creative little daisy

18 Months

I've been living with these beautiful gifted lungs for 18 months. More than living, thriving!  My creativity has recently awakened and it's as if I'm making up for lost time. I want to paint, sew and build all the things. For a couple years prior to transplant I just didn't have the energy to do much more than exist. I'm so trilled to have energy and strength to do the things I love. I'm stronger than I ever remember being and it's such a wonderful, amazing feeling!

Despite my physical strength, my blogging muscles seem to have atrophied. It's been so long, and as they say, use it or lose it. I'm finding out I've darn near lost it. Hopefully like the rest of my muscles, with work, it will come back. Not being in the blogging frame of mind, I haven't photographed much of what I've done lately. A snap here and there to post on Instagram is about it. Today I got the big guy out, my real camera, and took a few photos of my latest projects.

A few weeks ago we installed a new sink. A great big, apron front farm sink.

We installed two actually. The first one cracked after several hours of altering (cutting!) the cabinet and counter top so that it would fit.

It was traumatic, very traumatic. Thankfully, Ikea exchanged the broken sink, even though it cracked during installation and gave us a new one. It only involved six hours of driving. We are certain the sink was defective because we did not apply enough pressure for it to crack.

Then I got a wild hair to strip the paint off the french doors that separate my living room from the kitchen and dining room. Not a quick or easy project, but one I'm happy I completed. 

I liked the softer more muted, natural look of the doors, so naturally I decided my curtains needed to be more muted. That's just how the brain of a serial diy'er works.

I found the fabric at Fabric.com a while back, not knowing what I would use it for, I just knew I loved it. 

The latest project happened simply because Casey send me a picture of a dining table with an antique pew. He was looking for something similar for his wife, Jessica.

I offered him a bench I had in my garage.

He didn't jump at it, I don't understand why. (I need the laughing emoji here) I bought it from a friend a few months ago with the plan of stripping and sanding it to bare wood. But the bare wood was very, very red. So, it's been sitting in the garage since. It was not the correct size for Casey and Jessica's table, but the photo he shared gave me the perfect inspiration for what to do.

The seat was in bad shape and had to be replaced. In this picture I had replaced the seat and it had a light coat of primer. You can see how red it was even through the primer. I had to apply several coats of a stain blocking primer to stop the bleed through

I'm so glad to have it out of the garage. One less unfinished project floating around.

 

I have a list in my head at least a mile long of future projects, close to the top of the list is painting the cabinets. It's been a few years since they were painted. We used oil based paint for a couple reasons, primarily because Mitch sprayed the doors and drawers and oil paint doesn't clog his gun like latex would. Also oil dries (eventually) to a much harder more durable surface. Well, fast forward to today, and my white cabinets have yellowed. Thank you oil paint. This was magnified with the addition of a bright, shiny, white apron front sink. And,,,, I'm sick of the black cabinets. Sick of black, yellowed white, perfect excuse to repaint 

This post only took two days to complete, with all the relearning I had to do about uploading and editing photos from an actual, real camera instead of doing everything from my phone. Hopefully it will not be as long between posts and I'll get the hang of this blogging thing again.The old blog certainly needs a makeover, but good gracious, the thought of that is down right frightening. Maybe when I run out of things to paint around here. Ha ha, like that's going to happen. 

BTW, I found I have a difficult time typing and  not using emojis. Surely that's possible, right? Using emojis from my lapto? I'm finding myself in need of a smiley face.  I'm so un-techy. 

Mark one off

One of my half-done projects is finished.

I think she's pretty hot if I do say so myself, with her sexy curves. 

This was my Granny's chair. I have no idea how old she is,but I'm guessing at least sixty.

I had her professionally reupholstered a couple of years ago for Alyssa.

See her there in the background? Only before shot I could find.

I really debated on whether or not to paint the wood.

I usually have no qualms about painting wood, but since she was my Granny's I went back and forth before deciding that in order for her to really shine, she should be white.

The wood just blends in with my floor and it was not in the best shape anyway.

I was a little disappointed by the job the upholsterer had done. I mean the work itself was fine, but instead of using cording made from the upholstery fabric to trim the edges, he used matching gimp.

It looked OK, just not what I expected, for what I paid.

I made double welt cording and think it looks a little more finished this way.

I took a few photos of the process, but I am in no way qualified to write a tutorial on upholstery.

Every piece of furniture is different. For this particular gal, the worst part was removing the old fabric. Holy staples Batman. To say I removed ten billion staples is no exaggeration. Well, maybe a tad, but no less than several hundred.

Can you see all those staples?  They were in deep too. I couldn't get a flat head screwdriver under there to pry them out.

I have this pointy, poke-your-eye-out-if-you-aren't-careful thingy.

That did the trick.

I wrapped some tape around all but the tip so it didn't dent the wood.

 

Once all those staples were out, I just cleaned and sprayed the wood.

I kept the batting underneath, because it was only a couple of years old. I just taped the edges to keep it away from the frame.

The rest was pretty easy in comparison to pulling out all those staples.

Just staple on fabric in the reverse order it came off.

There are a variety of methods for making double welt cording.

I don't have a special double cording foot or even double cording. I use my zipper foot and regular cording.

Measure what you need for your project and cut strips of fabric 2 inches wide.

 For this, I cut the fabric straight across the width from selvedge to selvedge instead of cutting the fabric on the bias.

I sewed the strips from end to end, at an angle- sorry, no photo of that step.
Now that you have a long strip of fabric, take it to the machine. Wrap it around far enough to cover the cording and using  your zipper foot sew very close to the cording.

Sew to the end or your fabric.

Lay a second piece of cording up next to the first one. Snuggle it in close, but not too close. You want enough room to sew down the center. Not too much room. Just a little. How technical is that?

Sew down the center of the little valley between the two pieces of cording.

 Trim away any excess fabric from the seam, so that it doesn't show from the front.

Glue that baby down with hot glue and your friends will be very impressed.

Glad to have one thing marked off my list. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some pillows to make.

Here's one more look at my sexy girl. You can stare at her curves if you want. She doesn't mind.

 

 

I'll be sharing this at the following link parties. Check them out for some great inspiration.

 

Lets talk about something happy

Like curtains. Curtains are happy, right? I think so. Some girls have a thing for shoes and purses, my thing is for curtains and rugs. And lamps. I love lamps.

 But I digress, I am here to talk curtains today. Kitchen curtains.

I hear some of you saying, oh no she didn't.  And to you, I say, oh yes I did.

I've received lots of  nice comments on those IKEA curtains I had in the kitchen. I loved them too, but it was time for a change. 

These aren't actually curtains. Well, they are now,  but they started out as table cloths.

 
I lined them using white twin sheets.

You can find them here.