Finally sealed and varnished kitchen floor transition

I had my kitchen redone over a year ago. I have been meaning to seal and varnish the wooden transition from the dining room into the kitchen since then. A couple of weekends ago, the temperature was perfect to open the windows, which meant I no longer had an excuse to keep the sealant closed.

After little sanding, cleaning, and using painter's tape to protect the kitchen tiles. I grabbed a paint brush applied the sealant and went to bed so that it could dry. Since it was such a small area that I needed to varnish, I realized it would be an awful lot of effort to put together the varnish pad that I have... and it would be a waste of water to clean. I ended up using a Viva Paper towel (and gloves as is good practice) to apply the varnish. 

It's just a small project, but it's a relief to complete!

Questions I was asked yesterday

1. "Do you need any extra tools?" 
2. "Hey, I'm going to Home Depot. Do you need anything?"

As I always have house/yard projects underway, these are acceptable questions to ask me. A couple of great things about these questions really struck me: 1) Tools are meant to be lent. 2) Errands are meant to be bundled. 3) Most of all, I have a good support network of friends who will go out of their way to help me, lend me tools, run an errand for me.

I'm am so blessed that I have to take some time to expand on 3 a bit (please bear with my sappiness, but I wouldn't be able to tackle these projects if #3 didn't exist). The first question comes from Steve who helped me blow insulation into my attic, fill my raised garden with soil, and other projects. He texted me over the weekend to offer to help me with my deck... out of the blue.... just cause he has some time available. Steve, who could be doing a variety of other things, is going to help me dig holes in my backyard... and may even bring his own tools. How cool is that? The second question comes from my neighbor Amy, who is my free-mulch-gathering-sister and the owner of my dog's girlfriend. Over the past few months during doggy play dates and other hangout times, we have bonded over our love for Mother Earth News, gardening, healthy food experiments, and fun exercises. Her inquiry about my need for anything from a hardware store may seem like no big deal to her, but it's further evidence of her generosity (there are too many other occasions to list, but take my word for it that there would be a lot... and we've only been friends since February!).

Those questions reminded me of my other friends who have helped me paint, install ceiling fans, surprised me with a housewarming party; of neighbors who have helped me clean out my gutters, cut down tree limbs, gave me seeds; of co-workers who lend me tools, share their experiences; of family and family-friends who have helped me reseed my lawn, weed, grout my tub, fix my roof, plan my deck and will help me build my deck. And that list is by no means inclusive!

Thanks to each and every one of you!

Deck Permit!

I have a permit to build my deck! It was a long process to get all of the plans together, and to interpret my city's deck details, but I did it! It also doesn't help that I have to build around a stoop, which makes things all the more complicated. The building code people were really friendly though and going through the process last Friday afternoon was pretty simple. Some of the regulations are probably overkill for my low deck (1 ft high from ground level), but it certainly will be stable.

Now I just have to keep digging the holes for the footers. Too bad my dog insists on digging in the wrong places b/c he could get it done in no time.

Yard find

I've found teletubbies and a random assortment of items in my yard... I wouldn't have guessed it to be a potential paleontology dig site though. This well-preserved specimen is my latest find:

Not me!

Comic Title: does anyone have a hammer for ladies i can borrow?

http://www.nataliedee.com/031912/does-anyone-have-a-hammer-for-ladies-i-can-borrow.jpg

Starting Seedlings

The mild winter has put gardening on my mind for a variety of reasons. Flowers are appearing early. The yard is already starting to go crazy and I'll need to pull out the mower soon. It's too nice to be inside.

It's seedling starting time! I am trying some new methods and hoping I don't have a seedling fail again. Over the year I saved yogurt cups because they're deeper than egg cartons. I drilled 3 little holes in the bottom of each cup so that they could drain well. I also did a fair amount of reading about seedling temperature and light. I covered the large container that I placed the yogurt cup seedlings in with saran wrap to keep the moisture and heat in. I keep a desk lamp on over that set of seedlings and may check freecycle.com to see about getting a small florescent light for the ones I started today. The new set of seedlings are planted in a large strawberry container, which already has holes along the bottom edges for drainage. I made separators using the free newspaper that gets delivered on Sundays. Another great thing about this container is that it has a top that will keep in the moisture and I won't need to use saran wrap.

One of my favorite seedling starter tips is to put some of the seedling starter mix in a bucket and add water. Mix it and let it sit for 30 minutes. Mix it again to make sure the water is absorbed and use the wet starter mix to plant. It's much easier to use wet soil to begin with than to water them after.

Headboard done!

Ok... So when I left off, I had 4 more steps for finishing my headboard. I decided to do 2 rows of 5 buttons. I triple- or quadruple-measured my marks for where the buttons would go. Then I drilled small holes so that I could thread the buttons through the headboard. I used the drill depth gauge since I only needed to drill through the thin plywood.

The next step was to attach the foam and fabric to the frame. In case you didn't know already, craft store foam is expensive. I ended up getting a 1 inch mattress topper and cutting it in half in order to double it over so I'd have 2 inches of foam over the plywood. I easily saved 50%. I glued the two pieces together to make it easier to attach to the plyboard As I mentioned in the last post, I left extra plywood on the bottom so that it wouldn't be as top-heavy. Because of this I had to completely attach the bottom of the foam/fabric first. Since the foam was technically 2 pieces glued together, I stapled the bottom layer of foam and the fabric to the plywood. That kept the top layer of foam plush.


Then I flipped it over and stapled the centers of the other 3 sides. I pulled everything taut as I stapled from the center to the corners. I cut off extra foam and fabric (especially in the corners). I used a lot of staples.

With some of the extra foam and fabric I covered ten buttons. I bought one kit for covering buttons and then other "refill" cover button packs. They were surprisingly easy to do: fabric, foam, button top, press and fold fabric, button back, and press again. Voila! covered buttons!

Attaching the buttons... much harder. There are a couple of tricks to add buttons to a headboard so that they are inset into the foam a little. I had read that you could cut out some of the foam. I didn't want to risk messing up the foam, so my trick was just to pull the button really tight and in order to do so, I had to use yarn instead of thread. I needed to attach the yarn to something on the back side of the plywood so I used another trick I had read about - using chopsticks or bamboo skewers. I used 3 inch pieces of skewers to keep my yarn from pulling through the headboard. I attached the button to the front and threaded the yarn back through the drilled hole. After pulling tight, I wrapped that end of the yarn around the skewer and tied it off.

Here's the final product along with mirrors my brother gave me for Christmas. 

Trips to Hardware store - 1 (for staples)

(add that to the last post and this headboard took me 3 trips to hardware stores and 2 trips to fabric stores and I tracked down the foam at Ross... phew)