June 29, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized
Here’s what the chairs looked like before.
Partly stained, partly worn off. Some stained really dark, and some painted red in the middle.
Antiques road show be damned, I wanted something I could live with and somehow I doubt that this set was ever gonna get sold on e-bay for thousands. Here’s a close-up of one of the tops.->
The finish color wasn’t actually that bad, but where it was rubbed off, the wood was very dry and lighter colored.
So after a week worth of stripping and sanding and staining and refinishing, I finally wrapped up the hard stuff yesterday. The seats got recovered with some bargain brocade fabric that I found on sale at Jo-ann fabrics. I’ll put up pictures of the matching table when I find someone to help me drag it into the house. Here’s the finished products:
Here’s the captains chair like from the before photo.
Close-up of the top after refinishing.
And the fabric is below, although my camera kept trying to use the flash which kept making the silk reflect like crazy. It’s a pretty dark brown.
June 26, 2008
· Filed under random
Y’all are probably sick of the house related posts, but I figured all the knights would remember this old classic. That’s right, it’s the final piece of furniture from mom’s parents bedroom set that I’ve been using since circa 1988 when the addition went on the parkhill house. I think scott had the matching bed and other dresser at one point, but managed to dump them a lot sooner. The newsflash is that this dresser is now departed from my house. Gone, finit. To the great furniture farm in the sky. Or more accurately to the kind lady who actually gave me $50 for it. So take one last look because it’s outta here.
June 26, 2008
· Filed under outdoors
I’ve got calla lillies and daisies in the side yard! Maybe I should get out there more. Also, this tiny weed plant: 
is actually lavender that smells really good. I also have day-lilies in the backyard, but they were closed up for the night. The grapes and raspberries are working on getting me some more produce, and I’m caught up on the mowing for the week. Now it’s back to engineery goodness for the evening. It’s a crime that I’ve been trapped inside in the recent great weather.
June 17, 2008
· Filed under random
Look at all of the strawberries my yard gave me! There were so many I got tired of picking them and decided to go inside and take a picture of the haul so far. Now if only there were enough strawberries to offset the mortgage costs…
June 9, 2008
· Filed under renovated
I don’t know about flowers, but I definitely got a lot of dirt and stuff in my hair this morning. Before weeding this annoying thing with pink flowers had taken over everything. Originally I thought it was some sort of flower, but then it started spreading. After wards I found a princess hydrangea and a couple of other plants you couldn’t see behind the weedy stuff. (below) 
That took me about an hour and now I’m 3/4 of the way through the flower beds to weed and try to figure out what’s where. I also found a clay pottery house, a bird feeder, and lots of bugs. I’m also putting up on picasa another name that flower album so that y’all can help me identify the other stuff that I’ve never seen before. (
June 8, 2008
· Filed under lighting, projects, renovated
I may be a chemical engineer, but apparently I’m still capable of changing o
ut a light fixture. The hideous yellow hanging thing in the kitchen had to go because everyone kept walking into it. The lumpy shade was also cracked, and it was held up with some classy rope and twist ties.
H
ere’s what it looked like half-uninstalled: Pretty scary, but not all that difficult to unscrew the old wires and fixture and insert a new one. Luckily, I picked a new one up at rejuvenation in portland a few weekends back (http://www.rejuvenation.com/ ) which was an awesome store by the way. I got two other fixtures; one for over the sink with two lights that has 4 connection wires and may be beyond my level of expertise.
The other one is to replace the fluorescent chicklet of doom (not to be confused with the altoids more commonly found in dorm rooms at the UR.) I have yet to actually pull that one down to see how it’s attached and whether the new one will fit under it. So yesterday was just to replace the icky yellow hanging 70s thing. And I did, and this is how the new one looks.
Notice how the stripe on the light fixture matches the stripe in the tile (!) And doesn’t look to anachronistic like the ikea light over the sink. I found out it’s from ikea because that was the label on the instructions I found over the sink.
That and some ongoing linen closet painting and such was my saturday. The lawncare has also been overwhelming since I wait too long between mowing and weeding. Yay weekend-not much other news, I’ll go back to unpacking now 
Here’s what the chairs looked like before.
