Category Archives: home decor

April 6, 2016 · 1:00 AM

Lost on the stairs

I’m quite proud of all of my hand-refinished oak floors in the house.

And I like our cheap-fix painted basement floor – so much so, I’m not even thinking of what we’ll do to improve it in the long run.

But the basement stairs – those still really sucked.

stairs-way before

This was the state of things when we first bought the house – a toxic green tunnel leading roughly down into a cheap-paneled hellhole.

The unpainted/unsealed stairs and balusters were likely put in about a decade and a half ago when the original owners received a grant from the town to improve safety in the home. (At the time they also had a one-story drop off from the back door as well…) The wood used on the treads is a soft pine and is well-dented, gashed, and full of too-wide nail heads.

I thought about re-finishing (or finishing for the first time) the treads anyway, but the wood really sucked. I thought about painting them, and prepped and primed them to do so, but the color I picked out was too dark, and a lighter color was going to be too light, and the wood was still shit, so painting it would just be painting over shit, which would make it look like painted shit, which is only marginally better… And then I wanted to carpet them. I hate carpeting except on basement stairs. It’s a practical thing because I’m a klutz and most likely to fall on basement stairs and I don’t clean the basement often enough so carpet helps to trap dust and sawdust and whatnot from being tracked up into the house. So I went shopping for the cheapest, not too light, not too dark, low-pile grey carpet and didn’t find anything that would cost less than $100 which was my top limit on the project. (I wasn’t able to find a cheap remnant place around here either…) My next option was to find cheap jute or rag rugs to “carpet” the stairs, or else a fairly wide runner to cover up most of the painted shit – and though I came close, most options still topped off at or over $100, though those would have been nicer than cheap grey carpet. For half a minute, I considered weaving something myself, but since I don’t own much of a loom, that put me way over my budget, and then I considered knitting, sewing, or felting something, but that would mean I still wouldn’t have something covering up the stairs for at least another 7 to 10 years…

So clearly, I was craving a challenge for something super cheap and somewhat interesting, and with color but not too colorful, and light but not so light that every dirt clod would show, and somewhat fast.

Decoupage was my answer, my cheap savior.

63050463502674595_HcReHRQr_c

For a moment, I wanted to use fabric, but as much as I love the above, my fabric stash isn’t so vast and a little too precious for the floor.

Then I looked hard at the paper bag floor. There are many, many tales of successes and surprises (hi Grackle & Sun, I bumped into yours!) and techniques and alternates with colored kraft paper and red rosin and the like… But I didn’t want brown – I love brown, but there is enough of it in the house already, and I didn’t want just one color, or one stair in one color and another in another, in a motley sort of way…

So how about paper maps?

stair papering-test

I had a few too many in my car, so I made a test step.

stairs-with shoes

(The obligatory shoes with something on a floor pic I would have posted on my instagram if I had a smartphone of my own and posted regularly and ironically.)

I let it dry, gave it a coat of poly, let that dry, and in a few days deemed it successful.

stairs-edge

I started decoupaging all of the edges first – I used the map’s edge against the riser and tread’s edge to mimic the look of a runner and reign in the scrappy visual chaos a bit.

stairs-during

After the edges were all framed out, I tried to do a couple of treads and risers every evening, and in the morning, I’d give them one coat of poly. This made the stairs still functional for a few hours a day…

stairs-up left

And after a week, I was done, and gave the whole thing another coat of poly.

stairs-up right

Though I still need to do another coat… and perhaps one more on the treads only after that, but maybe not…

stairs-top

I’m quite pleased – the transition from our lovely upstairs oak to the painted cement works – casual but not too crude – and the subject is appropriate for our basement library too…

stairs-down down

The functionality is good – not too slick in sock feet, but it might be a bit slick for dog paws, so we still might need a runner at some point.

stairs-texture

Since the map paper is thin, and I used a self-leveling poly, the texture of the wood still shows through – I like that it does.

stairs-equipment

And the final cost?

About $13.00!

(Because we only needed more poly)

The nitty gritty: I used plain paper maps – the kind you get from AAA – I could brag about recycling and whatnot, but I’ll spare you. The glue for the decoupage was some fancier acid-neutral PVA leftover from my book repair and binding years (roughly 15) ago. It was fairly lumpy, but still usable, and I cut it with water maybe at a 1:3 ratio – but mostly it was globbing some in a yogurt cup, filling it with water halfwayish, and stirring it somewhat until it looked milky. I brushed it on the back of a torn piece of map with one of my old fancy oil painting brushes, positioned it on the stair, and brushed over it again. I couldn’t brush it or re-position it too much or it would tear. I tried to distribute colors and leave meaningful places in visible spots, but after the first step or two, it was a  geographic free-for-all except for color distribution. It was also very uncomfortable for me to be sitting on a step in a spinal twist, so even if I wanted to work on bigger chunks at a time, it was painful, so spreading it out over a week worked for me. I used a triple-thick, self-leveling, satin finish polyurethane and I’d brush on the first coat about 24 hours after the decoupage to insure it was well-dried (our basement currently has about 50% RH).  After the whole thing was decoupaged and had its first coat of poly, I coated the whole shebang again. I am about to put on a third coat. And I might put on a fourth just on the treads. We already had about a half of a quart on hand, so when it’s all said and done, it probably took about a quart and a half.

Some things to consider: the acid-neutral glue I used will not yellow (I can’t say the same for standard white school glue – I think that stuff might yellow) and the water-based poly should not yellow either (oil-based most certainly will). I don’t know if the map paper is acid-free or not, so that could yellow though it is no longer exposed to air, and the stairs were sealed with primer, so they shouldn’t leach too much yellow-inducing acid either. I like the triple-thick poly because you don’t have to use as much and the coats go on thick enough that you can safely sand between them if so desired – but it goes on translucent and if left too thick, could dry with a bit of a milky haze – again, not a problem since the maps had a white base, but if it was dark surface, I’d be more careful about thinner coats. (But generally for wood that stays wood, I only use oil-based products – yellowing only adds depth and richness over time.)

And how will it wear?

It should be fine – the same as poly over finished wood – it will scratch and gouge under extreme circumstances, and will eventually need to be re-coated. If there’s a particularly bad spot, I can patch it with more map. Dirt can be swept/vacuumed up and ick can be wiped up with a damp cloth. You could probably even decoupage the whole thing just with poly instead of glue, but it would be messier, dry more quickly making re-positioning harder, and perhaps the paper might dry more translucent instead, but I’ve no idea.

I’m eyeing a few other things in the basement that could benefit from some decoupage now too…

3 Comments

Filed under collecting, home, home decor, recycling

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2016 · 1:00 AM

Winter blahs…

It’s finally gotten cold, well sometimes cold, and sometimes just warm enough to turn the backyard to mud again and then refreeze overnight.

january-pecker

It’s been a pecker party outside the kitchen window – red bellies, downies, nuthatches- mostly policed by a downy pair.

Our house has been troublesome – hot water heater, newish refrigerator, and well parts giving up varying degrees of the ghost within a couple weeks of each other – as well as our bodies with a mild but lingering cold since just before the new year, and routine and not so routine medical tests which required healing downtime and acceptance scenarios involving amputations, but turn out normally abnormal in the end.

We’ve been thrifting and antiquing a bit more, though on weekends when crowds make it a bit more unpleasant, but perhaps improve focus and curb impulse.

We said we had enough Heywood Wakefield * in our lives, but then a decent china cabinet opportunity came up and we took it – the scale is perfect for our small but not too small dining room and overflow Fiestaware.

furniture - heywood wakefield china cabinet

We’ve also had good luck finding more cheap and fun mid-century lamps.

january-lamp

And I still haven’t culled my vintage china herd, but I’m rotating through it with a use it or lose it tactic.

january-cakes

These meat on a spit plates have been a favorite for years but I rarely use them because they are large – perfect for part of a roasted ribcage – and we tend to eat on a smaller scale. I only have three plates and two cups and saucers that don’t officially match but do, so a meal that requires a large plate and coffee cup is rare, and all I can come up with is pancakes, which we make only maybe twice a year and usually with a souvenir bag of Polly’s pancake mix from the summer before.

N has been building some built-in bookcases and doors to previously un-doored closets, so the house is becoming more our own and finally has spaces for things, but I’d gotten used to our still semi-packed minimalism, so striking the balance between delightfully interesting and my previous states of delightfully cluttered is a bit tricky. As much as I loved my previous live-in cabinet of curiosity life, it was awfully dusty and too delicate (and a grand bitch to move).

january-door

I’m still unpacking hastily thrown-together boxes of supplies and organizing my work space.

january-studio

And doing a bit of use it or lose it on some old WIPs – nothing much to show, just a bit of slogging through to see if I want to keep slogging through…

* When editing this post, I clicked on the link to make sure it was the right one – and good god, is my life so routine that every January has me shopping for vintage lamps, watching woodpeckers, and obtaining more Hey-Wake furniture?!?

2 Comments

Filed under collecting, home, home decor, thrifting

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 30, 2015 · 1:00 AM

Cheers for chairs

I have a slight problem with obtaining chairs. We don’t yet have more than we can use, but perhaps one more would be unnecessary.

There’s an awesome antique mall in a rust belt near ghost town on the way to visiting my family. We used to live close enough to it that it would be a fun weekend day trip. We both, however, drive sedans – N’s is fairly large, so a chair or two can fit in the back seat, and mine is small and can fit one small chair, but it’s also an old beater, so we’ve had no qualms about strapping a huge old oak library table to its roof among other near impossible things.

On our way back from this past Thanksgiving travels we stopped in. I was very close to obtaining another small rocking chair, a “sewing chair” that was similar to this one I got a few years ago:

chair-sewing

That I use as my spinning chair and re-covered in a lovely (and once expensive) vintage linen sample that came from an estate sale.

But then we spotted a homely mid-century chair for the whopping price of $12.00 in the basement. The basement in parts, is a dim and dank place. Good things have come from this basement, but far better things have had to be left behind due to our vehicle limitations, or the expense of renting the van to haul it home. We sort of needed a chair for the guest room/N’s study, and I didn’t need another little chair, so we considered it. The wood seemed like it was likely walnut, but it was covered in a dark streaky stuff. There was a ghastly 1980s wedgewood blue and peach dot fabric covering the seat, but in the dim light I was able to see that there was a plaid cover underneath and thought it could be the original – possibly a wool blend in black and white and red.

chair-first cover

N set out to strip the unfortunate goop off of the wood.

chair-before

And I began to pry off the nasty insipid fabric to unveil the “original” upholstery.

chair-three covers

Only in better light, I saw that it was a nasty 1970s acrylic brown and orange and gold and barely perceptible mint green thing. And likely the top layer of dark “stain” or goop was poorly applied to the wood then too.

chair-second cover

So I pried the staples off that one and got down to the original cloth.

chair-original cover

A black and brown plaid chenille-like fabric in surprisingly good condition.

But though I was pleased with finding the original seat in perfectly usable condition, it felt too dark for our house and didn’t show off the freshly restored walnut well.

So I hit our town’s shop that sells used/excess art supplies and got some more upholstery/drapery samples.

chair-after

In the end, the one that worked best and N liked the most – a nice linen – doesn’t quite match the era of the chair, but it works well enough. I’ve also got some solid-colored but nubby-textured linen and silk blend samples that look spot-on for the time should we wish to change it or sell the chair eventually. This fabric was probably meant for drapes and likely not especially hard-wearing, but it won’t be used too often and it is easy enough to change.

And the original cover is still safe and sound and protected.

Now it needs a little pillow perhaps…

Leave a comment

Filed under collecting, home, home decor

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 23, 2015 · 1:00 AM

Finished objects, household edition

I wish I could live in a house that I knew would be the only one for the rest of my life. I’d immediately fix it up enough so that it would be safe, not too smelly, not extremely drafty, and visually appealing enough for the time being. Then I’d wait to come across the perfect things and work around them – a mint green double sink with double drainboards? I’d design the whole kitchen around it. Ditto with the same in the bathroom  with a green pedestal sink (which is fairly easily obtainable). And bonus points for having a house the right age for a separate clawfoot tub and shower stall… I’d wait for the perfect sized vintage/antique built-ins to show up in the salvage yard until we had a house full of nooks and crannies and only needed a few pieces of upholstered furniture for the center of the room. And I’d consider the thing a lifetime project that gets better and better with time and age as most things I love do.

(Of course my real dream would be to find an old house entirely untouched by decades of other’s “improvements,”except for newer wiring…)

But I’ve felt a sense of urgency in our last two home projects – we’re both in somewhat precarious fields full of fluctuating budgets, management whims, and soft money. My personal mantra is along scout lines in that a house should always be prepared for immediate sale if a sudden onslaught of financial ruin should befall us. I am overly skittish about such things, but I identify far closer to a depression-era mindset rather than our current one of debt and giant crap houses full of expensive soulless crap.

But it’s also because we’ve seen so many houses during our last house hunt and watched too many trashy home shows that set my teeth to grind because of other’s overall lack of what – planning? Aesthetic sense? Care? People spend so much money to have a “showcase” kitchen and then have bedrooms with missing radiators and broken windows or serious foundation issues that should have taken up most of that ugly new kitchen budget. Or a room that is nearly finished but for some missing trim pieces, or fresh paint on the walls, but a stained ceiling and the whole thing looks worse than it is for it.

In my making stuff life, I leave far more unfinished, or in a state of I-haven’t-finished-it-yet-but-will-someday. But in our last two houses, I like to wrap up the details on a project before changing focus. But this last time around, I’m not sure what happened. We let a few easy finishing touches languish – partly from indecision, partly from other things demanding attention, and partly from forces unknown.

delay-threshold

This threshold on the half bath took over a year and a half to be laid. We bought it after doing the tiling, so I was waiting to put it in until we were doing another tiling project, which also took over a year and a half.

delay-backsplash before

We wanted the kitchen to have mostly tiled walls. But then we wanted a functional kitchen faster. I knew I was going to put in a tile back splash, but we didn’t immediately know what height or which particular tile it would be. I bought some samples and enough of the smaller subway mosaic sheets to do a low band  along the counter or a section just around the window, so we painted the walls except in the one place where we knew with certainty that there would be tile. And then I stared at the ugly naked spot every day for over a year and a half. But then, I really didn’t – I looked out the window and truly didn’t see the ugly naked spot anymore.

delay-backsplash-layout

But I was done chasing splashes threatening to flow behind the sink and leaving out ratty old rolled towels to absorb their path, so I declared it would end before the year was out. We decided on the easiest layout, N went out for more tile (and yes, they changed since I originally bought them – about 1/8″ thicker) and more mastic for the last foot at the last minute.

I think I’ll always choose white subway tile in the kitchen – I like that several versions are available and cheap these days but will cringe when the masses of trend zombies declare it dated. And I’ll beat that dead horse again of my belief in only putting in semi-permanent stuff in a house that is appropriate to its age. Yes, the white subway tile is a little outdated for a house from the early 1950s, but I can’t stomach powder blue and pink dammit.

delay-backsplash-spacers

We lost our tile spacers in the move I guess – oddly, we still have the can that they were stored in, but they aren’t in it now – but some cut-up pieces of resilient floor samples worked perfectly.

delay-backsplash-during

We wanted a thin black line at the top, but thin black tiles that are glazed on the top edge, or are a narrow bullnose are not to be had unless specially ordered and bought with lots of money – I could somewhat justify spending it because the whole project was very affordable, but I was also fine with the wider black bullnose, so that’s what we went with in the end.

delay-backsplash done

And the whole thing – tiled, grouted, sealed, and caulked took less than a week – and it’s made such a huge difference. I didn’t realize how much the un-doneness of the kitchen actually bothered me after all.

(And yes, I’ve screwed the switchplate back on, as well as junked it back up with the dish drainer and canisters and radio and…)

For more on the kitchen, see what I did with the floor, sink, and curtains (that need to be ironed)…

5 Comments

Filed under home, home decor

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 28, 2015 · 1:18 AM

Not a Roman holiday

Autumn gets me itchy for the opposing forces of nesting and travel.

Autumn is my favorite time in Italy because it is the most familiar – I spent the most time there over the years during these months – and the tourist season calms down a bit. When the leaves begin to crunch, I automatically sniff for roasting chestnuts, but alas, for most of the United States, I’ve got to settle for woodsmoke and cider, which I love too. But we decided not to go again this year for a number of reasons, and headed back north to the White Mountains, then the sea, instead.

north-dawn

Only we headed straight into the belly of American tourism, or more specifically, an army of leaf peepers. We thought we’d be ahead of them, but instead we hit at the peak – don’t get me wrong, it was a glorious multi-hued autumn bomb – but the more accessible trails were like Fiumicino airport. But luckily, we were tucked away again in our now very familiar rough and tumble-down rental cabin on the lake in near solitude, and I’m finally getting back to slightly more moderate trails.

The cabin owners left some knitted and crocheted afghans for us that we haven’t seen in the summer.

north-blanket

But I brought our big guns – vintage wool bed blankets that kept us perfectly warm sitting outside watching birds, otters, beavers, and this time, a mink, although several mornings had frost.

north-blankie

I did just a little knitting – started a gift hat that is identical in color, but hopefully sized down, to the selbu modern I made last year – and the second sock of the pair I’ve occasionally worked on since June, some sewing, and this time I also had work work, which wasn’t really unpleasant to do while away – in fact, I felt more focused.

(And was well-fueled by my favorite licorice allsorts and chocolate nonpareils snagged on the way up.)

north-candy

After a week in entirely non-internet ignorant bliss (though marred by a knife through N’s finger (I didn’t do it), a septic issue that further confirmed my certainty of never wanting to live with one, and a bizarre key issue on our way out that took half the day to not resolve and led to the elderly cabin owners having to shimmy through a window several days later) we headed further north and east to a comfortable seaside cottage near Acadia National Park.

north-acadia

We knew we’d hit crowds there, and with gorgeous weather and colors, everyone should be out, but we happily managed to have several choice trail lunch spots to ourselves and a few excursions without road noises or children screaming for ice cream in the middle of a lovely quiet forest.

We hiked, we biked, we ate a shit-ton of fried clams, chowder, and lobster rolls. The season officially ended at Columbus day, so many of the lobster pounds were closed after that much to our dismay, but the island noticeably got a bit less tourist-peopled.

I saw more sunrises in two weeks than I have for at least two years – it either comes too early or I’m not paying attention – and I shot most of them…

north-maine dawn

I’d been wanting to go to Acadia for a bit – I love moss and the juxtapositions of forest and sea and got just that – more kinds of moss than I’d ever seen before, squirrels on the beach, seaweed smells in the trees, the sounds of the surf in the pines, and chickadees and forest birds at the water’s edge.

north-teaberry

I figured we’d be annoyed with the over populated trails and cruise ships and it would be a once and done trip, but I’d come back – and definitely in the autumn…

north-rhinebeck

And Rhinebeck just happened to be on the way home… maybe more on that later…

north-frost

We left the frosty north just in time, but unfortunately, it hit at home too… more on that next time, or later…

2 Comments

Filed under hiking, home decor, knitting, sewing, travel

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 14, 2015 · 1:00 AM

Is this lump outta my head? I think so.

I have an old cheap sofa that I’ve held onto longer than I probably should have because it’s so damn comfortable.

I bought it about a decade ago off an old apartment neighbor who got it as a gift from her boyfriend who later dumped her and she decided to move far away. It was a bit of a shame though, I hadn’t spoken to her except for neighborly pleasantries until that point, and only when she was moving did I realize she might have made for a good friend.

But her sofa, ugly as it may be, has been quite the comforting companion.

It was too big for my old tiny living room and one had to awkwardly maneuver around it when entering through the front door. But it made for decent sleeping accommodations when need be, and I had the perfect knitting nest in one corner.

I believe a good sofa must be deep and wide.

It is red, and I never much liked red, except for a bit in kitchens, and N never liked that it was faded red – it’s meant to be of the casual canvas aesthetic sort of thing, completed with cotton rag rugs and denim pillows, likely.

Unfortunately, just when I had the cash to buy a new, better colored cover, the big Swedish store discontinued the sofa and all its covers.

Somewhere along the line, I bought some fabric to make a new slipcover, but it wasn’t quite enough – so I bought some more, which still wasn’t quite enough either, but complemented the other, so I thought I would make it two toned, but then I never made it. (The fabric is still waiting to become something though – probably a slipcover for a chair instead.)

In our first house, it stayed propped on its end and shoved into the corner of the basement for a year or two until N took a job long distance and it once again reigned over a living room – a proper sized one, finally.

But then it spent nearly a couple of years in storage – I thought we’d need to trash it after it essentially stayed in a garage for so long, and who wants a sofa that’s been in a garage (especially one infested with stink bugs)?

But it came out fine.

Except the lumbar pillows.

lump-pillows

They were always a bit too lumpy – I think my neighbor had washed and dried them too often or too aggressively – I’d rather not speculate why, but the rest of the sofa is stain-free, so I’m not too worried. But the lumps made the pillows flaccid and ineffective, so I decided it was time for a revival.

lump-lumps

Should I be ashamed to admit I still kept the lumps? They’ll be good in a future dog bed, right?

I really hate to put anything in landfills.

And I wasn’t keen on stuffing it with plastics again, but wadded-up old clothes weren’t comfortable, leaves or straw too crunchy and a bit too earthy, and wool is too dear, so I got some more of the synthetic fluffy stuff.

lump-stick

It came with a free “tool.” Now I like free shit as much as the next guy, but for chrissakes, it’s just a chopstick – a single chopstick in a paper sleeve just like what chopsticks come in – did a chopstick factory accidentally package only singles and the stuffing company get a bargain?

Not to mention I already had a few random chopsticks kicking around in my sewing box along with a pencil or two with the lead broken off for the same purpose… A stuffing “tool” is probably the one thing people don’t really need…?

lump-during

So I crammed the pillows to their fill and made them a bit lumpy in a fluffy way, but that didn’t really matter. I like some poly fill brands over others but I buy it so infrequently that I forget which I like and I’m not certain this was the one…

But now our lumbar regions are properly supported once again when lounging in the basement – the perfect place for a less than perfect but still very comfortable sofa.

lump-after

A bit ago I ordered a pound of yellow dye to revive an old rag rug and turn this sofa cover orange – I figured the best options for overdying it were brown (but we already have a brown sofa upstairs), purple (meh, purple), deeper red, black, or orange – but I didn’t want to worry about potentially staining our clothes if I didn’t wash a dark dye out well enough, so I figured the yellow was the best option and I wanted a yellow rug anyway. But now I’m not so sure – the red sofa actually matches a rug for once and it is the basement, so a bit of a mishmash is warranted…

But I do like orange much more than red…

Leave a comment

Filed under dyeing, home, home decor, recycling, sewing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 2, 2015 · 6:00 AM

What time is it anyway…?

Things have been a bit hinky lately – perhaps it’s an annual thing, or perhaps it’s because the season is just beginning to change, or perhaps it’s all just an illusion…

My entirely ugly, but much relied upon atomic clock began reading 6:91…

hinky-clock

It took me more than a minute to realize that that wasn’t possible, a few days to remember that it wasn’t possible several more times, and then another week to clean out the gunk from a corroded battery… It still hasn’t readjusted to reality – maybe I’m the one who needs to readjust?

Our garden yielded only one mutant vegetable – which is proof positive of the organic veg we consumed from the bitchy CSA from the last two years was in fact contaminated from the megabiopharma mere yards away.

hinky-tomato

The half basement wall went from yellow to orange then back to yellow again… I couldn’t get over the orange and teal looking too much like a southern NFL team with a sea creature mascot. N doesn’t understand why I even know the colors of teams when I despise the whole franchise, and I can’t understand it either – further proof of its evilness for invading my ignoring brain. (And let’s just ignore the fact that it’s now close to the yellow and green of a northern team with a mascot that does something with meat or boxes…)

hinky-basement

But whatever, I am really done with painting for quite some time. And as much as my vocal cords are shorn from screaming “one coat of paint is never enough,” this time it had to be – in fact, it’s more like 3/4 of a coat with another 1/4 over the the thinnest spots – going out to buy even more paint wasn’t an option. But I primed the orange very very well, so it is good enough for a basement. And this time we were mildly ill from the fumes for a few days from the floor – I’ve been so smitten with the no-VOC paint we’ve been getting for the walls, that I forgot the low-VOC stink – nothing like the brain melting paint of just a few decades ago, but it has an odor when the other stuff really doesn’t… But now we can officially unpack every last thing…

hinky-closet

But getting organized isn’t always the answer. Most of my fabric stash is now neatly boxed and well-labeled and shoved into a long knee wall closet – and I can’t find a damn thing, or it’s a pain in the ass to move things away to get to the thing I need… But one of my siblings sent some neat inflatable led lights that have come in very handy in the space, though they’re meant for the great outdoors.

A garden fence ornament ended up as a pile of pieces on the ground for no discernible reason.

hinky-sun

Its hanging wire was intact – if this were the country or the city, I’d think someone shot it down, but instead, maybe a squirrel got strong and angry?

My favorite sock yarn tested my love for it…

hinky-plastic

There’s this bloated and horrid plastic filament intertwined through a good portion of it so far – it’s not the occasional rustic bit of guard hair, or people hair… probably a larger clump of the bit of nylon added for strength like a pasta clump? If so, this nylon feels like all kinds of petrochemical nastiness… which is what nylon really is, right? I’m conflicted – I like sock yarn with a bit of it in for strength, and I’ve not yet had to darn any of my socks made of superwash and a bit ‘o nylon. But I’m all preachy against plastics escaping into the environment, and I can’t stand synthetics against my skin. In theory I prefer to wear socks without the nylon too – in certain temperatures I swear I can feel the sickly unbreathability of 10% – 25%  nylon in my socks. Mohair is called “nature’s nylon” but I’ve yet to see a superwash mohair blend, or one I’d like to wear perhaps, and socks made with just wool seem to precious, and I don’t knit or wear precious socks. But perhaps thicker yarn knit up at the tiniest possible gauge could be fine…?

One of my credit cards was hacked a few months ago, and now another, and finally my debit card in the same week has been as well – from internal breaches – nothing to do with my online purchases (or entire lack thereof of late). I think I caught and updated all of my automatic payments (and again) but the uneasiness hasn’t subsided that a late bill might be headed my way. Perhaps I’ll just start burying my nickles under the bushes – bushes that still need to be cut back…

And my work work future is up for grabs again – a cyclical chaos I’d been adapting to for the last three years, and as of a few months ago, I though I had a less chaotic three years ahead, but silly me, life isn’t so kind… So I’m spinning my wheels again, but not making yarn or going any distance.

Leave a comment

Filed under collecting, gardening, home, home decor

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 19, 2015 · 6:00 AM

Other people’s houses

When we go on vacation we nearly always stay in other people’s apartments and cabins. Hotels serve their purpose for a night or two on weekends or in in-between places (and we’ve managed to rack up some points to stay in some neat ones). But for longer stays, it’s cheaper, sometimes more comfortable, and easier on the gut to stay in other’s living quarters. I can’t take eating out for more than one meal a day, or too many days in a row, even in places with my favorite cuisines – I need home cooking on a regular basis and I like exploring  new markets (or we bring our own groceries if it’s remote and/or slim pickings for good stuff).

I like staying in places that feel homey but don’t seem too much like someone else’s home – strong smells, dog hair on the sofa, stained linens, funky (stinky) plastic dishware, too many personal effects, and condiments of dubious quality still in the fridge are turn-offs. But on the other hand, places decked out in all new things that all match, bought brand new in either “wal-fart for cabin” or “swedish store Euro-chic” seem too sterile.  But I suppose I do prefer the sterile, even with resin bears and thin wobbly dressers, to cabinets with tubes of butt cream, half-smoked joints in the bowl on the living room table, and 73 photos of very sticky germ-ridden grand kids on too many unlaundered sticky doilies… And no matter what, I always spend way too much time thinking how I’d tweak any place a bit – from cleaning out the moldy caulk and rubber tub daisies, to painting a cheap wooden chair so it doesn’t blend in so much with the wooden walls…

And I’m a bit conflicted with the act of owning a second property – granted, it’s fine if it’s well-used by extended family and renters I suppose, but it leads to over-building, destroying habitats, and the production and disposal of more cheap crap (not to mention my contempt for the rich, but that’s another category since they usually don’t share or rent their homes to others)…

But we’ve yet to hit the jackpot for meeting all of my hopes – clean, not moldy, not very cluttered, but stocked full of (not sticky) puzzles and games and take one/leave one paperback, decent mattresses, a nice place to read or knit with adequate lighting, and a kitchen with a pot large enough to boil pasta and a corkscrew. So we pack along as much as these things as possible when trying out someplace new.

The cabin we’ve stayed at a few times now in the White Mountains doesn’t really meet many of those things either, but it’s got something a bit more rare – history and honest frugality. Now, that isn’t surprising for New England, but for rentals, they are elusive qualities. The place dates only to the 1960s or 70s, but is full of a generation’s or two earlier cast-off furniture and books.

I love this particular dresser – the quarter-sawn oak veneer is still in excellent condition, but the handles are a lively mismatch of whatever was on hand. Too many of us (myself included at times) would just go down to the big-box and buy six matching replacements when it is totally unnecessary.

NH-dresser

The bathroom wallpaper initially made me a bit twitchy, but I’ve grown fond of it and it’s in really great condition – the room could be brightened up a little with some accent paint in that cheery orange…

NH-wallpaper

And the curtains were perhaps bought new via an advertisement in Yankee magazine from the early 70s – I love that both still live in the cabin, though I’d certainly wash the curtains because they probably never have been… And both the magazine and one of the popular style trends was in the “ye olde” variety for that time period, it also dates to the beginnings of me and makes me feel ye olde and crumbling and yellowed and low-tech too…

NH-curtains

And there is a small settee awkwardly shoved in a corner that was probably semi-banished when a bigger new sofa went in a couple of years ago, but they still kept it – it’s in fine shape with a delightful bird pattern – I’d be tempted to get rid of the big new sofa and use it instead… (but the new sofa is damn comfy).

NH-textiles

 I wish there existed many more old but perfectly good (not smelly or sticky) things in our lives and weren’t so quick to toss them… though I don’t have that much of a love for bobbles…

Leave a comment

Filed under collecting, home, home decor, recycling, travel

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

August 12, 2015 · 8:51 AM

Catch-up, but no ketchup…

Going on vacation is great, but the aftermath is a bit of a struggle…

I’ve been doubling up on work-work to make up some hours and the house-work doubled, tripled on its own.

catch-up tomatoes

We’ve canned even more tomatoes – certainly enough to get us through to the season next year – I think. Some of the heirlooms didn’t produce much, but I’ve been especially fond of the green stripey ones this year for eating fresh. The green beans exploded and have been eaten in all cooking methods liked by us as well as frozen and pickled – I put in another crop in early July, and I don’t want to say I regret that, because it’s one of the few veggies not being attacked by something or another out there, and the neighbors will be happy for more bounty, but I wish I’d put in a dried variety instead…

catch-up-painting basement floor

And the basement is coming along – the floor is now half teal. And I am an idiot and decided that the orange didn’t work after all, and have to hurry up and re-paint it with the original yellow, or a boring white, or more grey… (The pic above shows the floor color fairly accurately, but the walls are more grey-green rather than the yellowy putty they seem to be on my screen). So as long as I get on that soon, we’ll be able to finally install N’s library by the end of the month and unpack most of the rest of the boxes.

I’d like to overdye a large old cotton rag rug (old meaning faded and from the 1990s, not vintage) and a large old cotton sofa cover but not sure how to do that… I’ve only got a small front-loader washing machine, a well that is going a little precious this time of year, and I’m sure the laundromats don’t want me to do that there, but I don’t want to spend much to revive these things – probably be cheaper to get some cheap sisal/jute rugs in the end, unless there’s some sort of paint-on, no rinse or little rinse fabric dye out there…?

Leave a comment

Filed under collecting, dyeing, gardening, home, home decor

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

August 2, 2015 · 7:45 AM

Cellar dweller…

Our “finished” basement needed to be finished some more.

The only redeeming quality was that half of its lights are groovy. But the ceiling was styrofoam, the floor is skim coated with cement covering up god knows what, and I have no tolerance for thin, cheap, and dark paneling.

basement light

Painting the paneling was a no-brainer. I made a brief attempt at whitewash, but it looked terrible. And I wasn’t about to take the time and energy again to fill in the groves to mimic drywall, and doing new drywall would have been more effort, expense, and bad for the environment since the only place for paneling is a landfill, or a fire.

basement-good light

So a thick coat of primer and a couple of coats of pale green-grey paint later, it is fine – for a basement. I went with the same color scheme as my tiny studio (and it’s also the same green-grey as the temporary bathroom fix) because I like it and there was leftover paint. One wall only has half paneling/wainscot and another has built-ins, so those started to become yellow along with a couple of doors.

But it didn’t work for me, despite the fact that one wall was perfectly painted – the yellow was oddly too cool.

basement-yellow&orange

So I went out and bought more of the same orange that we’ve been using on all of the outside doors  and painted some sample strokes over the yellow.

But apparently, I forgot that I had added white or some other lighter colors to the original inferno orange…

So  a mixin’ I went…

In went a pint of a bad yellow, a near-full pint of a pale lavender, a spoonful of the green-grey, and the dregs of some bright white used on the trim in the kitchen….

basement-orange

And thankfully, it worked – at least in the way I wanted it to – a warm, bold color familiar with copper.

But the color scheme is a bit on the odd side – the green-grey looks white, so it’s a bit like a fuzzy freezer burned creamsicle, but it’s the basement, right?

I’m not crazy about the other half of our light fixtures – not sure what the original owners were thinking mixing mod with colonial revival, but at least both are copper.

And don’t get me started on the agony of figuring out what to do with the drop ceiling and the defeat of just buying new panels, albeit, smooth ones… and ones, I might add that were woefully damaged and without any attempt at quality control. I’m looking at you, Armstrong. But thank you N, for dealing with making all of the cuts thanks to the dumbass original owners who didn’t lay it out in the direction that would have minimized cuts…

The floor will soon be painted a dark tealy-green and then we’ll finally set up N’s library, my favorite old oak library table, some of my found objects on the built-in shelves, all of the artwork that didn’t make the cut for the walls seen daily upstairs, a lounge area for hot summer evenings, a corner for my stationary bike, and then there’s still plenty of room for a floor loom…

(I don’t have a floor loom.)

(And maybe a pinball machine for N.)

3 Comments

Filed under home, home decor, recycling

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,