Hardly Martha Stewart - but I'm good with that.

Ok, let’s get this out of the way right now; I am far, far from a domestic goddess. Yes, I love to cook and I’m pretty damn good at it but I am far from perfect in the home department. I pretty much detest housework and procrastinate it often and well.  It’s a good thing no one can see my basement right now, although the guy who always does our furnace and air tune ups assures me it’s far from the worst he’s seen. Although I’m not sure if he’s just trying to make me feel better – he’s a really nice guy. At any rate, I will not be winning any Martha Stewart clone contests.

That being said, now that I’m focusing on being happy and what I want and need to do not what I think I should do, starting my own business (honestly, my main financial goal is to pay someone else to do my housework! The rest of it is just fun!) and enjoying the mental freedom of deciding to do my own thing, I am spending a lot more time working on creative home endeavors (why it took me living here for fifteen years before I realized I can change things in MY house? That’s a topic for another post!). Right now I’m in the process of re-doing Krystins’ bedroom (along with the 500 other projects I have going - you think I'm exaggerating? You should see my list!). 

The last time we did it she was eleven, so her tastes have changed a bit and she’s been through a really rough year. So I caved. The deal was she was supposed to help, that hasn’t worked out so well – mostly because now that she’s in school she has very little free time and in August when I started, she had a kind of relapse health-wise and was pretty out of it.  My initial plan was to have it done before the end of the summer, but other stuff and, again, the darn pneumonia got in the way. So now I’m back on track, sort of, while trying to get my vintage business online before the holiday shopping season gets going.

I painted her walls (she picked the colors, one Fuchsia wall, two aqua walls and one sort of white one. Painting is great, it’s sort of a Zen like activity, it’s the taping I hate. So boring. I also pulled out her carpet last August (before pneumonia!) and put down a new floor. It’s the same sort of white as the walls. Basically I glued down brown contractor paper in uneven tears, went over it with an off white glaze (the same color as her big wall) and then covered the whole thing with several layers of polyurethane. It looks pretty good, which reminds me, I need to start taking before and after pictures! I'd take a picture of her floor but I can no longer see it under the layers of clothing.

She wants a vintage type of feel so we’re incorporating that. I’m currently working on a nightstand using a cool wooden tray I found, which I am lacquering black (her accent color). The original plan was to use a couple of really interesting huge iron candlesticks I found for the base, but it just didn’t work balance-wise, the tray is too big, so they'll wait for another project!

Fortunately, on my antique auction trip (first one as a dealer – woo-hoo! Check out my other blog - Vintage Life & Design) I nabbed a couple of wrought iron table bases for $2.50 each (yes, that's two dollars and fifty cents) and one of them is perfect. The other one will someday be a mosaic patio table base. Only problem, it- the one that's the right size - was covered in rust and really wobbly. Yes, another project before I can finish the current project. Yep, that’s just how I roll. I actually did take some pics, although I didn’t remember until half-way through the project, but, it is progress!

Here’s the table base (cleaned up –really should have taken a before!):

It was completely caked with rust. So I soaked it in apple cider vinegar for 48 hours and went at it with a wire brush (my trusty wire brush is featured in the photo). It cleaned up pretty well, but the bolts and nuts were still so tightly rusted they wouldn’t budge. Bummer, because I was really hoping the vinegar would do the trick. It’s been sitting for a couple of days waiting for me to get around to it again and today was the day since I was stuck waiting around until the oven repair person decided to show.

Here’s what the bolts & nuts looked like AFTER the vinegar soak and lots of elbow grease with a stiff wire brush:

 

  So this afternoon I soaked the rusted bolts with penetrating oil a few times, wacked ‘em with a hammer a few times and they finally loosened up enough that I could tighten them. It was harder than it sounds because I had to hold the bolt tightly enough to keep it still with the giant pliers while using the wrench to tighten the nut, which really wanted to stick with the bolt.  My hands hurt for about half an hour afterwards and I was covered with oily, rusty residue, but it worked, yeah!

Next step, obviously, clean the rust off the tools – kind of like cleaning up as you cook – makes everything better and you don't have a huge mess to clean up at the end.

I couldn’t find the WD-40 in Jeff’s workshop – even though I swear I saw it the other day - so used the 3 in 1 oil.  Over a bunch of newspaper I drenched the working ends and used an old toothbrush to get it all off, then wiped them down with a rag. 

Next, get the penetrating oil off the table base so it will hold paint.

Soaked it in water with Dawn dish washing detergent for about ten minutes (it doesn’t leave a residue – hey, if it’s good enough for tractor enthusiasts who want to take apart old rusty tractors and repaint them, it’s good enough for me!) and again used the old toothbrush. Rinsed it thoroughly in water and then again in water with a little bit of vinegar just to make sure there wasn’t any oil left. Vinegar, in case you didn't know, is the miracle liquid. It can leap tall buildings in a single bound, oh wait, that's Superman; but you get the idea.

After it was completely rinsed and blotted dry I used a hair dryer on it (because I am in Michigan and I don’t want any more rust to form! I just spent three days trying to get rid of enough rust I could work with the base!). Now it sits patiently waiting until tomorrow when I will spray paint it black (if it’s not raining again).

So the saga of the nightstand will wait another day. I still need to attach the tray, fill in the screw holes, sand them down and repaint it. It will be sweet.

I am also refinishing a desk that I’ve had sitting in the garage for fifteen years (because I loved it but didn’t have anywhere to put it - plus we were in England for three years, so it's really only twelve).  Krystin needs a desk and it’s the right style (Queen Anne) for her room. Imagine my excitement (if you’re not an antique nut you probably can’t, but try) when after several days of stripping (seriously, there were six coats of paint, on top of various layers of varnish on this thing!), I found that my $10 garage sale desk is a Cavalier desk made by the Tennessee Furniture Co., sometime between 1905 and 1938 and conservatively worth  probably around $400 - $500! 

I LOVE it when that happens! Not that I’ll sell it, but it’s just awesome. I have to do some veneer and carving repairs and will probably have to paint it rather than lacquer, which was my original plan. Unfortunately. Someone painted it a long time ago, it looks like before it was stained, and the paint has actually soaked into the wood in many places. I can’t get it off without damaging the wood and it will show through the lacquer I was going to use. Bummer, but oh well, it’s still a beautiful piece of furniture and will look great in her room (if she will just keep it – her room - picked up!).  

So, if I were even partly as together as Martha Stewart (apart from the whole insider trading thing, not real keen on a prison stay, actually) or my friend Lisa, who Martha Stewart has nothing on and has never been to prison, plus she’s way cooler, prettier and one of my best friends; my house would be perfectly put together, clean AND I would have done everything else I did today. Needless to say, it’s not. Although I did put corned beef & cabbage in the crock pot this morning so we do have dinner tonight. Three days of spaghetti was pushing it (although it is really great spaghetti sauce! I'll post the recipe when I have time to think about recreating.).

I also learned how to change the element in the oven, so if my element ever goes out again, I can fix it myself. Pretty cool, huh? My Dad told me it wasn’t hard to do and that I should watch the repair guy when he did it. So I did, even though I think it made him a little uncomfortable, but too bad, I paid for it, I can watch if I want to, buddy, deal with it! Actually he was very nice once he realized I really was watching to see how to do it. I think he thought at first I suspected him of trying to pull a fast one somehow. Like I'd know if he did until I tried to use the oven and it still didn't work.

On the downside, my oven now works so I don't have an excuse to redo my kitchen. On the upside, we really can't afford to redo the kitchen, so it's a good thing. Cody can still go to college (ok if you really think I would use my son's college money to redo my kitchen, well, I wouldn't. I might be tempted, but I wouldn't.).

And there you have it, a day in my life. This is why I go too long between blog updates - I do too many things at once and only sometimes manage to finish them within a day. Several hours working on business start up stuff, a couple more cataloging items, trying to figure out how to connect my FB business page to my Etsy account – still not quite there yet I swear FB has a vendetta against me for some reason - learning how to put in a new oven element, tightening bolts on a table base and we’re not eating leftovers tonight. I also put in a couple of hours of writing so I hit all my “must do’s!” It was a good day.

I still have three baskets of clean clothes I haven’t put away, towels & sheets to wash, a dirty bathroom (ok, two) and an entire downstairs that needs to be dusted and vacuumed, but I can live with that – not like it’s going anywhere, after all - unfortunately. How was your day?