This afternoon finds me very unhappy at the weather, my heirloom tomato plant, and a certain elusive disgusting brown spider in the mudroom who should do the whole world a favor and just die.

First, the weather. It is over 100 degrees. Today, in case you missed the memo, is the first day of fall. It feels suspiciously like California fall. Speaking of, there are hot, gusty winds that distinctly resemble the Santa Anas (the much-maligned winds known best for turning Southern California into a barbecue every year). These winds blow me to my next point: the heirloom tomato plant.

Frankly, I've been disappointed. Only now, late-ish September, does it have three small green tomatoes. I've just been hoping they ripen before the first frost. But I'm really mad at this plant because this afternoon, I had to go outside in the inferno to put stand it back up again. Then it blew over a second time and the pot broke into multiple pieces. So now I have a half-busted pot, held together by a bungee cord, stuffed inside another pot, and bungeed to the fence so it can't blow over again. All this took about 45 minutes at midday, after which I was dripping and ready to run over the stupid tomato with my car.

Honestly, I can't wait for the first frost. My gardening efforts this summer have been minimally rewarding, and the plants that aren't infested with budworms bent on eating everything colorful have some kind of weird leaf fungus. Next summer, I'm not growing any petunias, because I found out that the budworms come from moths that lay eggs. So they can fly to my baskets. They also eat geranium buds, but I love geraniums, so I'm going to have to come up with another solution -- screens or something. I tried poisoning them, but they don't like the bait. Rotten bugs.

I don't think I really need to say anything further about that spider, other than, I will stomp on you with much glee when I see you next, so watch your back or beat it.

Anyway, here's the picture of the headboad I was working on the last time I posted.

It turned out really cool, except for the part about the spray paint off-gassing and us waking up at 2:30 am with headaches and having to spend the rest of the night in the guest room. Avoiding stepping on pliers and nails sticking out of the floor in the stairway on the way upstairs was the most fun, especially since I didn't have my glasses.

After that, the headboard spent a few more days in the garage to de-fume. We moved it back in last week. I also have to post a picture of the crafty thing I did to one of our duvet covers...coming soon!

Building a headboard

I've been working on a bunch of fun little crafty projects, and I have to take pictures of all of them and post them, but this is my big accomplishment right now. Well, almost. It's not done quite yet. I built a headboard for our bedroom!

Riffing on the door theme I've seen going for a while, I designed a headboard and headed to the scratch'n'dent building supply store (motto: B-grade materials may or may not comply with building codes) to get my materials. After much deliberation and measuring, I went with a hollow-core dore (rather than a paneled one, which presents problems of symmetry when horizontal) and used these masonite panels they had to give it some flair. In case you want to build a headboard like mine, here's my materials list.

1 36" hollow-core door

1 piece of crown molding (or panel molding, like I used. The dif is that panel molding isn't as big, and fits flush against the surface, rather than fitting hollowly into a corner like crown.) Depending on bed size, you'll probably want 7+ feet to account for all your screwing up when you cut it.

1 piece of baseboard (7+ feet)

panels or whatever embellishments you want to use

1 tube painter's putty/caulk. Cheap stuff is fine

2x2s for legs, which I will explain later. Probably need 8' or so of 2x2.

Small finish nails

3" screws

Drill

Chop saw (or compound mitre saw)

You can see the panels, door and molding in that picture. I had the door cut to 65" at Home Depot. It was 80", which would be better suited to a California king than our queen mattress. After measuring out where the panels should go, I glued those in place with my construction-grade adhesive and put some paint cans on them overnight so they could dry in place. I also put a piece of trim on the hollow side of the door so there wasn't a hole there.

Next, the fun part. I measured out the molding for the top and started making cuts, which is sooo easy with a power saw. This is looking at the top of the headboard. (Here's another angle).

I drilled pilot holes and then dropped a few finish nails in, after gluing that piece of crown to the door. On top of that goes this:

which is the piece of baseboard that I made a neat 45* cut to and glued and clamped. The whole top of the headboard looks like a fireplace mantle. In the meantime, while I was waiting for my clamped pieces to dry, I caulked the edges of the masonite panels, so the whole thing would look like one piece once it was painted.

To get the best position for securing the baseboard to the top, I stood the headboard up. Here's what it looked like, coming together....

And here's how I finished the corners, so it wasn't just crown on the front:

That is my neat and tidy corner. The other one, I won't show you... Right in the center of the picture is the finished corner. The piece to the right is the baseboard, which goes on the top.

While I waited for glue and caulk to dry, I went to work on the legs. If you've been following my building exploits, you know that sometimes I have trouble getting things to be sturdy. I couldn't have that be the case with this headboard, so I thought up a great way of bracing the legs, and went with three for extra stability, rather than just two. Here's those:

I dropped two 3-inch screws from the top brace (the more horizontal piece) into the actual leg (the more vertical piece). And I glued the little corner pieces in with wood glue. They are very sturdy.

Lastly, I primed the whole thing. This was an unfortunate business, because we have a whole gallon of tinted primer left over from the living room paint job. That's right....

PINK!!

Totally reminds me of a book from when I was little, "Burt Dow, Deep Water Man." Burt and his boat, the Tidely Idley, got swallowed by a whale, and in order to get the whale to cough them up, he flung a bunch of pink and mint green and black (and maybe yellow) paint at the whale's insides.

Anyway. I glued and set the legs on it yesterday. Today I'm going to screw them in place and spray it with the first coat of black. More pix to come!!