Downstairs Miscellaney (and a Tomato)

This has been a quiet, lay-low kind of weekend. We were in Bend last week, which was great fun, but also apparently draining. I dragged myself around all day yesterday, never completely shaking off feeling groggy. It was not a shining weekend of productivity. But last weekend was, between the dining room chairs and the pillows (more on those later).

So this is just a hodge podge of what's new this month (that I may or may not have mentioned before). First up, I snagged a couple of these artichoke candles on clearance at Target for $3 each. They'll be fun to move around. 

 

The dining room is looking worlds better, with the chairs and the newly constructed moss ball. One benefit of cutting down the oak in the backyard was the abundance of moss I harvested (sometimes I pause and realize I sound like a total headcase. Maybe I am. What kind of a lunatic harvests moss? I  have two bags sitting in the kitchen just waiting for inspiration to strike.)

I used said abundant harvest to create this moss ball, which is living in my little greenhouse. I feel like there's another word for this thing, but I can't think of what it is right now...

Here's the dining room looking into the living room. Other than the kitchen remodel/wall removal project, the last couple of things in here are some bold curtains, crown molding and a new light fixture. It's massively improved over where it was.

 Finally added a rug to the living room, picked up from World Market when we were in Bend last week. I LOVE having a rug in here. I also love this particular rug; we have a smaller one in the bedroom that migrated from our master bath in the Fishhawk house. I'd been considering layering a cowhide under the wing chair and ottoman (right side of the image) but I think it might be kind of overkill now that I can visualize it better.

 Ok, now, the pillows. This is the project that spawned the re-covering of the dining room chairs. I made some pillow covers out of napkins last year, and I was lazy and used Stitch Witchery instead of sewing them, and the fabric was more stretchy diagonally one way than the other, and they just never looked very good. Plus, they were green. Worked well at the last place, not so much here.

So probably six years ago, I acquired several large pieces of corduroy in the Garment District in LA. Two navy and two white. I've had them squirreled away, unable to commit them to a project. The day finally arrived last Saturday: they were destined to be pillow cases. (Well, like half of one piece of navy. These are pretty big pieces.)

I used the cord on the front and dropcloth on the back and sewed them this time, and darn it if they don't just look AWESOME. Some of my best sewing ever. This picture doesn't show them them all that well, but they'll be playing a supporting role from now on.

Penultimately, a couple of shots of my office, just because. Still work to do; I want to mess with the curtains, hang some art and finish assorted detail work on the trim, but mostly I really like it. The color on the crate under my desk is "La Fonda Fireberry" because I guess Valspar thought that just "La Fonda" or just "Fireberry" didn't capture it sufficiently.

Couch is a few months old. We got it shortly after moving back, and it is a vast improvement from that Ikea sleepersofa. I think Todd still secretly rejoices that thing is gone and he never has to move it again.

 And lastly, the tomato: a large golden slicer. I am about to eat it for dinner tonight. Yum.

Dining Room Chairs. Finally.

In March of 2009, we bought this dining room set on Craigslist. It was an adventure off into the middle of nowhere. Four and a half years later, I might have gone a different direction with style, but I do like this set still. It's classic without being too ornate.

What I've never liked is the upholstery on the chairs. It was ugly when we bought the set and the chairs were cream.

 I didn't redo them sooner because 1) I didn't realize how cheap it would be and 2) we moved; no reason to put new fabric on them when I wasn't going to be around to enjoy it. So they have been like this for four and a half years...

...getting progressively more grubby. Because seriously, who other than a crazy person upholsters chair seats in cream?

Anyway, last weekend I had sort of an "if you give a mouse a cookie" moment. I started in on a few other projects, and while cleaning those up at the dining room table, I thought to myself, "Maybe I'll just flip this chair over and see how hard it is to take off the seat." So I did, and it wasn't that hard. But then I had a chair with the seat detached, and I thought, "Maybe I'll just try to remove this hideous chair cover." So I did that too, and that was a huge pain.

That stuff was like Kevlar. You could have a very bullet-proof army of grandmothers outfitted in that fabric. I only took the fabric off one seat because of what a nuisance it was to remove. I just went over the others. Easier that way, too, because I didn't have to be careful about repositioning the foam as I stapled.

Anyway, this is the end result. SOOOO much better.

 

Oh, and it's outdoor canvas, so it will resist staining (and mold and mildew; let's cross our fingers we don't have to deal with that in the dining room.)

Smoky Peaches and Clover

I don't think I've ever been so thankful to see bluish skies as I was on Friday morning. We've had a horrible stretch of smoky weather; I guess it was only since last Sunday night, but it seems like months. The sky was overcast with smoke and it was suffocating outside. It's been pretty hazy the last couple of days, but nothing like it was. When you could see it, the sun was a vague, reddish glow in the sky, even in the middle of the day.

Given the weather, we got pretty much nothing done all week outside. We didn't go outside, period. But there were still things going on outside, even though I wasn't about to go and check them out up close. Things like this...

 And this, which I did a few weeks ago when one of the peach trees bent over under the weight of all the fruit.

 We are going to need a peach management plan, and soon.

Nothing's ripe yet, but I don't think it can be more than a couple of weeks away before we find ourselves buried in peaches. Yum.

This was happening in the garden. I went out to snip a few for my office early one morning when I was feeling depressed about the smoke.

 These too. I have some sitting in one of Mom's old pitchers on the kitchen table...

 Here:

Post-Bartlett, this is what the backyard looks like. Barren. Also dead, except for some weeds that are impressively resisting my repeated Round-up attacks. That big pile of brown is mulch from the ground-out cedar stump. 

 My blackeyed susans are blooming beautifully. Someday this whole bed will be full of them, once they've naturalized.

Today, I worked my way through some zucchinis from the garden and using my favorite zucchini bread recipe made 12 zucchini muffins (eight of which are still intact. They're about three bites each and so yummy),

eight mini zucchini loaves and two normal loaves. I used almost 10 cups of grated zucchini. It was a lot. I'd intended to use some chocolate chips in a few of them, but they'd mysteriously gone missing. Next time.

Lastly, there is clover. In my garden. Or on the edge of it. I decided I just didn't really feel like waging war on it today, and it's ended up making a rather cute little bouquet for the kitchen windowsill. It's nice when things work out. 

Kitchen/Laundry Plans

This is possibly the best blog post to date. (Probably not, but maybe. I am really excited about this.) The following is what the fine people at Lowe's are going to make our kitchen look like for the small fee of $6,800.

This is looking south toward the laundry room. Open shelf for cookbooks, mixer and other easy-access items. Raised bar on the right:

This is looking east toward the dining room. We're going to take out half the wall and open the kitchen to the dining room. (SO EXCITED!!) It'll let tons more light into the house and modernize the whole setup. See those big drawers? They're 36" wide. You can fit so many pans and pots into a drawer that size! AND. Large pantry cabinet on the right of the fridge. Like squirrels, we have food stashed in like four different places in the kitchen right now. Not counting the fridge. I feel like I'm on a neverending scavenger hunt.

This is facing west, toward the street. The perspective makes it look like this is really big, but it's not. The cabinets on the left and right stick out about 30", so not really that far. There will be lazy susans in both bottom corners, trash/recycling pull out on the right front corner and open shelves on either side of the window. The window will be a bay or a bow and have a sill for cut flowers and perhaps a tiny winter herb garden. It's going to drop down much lower than the picture.

Other facts:

• cove molding around the tops of the cabinets
• cabinets: white maple shaker
• counters: 2'x2' dark gray porcelain tile (it's supposed to look like soapstone)
• backsplash: white subway tile, gray grout
• floor: dark walnut
• appliances: stainless

Here's the faucet, which I was on the fence about, but it's the most budget friendly of my choices. When we get sick of it in a few years, we can switch it out for something more classic. 

 And the sink is a 32" stainless single-basin undermount.

And these are the pendant lights for over the bar. We'll have two of those. The rest of the lighting will be recessed, except for over the table. That fixture is TBD.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this part, but we're also moving the laundry room wall back several feet into the garage. This will serve two purposes. First, we'll have an actual, functional walk-through mudroom because the appliances can tuck back into that space and not be in the way in that fairly narrow space. There should also be enough room for a laundry sink in that area, too.

Second, we think we're going to have enough space to add a tiny powder room. We've always felt this house should have three bathrooms and wished there was something basic off the garage so people using the pool or grubbing around in the yard could use that instead of tracking dirt or water through the house into the main bathroom. I love the marble and wouldn't consider trading it, but it is sensitive and we're careful with it (no shoes, no chemicals, etc.) Not the greatest for the single downstairs bathroom. Adding a little powder room is a perfect solution. 

When the guy at Lowe's finished putting in all the dimensions and clicked the button to generate the drawings, Todd and I got really excited about finishing this project. This one is not about the process. It's about having a functional kitchen that doesn't disgust us, and preferably as soon as humanly possible. He's been such a champ about staying on top of the planning and pushing it forward. We're still in the early stages of the project, but it's mostly planned. I can't wait for it to be over. 

Fine-Tuning the Downstairs Bathroom

As you may or may not remember, we gutted the downstairs bathroom four and a half years ago. It was one of the first projects we tackled (along with refinishing the floors downstairs and replacing some exterior doors. Since we moved back almost three months ago, I've been messing with it again. It went from ice blue to white since the blue hadn't worn very well in the three years we were gone. I framed the mirror last weekend and hung shelves the weekend before that.

I've been wanting to do this project since we first bought the light fixture years ago. I never liked the frosted glass sconce covers but all searches for milk glass turned up nothing. So after waffling on it for a while last Sunday, I decided to take a risk. I grabbed a can of white spray paint and a can of Rustoleum clear gloss spray from my collection and headed outside with my three shades.

After spraying the insides with a few thin coats of white, I sprayed the outsides with the clear gloss. Results are entirely satisfactory, if somewhat unimpressive when photographed. Makes a big difference in the way the light doesn't diffuse as much anymore. I'm really happy with it, and particularly pleased that I didn't ruin anything in the process.

 I also made one other minor but important addition: hand towel hook. You can see in the above picture we really don't have a great space for a bar or loop holder. The switches, floor thermostat and outlet are right in a row, and there's not really another good spot to hang a towel. Then...lightbulb...and now we have a towel hook. I even had a spare copper screw lying around, so the screw matches the hook.

Now, with the exception of some art, it's nearly finished. For now. I suppose.

A Moment of Silence for Fallen Oaks

Yesterday was a day of rather mixed emotions. We had the trees trimmed, which implies a lighter hand than the method used. To be fair, our trees were wildly overgrown, had tons of dead undergrowth, were hanging much too far over the house or growing into power lines and probably hadn't been properly addressed in several decades.

I spent the hour before starting work scurrying around the house watching. It was so interesting to see how they were doing things, and how fast the machinery made the job go. The 50-foot-tall magnolia went from standing to disappearing in about 20 minutes. Timber, chop, mulch, poof. It was fascinating. Also, I love heavy machinery and watching it fairly up close was super fun.

This is the backyard, crew in progress yesterday.

And the side driveway. It looked like the yard got hit by a tornado. The crew of seven guys brought five trucks, one stump grinder and a mulcher and and generated something like five cubic yards of mulch. That is A LOT of mulch.

This is a Stump Grinder 2400-4. I want one for Christmas. It's remote controlled and rips through stumps like nobody's business.

 Even that giant shrub outside my office door was no match for those teeth.

 And here, sadly, is all that remains of the oak.

Don't get me wrong, it had to go. This is what happened to one of the limbs when it fell. (It cracked on impact, if you can't tell.) The joint that branched off over the roof was full of tunnels the diameter of my thumb, a honeycomb, the tree guy said. (Side note, you can kind of see how smoky and gross it is here in that picture above, in the background. UGH.)

Still sad, though. It sort of feels like an old friend is missing from the back of the house. And startling that something so strong that took so many years to grow (50? 100? More?) could be leveled in a few short moments. It's weird; there haven't been a lot of sad moments in the course of our remodeling projects here. It's usually filled with joy as we watch the transformation. It's such a pity that tree was neglected for so many years that it couldn't be saved.

This is the backyard, where the magnolia was. They ground out both that stump and the cedar from several years ago that our neighbor's buddy cut down. 

The backyard looks kind of awful right now, honestly, and we were both depressed last night about cutting down the oak. The fact that the sky is completely overcast with smoke from a bunch of raging forest fires definitely isn't helping the overall mood. Neither is the dead grass in back, or our neighbors' dying shrubs.

There is some good news, though. 

• Grinding the cedar stump generated a ton of lovely-smelling mulch, which I can put in the garden
• The magnolia will no longer be a menace to the pool
• Taking out the oak lets a ton more light into the back of the house
• The dying shrubs will be replaced with a new fence soon
• When the oak seasons, we will have tons of great firewood
• We might get to rent a log splitter to split up the oak (!!)

The trees elsewhere in the front look tons better. I don't think you can capture it really well in a picture, but they all looks like they got a haircut. 

Project Report

I've had a few projects in the hopper for the downstairs bathroom the last couple of weekends. Of course, we painted it white a few weeks after we moved back. The ice blue had lost its appeal for both of us, plus the crown and ceiling had always needed at least one more coat of paint, so we did it all one color (Behr Swiss Coffee in semigloss). Minimized taping, which was great.

Unfortunately, the paint ended up really gloppy and drippy and kind of looks awful in spots. I haven't yet tried fixing it. I have, however, tried distracting from it. So far, it's working! Here's what it looked like before...

and after. Much better. I haven't finalized the shelves, still messing with styling and art and whatnot, but love the distraction from the crapped up paint. But wait, it gets even better than that... 

 Because here's another before...

And after! (I pulled down the sconces to paint them. Don't worry, they'll be back soon for more pictures.) Mirror is framed!

 In the process of that project, we discovered that our bathroom wall curves in as it goes up. You can see it if you look closely on the left side of the mirror. This makes it extremely difficult to hang a frame so it looks level. Even when it is level, it looks a bit wonky. Seven unnecessary holes in the wall later, voila. 

My original plan of staining ended up not working, when the wood filler I got stained a very different color from the wood, and then the wood took the stain unevenly. Top and bottom were different shades than the sides. I sprayed it brown and then used some blackish glaze so it didn't look like my mirror was framed with Hershey bars. It actually blends unbelievably well with the walnut from the vanity. I wish I was talented enough to plan these sorts of things, but it was a happy coincidence. 

There's another project I finished, oh, probably two months ago now: the headboard. I upholstered one for our house in Bend in navy blue canvas, and it worked really well in our oatmeal-colored room. Here, not so much. Plus almost as soon as I finished that one, I realized I love tufting and should have done that. 

 So I did. This was not a super-fun project. It was hot upstairs. I went the nuts and bolts route, which meant very sore fingers for jamming 57 bolts through 57 holes and screwing on 57 nuts. But I'm really happy with it. Not a perfect tufting job, but for a first try, not too bad.

 I'm still working on figuring out what to hang above the bed for art. Thinking maybe five or six square frames with TBD images. Also still trying to figure out what to do about bedding. The navy blanket is functional, but we're kind of feeling some yellow and orange as accents. I've been into quatrefoil and trellis patterns for a while, but haven't found anything yet I want to invest in.

 The lamp on the dresser is going to get switched out eventually, once I find something else. In that corner on the right of the image above, I've ordered...ugh...I can't even believe I'm saying this...a fake palm tree.

 I've killed one palm tree so far, and have another that's not hanging on by much in rehab out on the patio. Steady diet of sunshine and Miracle Grow is doing it wonders. Anyway, the corner needs some greenery. The room's not quite big enough to hang art on every wall; it just gets too cluttered. We both like the palm tree, but not the investment of buying a new one every three months. Hopefully this doesn't look like complete crap. I'll report back soon.

Lastly, for the bedroom roundup, are the Ikea Ritva curtains from a month or two ago. You can see them better a few pictures back, but this gives a better sense of their length. Like, 105 inches or something for a very reasonable $60. Awesome. Our ceilings are 98 inches, so no standard curtains now that I've adopted the high-n-wide method of hanging. It really classes up the room.

Surprisingly, they're linen and rather lovely. They diffuse the light nicely in the morning without making it darker than it is already (the blue absorbs a lot of light). Oh, one other thing... THE FLOORS. We had the floors finished in the bedroom and it looks great. Once the kitchen/laundry room are done, it'll be all wood downstairs, except for marble in the bathroom). Three different kinds of wood, but still.

And tomorrow, the tree guys come. We're sad to be losing the oak on the left, one of the two large branches of which is rotted. The guy said, "it could be like this for another 40 years, or it could fall on your house tomorrow." We decided against taking our changes, but cutting down a big tree is pretty much always sad.

Unless it's a stupid magnolia (right) that drops leaves every day of the year, smothers flower beds and craps up the pool. Then you can't get rid of it fast enough.

Trimming trees is decidedly not among the more fun ways I've come up with to spend a couple grand, so I'm hoping that all the other trees look really good after they've been shaped up. We have five other huge old oaks, a large cedar, another magnolia in the front and a mimosa. And some weird tree we don't know the name of, also in front. They're all getting ridiculously long-overdue haircuts tomorrow. Progress :)