Trash, trash, trash

So I have been spending the last several weeks renovating a place for us to live, and that renovating creates a lot of trash and construction debris. For the most part, we were piling the debris outside the front door until the dump was open so that we could haul it away. It made the entire place look trashy, no matter how much we cleaned on the inside. So today I finally was able to take the trailer and haul off all the trash. It took two loads, and I got pretty frozen. On the plus side, the trash is gone! It drastically improved the look of the place. Now I just have to haul off a possibly broken and ancient refrigerator, and a couch/loveseat set. Once that is taken care of, it will really improve the look of the place.

Just a sample of the amount of debris we pulled out of the house.

We have to redo the plumbing in the bathroom, which is where a large portion of this trash came from. Water leaks plus drywall equal a mess, just in case you were wondering. So right now, the bathroom is just the frame. Now that it is down to the frame though, we can redo it correctly, so that we don’t have to open the wall again for quite awhile. We yanked out the tub and discovered that the drain is a pipe that was placed under it, and set outside the wall of the house to drain right outside into the dirt. No actual plumbing drain there, at all. That was nice to discover. We’re going to redo the drain correctly, and then put a shower in to improve the function of the bathroom for us. I’ll have to post pictures of the before and after once I am done. This large renovation is why I have not been online or updating my blog much, plus I have spent the last couple of months taking care of my mother, but that’s a different story altogether. For now,  I think I am going to crawl under my blanket and attempt to get warm, I am still feeling cold from earlier.

Project Ten: Chair Recovery Part Two

Well, I am making a lot of progress on the chairs, and I am glad, as this means I am getting close to being done with this headache of a project. I had not anticipated this project taking the better part of a month to complete, let alone the several months of searching for the perfect material to recover them with. One would think that as soon as the actual cushions were done that I would be done recovering these chairs. Nope. Of course not. *sigh*

Remember the damage I showed you before? Well I now have to hide this damage with more upholstery. This includes cord for the upper portion of the chair. So first things first, I grabbed the cherry wood stain that I had left over from the fish tank stand. This would be put to good use, as the top part of the wood was cherry red, but the damage showed the pale wood underneath the stain. So I took a tiny paintbrush, and I gently stained all of the areas that had been damaged from the staples. This does not hide the damage completely, but it helps.

Once the excess stain was wiped off, I allowed it to dry before taking the next step. I grabbed my high heat hot glue gun and glue and then grabbed the cord I had purchased specifically for the chairs. I chose a sort of pearl white cord to offset the amount of brown and red in my kitchen. I love earth tones, but sometimes it can be too much. Very carefully, and very slowly I glued the cord into place. I did not want to have to use staples on the top again, as I had no way to really hide them.

It took some practice, and I became better at gluing the cord into place with each subsequent chair, but I am pretty pleased with the effect of the white against the red wood. As long as I like my own chairs, that’s all that matters right?

Project Nine: Chair Recovery Part One

Now that I finally had the chairs down to a frame, it was time to start recovering them with the new fabric I purchased. The fabric I ended up deciding on was a bit pricey, since it was faux leather, but I loved the color, and the ability to wipe off any spills and messes that might occur. I think it was about $16.99 a yard, and I needed seven yards to recover the chairs. First things first, I had to cut the cushions out of the foam. My father had already cut the wood that was to be the base of my cushions for me, so that part was done.

Using the wood that my father had cut for me to fit the chairs, I traced the outline onto my roll of foam with a permanent marker. It wasn’t exact, and honestly I realized I should have made them slightly larger than the outline, as the foam can be squished and such, but that is a lesson for when I have to replace the foam at a later date. *sigh* Oh well. Anyways, I cut the foam out with scissors and a razor blade. Neither worked that great, so I am open to suggestions if anyone can find something that works better than what I used let me know.

I used two inch thick foam for the cushions, as the old ones did not seem very thick and I wanted some comfort from these chairs if I had to redo them, you know? I set the cushion and wood on the frame, just to see about how thick the chair was going to look once it was done. Now it was time to cut the fabric.

I grabbed the wood and foam to double check my measurements on the fabric before I cut it. I can always cut smaller than what I cut out, but I really did not want to waste any of my fabric because I did not want to run out. I used the permanent marker to mark out my cut lines. Unless you’re 100% sure that the marker won’t bleed through, I wouldn’t recommend using a permanent marker. I has already tested it in a small corner myself, just to be sure. I cut out the fabric in a square, as I was going to be folding the fabric around the foam and wood to make the cushion. I did not really care about whether or not the fabric itself matched the shape of the wood.

Once I cut the fabric, I was ready to staple the fabric to the wood. (Staples, I know. >.< Trust me, I used less than half of the amount of staples that were in these chairs.) Once I had the material affixed securely to the wood, I could flip it over, and attach it to the chair frame.

Voila! A large part of the recovery process done! What do you guys think so far?

Project Eight: Chair Breakdown Part Two

Yesterday I left off at halfway through the breakdown of my dining table chairs. Unfortunately, that leaves the cushion part that I still needed to break down. After pulling the cushion off of one, I got frustrated with it, and I started simply slicing the fabric open and removing the cushion from inside, because it was disintegrating while I was attempting to pull the staples out.

To the right is what is left of the cushion. It was rather thin, and there was pieces of foam everywhere. All over my clothes, all over my floor, I think I even had some in my hair. It was awful. My nose itched so bad from all the particles in the air. I had not expected it to be so bad, but I was grateful I had already decided to replace the foam inside as well.

The picture on the left is me pulling the trim off of the sides that were covering some of the staples. Mercifully the trim appeared to only be glued on. The amount of staples under that made up for it though. I honestly think someone went a bit crazy with the staple gun…

The picture on the right of this is right after I sliced off the fabric to remove the cushion. The cushion was held up by those crisscrossed pieced of material, which explains why it did not support very well. And those were held up by…. you guessed it, more staples. Three rows of staples per end to be precise. At this point, I am developing a deep hatred for staples.

Here I am prying more staples out of the side as gently as possible. I did  not want to damage the wood in a way that I would not be able to cover with fabric. You can see the dust left everywhere from the cushion deteriorating inside the fabric. Also, ignore my messy garage in the background. I had to work while the kids were sleeping, and I did not want to wake them up.

At this point, I am finally starting to make some progress on the chairs, the straps were not as horrible as I had imagined they would be, probably because they were on a flat surface, and the support straps were a thicker material than the upholstery fabric, making them less inclined to tear.

After about three to four hours per chair, the bottom portion is now completely off of the frame! I cleaned up the mess of staples wiped down the chair, and took a well deserved break before I set up the area to put them back together with the new cushion and fabric.

Project Seven: Chair Breakdown Part One

So much catching up to do for my posts! I was in a funk for quite awhile, but I think I can get some of the posts caught up tonight. They are going to show as if they posted in May, because that’s when I meant to post these. Sorry for any confusion this causes.

So, back in December 2011, my mother gave me a dining table with six chairs and a matching hutch that were gorgeous in a dark cherry wood color. The only problem with these chairs was the fact that they were a little old, so the fabric on the cushions had worn down over time, and the fabric was also white, so they showed any stain easily. I got the entire set for free, I definitely cannot complain. So I spent months searching for the perfect fabric to recover the chairs with. I did not want to start breaking the chairs down until I found the new materials to redo them with, because I wanted my table usable in the meantime. After about five months, I finally found a fabric I wanted to use! More on that later, first I have to disassemble the current cushions.

As you can see from the image at the left, the cushion showed stains like crazy. I shampooed the cushions about once a week, and they still ended up like this after a few days. It was crazy. Now most of the time, you can remove the cushion from the chair via the bottom of the chair. This is not the case with these chairs. The have no solid support under the cushion, and are held in place with fabric and staples on the frame of the chair. Now, when I say staples, I mean enough to reupholster several couches. It was ridiculous the amount of staples used in these chairs.

First things first, I removed the fabric from the back of the chair. It was pretty much useless, and was simply more fabric to clean in the long run. I decided to leave it off from the final project. I had to be super careful while removing the staples, as the wood was rather thin and easy to splinter. Not that the billion staples did the wood any favors to begin with.

The picture to the left is where I partially pulled the fabric down from the top. I was not concerned with salvaging the fabric from the back of the chairs, and I might have had some minor sadistic glee in ripping the fabric so I could see the offending staples better. The tool on the cushion is what I was using to pry the staples out. I might have caused some damage from it myself when I would get impatient with the process, so if you want to salvage the wood a bit better, my best suggestion is to be patient with the process.

The image to the right shows some of the damage left from the massive amounts of staples up close. I already had plans to fix this though, so it shouldn’t look too bad when I finish them up. I’ll explain that in further detail in a later post though. The process of removing the fabric and staples from the top of the chair alone took close to two hours. Also, that is two hours for just the top of a single chair. There were six chairs, so that’s roughly 12 hours, just for part of the chair. To say that my arms hurt afterwards, is a gross understatement.

Project Six: Repainting an Entertainment Center

Awhile ago, my neighbors threw out an entertainment center beside the road with a free sign on it.  Matt grabbed it, and took it out back to put the stereo that my brother had given us on. The center was dingy and dirty and yet it served a purpose that we needed it to serve. Well after several months of it being there, it became even dirtier, and sort of became a catch all for items that were used outside. So it became cluttered too. The picture to the left is what I started with. It’s an absolute mess.

Something had to be done. No matter how much I cleaned it up, it looked like crap so no one cared. So I got an idea… Time to clean and paint! First, I had to clean the layer of dirt off of things. We had a dust storm about a week ago or so that really mucked things up outside. Then I had to move it away from the wall and put it on the plastic drop cloth to protect the cement and prep it for painting. Normally I would sand the wood down more, but this is particle board and it’s going outside, so I barely care.

I did use the wood filler and sander for part of the side that had some holes in it. I also sanded down parts of the top that had bubbled up. Once the wood was filled and sanded I began painting. I was using leftover paint from when I painted the metal patio chairs, and the black paint is from when I was painting the bed frame. Like I said before, this was going outside, and I was doing a quick job on it to make it “look” better.

The bronze paint is a hammered metal look that gives it some texture. The picture to the right is after about three coats of paint. Once those dried I taped off the sides and began painting the bottom sections. A note for anyone that plans on painting something like this that involves particle board and card board, I would recommend just painting the entire thing one color. Even clean release tape peels the paint off of the unit with little effort.

This makes it look like crap, and you end up repainting and making a mess. I had to go back over the bottom several times, and it still ended up looking like crap and I decided after awhile that I simply did not care anymore and finished it up. I went back inside to get out of the heat and let the paint dry. Once back outside after the paint dried, I cleaned up the area and put everything back on it.

What do you think? Even for a quick afternoon job, I don’t think it looks too terrible.

Project Five: Building the Platform Bed

Okay, Monday’s post was about repainting the bed. Today’s post is now about building the platform for the bed. While I was setting up the bed, Matt was out at Home Depot picking up the wood he was going to need to create a platform. Our biggest issue was that most platform beds had thin rails, and they were spaced pretty far apart. We actually plan on having sex in our bed, so we definitely wanted it to hold up to both of our weight in a single spot. (Sorry if that’s too much information for you, but if you think married couples don’t have sex after having kids, you are living under a rock.) Anyway, we had just bought a new mattress that was delivered the same day we built the platform, and we did not want our new mattress dipping between the slats. So we discussed it, and we decided that we could build our own platform, and add plywood to the top of the slats for extra mattress support. We also wanted a center support, which oddly enough, quite a few platform beds do not have.

Matt ended up picking up 15 boards, and 2 pieces of plywood. The image to the right is after he put the boards on the frame to decide how to space them. Then he used his air powered staple gun to staple the side boards to the slats, so that the platform slats will not move over time. We try to think long term when we work on these projects, really we do. I think there is 2 staples on each end per board if I remember correctly. It was kind of noisy and I hate being deafened by earplugs, so I left the room while he was stapling. If you use air powered tools I would highly recommend hearing protection, as these tools get really loud, and it may not seem so bad at the time, but it really can damage your hearing.

Once the side boards were stapled, he flipped the frame for the platform over, to place the side boards on the rails. After that, he attached a center support rail under the boards for increased strength. I actually recently replaced that board, as it was too thin and broke, but the rest of the frame has held up wonderfully, so far.

After the center support was in place, Matt added the plywood on top of the other boards to prevent the mattress from slipping between the slats. I did not want our new mattress wearing down in odd places.

Once Matt stapled the first piece to the frame, he attached the second piece to finish off the platform foundation for our bed. It looks all professional, I love it. I have to admit, when I give Matt a task, he tends to go above and beyond my expectations. It may not always get done right away, because he’s busy with work and such, but hey, it gets done.

Here is the bed with the mattress on it, man I slept so comfortably that night!

Project Four: Repainting the Bed Frame

Awhile back my oldest brother decided to change out his bed frame. He knew that I was looking to upgrade my bed from a queen sized bed to a king sized bed, so he offered me his old frame. It was still in good condition, very sturdy, and very heavy. It was a little rough around the edges of the finish, but I figured I could sand it down, no problem. Boy was I wrong. The bed has rounded posts, which are a pain in the butt to sand. At the time, I did not have an electric sander, so I was sanding by hand. I don’t recommend it. It’s exhausting.

I gave up part of the way through and decided to go paint browsing. Rather than stain the bed, as is my usual preference, I decided I was going to paint it. When I painted my last bedroom set I used a normal, brush on paint that I was told wouldn’t scrape or swell when exposed to water. The lady at the store lied. The paint peeled and chipped and was awful. So this time around, I decided to check out lacquers, which generally hold up better to the abuse. I ended up finding a spray lacquer, and I decided to try it. The lacquer is Rust-Oleum Specialty Lacquer. It was black and had “High Lustre Coating” which claims to give a factory-like finish on wood and metal. Bingo. I snagged up about 10 cans and brought them home. I knew I would have to do this project outside, and if you decide to do this indoors such as your garage, please open your garage door and set up fans to allow for air circulation. Also, wear a mask! This is the project where I neglected to wear a mask and caused my nose to bleed for several days. The mask is annoying, but it saves your nose and lungs. Eye protection is also recommended for spray painting as well.

I prepped the wood by laying out plenty of plastic drop cloth material to protect my patio and prevent any dirt that was on the patio from clinging to the paint. The image to the left shows me prepping the side rails for painting. I had already started on the foot board and head board at this point when I realized I should be taking pictures. Don’t worry though, I took other photos later, although I did not take as many of this project as I should have. I wore old clothing work in, and I would suggest anyone else does as well. If you are anything like me, you end up with paint here, there, everywhere on your clothes, hands, and even my feet because I was wearing flip flops.

The finish on the bed that was on there previously was sprayed on by a machine, so the back side of the headboard was rather dry and soaked up my paint pretty bad. The backside of the headboard does not really need to be painted, but I am pretty thorough. I should have sanded some of the parts better, because any where there was oil on top of the finish, the paint bubbled. It is one of those situations where I ran out of time to work on it, because I needed my bed together so I could sleep on it. I was really, really tired of sleeping on my old mattress on the floor.

So I left it outside to dry and came back repeatedly for several coats until it looked good enough. Once we move, I’ll re-sand the parts that bubbled and repaint those sections. Once everything was dry, it was time to move it all inside. Just in time too, because it was looking like rain soon. I had cleared out an area in my room for the frame, and I get it all inside aaaaand it doesn’t fit where my bed was. Great. So I had to move things around and get exhausted moving this hug bed myself. Hooray. Where was Matt? He was at the store picking up the wood for the platform that we were making. New mattress, I wanted a platform bed for it, but the average platform planks were annoyingly far apart and expensive. We decided we could do better ourselves. So I got the bed all put in the proper spot finally, and waited for Matt to bring home the wood.

Building the platform is another post that we be here Tuesday because it has just as many pictures and was a whole new project all by itself.

Project Three: Hair Bow

So, I have been making bows for my daughter, mostly because she wants new hair accessories almost every day. And I enjoy having a hobby that involves making things. I decided that since I did the tutorial for my ribbon rack, I’d show you what I use the ribbon for. To the left is an image of one of the bows I made for my daughter’s hair. It’s actually sort of small, since she has a tiny head and thin hair. Almost every bow I can buy at the store is either too tiny, or way too big. So making them is probably my best option. Depending on where you buy ribbon, it can actually be pretty cheap. I will go through this process step by step. Click on any picture to enlarge it.

You will need: 50 inches of ribbon, Scissors, Hot Glue Gun, Lighter, 2 hair clips, wire or thread.

Step One: Cut the ribbon into three pieces. Two of the pieces will be 20 inches long, and the third piece will be 10 inches long.

Step Two: Take one of the longer ribbon pieces and fold it over twice to create two loops on each side, with the excess hanging over. (Picture below.)

Ignore my nails, I have been working with stain all day.

Step Three: Take the wire or thread and slide it under the center of the loops and tie it in a knot. This might take some practice to do, and the thread is harder than wire. Once it is on the ribbon though, you should be able to slide it back and forth to center it. Make sure you pull it tight.

Step Four: Fluff the bow to give it shape. You can pull the loops out of each other to give the bow some volume.

Step Five:Cut the 10 inch piece of ribbon that you set aside in half. Take half of it and tie it in a single knot.

Step Six: Flip the knotted ribbon over and smooth the edges out. you’ll want to make sure that you have the pattern facing up on the ribbon. Glue this knot to the front of the bow with your hot glue gun to cover the wire. Make sure your excess ribbon is vertical on the bow so that it can wrap around the back of the bow.

Step Seven: Once the knot is glued to the front of the bow, flip the bow over and apply a small amount of glue to the center where you will be applying the clip. I find it helps to hold the clip open when gluing it, and I glue the excess ribbon from the knot onto the back of the bow between the clip closure.

Step Eight: Trim the excess off from the knot that you have glued down already and use the lighter to gently burn the edges to prevent fraying. Fold the lower part of the excess knot ribbon up and glue it under the clip enclosure as well. You will want to also trim off the excess here and gently burn with the lighter to prevent fraying as well.

Step Nine: To create a V effect on the bottom, of the bow, simply cut the ribbon carefully into an inverted V on the ribbon that hangs at the bottom of the bow.

Step Ten: Burn the edges of these with your lighter as well to prevent fraying, and you are done!

Please keep in mind that not all ribbon can be safely burned to prevent fraying. There is a sort of glue called Fray Check that can be used instead I just simply cannot find any right now. Some ribbon tends to just catch on fire, especially transparent type ribbons that you can see through. It will take some practice to get this right, and I sometimes use a small drop of hot glue to  keep the bow loops from sliding into each other again. It takes me about 5 -10 minutes to make each bow when I am not pausing to take pictures constantly. To make a second bow, just grab the ribbon I had you cut out and repeat the above steps to make a matching bow for the other pigtail.

Project Two: Ribbon Rack

I have been making bows for my daughter’s hair for awhile now. My biggest problem with it is, where to put all the ribbon? For awhile I could get away with putting it all in a scrapbook bag and that was fine. Until I realized I was getting more ribbon than I could hold in the bag. So then I had spools of ribbon just jammed into the bag, and most of them coming unwound, and it was a mess trying to figure out what ribbon I had available and how much of it I had to make bows with. So while at Michael’s looking at ribbon and such las Wednesday, I saw a ribbon holder that sort of resembled a paper towel holder with three poles. While it was nifty, it was $25 and only had the three poles for ribbon. Also, that sort of ribbon holder required you to have large holes in the ribbon spool, and the ribbon would have to be stacked on top of each other. This means if you spin the bottom spool to remove some ribbon, then you are spinning every spool above that. I certainly hope you put a pin or some tape on those upper spools, because now you are unraveling all of them. So I thought to myself, it can’t be too incredibly hard to make a much better ribbon rack, perhaps something free standing or even wall mounted. So while wandering through Michael’s I was hit with inspiration. I picked up four thin, long dowel rods to make the rods for the ribbon to sit on. They were only 59¢ each rod, and they were pretty long, so I figured they could be cut in half to make 8 rods.

I presented Matt with the rods, and then told him about my idea. He said it was doable, and I left it at that. Well the next day he went into the garage and came back in about an hour or so later with this a rack completely built. He had used spare wood from building our bed platform, (post on that coming soon), and so I had only spent around $1.20 on this particular stand. He says he’ll make me another one as soon as he gets more wood for the project, but it is pretty awesome that he made it for me right away! He apologized for it not being pretty, but honestly, that is my job. He builds them, and he makes them functional. Making objects pretty and finishing them is my job in these projects.

So Friday morning after putting the kids on the bus, and Matt headed out to work, I went to work on the stand. Wood filler was used to fill in any cracks, and I sanded it down to make the wood smooth. I pulled the dowel rods out through the holes in the side Matt gave me so that I could sand easier, besides the rods don’t really need sanded. They are smooth already. Matt will have to reinforce the stand later, because I sort of jarred it while sanding, which sucks, but it’s fixable. Once all the sanding was done  I decided I wanted to stain it rather than painting it. I hate the way paint chips sometimes. Stain also looks more professional, at least in my opinion.

So, staining time! I thought about stopping for a bit and taking a shower, since I was sweating in the back yard being in 100+ degree heat and in direct sunlight, but I figured I’d end up a mess anyway once I started staining. I am glad I waited on the shower, staining did make quite a mess, especially on my hands. You’d think I’d know this by now. Technically, I should be wearing gloves, I am sure, but I prefer being able to feel the wood as I work with it. (That sounded dirty, didn’t it?) Anyways, I used the leftover stain that I had from the fish tank stand. Minwax Wood Finish in Red Mahogany. Again, follow the instructions on your can if you decide to use wood stain. I brush it on evenly, let it soak in, and then use a junk rag that I don’t care about to wipe the excess off to prevent pooling and darker spots on the wood. At this point, I decided to take a shower and then come back after lunch to seal the stain with Minwax Aerosol Lacquer. Also the spray lacquer smells sweet. Please keep it away from your children and pets, and wear a mask! I once sprayed without a mask and I had blood coming out of my nose for several days from the irritation. I am bad about wearing a mask because it makes my face hot, and fogs up my glasses. Learn from my idiocy, wear a mask. It doesn’t seem as harsh as other aerosols, but for those of you with asthma, you’ll definitely want that mask. It may smell oddly sweet, but the breathing problems are worse than the annoyance the mask causes.

Once the rack was completely dry though, I was able to bring it inside, and put the ribbon on it to organize it. It felt like I had a lot more than this to be honest. But then again, I had a hard time seeing them all in the tiny bag I had them in. I guess I’ll have to fill it in by buying more ribbon. 😀 What do you guys think?