Thanksgiving

I trust you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that most of ate TOO much!  I believe that I didn't overstuff myself for the most part, but I did indulge in a bit too much pie!  We spent the long weekend with my son and daughter-in-law in South Carolina.  They live in the lovely northwest corner, near the mountains and also near a sizable lake.  The do have a 2 bedroom apartment and it is fairly large, especially for the two of them, but when you add in 5 extra people, it starts to get a bit cramped! But we certainly managed just fine, and they were fabulous hosts to all of us!

We had Thanksgiving dinner at my brother and sis-in-law's house, who also live in the same town as my son!  Unfortunately, sis-in-law had a nasty case of stomach flu on Thursday and on Friday, so wasn't able to participate in the festivities. :(  My brother handled it all with much grace, and a little help from me, my mother and DIL.  And then, as luck would have it, he came down with the stomach flu late Friday night.  Poor guy.  Sure wasn't ideal for them, but so far, none of the rest of the family has been struck with it.  Nor their little guys.

On Friday I did a little non-traditional Black Friday shopping along with Mom, DIL and future DIL. We hit some antique shops and furniture consignment shops!  Yee-haw!  Jeff would have managed to squeeze a piece of furniture into one of the cars for the trip home, had I found something I couldn't live without!

Got home Sunday evening and yesterday and today have been spent playing catch-up.  So for those of you who are wondering, no, have not even gotten the Christmas boxes out of the attic!  Hopefully will have an all day marathon of decorating tomorrow, but most likely will not get it all done.

Sorry no pics, no projects.  But I do have a couple of things in mind!

Blessings,

Ronda

My Little Bench

Well, folks, it has been kind of a hectic week here.  Hubby has been at the theater for the last 4 days running sound for the local high school production of Bye-Bye Birdie.  He is literally running on fumes right now, over at Bible study, hopefully not nodding off in the middle of a discussion :D

I enjoyed the beautiful day yesterday, no, not by going outside, although I did that briefly to take care of my dead mums and final remaining impatiens, which had been dead for a while.  Ok, so run-on sentence there...now to complete that thought....I worked on projects!  I had free time, so decided to play around with some painting.  I have a cute, red stool that I bought years ago from Southern Living At Home.  It has sat in the back hallway for kids to sit on while putting on their shoes ever since I got it.  So I decided to play with it....

I had read a tutorial on how to do this, but since I couldn't quite figure out how to do the mirror image...yeah, so a little computer illiterate, I admit it...so I did it in my own way instead.  I printed out the number and then using a sharp pen, outlined it, so that I could see it on the back side.  Then, using a pencil, I colored it in as darkly as I could.  I taped it in place, then using a pen cap :) I burnished it onto the stool.  Then, a tiny paintbrush to paint over the pencil markings.  The lines were done with just painters tape. Sanded the top surface...

...a little distressing....

...a single coat of wipe-one poly, just to protect the paint surface.

I was also working on putting the poly on the table leaf, which, by the way, is done!!

Here you can see my messy work area!  Including the mess in my corner hutch! Unfortunately, I think it is lighter than the rest of the table, even after 4 coats of stain.

That was my Saturday!

Thanks to my future daughter-in-law for the lovely shots of the stool-- I am still learning how to get the best pics of my projects.  I think I will be learning a few things from her!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  Doubt very much I will do much blogging between now and then!

Blessings,

Ronda

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Quite an Evening

This evening was the Harvest Gathering for our home school co-op.  It was an awesome time filled with displays from the various classes that were offered throughout this semester. We had a demonstration of rain water run-off, a tae-kwon-do demonstration, and a derby car race.  Not to mention MY awesome girls chorus, GRACE Notes, singing a lovely prayer.  Plus, lots of good food and fellowship.  Never been a better one in my opinion!  I would say we have been doing these for about 6 years now.

Anyway...not much to report in the way of projects around here.  The new chairs are making progress, but not ready to show.  The leaf is a learning process for hubby.  It looks like it didn't turn out as well as we would have liked, but it will still be usable.

Another project I have been contemplating is my stairs.  I would really like to pull up the carpet and do some really nifty with them.  Hmmm...something maybe, sorta, possibly, but not quite like this.....

   

This is a little more detailed and possibly a little more rustic than I would probably do.  Have you tried a stair project?  Tell me about it.  And while you are at it, tell me if you think this one is do-able for me, a baby DIY-er.

Blessings,

Ronda

The Chair Story

I promised you the chair story, so...

On Thursday I found a set of chairs on Craigslist that I wanted to check out.  The post said Bedford-- 45-50 minutes away depending on where in Bedford.  We were planning on being out and about, closer to that area on Saturday anyway, but knowing that if I waited till then, they might be gone, I called Friday morning.  A laid-back male voice answered and said, yes, I could come see them that day.  He was actually located in Heltonville, which would take me at least another 20 minutes.  Ok, whatever.  So I headed that way.  

It wasn't until I was about halfway there that I started having second thoughts about my plan to go alone.  Hubby was already having a busy day, so I hadn't wanted to ask him to tag along.  I called him to talk to him about the wisdom of going alone, but he encouraged me to go ahead and just trust my own judgement.  I think my mother would have disagreed!

I passed through the small town of Heltonville and kept getting further and further into the "boonies." And of course, getting more and more nervous.  I did actually find the place on my GPS, but the spot marked was actually nothing.  There was a vague lane off the road, but I went on past to the next mailbox, about a 1/4 mile, then turned around when I realized that had probably been it.  By this time I had Jeff on the phone directing me via googlemaps.  I cautiously drove up the driveway to find a very dicey-looking house (using this word loosely!) and a shed that must have been his barn.  I sat there in my car for a minute, waiting to see if someone came out.  I had to hang up on Jeff to call this guy and find out if I was in the right place.  I was, and he came out of the house....

BIG GUY!  Ripped, dirty overalls, plaid shirt, shaggy beard and hair, knit cap.  OH MY!!  What had I gotten myself into?  He was waving me up closer.  I hurriedly speed-dialed Jeff again, then just held my phone in my hand. Now, what could he have done if this guy was a serial killer or a rapist?  I don't know, but it made me feel a little better!  

The chairs were great, the guy was just a kind-hearted, back-woods hick and things turned out fine.  But I still made the transaction as quickly as I could and beat it out of there!  And promised myself I would never again go alone!!  

Unfortunately, when I got them home, I realized there was a slight smokey smell, but I think it is wood smoke, not cigarette.  

Here is a pic of the "booth" my husband created for my in the garage so that I could spray paint out of the wind and soon-to-come cold weather.  I may or may not have felt a bit loopy when I was finished....Shhh!

Blessings, 

Ronda

The Big Reveal!

Some of you have been asking when I am going to show you my table.  I had thought that I would put it off until I had all my chairs done and show you the whole "ensemble."  But I couldn't wait any longer!  Ok, maybe just a bit longer, long enough to torture and show you the "before."  So grab your cup of coffee and settle in for a long story!  And remember, you asked for it!

So to start a very long story--
I found this table top Labor Day weekend at a yard sale in a nearby town.

Note, I said table TOP!  Nope, no legs-- but I absolutely fell in love with the details on the apron, and we knew that legs would be simple enough to add.  As the saying goes, "if I knew then what I know now..." I don't know if I would have even given the $10 for it.

The top was veneer which was started to chip along one edge.  The pic is where I had started to pick at it to try to see underneath....um, yeah, that was just the start of things to come.  I knew there was going to be no way that I would be able to patch this since I wanted to strip and stain the top.  So did some research on how to remove veneer...

The process involved softening the glue with steam and prying it up.  When I started it seemed to be going fairly well until I realized that I was only getting up one layer of the veneer! Oops!  And so I wasn't actually getting down to the glue.  So what you see me doing is putting a wet towel on the top and then putting a hot iron on top.  And yes, it ruined my iron! Do not try this with a good iron!  Needless to say it was a very long and tedious process.  It got a little easier when we got smart and borrowed a large wallpaper steamer from a friend.

The look that I finally got it down to was never meant to be the top surface of the table.  It was a mix of woods, what we are guessing was some oak, some hickory and some maple.  The strips around the edges were even all different widths! But I was loving the uniqueness of the look, especially with the deep knots and the wormholes.  I was even kind of liking the look of the few little gouges that I had put in it with my putty knife (OOPS!).  The pic above is after we had it all sanded down.  We have now realized that we probably should have sanded the wide edge pieces a bit better as I think there was still some glue left on them.

Part of the reason that DH and I fell in love with this piece was because it had the hardware to open out to over 100 in.  We had been looking for a table that would start small, but be able to grow with our family as we add spouses and eventually grandchildren.  But, of course, no leaves came with the table top, so DH agreed to take on the task of making leaves.  It is already unique enough that they wouldn't have to match exactly.  The one problem was the edging pieces- we couldn't find any that matched anywhere we looked.  So we ended up picking new edge pieces.  It changes the look just a bit, but I'm ok with that.

So all of this wood got 3 coats of Minwax Special Walnut stain. I thought about using the Dark Walnut, but was actually worried about it going too dark.  And then I finished with Wipe-on Poly in a satin finish.  6 coats!  Hope that's enough to protect it.  I don't mind a few more nicks adding to the character, but would rather avoid water rings.

So I admit, I was too lazy to strip the apron pieces.  Besides, I knew that I was going to have to put something on the legs so that I could distress them and it didn't look just like new raw wood showing through.  So I painted all of them with brown spray paint.  Then 2 coats of Swiss Coffee.  Then a bit of distressing.  One coat of paste wax, followed by antiquing glaze.  I was a bit concerned about this step since I wanted to keep these parts as white as possible with just a hint of the glaze in the crevices.

 You can see the antiquing pretty well in this pic.  You can also see that some of the decorative pieces are missing.  A few of them had fallen off while the pieces were sitting in our garage, so I glued them on and hoped that the glue plus the paint will cement them well enough.

Ok, I admit it, I still swoon every time I walk in the dining room!  We are pretty pleased with the finished project.  The next time I post about this table, I will show it with a leaf in it and all the chairs done!  Tomorrow I will tell you about my adventure finding my latest 2 chairs!

And if you have read all the way to here, I'm sure you have finished your coffee by now! ;)

Blessings,

Ronda

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Are you a NO-REPLY???

Some of you who are commenting on my blog are!  I would like to be able to respond to the comments that you are leaving on my blog, but I CAN'T!! I know some of don't have a profile set up, and probably don't want to do that, but if you care, please read the following and correct the problem!

The following was copied from Funky Junk Interiors:

What's noreply?

Noreply means your profile/email aren't properly linked together. So when you comment on my blog, I can't respond back to you via email.

So this is what I see instead of a return email address from you. Bummer.

Why did this happen?

This is a glitch between Google + and blogger. When you switched to Google, you lost the option to fix blogger account settings. So now what you must do is revert back to your old blogger dashboard to fix, then you can go back to Google again.

Warning! The issue remains a glitch so many have to repeat this fix more than once. Frequently even.  Painful, but it's the only way if you are choosing to stay with a Google profile while this glitch exists.

How do I know if I'm a noreply?

You don't. That's the part that's frustrating. Unless someone gets a noreply email from you, travels to your blog, finds your email and notifies you, you won't ever know except for your inbox getting a little quieter.

I get HUNDREDS of noreply comments through my inbox and it's impossible for me to email each of you, so I hope you will check to see if this applies to you.

Check anyway

Even if you haven't made the switch to the new Google profile, I suggest you check your blogger settings anyway. And for those that don't blog but do comment, if you don't have an email activated through blogger, you come up as a noreply. I implore anyone that comments on blogger blogs to attach your blogger profile to an email so we can reply back to you. Truly I do. You just MUST have an email activated for this to work. If you're staying incognito for security purposes, fire up a hotmail or gmail. Anything.

How do I fix it?

Fixing is easy and I truly hope each and every one of you does so. I checked my own as well. Please oh please click below and let The Tattoeod Teacher help you through it. It's an excellent post I couldn't improve on.

This and That

I know, I know, it has been several days since I have blogged!  Bad me!  Kind of waiting on the time when my table is done and I can finally show more than a sneak peek!  I have been working on it, as has my hubby, but it is not quite there yet.  Fingers crossed, hopefully this weekend!

So, in the mean time, I thought I would share a few pics of various things around the house!

 This first pic is my recent birthday present from my wonderful hubby.  It replaces the awful brass and ivory chandelier that was put in when we built the house.  It was actually pretty to begin with, but we hung it so high in the entryway that it was impossible to get to in order to clean.  So it was really grungy and covered in bugs and cobwebs.  Not to mention the fact that some of the "candles" were warped-- eww!!  So this time we got smart and hung it quite a bit lower so that I can actually get to it to clean it and change the bulbs!

This random decor pic is a shot of the rustic lanterns that I bought with the birthday money from my mom.  Thanks, Mom! Love them!

And here you see our current dining room table.  This has been our main table for the past 26+ plus years!  Several family members went together to buy this as a wedding gift for us!  And it was used then!  It was originally all dark pine.  Several years ago I stripped the table top, chair seats and backs and stained them to match our woodwork.  The rungs and legs were dark blue, but are now black.  This weekend the table gets passed down to the next generation.  We are giving it to our son and future daughter-in-law.  It is a very solid table and chairs and is actually still in very good shape.  I am just ready for something new!  You can see my beginning of my collection of black chairs to go with my new table.  Also my pumpkin table runner!  But I'm thinking the red candle box doesn't look so great--- might change that out tomorrow!

Be watching for my table soon!

Blessings,

Ronda