Uncategorized Archives - Page 8 of 113 - Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Ruff Morning

October 13, 2015 by Ashley Hackshaw

Only for Max…as he got his bath:

He’s so darn cute.

How to Make Round Vintage Signs

September 27, 2015 by Ashley Hackshaw

My most recent project for the depot, other than the picket fence and raised garden, has been to paint vintage railroad signs as “flare” for the outside:

I started with these stain grade edge glued round table tops from Lowe’s as the canvas:

The first thing I did was paint each table top with a coat of primer:

Because the table tops are round it’s hard to create a grid for measurements. I used a large piece of contractor’s paper to create a round template the size of each table top to make it easy to find the center and to mark quarter and half marks:

move down

I enlarged text in Powerpoint and printed it off as a template. I used newspaper to transfer my design. If you trace and press hard enough the newspaper ink will transfer to the wood:

I used acrylic craft paint to carefully paint in my designs:

Here’s a Santa Fe sign:

On reason I chose that sign is that our house overlooks the Bryson City train depot and the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad has an old Santa Fe caboose….it was built in 1942 and rebuilt in 1970. It’s a class Ce-2 which you can read more about here.

For the large railroad crossing sign I marked the center of the wood using my paper template and then used a ruler to mark the outside border all the way around:

I printed off a large “R” to use as a letter template:

I painted the yellow background first:

And then the black parts:

I love the large scale of the RR sign:

The old depot was part of the railroad in Canton, NC so I wanted to use a sign from its roots. The Southern Railroad would have been the railroad whose locomotives used this building. I used a small paintbrush to carefully write each letter:

And the finished sign:

After all the signs were completely dry I put a few coats of polyurethane on them to protect them from the outdoor weather:

So far I’ve painted three but I’m working on a handful of other ones:

You can use this technique to make any sign that is circular:

You can follow along real time at @lilblueboo on Instagram.

All the projects are indexed here:

Click here to read more about the Old Depot Project.

The Old Depot Project is sponsored by Lowe’s Home Improvement.

If you like using the round table tops for projects try this one out too!

A Place Called Cataloochee

September 17, 2015 by Ashley Hackshaw

If there are any ghosts in the Great Smoky Mountains they are definitely in Cataloochee:

Cataloochee was once a peaceful, prosperous community for the families that lived there, until the rumors of the formation of the national park started to filter in from the outside. By the late 1930’s most of the families would be forced to leave. Some of the structures were preserved like the Palmer House:

Layers of peeling wallpaper:

So many beautiful textures in this place, like this old floral linoleum:

This is the Caldwell House built in 1906:

I just loved the inside of the house and the remnants of paper on the walls:

Newspapers and Sears catalogs were used to cover the walls to keep out drafts:

The old Cataloochee Beech Grove schoolhouse, built in 1901, is the only school that remains now after the families moved out for the park in the 1940’s. As we approached it we could see an elk resting in the woods. I didn’t take a photo because it’s wise to give elk their space.

The desks and blackboards are still there as if the students just walked out one day, which they kind of did:

The community is now mostly grown back into forest…no more farmland or orchards. While Brett and I were clearing the area for our garden the last few weeks I remarked a few times: Could you imagine having to manually fell trees and clear land for farming like this?

Cataloochee is way up over a mountain, surrounded by 6,000 foot high ridges, so far up and down that as we were driving there Brett asked: Are you sure there’s something at the end of this road? It makes you wonder how the settlers even found the area in the first place. And then when they found it they had to clear it to create farm land. It’s a beautiful place but also eerily sad. Over ten million people visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park last year, making it the most visited park in the country. I often wonder how many of those visitors know the history of sacrifice that went into creating it. I’m so glad some of these buildings were preserved in the park so that visitors can imagine the community that was once there.

P.S. I think one thing that really shocked me was the amount of graffiti left in these old building. Sad that people can’t have enough self control to deface historic property.

****

I read the book Cataloochee a few months ago, a fictional account of the community. I loved being transported back to such a simpler time and being able to imagine what it was like living there:

Cataloochee by Wane Caldwell

“Against the breathtaking backdrop of Appalachia comes a rich, multilayered post—Civil War saga of three generations of families–their dreams, their downfalls, and their faith. Cataloochee is a slice of southern Americana told in the classic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner. Nestled in the mountains of North Carolina sits Cataloochee. In a time when “where you was born was where God wanted you,” the Wrights and the Carters, both farming families, travel to the valley to escape the rapid growth of neighboring towns and to have a few hundred acres all to themselves. But progress eventually winds its way to Cataloochee, too, and year after year the population swells as more people come to the valley to stake their fortune.”

More of my favorite books on the area are listed here.