Seeing Clearly Through An Old Window

I was feeling a little brain-dead this morning, courtesy of spending the weekend in Nashville for a friend’s wedding. Thanks to my in-laws, my husband and I were able to enjoy a child-free get-away and it was much appreciated. However I don’t quite recover from staying up too late and enjoying one too many adult beverages like I used to. Who knew? I imagine my in-laws might be spending their day recovering as well, considering our 18-month old is a handful (but a perfectly sweet handful at that). I had to make a quick trip to the grocery store to clear my head after staring at the computer screen for God knows how long this morning trying to come up with a title for this blog post. Sad. I think I’m okay now though.

For whatever reason, having old windows in your house as decor is super “in” right now. Actually it’s been in for a while and it doesn’t seem to be going out anytime soon. Being that my brother is a handy-man, he always seems to have a supply of old windows sitting around. Lucky for me. I have a stock in my basement, as well as 25 ancient windows on our house, so I should be good to go. During the dining room remodel I decided I wanted an old window hanging on one of the walls, but it took me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with the window. So the wall remained blank for some time.

After my dad passed away a couple of years ago, I came across some really old postcards when going through his things. The photographs on the postcards were from National Parks and other attractions around the Southeast. I thought they were so cool. Then I flipped them over and realized that half of them had actual writing on them (mainly from my grandmother, Papa Ernie, and their friends). Even cooler. When’s the last time you sent somebody a postcard and actually wrote a note on the back? It reminded me of the postcard chain letters that were so popular when I was growing up … nostalgia at its finest. I knew I just had to do something with them, so I did.

I decided to hang the postcards in the window I was redoing – super simple but oh-so-special. The first step was sanding the window. It was in pretty bad shape with multiple coats of paint, so it took a good bit of sanding and I used a pretty coarse piece of sandpaper. Then came the painting – thanks to Pinterest I originally decided to paint the window a lime green (Craft Smart Citron to be exact). Now I love color, but the lime green window hanging against the teal wall was just a little too much, even for my liking. So I painted over the lime green with a couple different colors (Folk Art Dark Brown and Folk Art Dove Gray). I used acrylic paints and a sponge brush with short quick sweeps because I wanted a layering effect with the multiple colors. There are even some spots where the lime green peeks through.

Next I just arranged the postcards the way they looked best. I had to pick my favorite ones at this point because there wasn’t room for all of them and I wanted to have some sort of pattern. I used the tiniest pieces of clear tape to attach the postcards to the window. You’ll see from the picture below that I didn’t bother repainting the back of the window. Who has time for that?

I was thrilled with the with the way it turned out and I don’t see myself ever getting tired of it (even if old windows do someday go out of style). It has great meaning to me, it has a vintage feel because it is vintage, and I think it’s the perfect addition to our dining room. And believe it or not, I’ve actually seen similar old postcards in antique stores – so you could actually do this same craft yourself 🙂