Round Top Texas–Part 2

I was able to make a whirlwind trip through Round Top, Texas to see the antique festival recently when my husband had a business meeting in Texas. The meeting was in Dallas and we were able to add a few days at the end of the trip to venture down to Round Top.

Round Top is tiny most of the year. There is no “town” to speak of. There is no hotel, only a few guest houses which obviously book to capacity well ahead of the twice yearly antiques festival.  Initially, I booked a room in a chain hotel in a town about 35 miles away. Then I found an alternative in a town 50 miles away for $200 less than the chain hotel. I decided to take my chances and use the $200 savings for shopping money. I did not shop with a “budget” in mind but my purchases ended up costing right at $200!

We stayed at Rainbow Courts in Rockdale, Texas. It was about 50 miles from Round Top but the speed limit is 70 most of the way and it was a very easy trip.

The cottages were sooo cute and the lobby was absolutely vintage gourgeousness!

Our little cottage had a full kitchen which would be great if you stayed there all week and tired of take out food.

On our first day at Round Top we browsed the southern end of the festival at Warrenton. In my opinion, the merchandise in the Warrenton area was lower end and the merchandise at the northern end toward Carmine was a little more high end including some fine period antiques. Unfortunately, the Marburger Farm show was not open while we were there. We missed it by one week so maybe next time. There was a TON of stuff there. There were fields and fields of tents. It was almost overload even for me!

There were plenty of food vendors.

This is not a good photo, but we had lunch on day one at Reba’s Upstairs which is the porch at the top of the photo above. They had a variety to choose from, and they had a restroom! (Some buildings had restrooms but tent areas usually just had port-a-johns!)

I had a great salad and my husband had brisket.

On the second day we were there we ate at the Methodist Mens Barbeque at the Blue Hills show. It was excellent!

I love unique vehicles so I had to have a photo of this coffee bug.

Speaking of vehicles, the one below was one of my favorite things from the entire show.

It was a 1957 Fiat for $850! Call me crazy but I love this car. It even had suicide doors! It reminds me of my first car. My mother bought me an Austin America for $100 at a yard sale. I don’t remember the model but I loved it. At the time, Austin made the popular Mini before it was sold to Cooper and the America model was made for the US. The fuel pump went out and my daddy refused to pay $89 for a part for a  $100 car so they sold it instead of repairing it. I would LOVE to have that car back!

We enjoyed looking at these vintage campers in the Warrenton area.

Some of them had already sold.

There were rows and rows of stuff for browsing.

There were also rows and rows and fields and fields of tents packed with goods.

The local sheriff was on hand to keep law and order.

Some of the combinations were quite interesting. The tent above had a variety of carnival rides, Greek statues, and garden urns.

Since our summer cottage is on a small lake, I am always drawn to little boats.

Where do you find a life size Buzz Lightyear?

There were lots of goodies regardless of your personal taste.

These vintage olive buckets were reasonably priced at $35 each.

This kid size church pew was so cute.

I would love to have added this Delft rolling pin to my collection but didn’t want to pay $175 so I just enjoyed looking at it.

I also loved this coat rack with the Delft tiles. I think I will be using this photo for inspiration in an upcoming project using the vintage tiles that we purchased in Belgium.

I loved this beautiful tent above and especially the shoe trunk. I can see it repurposed as a unique foyer table. It would look great with my parrot lamps on top!! The green and blue shades would even work!

Have you ever seen such a cute fitten’ room as the one in this tent?

There were many repurposed items including this gas tank with the attached mirror.

This tailgate was repurposed into a swing and the armrests were repurposed fenders. Notice the bumper below the seat. Very creative.

Zapp Hall was great. It was filled with very well styled booths.

The ceiling of Zapp Hall was fabulous.

My photos focus more on the unique items rather than furniture but there was plenty of furniture there to be had. In my opinion, a full size taxidermy bear is very unique.

I have collected rabbits for years and loved this one but at $1495 it was a little pricey.

This beautiful French sideboard was 11 feet long.

According to the tag, it was found in an old winery in France.

So, what did I buy? I’ll have photos later but I actually purchased very little. I purchased 6 Limoges fish plates, a set of copper measuring cups, and a pair of vintage door pulls. The biggest purchase was the set of plates and I bought them from a dealer from South Carolina! It’s a good thing that I found him on the second afternoon we were there or I would have been negotiating with him for transportation of a few big purchases! I did see a table that I liked and a grandfather clock but did not want to deal with cross country transportation. After we left, my husband told me that he had seen a shipper there with a booth. Funny he didn’t point that out to me!

Here are my notes if you have any interest in going.

This festival is HUGE. It involved lots of walking in the heat.

Comfortable shoes, clothing, and water are essential.

I chose comfort over cute and am so glad I did.

This website was very helpful. I printed the map to take along.

As stated earlier, there was a wide variety of items and prices. Lower end items were toward Warrenton and higher end items were north of Round Top.

I did not get to visit Marburger Farm as it is open for fewer days than the other venues. It is in the middle of all the venues and from what I heard and have read it is higher end. There is also an admission charge and maybe a parking fee too.(All other venues are free)

Cole’s was very big and very cool (as in temperature). All quality dealers with no junk. Bonus—clean restrooms.

Junk Gypsies- way to crowded for photos- packed full of women- More Junk Gypsy brand merchandise that actual junk

LaBahia was a good show with no junk.

We had to pay $5 to park in the Warrenton area.  All of the other venues that we visited had free parking.  There was a trolley going from one end to the other with stops along the way but we just drove our rental car.

Blue Hills was an excellent show with quality dealers- no junk. The Methodist Mens Barbeque was there and was excellent. It also had free parking and clean restrooms.

Arbor show- very high end big items

Round Top Hill was very low end with mostly junktiques

I enjoyed everything, both high end and low end. Please don’t think I’m being negative about the junk dealers. I love junk as much as the next chic who comes along and have plenty of $20 jewels to prove it. One day I am going to do a post dedicated to my $20 finds.

You can read my previous post with more pictures from Round Top by clicking here.

I think fall has finally arrived to my area. I hope that you are enjoying cooler temps too!

I’ll be linking to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch, to the Scoop at Stone Gable, to Inspire me Tuesday at A Stroll Thru Life, to Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style, and to Grace At Home at Imparting Grace.

Inspiring Tabletops from the Round Top Antique Festival

Last week I was able to check an item off of my bucket list: the Round Top Antique Festival in Round Top, Texas. This post will feature some inspiring table tops from various vendor booths. I will do another post with my general observations. Unfortunately I don’t have any booth or vendor names, just a few random photos. Some of the photos are poor quality since they were made with my phone but I hope that you will still be inspired.

This one with a Christmas theme was really cute. The centerpieces were vintage ornaments and the place setting was layered: a book, a white plate, a vintage Bible, and an ornament with a beaded twig stem. Each glass also had a bottle brush tree and a beaded twig stem. There was also a  wire whisk at each place. I did get another view of this table as shown below.

Very creative to say the least!

The tabletop shown above had grapevine wreath “nests
and vintage glass domes. I’m sorry I can’t remember what the paper things were under the domes!

This setting  had brown transferware plates with ships  and a large wooden model ship for a centerpiece.

Simple pine cones look great on ironstone plates with the back of an old book sandwiched in the middle.  I also love the added texture of the centerpiece caddy made of ceiling tiles.

The photo above is not taken from the best angle but you can still get an idea of the creativity. I love the blue prints used as place mats and those chair covers are fantastic!  The centerpiece was a pumpkin nestled in a grapevine wreath. Osage oranges were used often.

The table above had an enamel pan filled with Osage oranges with a pumpkin nestled in the center, and that leopard runner is quite eye-catching too.

I had to include more than the tabletop for this shot. I love the tabletop with vintage silver trays, Osage oranges, and tree branches but I also love the vintage rug, the settees, and the plush chair covers.

I hope to have my follow-up post up soon sharing more from Round Top.

I’ll be linking to Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch.

Mixing Chairs and Fabrics

As a follow up to my last post on Rescued Chairs I wanted to share the arm chairs that I plan to use with the group. All of these will be used at our summer cottage.

I purchased a pair of wicker chairs at an estate sale and made the cushions for the seats.

I started by using a piece of newspaper to make a pattern.

Next I transferred the pattern to the fiber filler for the insert.

I traced around the pattern with a marker.

Next I used an electric knife to trim the insert. Notice that this is a fiber insert which is sold as an alternative to foam.  I bought one yard of this at JoAnns because after I used a coupon it was was more affordable than two pieces of foam. It took the clerk quite a while to cut the material with a pair of scissors. As you can see by looking closely at the photo above, it was very difficult to cut, even with the electric knife. I also used the electric knife to cut another 4” thick cushion for another project with no problems whatsoever. The foam cuts very easily with the electric knife.Thus, I would not recommend this product due to difficulty cutting!

I used the same pattern for my fabric but added 1 1/2 inches to all sides to allow for the thickness of the filler and the seam allowance. Then I stitched it up on the sewing machine.

Now I have a pair of arm chairs to use with other chairs. I chose to coordinate the fabric rather than matching the other chairs.

I love the color combination. I showed a photo of several coordinated pieces of fabric in a previous post.

All of these are chair fabrics at our summer cottage.

The first chair on the left will be used at the downstairs dining table and can be used upstairs when I need extra seating.  The second chair on the left is used as additional seating upstairs. You can read about those chairs by clicking here. The third chair from the left is one of the dining chairs from upstairs. You can read about that dining set by clicking here. Then the last chair can be used with the downstairs dining chairs or as additional seating upstairs. That sounds like a lot of chairs but it is actually a total of 14 and because we do all of our summer entertaining here we quite often need extra chairs. Let’s take a closer look.

While the fabrics are not all the same color, they are all in the same color family and work together very well.  You can click here to take a tour of our summer cottage.

I also finished another major major project this week. I’m not doing a tutorial or even sharing a lot of pictures because this is not typical DIY blog material but I wanted to give a peak of what I have been doing with my time.

The fiberglass base to one of our showers developed a crack! When I called the repair guy I was told that the material could not be repaired because it was too thin! He said that the entire base would have to be torn out and replaced with another base or with tile and that the labor alone would be more than $1000!! I decided to tackle the job myself. It took my several hours to tear out the bottom two rows of wall tile and cut out the fiberglass shower base. I decided to reposition the drain while I was at it! I spent hours doing research to learn how to make a concrete pre-slope, install a rubber membrane, then build the sloping concrete base for the tile. Finally I laid the new floor tile. I forgot to mention that I had to remove the glass shower door then re-install it in the end. My husband did help me re-install the shower door as it was impossible to do with just two hands! It took me several weeks to finish this project but it is finally complete and turned out very well. The final cost was less than $150 so it was quite a savings but involved a lot of sweat and hard work.

Hope you are having a productive week!

I’ll be sharing with Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style and to Grace At Home at Imparting Grace.