Tag: guest room

Building a Home Archive

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I am lucky enough to be trusted with a few collections of old family photos and documents, partially because I have shamelessly asked for them. It is my dream to have the family history I collect safely stored and digitized so that all my family members can have copies and that that they can be passed down in the future.

For a short period of time, I worked in the archives at UWSP. It was a learning experience I will cherish forever. It also sparked my passion for seeking out and preserving family photos and documents. While I was there, I examined and wrote descriptions for our county historical society’s small collections. It gave me a chance to see how archives are organized and documents stored. A lot goes into preserving the old photos and bits of history that we sometimes take for granted. Images and newspapers aren’t really made to last!

After leaving, I have been continuously working to better my own home archiving process and knowledge. Like all things, it’s a work in progress.  My dream would be to have an entire small room dedicated to a library and archives, but you know… a 1000 sq ft house doesn’t really have a lot of extra space. The spare room is my best choice. Fortunately,  one of its closets is a pretty good location. It’s free of light, stays even in humidity and temp. But, I do have to use it to store my sewing machine and all of my extra tack (a ton of spare bits and bridles).  I’ve been working on it for awhile to get it set up for a home archive.

I picked up a lot of knowledge from the university archives but I’ve also spent a lot time searching the internet and found some great resources for home/family archivists. My favorite blog is The Family Curator. Lisa’s advice on creating archives, storing photos, and million other things related to family history makes her blog my go to choice when I need advice or ideas for my own archival process.

I also rely heavily on articles published through museums small and large (like the National Archives), conservators, and archival companies like Gaylord Archival. I follow a variety of groups on Facebook too, and try to save articles that will help me. Every collection is a bit different, so do some searching around to find a method that works for yours.

Here is what my current archive situation looks like:

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As you can see, it needs some work. The bankers boxes aren’t archival, but they are clean and simple (I also got them on clearance). Most are pretty organized, but now I hope to go through and properly label everything. Currently, I have collections from my grandma, a great aunt, my mother, and a small mix from my Dad. I need to add a shelf and get a few more small boxes. These metal shelves came from Target. There are also some hooks that need to be added so I can hang my extra bridles a little easier.

I know it’s a weird mix of stuff to have in a closet, but I keep my leather nice and clean. The cool, dark, and dry closet keeps any mildew that the bridles are prone to from getting going.

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Family History Gallery: Triumph and Defeat

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Many moons ago, I promised my next post would show the results of my family history gallery. I had to give up that dream and post a few things before. That family history gallery has been a beast.

The two major problems for me:

  1. deciding where to hang things
  2. execution

I’ve played with layouts, all sorts of great ideas of artifacts to include, and looked through dozens of photos. It has been overwhelming. Sometimes, you just need to put a nail in the wall and go with it.  I’ve ran into other problems too.

Some of my chosen photos from digital sources caused a huge set back. When I tried to get prints made, I received alerts that the resolution was too low for the sizes (even though most were no bigger than 4×6). So, I had to rethink some of those photos and decide how and when I would tackle the task of bringing out the archives and scanning them.

The task of bringing out the archives has been a hassle forever. My large closet in the spare room is host to not only my family archives, but my sewing stuff, signs, and all of my extra horse tack. With no proper shelving, every time I need something, I have to take out half the closet.  Not to mention, when we do have a guest, extra things get stacked in there too.

That problem is in the process of being solved.  You can read about my home archives makeover, here (I’ll link it when I’ve finished my post!)

So far, I’ve hung most of the frames, but need to fill in a few small gaps. Next I will be choosing the images, maps, etc. that I want to highlight in my gallery right now. Next, I will be able to figure out what images I can put into what frames and have them printed. Here is the current status:

Family History Gallery

I have frames up, next will be filling in gaps, and picking out the photos I want to use!

I wonder how long this next step will take me? At least I’m making progress…

Creating a Family History Gallery

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Now, that the spare room is relatively complete, it’s time to start my family history gallery. It’s harder than I thought. Deciding what to include has been the most overwhelming part. Fortunately, I have access to many family photos through digital copies shared by other family members and many originals in my own collection. I recognize that some may not have this luxury. But a family history gallery doesn’t have to be just family trees and ancestor photos. It can be so much more!

Here is a list of ideas that I am using as inspiration for what to put on my wall:

  • genealogy fan chart
  • ancestor Photos
  • photos or paintings of ancestral homes or lands
  • maps (there are so many amazing historic maps available online)
  • documents like marriage certificates, land patents, ship manifests…anything visually interesting
  • artifacts, like medals, jewelry, gloves, small items owned by the family
  • items that represent heritage (in my case things like Danish hearts, Swedish Dala horses etc.)
  • pressed flowers from heritage sites (this one is particularly exciting to me)
  • painted or printed sayings meaningful to the family
  • framed family recipes

I have been slowly gathering each item I want to put on my gallery wall. Before going on the wall, everything will be laid out on floor or bed to get an idea of how I want to look on the wall. One thing I have to decide is if there will be a few ‘extra’ pieces beyond family history items. I have a handful of garden/natural curiosity items I may add as well. I guess It will come down to space and what looks good!

Selecting what photos I want to use has been the hardest part, but I’ve started a folder on my desktop. Getting photos printed off these days is pretty inexpensive, so even if I don’t use them in my gallery, I won’t have spent a lot. I think it’s important to remember, that gallery images can change too! You don’t have to find an image and have it on the wall forever. I plan on using standard sized frames for photos I don’t plan to keep up long-term.

Above is the room, future gallery wall, and the beginning layout of the gallery. I will need to get some more frames, and get the pictures printed. I will be sure to post the gallery when it’s finished (someday)!

There are some really important things to remember when displaying and storing family photos, artifacts, and heirlooms. Working in the archives really showed me the importance of taking care of precious items. I may write a whole post on it, sharing some of my favorite resources.

Two of the best pieces of advice, if you can’t use a duplicate as a display:

  1. Keep items/photos/documents out direct sunlight and fluctuating temps
  2. Use archival or museum quality framing materials

I didn’t expect this to take me so long to put together becuase I have a lot of things too add, but it is really hard to choose what to include! It is a fun process though, I have gotten to revisit parts of the family tree I have’t looked at in a long time.

 

 

Our House: Spare Room Update

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Last week, I began redoing our spare bedroom. I took almost everything out of the room (except the closets, they are their own thing). The yellow ceiling was the first to go! I used Valspar’s color changing ceiling paint, in flat white. It makes everything so much cleaner and brighter. It goes on sort of purple and dries white. I probably didn’t need it for the this room, but the paint was left over from the painting the bathroom ceiling.

Next, I decided the wall paint we used to cover the turquoise just wasn’t what I wanted. I did a little looking at Lowe’s and on Pinterest and chose Valspar’s Oxygen White as the wall color. Eventually, the trim and closet doors will be the same white as the rest of the house’s trim, Olympic’s Delicate White.

Our house isn’t huge, so I’ve tried to consider how all the paint colors in our house work together. Below are all the paints we’ve used in our house!

  • Mountain Grey: main living, halls, utility, and kitchen
  • Azalea Leaf: master
  • Mountain Dew: bathroom
  • Oxygen White: spare
  • Duchess Lyndhurst Duchess Blue: kitchen cabinets
  • Delicate White: all trim

All our paint has come from Lowes, and the best pieces of advice I picked up through researching on blogs and Pinterest for paint is this:

  1. Save the lids to the paint cans (with the paint color info on it), if you need to match discontinued colors, it makes it a lot easier.
  2. For whole room colors choose something a few shades more on the gray-scale than the color you want. The intensity of a color is a lot higher than what it looks like on a paint chip!

Even though the paint all looks really cool, it balances with the amount of warm wood finishes we have in the house.

My remodeling of the spare room is on hold for the moment. We are waiting for the new bed frame for our master room to arrive, Todd still needs to add base-boards. Once that happens, we will move our old bed into the room, arrange it, and start putting it all back together. I’ve started to think about how I want the space to function, and what I want to add to the family history gallery. I’ve also purchased these pretty curtains…

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I got them on sale, and was able to stack some discounts to get them for just over $30.00. Woot.

Next post, I will share my plans and thoughts on putting together a family history gallery!

Our House: the “Spare” Room

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I’ve been struggling for inspiration these last couple of weeks. I took a little break from genealogy, and garden planning. The weather went from -30 to 40 degrees in a couple of days. During the warmer weather it rained, but the ground is so frozen it’s just turned into a sloppy mess, which has now froze again. We’ve also had several inches of snow in there. I hate weather like this. Stay cold and snowy then ease into an early Spring. That’s what I wish for.

I missed my Sunday post, but while lacking inspiration for genealogy and gardening, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at our unfinished house. It’s getting there. Soon, I hope, I’ll post some pictures of how far we’ve come. For now, my February project is to tackle the “spare” room. It has a lot of duties, since this house isn’t huge, around 1100 sq ft.

When we moved it was a kids room with yellow ceilings, bright turquoise walls, and lilac closets. The walls and closets are now Mountain Gray, but the ceiling is still yellow. Here are photos of the room when we bought the house. It’s hard to see how yellow the ceiling is because the walls are so bright!

The room is some times clean and pleasant, but lack of organized storage in the house turns it into a mess quickly. Right now, I have Good Will bags, art, spring decor, horse stuff, shoes, hats….etc all over the place. This is the mess that happens whenever I need something out of the closets or change seasonal decor. The current state of things (a bit embarrassing):

But I’ve been dreaming and planning. I need a guest room, office, and storage space all in a 12×12 room. Here are some of my Pinterest inspirations:

I’m hoping to have a gallery wall of family history, with some other art as well. I think that will take some time laying out and planning. I may write a separate post on it to share about displaying family images and documents. We will also be putting a real bed in the room, after we get a new one for the master. The closets…well, I didn’t take a photo of them for a reason. Over all, I just want it to be a happier space for guests when they’re here, and for me when I want to paint or do genealogy. I’ll post as the room progresses!