Summertime, Southern style

As in, on the front porch. We got our patio furniture put together and arranged on the screen porch in time to have coffee and the Sunday paper out there this morning. Granted, no screen or ceiling fan, yet, but soon enough.



And yes, these were taken with the new wide-angle Nikon. I love it. This is basically on auto, with minor brightness/contrast adjustments. It's picking up some pretty bad hotspots at this setting, but I'm just glad the shots are in focus-- it's a major improvement. It does soooo many things, and I need to learn how to find and use them all. I'm having a great time playing with my new toy.

The first pic shows our new fancy furniture-- from Wal-Mart, of all places. It went down so much in price that I couldn't say no. The second shot shows our tragic little pea green couch that was "destroyed" in the storm; it had previously been "destroyed" by the cats, and "destroyed" by a lot of flopping down on it. But cover it with some old sheets, and it's perfect for this space.

Porch swing also came in--



Once we get it hung up, it's going to be great. Ugh. Note to self. Save down the pictures from 8 Mp before loading into Blogger-- they take forever! The old camera maxed out at 4 Mp, so I'll have to remember to do some adjusting.

We've done some more unpacking and cleaning this weekend, and finally reinstalled the French doors between office and living room. They look great, but I'm not going to post anymore about them right now; I'm actually on the front porch, where it is, no lie, 105º, and any more time on this computer will heat up my lap too far beyond the boiling point.

So more tomorrow. Time now to lay back and enjoy this fragment of a breeze.

It's hot

Me? I like it. As long as I can sit in the shade and be generally motionless.

Pretty much everyone else I know hates it. And to be fair, it was well over 100º this weekend. The humidity was pretty easily in the very high percentages. Adam and his boss worked on making sides to a trailer Saturday while the boss's girlfriend and I grazed on Pringles and watched, raising helpful concerns such as, "Ummm, how do you plan on bracing those walls again?" I had a good time, but didn't get much in the way of progress done.

Last night, I broke the garage door track. That should count as progress, I suppose-- we have to demo that door soon, anyway, in order to salvage the wood and make new ones! I'm just looking long term. Doing my share.

We also got some good old fashioned scrubbing-type cleaning done on kitchen and bath-- like with heavy-duty cleaners, not just a cursory wipe. The dog got a bath. And promptly got dirty again. The grass, did not get mowed.

So, you see? Not much in the way of visible progress. So for today's eye-candy, I give you: the screened-in porch furniture I'm going to buy this evening, assuming it's still in stock now that it's gone on sale.


It's the kind of thing I hate buying-- but it's gone down in price to cost really next to nothing. And I do have a couple of chairs that I'm upholstering for the porch. We just have so much outdoor space-- and we've got so little to work with!

And for the kitchen light...what do you think?
I'm still trying to find it on clearance. I know the metal is different than the other finish in the room, but I think it's otherwise pretty awesome.

Oh yeah. That's the other thing I did this weekend...

Internet window shopping.

It's your fault!

I blame it on all of you out there getting new kitchen cabinets. I've been obsessing over them. When I realized that we aren't in a position to buy new doors right this minute, I thought maybe some sanding and a clear coat of poly would tide me over for a couple of years. So I sanded the back of one door to see. And I really liked it-- or, at least, it was an improvement in my humble opinion:



The top one was partially sanded and given a coat of clear water-based poly. It highlights all the variations in the wood. But then I tried to sand the front of the door. Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated. Lots of beveling and curved surfaces. It was just going to take too long. Not to mention, the doors are in much worse shape than I remember. I ended up cleaning them all with some 409, taking off the old hinges, and hammering lose stiles back into place. We're going to put these back for now-- just to hide the clutter-- and price building them ourselves. Then we can decide if the money saved is worth doing it ourselves. I may get those custom doors I wanted after all...

I don't think I'd have been able to stand it if that's all I got done this weekend. Luckily, I managed to clean the front porch and then use one of those Lowe's coupons to get some Adirondack chairs.


And the most time consuming project was that baker's rack I mentioned the other day. I picked it up from my mom's and it was in worse shape than I expected.




A couple hours with a wire brush, some steel wool and a spray of water, plus a good coat of primer did the trick, though.



The final product, after a coat of satin wine red--

Ta da!



I like it. We may move it around. At least I got something done! Now I can feel accomplished.

Good fences make good dogs

Yeah, look. I know it's ghetto.

The dog won't stay out of the flower bed. He just keeps digging and digging and kicking dirt all over the patio, and tearing up the root system of the four o'clocks. I originally put up the wire thing you can kind of see in the back...as pups go, he's pretty responsive to boundaries, however real. But that cool, wet dirt got the better of him and he ended up in the bed once again yesterday.

I thought maybe a more substantial looking blockade would help, so I used the ends we cut off of our fencing boards. unfortunately, the little plants that are struggling to come up, are doing so right at the brick border, and I didn't want to hammer the wood into them and crush the little guys.


So I spread them apart, and now they look like jack-o-lantern teeth, and I managed to hammer my hand, which now hurts ALOT. And then I spread cayenne pepper water all over the bed and fence. We'll see how he does. The places where he's not digging are coming up like gangbusters


Meanwhile, the living room is kinda coming together. At least it looks like a place to sit and most of the boxes are out of the way. It makes me want to sit in it, and I guess that's all that matters.




Pay no attention to the shadeless lamp. It was a moving casualty.

We also finally got the insurance claim's itemized settlement statement and it's VERY detailed. We'll hire some of it out and do some of it ourselves. I'm just glad we can finally get moving on some of this crap.

Celebrating 100 posts of blargh

I had planned on saving my 100th post for the backsplash-- I've waitd so long for it, and I think it's going to make such a difference. But when I got home tonight, I knew that the C post would be devoted to tolling the death knell of my Bar-To-Be, a project I started some 2 years ago.

When I moved back to Arkansas, I had no furniture. In the 2 years preceding, I'd moved to New York and then to London, and I managed to shed everything I had. So I was collecting anything anyone would give. And one of the pieces of free furniture that I collected was an ugly 80s style pressboard, fake-veneered secretary. I used it as a sideboard thing. Then after a couple of years it became the kiddo's desk/dresser. When she got her first set of big girl stuff, the secretary became homeless and I devised a plan to turn it into a bar. I would build in space for glasses and racks in the drawers for liquor bottles; then I wanted to put a wall-mount wine rack on the side. I took off the door, took out all the slot compartments, filled the hinge holes with putty, was given a glass rack, chose a paint color...and then life got in the way. That, and a lack of power tools made it hard to want to continue sanding down that putty:


At any rate, now that we've moved, it's been sitting outside; I'd hoped that the aid of power tools would boost the project, and we could use it as a microwave cart until then. During modifications of the top piece to get the microwave to fit, we realized that it is truly a piece of shit. Its fate was not to be a bar, but rather a potting stand, supply cabinet, or kindling.

I really liked the idea of repurposing such an ugly ass piece of furniture; I was going to use the leftover bathroom paint (red!) on the outside and glossy black on the insides of the cabinet and drawers, with 1950s art deco revival style hardware. It showed such promise! It's useful now, though,


and it will continue to be useful in some other capacity. In fact, it currently occupies a place of honor in the loveliest corner of the house these days. That's the pantry. Really! It is!!! See? Here's the before:


Thanks Adam! We also have a dining room chandelier and potted herbs. But I digress.

I will get my bar. We'll hit up the junk stores for a slightly less shitty something that I can convert into a cocktail cabinet. Or we'll build one from scratch, and it will be destined to have glossy black insides and red outsides and fancy hardware. It just wasn't in this little guy's future.

So 2 years after removing that front door, I say goodbye to a project that's had a permanent spot in the back of my mind.

And now I see

I finally see our furniture. It's taken a while, and there's many more boxes to go, but they are slowly disappearing from on top of and around the furniture...

Dining room was:


Dining room is now:


Some of those tables from the before pic have made their ways to the sides of the room, perhaps not to permanent locations, but the fact that there are sides of the room toward which they may go is major improvement:



I owe most of this progress to Adam-- he's been working hard. And while this post isn't an exciting one, it's largely for Heather, who couldn't make it to the house this weekend, and when that happens, she often demands pictures of what has changed. I'm preempting that.