In which I get all artsy-fartsy

I saw a post on Cowgirl Shepard a few weeks ago of a wine bottle holder made of old stirrups.  I *loved* the idea, but not for wine.  We keep sunscreen and bug spray right outside our front door, just thrown on a chair.  I loved the wine holder idea so much, I thought I'd try it with the sunscreen and bug spray.

I called Mom and Bill to see if they had any old, unused stirrups.  Mom has a whole shed of "someday" tack.  You know, the tack you don't want to get rid of because you might need it someday.  Turns out she didn't have a spare set of stirrups, but Bill did.  Weird, I didn't expect him to be the one with the spare stuff, but I wasn't going to question it.

I took the old stirrups and screwed them to the wall outside of our front door and voila! sunscreen and bug spray holders.  I love them and they make me smile every time I pull up to the house.

Aren't they the cutest?

Close up just in case you couldn't see them properly :)

Now we have what we need within easy reach.  We can step outside, grab what we need, spray up and be on our way.

With all of the work we're doing under the tree with the picnic table and stuff, I thought I'd find another set of stirrups to put on a post there so we could have easy access there, too.  I stuck it in the back of my mind to find a consignment store to pick up another pair of used stirrups cheap.

As with so many of my brilliant ideas, my second set of bug spray holders got changed when I bought new boots.  I'd been dreading buying new boots for a couple of reasons: 1) boots are expensive and 2) I loved my blue Justin Gypsies.  But those boots had finally worn out.  I threatened to get them re-soled, but the insides were falling apart, too.  It was just plain time to suck it up and buy new boots.

Don't get me wrong, I love my new boots.  I do.  Now that I bit the bullet and bought them, they're lovely.  Less obnoxious than my blue ones, but lovely.  When it was time to throw my old boots out, I just couldn't do it.  I physically could not put those boots I've had since before Jay and I met into the trash can.  Instead, I decided to make the bug spray and sunscreen holders out of them.

Well-loved boots

I was surprised at how easy it was to cut these apart.

Jay punched holes for me and I stitched the bottoms shut with leather lacing.

A couple of screws to hold them to the post.

I would be lying if I denied being pretty proud of my artsy-fartsy crafts.  I love this place and told our neighbor L.E. that we were "nesting" and that she wasn't going to get rid of us any time soon.

Pallet Projects

Last year, when we moved in, we refinished what used to be the kitchen table and turned it into our picnic table.  It was quite the project and we planned to eventually make benches to go with the table. Eventually did not happen last yer, but thanks to Deejo it happened this year.

Deejo has been amazing about dropping off the world's greatest pallets for any projects I can think of.  He brought us the pallet collars for the garden and then dropped off some pallets of various sizes.  The large ones were supposed to be used as a backstop for a knife-throwing target I wanted to make, but when we leaned them up against the picnic table, we realized they were perfect for our benches.

Bad picture, due to the rain, but you can see how they're just the right length.

Jay put the benches together while I worked on the horse garden.

Admittedly, they're a bit on the clunky side, but they're sturdy and they each seat four.  Now, instead of everyone bringing their own butt spaces, eight people can now sit at the table, but anyone more than eight will have to bring a chair.

They still needed stained.

Stained and in use!  They're beautimous.

After we had a gathering to try them out, we decided that the plates and plasticware took up far too much real estate at the end of the table.  It's no use being able to finally seat eight (ten when we make benches for the ends of the table) if we can't use the whole table.

The very next day, Jay used a small pallet and whipped up a side table specifically for the plates and plasticware.

It's functional, but not quite as finished as Jay wants it to be.

Jay's going to add some 1"x3" slats across the bottom supports to make a shelf.  We can put the plasticware containers on the shelf like drawers and put food up on top.  We have a dumpster less than twenty feet from the picnic table, but we'll probably add a trash receptacle to make it a bit easier for everyone.

Our goal is to have a yard where we can have impromptu gatherings with our family and friends.  I think we're well on our way.

Our Own Garden!

I swear, I blinked and it's June.  How does that happen?  It's frustrating the heck out of me, that's for sure.

Jay and I haven't been idle, though.  As soon as the depressing rain let up (seriously, something like 6" of rain in May), we got started on our outdoor projects.

I was chomping at the bit to get our very own garden in.  The last two years, we've shared a garden with his parents, but having to drive 40 minutes to harvest anything out of it wasn't ideal.  Deejo has been amazing with supplying all of the wood I need for my "projects".  We were going to build boxes for the garden and were talking to him about it, and he said, "just use some pallet collars".  I had no idea what a pallet collar was, but agreed that if he could get me some, I'd use them.  Let me tell you, they are the bestest things in the world!  We didn't have to do any construction, really.  We just unfolded them and stuck them down into the ground (after Jay leveled a bit and laid out some weed barrier).

The folded up things are the pallet collars

We planted mosquito-repellant plants

A couple of weeks after it went in; there's some baby lettuce peeking up on the right.

To make it a little prettier, we laid some sand and gravel down between the boxes.  We also moved the round planters off of the table and put them "temporarily" between the boxes, but liked them so much they're going to live there.

I got so excited about the lettuce and the possibility of not having to buy my salad mix from the store, that I cut some to use on a five-layer dip.  The next day, I went back out to the garden and the rabbits (I didn't even know we had rabbits!) had eaten it down.  I stomped around for a bit and then headed to Home Depot to remedy the situation.

No more critters eating my lettuce!

The garden is doing okay, with the exception of my carrots.  I bought fancy carrots because they made me giggle, and planted two rows of them, but only three have come up.  I'm really sad about that, not because I love to eat carrots, but because I wanted to see if they really grew the colors the package said they would.  But now I'll probably never know because only three damn seeds sprouted, and I think it's too late to plant more, but I might just because.

Wouldn't these be cool?

The (Five) Weekend Project: Tiling the Counters

It might have taken six weekends.  Or even seven.

All I know is that we finally got that gawdawful chore done.  Let me tell you, it definitely seemed like a good idea at the time.  C'mon, how hard can tiling be?  Really?  I mean, people with no experience do it all the time on the DIY home makeover shows.  Jay and I are reasonably intelligent people (but not intelligent enough NOT to take on this project).

Everyone assured me "tiling is easy", "don't worry about it".  They are all liar-heads, for the record.

We decided to start with the "little" counter - really just a free-standing cabinet we have by the stove for storage.  We figured we couldn't screw it up too badly.  It started out nicely enough. 

We borrowed Mr. Nebalee's tile cutter and Jay went to town making the cuts we needed.

And that was the last thing that went right with our project.  When we bought the supplies for the project, all we saw was mortar that we'd have to mix ourselves.  No problem, we can follow directions.  So we did.  And we ended up with some nasty mortar that was more like crunchy peanut butter instead of the smooth stuff. 

We fought with it for a while, then just said fuck it and slapped the tiles down, mushing them into the crunchy stuff as well as we could.

It doesn't look horrible, but there's not a single level spot on it.   That little project drove us to drink and we decided we were not doing any more that night.

When I bitched about it on Facebook, someone asked why we didn't just buy the pre-mixed mortar.  Pre-mixed mortar?  Are you kidding me?  We didn't see any while we were at Home Depot buying our supplies.  Sonuvabitch, we could have made our lives so much easier.

We finally made it back to the store to return our not pre-mixed mortar and buy some sensible stuff.  Jay and I put on our grown-up unders and started again.  He had a couple of hours before work one morning, so he started and I "finished".

 

I should say I finished all but the last seven pieces that needed to be cut.  I tried to bribe Deejo into coming over to cut them, but he couldn't make it.  I'm perfectly capable of running power tools, but I'm partial to my fingers, so I wimped out on the cutting part and left it for someone - anyone - else to do.

A couple more weeks went by and Jay had enough of having a partially complete kitchen project and we finally finished setting the tiles.

A day later, we grouted and now we can say the damn project is finished!

I'm all about learning new skills, but this is a skill I never want to use again.  Maybe if it had gone smoothly from the beginning, but it didn't and set a bad tone for the whole project.  I think our last weekend home project will be to build the benches for the picnic table.

Wait ... no, we're going to install a dishwasher.  That should be fun, right?

Weekend Project #2 - Kitchen Cabinets

The same weekend we did the picnic table, we started the kitchen cabinets project.  At Habitat for Humanity's ReStore, we found a 13-piece cabinet set for $600, which we thought was a pretty good deal.  But the deal got even better, we happened to be shopping during "Habi Hour", so Jay got to spin the wheel to see what our discount would be.  I was happy with a $600 set of cabinets, but I was even happier with 40% off those cabinets!

Getting them home was a bit of a problem.  We thought we'd be able to shove them all into the truck bed, but we were sorely mistaken.  Jay called in reinforcements in the form of his family with their big excursion and we were able to shoe-horn the three cabinets we couldn't fit in the truck into the excursion.

Kitchen before

With the cabinets unloaded

This pantry? Enormous.

We couldn't find a counter top at ReStore, so the salesman suggested getting a solid-core door and cutting it to size.  Why not?  It would give us a nice solid counter top and we could tile over it.  The door they had in stock was HUGE, something like 7 feet by 4 1/2 feet and weight a zillion pounds.

To get it cut, I called in my own reinforcements with a circular saw.  Nebalee and family came out to cut our "counter top".

Huge, heavy door undergoing its transformation.

It had taken most of the day to get the cabinets home, unloaded, and the door transformed to a counter top.  We laid out the base cabinets, slipped to top on, and called it a night.

I was determined to at least get the base cabinets put together, so I took a day off of work.  When I called Mom to tell her what I was going to do, she sent Bill down to help.  Instead of just getting the base cabinets done, we were able to get all of the cabinetry put together and hung.

Me and power tools - a dangerous combination

All together

We took a break and Bill played with Skeeter before heading home.  I decided I wanted to paint the cabinets and had just gotten started when Jay came home, so he jumped in and we knocked it out in no time.

After a break for dinner, we put the doors back on and it started to look like a real kitchen!

I love our "new" kitchen.  The gaping space in the upper cabinets will be a wine rack (eventually).  We also need to replace the shelves in the two right upper cabinets and all of the shelves in the pantry.  Why on earth those didn't come with the cabinets is beyond me.  It never occurred to me to check, because who takes the shelves out of cabinets?  What does one do with lengths of board that were formerly shelves?  It's a mystery.

We haven't actually gotten around to unpacking and putting things away yet, but I'm sure I'll love it even more once we get our kitchen stuff moved in (and the shelves replaced).

Maybe once Copper is delivered, we can go back to focusing on getting us settled in.  For now, we've been too focused on outside stuff.

Weekend Project #1 - The Picnic Table

Since we've moved into our new place, we've come up with some "weekend projects" that needed to be done.  Remember the shade tree that needed a picnic table?

See how lonely that tree is?

First order of business was to move the big, wood kitchen table from the kitchen outside so we could strip it and re-finish it.  We knew that we wanted to put kitchen cabinets in the kitchen to maximize the space, but the table had to come out.  The table is roughly seven feet by four feet and weighs a gajillion pounds, because it is solid wood.

Jay and I managed to muscle it out of the kitchen and into the mudroom, but came to a screeching halt at the door.

Off with its legs!

The door was about two inches too narrow to force the table through.  Many cuss words and one amputated leg later, we were able to get the table out.

We were smart enough to buy an electric sander, but not quite smart enough to buy the right grit of sand paper, so stripping the table was slow work.  We stripped the bottom of the table and the legs Friday night, then sealed them with Thompson's Water Seal and left it to cure overnight.

The next morning, armed with 100 grit, we tried stripping the top of the table.  It took us forever and we eventually ran out of the "starter pack" that came with the sander, so off to the hardware store we went.  When we came home with proper sandpaper, the project went much faster.  I hadn't realize how well sealed the table had been.  Maybe if I had thought about it, we would have bought something to chemically strip the varnish instead of spending two hours taking turns sanding.

I love the weathered look of the stripped table, but we had to seal it.  We love this table and want it to last, so on went the water seal.

After all that work on getting the table ready to be an outdoor table, there was no way we were going to let its wooden legs sit in the mud, which meant we had to expand our project to include setting pavers.

I know the pictures make it look like I made Jay to all the work, but I really did do some.  Really!  It's just difficult to take pictures and do physical labor at the same time.

Doesn't that tree look much less lonely now?  We still have no way to sit at the table (yet another weekend project), but it's a nice place to hang out and watch the amazing sunsets.

Allie-bird got to move back in with us now that we're not living in a pet-free apartment and she spent her time surveying her new domain while Jay and I worked.