Door Wall

The tour of our new Rustic Home continues today.  I promised that once we get moved and settled, I will get back to blogging about cookies, creating some crafts and sharing some recipes, but for right now, my life is all new house, all the time!  Hang with me..I am sure it will not be that much longer!


Today, I want to share one of my favorite features of the house, well, one of my favorites.

My door wall, or wall of doors or door accent wall, or as I call it "freaking cool" Or as many have said "well...that is different"

Glass Insulator Lights

Happy Monday Friends!

Today, I thought I would share with you some of the lights what we installed in our new house!  Please excuse the dust, we are still installing trim work, and that is why you see the lovely orange cover on the smoke detectors too.  But..this is a house in progress...so you will see picture of a house in progress!

 Aren't they beautiful!  I just love them!  We had them made YEARS ago, and they have been sitting in our basement, just waiting to be installed!  Well...they have been installed for months now, I am just getting around to sharing them with you.  Right now, I have three of these, but a fourth one is being made now.

I have had  glass insulators in a box for years and years, Mr. Cookie Puzzle has had boxes of them in his work shop forever and a day too.  My mom has some glass insulators from the farm she grew up on as well as some from my dad's family farm.  BUT, for these lights, I used insulators that I picked up from garage sales, auctions, clean up jobs and just wherever I can find them.

To have them made, Mr. Cookie Puzzle took them to a glass shop, and for $5 a piece, the nice glass place made drilled holes in the tops.  Mr. Cookie Puzzle then too them to a dear friend, who is retired, and likes to "tinker" with stuff, and he used copper piping to make the light fixtures.

Each of them is different...each is unique and totally custom...which is exactly what I wanted.  While they don't give out a huge amount of light, I am love with them.

I love that he used a combination of sizes, style and color.  Some are clear glass, while some are the blue ones.  They look wonderful against the wooden ceiling too.


So..that is that...three of the lights in my great room.   Taking pictures of lights is hard!  As we are winding down, I have lots I want to share, but finding the time to edit pictures is hard, but I will do my best.

Until next time...hugs!

Rustic Half Bathroom

We are FINALLY starting to wrap out our adventure in building a new house!  I am starting to get excited, but if I am being honest, I am totally exhausted.  Just when I think we are nearing completion, Mr. Cookie Puzzle tells me there is still more to do.

We are at the point, that I want to start sharing some of what we have finished.  Let me start out by saying that our new home is VERY RUSTIC....think lots of wood finishes, touches of stainless steel, butt joints over mitered joints (personal preference, not for lack of skill or knowledge), and farm style fixture.  Now, I know this is not a design style everyone likes, some even HATE it, and that is OK, I totally understand that, but, if you hate it, please keep your feelings and thoughts to yourself.  This is OUR home, built by US, paid for by US, and if you don't like it, fine, but you don't need to leave me a comment telling me it is ugly, or you hate it, or whatever.  This is a free country, we are all free to our own likes and dislikes, but this is MY BLOG, so be nice or don't comment, a little respect please?


So....without further ado...I present our half bath.

This is a small guest half bathroom, off of our great room, which is an open room that has our kitchen, dinning room and living room.  I know some people refer to this as a powder room, but with wood looking ceramic tile, barn wood walls and corrugated steel wainscoting, to me, it is half bath, not a powder room.

Please ignore the lack of baseboards, and the floor that needs a good cleaning, but I an in love with the vanity in this room.  This washstand was my grandma's, I inherited it when she passed many years ago.  When Mr. Cookie Puzzle came home with this vessel sink, I knew just what I wanted to do with it.  I love the look of a vessel sink, but was not sure I wanted it in a bathroom that would get lots of use.  So using it in our Rustic Half Bath was perfect.

For the mirror, I removed the mirror from an old metal medicine cabinet and spray painted it silver, and hung it horizontally.  You can barely see it, but the vanity light is a stainless steel farm light, attached to an old piece of barn wood.

Here is a really really crappy picture...but I wanted to show you it anyway.

For the walls, I coated them with two coats of polyurethane, but for the light fixture board, I left it naked, I just liked the look of it in the raw.  It gave it a little Rustic POP for sure.

Here is another shot of the light fixture.  It also shows the box beam, made out of hickory, and the ceiling, which is covered with cedar planks  I think this would be a good time to mention that Mr. Cookie Puzzle makes his living in the tree removal and trimming business.  For years, he has been saving timber, and taking it to a local saw mill to be cut into boards, then we would run them through the planer and edge them.  Before we even started building this house, we had a storage unit full of boards ready to be used.  We just mixed and matched them, using whatever board and wood that met the need at the time.  So, in this small half bath alone, you will see barn wood, cedar, hickory, walnut, and then the ceramic wood tile.

I think we did a good job and creating a Rustic Half Bath, I happy with it for sure.  I will be sharing more looks at the house, as I get time to write blog posts about it.

I do need your help though.  I am not a very girly girl, as you can see by this Rustic Half Bathroom, and decorating is NOT my thing.  I will always choose function over looks.  But, I am needing some help with this bathroom.

I am smart enough and girly girl enough to know that those pipes are UGLY! So, what do I do about them.  Do I just leave them and completely embrace the Rustic feel?  Or, do I try to hide or fancy it up.  Maybe a skirt of some type?  What type of skirt?  Burlap or Gingham?  Or, do I paint the pipes?  Maybe silver or black?  Help a girl out. If this was in your Rustic Half Bath, what would you do to cover these ugly pipes?