Good Scents!

And yes, that's meant to be a play on words implying that I found a great, inexpensive fragrance!

I like to attempt to match the scent in my house somewhat to the current season, and I always have a little difficulty this time of year. Most winter fragrances make me or my husband either hungry, or head-achy.
But I am pleased to say that I have found both a candle and a reed diffuser in scents that make my house smell like a wonderful forest, and cost less than $10! (ok, the initial reed diffuser is $13, but stay with me...)
First, Glade's Glistening Snow candle:

I can't find any product images, so you'll have to put up with my bad picture of it.
For about $5 (I got it on sale at Target for $2.50!) this candle fills my house with a wonderful, slightly sweet woodsy fragrance for hours. Justscent.com tells me that it's fresh bayberry with undertones of cinnamon, clove and peppermint.
Though I rarely actually burn it for more than an hour at a time since the essential oils in the candle let off a rather strong aroma that fills the kitchen and living room very quickly.

And then the Chesapeake Bay Oil Diffuser in Winter Pine:

This is a very fresh evergreen smell that I love- it makes my house smell like a fresh Christmas tree!
I purchased this one at Target too, for I think $12.99, but the best part is that you can buy refills for $5! So if you have a pretty bottle that you paid a little more for but like the scents available in these refills (I remember there being Sandlewood, Apple something, and one other in addition to the Winter Pine), instead of paying another $15 for the oil in the fancy bottle, you can just buy the $5 refill and put it in your nice container!


This less expensive line from Chesapeake Bay doesn't show up on the Target website, so you'll have to make a trip to the actual store to get them. They're in the candle aisle.


Time: Months of searching, and a 10 minute trip to Target!

Cost: $17.50! (if you don't count the $30 I spent on other fragrances I didn't like...)

Unexpected Art

There were two bare walls in my pink bathroom that have been bothering me for a bit.
I couldn't quite think what to put in there that would look right both thematically and aesthetically. And then I inherited three square gold picture frames with teapot paintings in them. Well, clearly teapots aren't quite my speed, but the frames were interesting sizes- one about 6 inches square and the other two about 4 inches square. So I decided to frame a few things that don't necessarily belong in a normal person's bathroom.


I filled the larger frame with the cover from a souvenir box of Godiva chocolates from Paris. I thought it was cute, so I'd saved it, and here the colors turned out to be perfect!

The two smaller frames I filled with postcards of miniature paintings I had picked up in India.


Most of the postcards I'd purchased were from the Kama Sutra, so I was happy to see that I had two that were not so... explicit!

The larger frame nicely filled the empty spot on the wall next to my medicine cabinet, and I stacked the other two kitty-corner to that in the slim spot next to the door.


They make me grin every time I walk into my bathroom now!

Unapologetically Cute

This past weekend my siblings came to visit, and brought their dogs with them.
I don't have any dogs (yet,) I have two cats who spent most of the weekend hiding outside or under the couch. Between the five animals (yup, five!) there was so much cuteness going on that I felt the need to share.

First Toby started trying to cause some trouble by batting at Skittles' whiskers while Skittles was trying to eat.


Skittles didn't like it much, but behaved very well, only hissing and swiping at Toby twice.

Moments later my younger sister, Sarah, arrived with her two Pointers, one 6 months old (Mia) and one about 9 years old(Promise), and the cats high-tailed it to their favorite hiding places. The dogs, meanwhile, quickly discovered a motorized mouse toy that made so much noise that the cats were too terrified to play with, so I happily let the dogs at it.

Though they were trained to hunt birds, they didn't seem to care much that this was covered in fuzz instead of feathers.


After my older sister arrived with Oscar, her sweet but ENORMOUS mutt (best we can figure he's some kind of Rottweiler/Great Dane mix), we decided to take the dogs out for a nice walk to tire them out a bit.
Mia, the younger of the two Pointers, loved the idea and decided to help out.


Oscar, though twice her size, played along and let Mia lead him around the house a bit.


What a good sport, eh?
A run through a nearby field had the desired effect and tired the dogs out nicely.


Awww... Which allowed us to do a little shopping. We headed over to the Christmas Tree Shop to check out the early Christmas decoration specials, where Sarah found the PERFECT Christmas outfit for Mia.

The men were appalled that we would do such a thing to the poor, defenseless dog, but she didn't seem to mind too much. And she's soooooo cute!

Aw, so sleepy and so cute... time to go home!

Our Sailboat Baby is Here!

Our brand new (to us) Olympic class 470 sail boat!

Doesn't Haris look so happy? He's posing there with the spinnaker pole. The guy who dropped it off showed us how to rig it up. Here's a shot of it with the jib up:


Look at the size of that thing! The mast is something like 26 feet long (you can't see the top of it in these pictures,) and with the 15.5 foot long hull, this thing is going to move! We didn't raise the main sail in the driveway because it was way too windy, and the boom was within swinging distance of the Volvo's rear window, and though eager we were, we thought cracking his window would be a poor way to repay the guy for driving the boat all the way up from Rhode Island.

Haris has told me that instead of jewelry this year for Valentine's Day I'll be getting a wetsuit and sailing gloves! Check out this video of the pros sailing some 470's (in much heavier winds than we'll be sailing in, I hope!) and you'll see why!

The Newest Member of the Family

Now, don't get so excited Moms! Here she is:



For about three years the conversation has gone like this:
Husband: "When will you buy me a boat?"
Me: "After you buy me a house!"

Well. I have my house, so last weekend we drove down to Bridgeport Connecticut (via Teaticket, Cape Cod, MA to see a trailer that we didn't buy...) to fulfill my end of the bargain. We couldn't fit the boat on top of the car- the current owner is going to deliver it this weekend- but we filled the car with sails, tiller, rudder and centerboard, which have kept my husband giggling happily all week. I'll post some better pictures and more detail this weekend when she arrives. Yay!

Halloween: 0 to 60 in 1 Year!

Over the last five years and last five homes, we've had a total of 1 trick-or-treater, and this year we got 60!

I guess that's what happens when you move to a quaint neighborhood in the suburbs! Since I will dress for any occasion, I donned my good ol' gypsy costume to answer the door. Normally this costume involves a very bare midriff, but in consideration of the small children (and let's face it, the temperature!) I added a tank top and

shawl to make it a bit more modest.





We had a notion that we'd get a few kids at the door, so we stocked up with three double-sized bags of candy. Around 7:30, though, we could see the bottom of the bowl and Haris panicked and ran out and bought 3 more bags. Which we are now trying very hard not to eat, because apparently 7:30 is the end of suburban trick or treating time... we'll have to remember that for next year.

Somehow my decorating enthusiasm failed me on this holiday, and this was the extent of my Halloween decorations:

That's Skittles in the window there- I had to tempt him up there with a bowl of food. Oddly, though, I'm already planning my Christmas decorations...

The Joys of Home Ownership

When we bought our house, we of course had it inspected...

Other than a few cosmetic issues (the previous owner seems to have had some rage issues and there are punch and kick marks in most of the doors and a few walls) the house passed without reservation. New roof, new-ish windows, old but working furnace, brand new hot water heater... we were excited. We thought we'd scored big. (We did get a good deal, even knowing what we know now.)

And then about a month ago, when the remnants of hurricane 'H' poured through town, I noticed a brown spot on the drop ceiling of one of the downstairs guest rooms. I climbed up on a chair to inspect, and low and behold, it was wet. So I popped the panel up and saw that there was a slight stain on the ceiling itself that also felt wet. I popped up a couple more and the ceiling there was also damp, though not stained. The spot was about 6 inches in from the wall and strangely centered, so it took me a minute to figure out where it could possibly be coming from, until I realized that the second floor is about six inches inset, and there's a big double window in the middle of the wall up there.

So up the stairs I went into the upstairs guest bedroom (it's a four bedroom house and just the two of us, so there are lots of guest rooms) and measured it out, and sure enough the leak was somewhere in the window. I opened the window and began poking at the frame and found that the sill was really soft and wet. To see just how bad it was I grabbed the edge and wiggled it back and forth a bit, at which point the entire sill fell off into my hand!

In a bit of a panic I called out to my husband who ran in, assessed the situation, and somehow figured out that my main problem right that moment was what the hell to do with the massive rotten piece of wood in my hands.

"Just drop it," he said.
I looked down the three stories to the ground (there's a walkout basement and two stories of house) and said, "Really? Is that safe?"
"What, are you worried about the fern?"
"What if the turtle is down there?" I replied absurdly. There is a turtle that lives in our backyard.
"Hon, just drop it." So I did.

At which point our attention turned back to the big issue: the massive rotted hole in our house. You can see here (this is actually a picture of the bathroom window, the bedroom was worse) the remains of the old sill that has broken off and the shards of rotted wood where the rest of the sill ought to be. (you shouldn't be able to see the white part- that's the siding on the house)

I quickly ran around and checked the rest of the upstairs windows and discovered that 5 out of the 9 window sills were mostly, if not completely, rotten through.

At which point I ran back downstairs and checked all the ceilings and walls underneath the rotted sills. Thankfully none except the one I'd already found had leaked through. When we pulled the windows out on those it turned out they weren't nearly as bad as that first one was, thank goodness!

The question at that point was What now?
Do we call a contractor? We just bought a house- we didn't have money for a contractor!
Which brought us to Can we possibly do this ourselves?
Well, Google helped answer that one. And the answer seemed to be, probably. Since our sill was completely rotted away we wouldn't be able to use it as a template for a new one, and we'd have to take the whole window out to remove it, but the rest seemed simple enough.
SEEMED simple... and once we'd had a friend who knew better help us do the first four, the fifth, and smallest, only took four hours to do!

The Technicalities:
- Use your trusty 13 inch pry bar (the same one that we used to take up the tack-strips from the old carpeting) and a hammer to pry the window frame off.

-Take all the screws out from around the window frame, and try to pull the window out.

- When it doesn't come out, pry out the plastic pieces in the side of the window to find the hidden screws, remove those then pull the window out.

- Use a task saw to cut any nails or screws from the remaining part of the sill that you can't access to remove.

- Slide (or in our case, use a hammer and rubber mallet to beat) out the old sill.

- If you can, use the old sill as a template to cut the new sill from the piece of pre-treated lumber you've purchased from your local home store. If not, measure as best you can, then cut, try, cut some more, try again, chisel a bit, and hopefully succeed in eventually sliding the new sill back into place. It will go in at an angle- that's so the water slides off away from the house- and the angle should be preserved, using wedges under the sill if you must.


- Fill in under the sill, behind the frame, and around the window with insulation as you slide the window back into place. (It was helpful to have two people at this point so that I could slip in the insulation as my husband held the window.) We used the white general purpose insulation.

- Screw the window back in and reassemble all the pieces you previously unscrewed and popped out.

- Once you've managed to remove all the old nails from the trim (whoever constructed ours apparently thought that we'd be hooking bowling balls to our window frames because each piece had about 10 nails in it...) nail it back into place.

- Caulk around your new sill and re-installed window inside and out, caulk generously, and check back to see if gaps have formed over the next couple of weeks. If it rains in the 48 hours after you caulk, a good deal of it will wash away, so you're best off you start the project with a clear weather forecast. If it does wash away, smooth out any bumps and then re-caulk.

- And voila! You're done! Or once you've filled in the nail holes from the new and old nails with wood putty and repainted, you're done. I haven't done that yet myself... it took almost a month to finish replacing all those sills! Not to mention the scraping, sanding, repainting and re-caulking of all the frames that didn't need to be replaced... I'll worry about the interiors sometime this winter!

At some point I'll tell you what we're doing about the ceiling in the downstairs guest bedroom...

TIME: 5 windows at about 4 hours per window, during daylight hours over 60 degrees only took about a month.

COST: About $200
- $30 lumber
- $50 circular saw
- $50 task saw
- $45 one gallon of self-priming interior/exterior paint
- $50ish nails, caulk, screws, wood glue and other sundry hand saws, files and chisels.

Fun in a Different Suburb

About a month ago I received a brochure from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem advertising their new exhibits...

They had an exhibit on Indian modern art that I wanted to check out to use as fodder for discussion with a family friend that sort of collects and deals it. There were a couple other exhibits that looked interesting, but really I'm just a little obsessed with all things India.
Since it was the beginning of October and before this cold streak hit, we decided to make a day of it, kind of forgetting that the town of the original witch hunts might be a little busy even four weeks before Halloween.

So we drove for an hour, following signs in from 95- they've done a really good job marking the roads until the last major turn onto 1A, which is completely unmarked- and followed the signs in for museum/mall parking. We didn't really bother looking for street parking on the way in because really, how bad could it be? Well, the only garage in town was charging $20, cash only, to park for any amount of time. $20! In freaking Salem! It's cheaper than that to park downtown Boston on the weekend! And we hadn't gone to the bank yet... So we drove back out around on to Rte 1A and found street parking about 6 blocks from the museum for free. So much better.

Toby the cat wishes to add: 87 yu66vcm

All over town the tourist attractions had awnings set up for a block in each direction leading off their entrances heralding the crowds to come. Trolleys packed to bursting plied up and down the streets as we hurried to the museum. Fortunately, however, for the most part the crowds hadn't yet arrived, and none of those that had were headed to the art museum. There was no line to get in, and for most of our visit we had the place virtually to ourselves, which was pretty cool.

The Gateway to India exhibit I had been looking forward to was a little disappointing. There were a couple pieces- like a great MF Hussein piece that was an interpretation of a Bollywood poster- that I liked because they reflected something very specific to India, but most of the rather small collection looked like lots of other modern art that could have come from any city in the world, except possibly for a greater than usual use of the color saffron. I admit, though, that I'm not a huge fan of modern art.

There were two other exhibits- the Maori tattoo photographs and "All My Life" which was a collection of contemporary pieces by Native American artists- that were really very good. The latter particularly surprised my with its breadth of sources, and the sharp wit with which the artists depicted the contradictory plight of Native Americans in America today. Definitely worth the drive over and the price of admission.

After the museum closed we decided to wander down to the water front to look at the boats.
The East Indiaman Friendship was also closed for the day, but Haris (who is a sailor as well as a bit of a history buff) enjoyed gazing at the rigging for awhile.














When it began to get dark we headed back up toward town to grab an early dinner before driving back home. I had seen on the town website that there was going to be live Irish Music at O'Neill's Irish Pub from 4- 7:00, so we asked directions ("Excuse me, do you know where O'... umm... O', or McSomebody's... hang on I wrote it down... it's an Irish pub with live music...") and a helpful local pointed the way. O'Neill's turned out to be one of those quintessential Boston Irish pubs with lots of heavy woodwork and red paint, fantastic local beers on tap, a roaring fire and- as promised- a trio of fiddles and flutes roaring away in the corner.

I would love to find a place like that a little closer to my house- there used to be a nice one on Rte 9 in Framingham called Desmond O'Malleys (the bar, not the restaurant) that had live music four nights a week, and I LOVED going and hanging out there in the evening where everyone was playing games and singing along with the drinking tunes (and occasional U2 cover,) but it burned down.

The food (at O'Neill's) was if not good then at least perfectly adequate (I had fish and chips, Haris had a burger), the pint was Guiness, and the atmosphere cheery. A very nice end to a fun day out.

Autumn in New England

This whole weekend was one of those lovely fall weekends...
where if you sit inside and lament the 50 degree temperatures you'll be convinced it is miserable and freezing, but if you get out and do some vigorous activity it will be a gorgeous fall day. Happily, we took the latter route.
Mom came over around lunchtime and we decided to trim the apple trees. We have two in our front yard that gave dramatically different crops this year (one gave two stunted apples, the other gave about 50 variously stunted and squirrel eaten apples.) I looked up online how to go about it a couple of days ago (trim off anything that grows straight up, and encourage those that curve out and up away from the trunk,) but I've never trimmed a fruit tree before, so I was glad to have Mom's more experienced, discerning eye.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a before picture, or an after picture for that matter, but my brilliant husband got excited enough to go in and grab the camera when Mom managed to convince me to start climbing. Or maybe it was more my conscience that convinced me.

We only had an 8 foot ladder, and these trees had been growing unchecked for some time, so there were some large branches that needed to go above the 8 foot line.
I should say, because this story will be more remarkable if I do, that I am terrified if heights. Terrified, like in high school when we were required to pretend we were gymnasts (for phys. ed.) and we were asked to do a "routine" on the balance beam, my legs would turn to jello and I would try desperately to find some way, ANY way to beg off.

Haris (the aforementioned husband) first said, "I could probably reach them if I climbed up."
And then Mom said, "I love climbing apple trees, these are good ones to climb, too!"
And a few things flew through my mind:
- Haris is quite a bit heavier than either Mom or I am, and these trees are not very thick.
- Mom is quite quickly reaching that technical "senior" age, where falling from an apple tree would be a rather bad thing.
- Both of them have full time jobs that they need to go to in order to pay our respective mortgages.

Which lead me to say, "I can go up." And surprisingly, I did! Up the 8 foot ladder, into the tree, and up a few more feet of branches. Mom handed up the saw, and down came the branches!

We didn't end up taking off as many as we originally intended to because a) when I got up there I realized they were MUCH bigger than they seemed from the ground, and b) we'd already taken off about a third of the tree, which is really all you should take at a time. Oh well, more fun for next year....



On another note, here is where our cat Toby now spends the vast majority of his time:

That would be the heating vent right behind him. Does anyone know if heat eventually flows THROUGH fur? Or is all that expensive oil fueled energy ending right in my friendly fur ball? Hmm...

Troubled Times

Hello my loyal readers...

I wish to apologize for and explain my long (and continuing) absence from the Blogosphere. My computer has died. Well, actually, the power cord to my computer has died (all right, was killed...) I hope to find a new cord for it fairly soon and be back up and running. In the meantime, I am afraid that my posts will be minimal, and photo-less.

Until then I remain fondly yours,
Madame Meg

An Oasis, or a Desert?

When I began painting my house in technicolor- my fuchsia bathroom, orange dining room, the bright yellow swatches for the kitchen- friends and family asked me what my ideas were for my beige living room. I said to them, "I kind of like the color in the living room, I feel like it's an oasis of calm, a place for the eye to rest among all the excitement of the rest of the house." And I meant it.

Until one day, a few weeks ago, when I came down the stairs in the morning and looked at my living room and was absolutely revolted. This wasn't an oasis, it was a desert! A barren wasteland of blah! I furiously set to digging through anything I could use to add color- recovering the couches, hanging tapestries, adding rugs and throw pillows. Which had an effect of something like putting fake plants on your font porch- something was wrong. For about three days I tried to find a way to work with the color of the walls that I had professed to so adore. But the feeling did not pass, and I began perusing my inspiration file once again. (really, if you don't already collect pictures from ads and magazines of things you adore, start!!)

I had a vague idea that I wanted to do a shade of blue, but the shades I was leaning toward were feeling a little too dark, or too grey for the feeling I wanted. But then I found the perfect picture in the current issue of Elle Decor. Once I found that, I realized that a shade that I had dismissed as altogether too bright- light bright, not loud bright- was actually the color I wanted. Oddly enough it was the color my younger brother had picked out a few days earlier... maybe I should just ask him next time...

So I broke out the painting gear once again and set to work. And about 6 hours later, my husband came home to a whole new room!

I am quite pleased with the result!!
Unfortunately, the mirror in the shape of a Moorish arch up in that top picture was the previous owner's, and all I have for the moment is an antique, possibly mercury glass, rectangular mirror to put in the same spot. I've framed a print I picked up in Italy in the mirror since my husband professes to be frightened by the distorted, speckled reflection the mirror shows. It's ok for now, but I'd love to find something like they had, I think it fits perfectly in that space and matches the style of the fireplace really well.
Another thing for the shopping list!

Time: 4ish hours- it takes me about an hour per wall to prep and paint.

Cost: $30- about $20 for one gallon of Dutch Boy in Clear Turquoise, plus a new tray liner and roller cover.

Impromptu Reupholstery

I have this cute little storage ottoman that I bought awhile back, about two years ago, I believe.
It was just what I wanted in the way of footstool/magazine storage/extra seating for under $30, and while I liked the fabric, the colors have never been entirely suited to my style. Hitherto, that's never been much of an issue since my rental apartments usually came with beige walls, and if I added color it was always considerately pale. (except for one notable hallway foray into apple green, which was fun)
So the other day I went to the fabric store looking for some nice velveteen with which to make curtains. Instead I came home with some wild velvet remnants with which to finally recover my ottoman. Which I did:

Isn't it cute?!

The Technicalities:
-I began by removing all the hardware- 8 screws holding on each tiny little hinge!!- and the legs, which screw off.

- I then measured the height of the lower part and cut strips of the tiger-print fabric, leaving about an inch of extra on the top and bottom. Since I was working with a pattern, I carefully chose the bit I wanted to be font and center.

- Folding the fabric under at the edge I used my upholstery staple gun and, starting in the middle, stapled the fabric about every inch.

- To save money I purchase less fabric and ran two strips end to end. To avoid sewing altogether, I simply overlapped the pieces, folding the overlying piece under to avoid a rough edge. I also put a staple in the center of the underlying piece to keep it from slipping out. (the seam in the picture is about an inch from the lower corner.)

- For the top half of the ottoman, I wrapped it like a present and also cut the edges with an inch of seam allowance all around, tucked the rough edges under, and stapled.

- I treated the corner pretty much like a present, too, though I wrapped them square for a neater look. You may need to trim a bit of fabric and use some extra staples to make it lie flat.


One Caveat: If you don't want the dog to sleep on your velvet, don't leave it on the floor.
Once she got on, there was no way she was going back to her own bed. Oh well.

TIME: About an hour.
COST: $8.50
I got a great deal on the remnant table, so one yard of the pink velvet was $3.50, and the tiger was $5.

Not White Anymore!!

You remember that dining room that I was saying didn't match itself? The one with the off-white textured walls and while trim? There's one picture down in the flooring post, here's another angle:

Well, once I got the floor up I realized that something dramatic was going to have to happen to make that a warm, inviting room that I would want to spend time in. In case you hadn't noticed yet, I love color. LOOOooooooove bright, warm, sexy colors. And my general idea for my house is that I want it to feel like an exotic escape: Arabian Nights, meets India, meets the Caribbean/ Mediterranean tropical feel. I had these pictures in my tear sheets and really liked the feel of
them:


I have no idea why the picture on the left will NOT rotate... clearly this type of technicality isn't my forte...

Anyway, I went to a couple of different stores and picked out a bunch of different samples of red, brown and orange paint and had them up on my wall for a couple of weeks. None of them were looking quite right- some were too dark, but the next brightest version of that color was too fluorescent...









Until one day, completely frustrated, I began taking the color swatches down and accidentally stacked a brick red sample on top of one of those too-bright orange samples and realized, DUH! I had to LAYER colors to get that effect. So I did!



This picture isn't fantastic- I'll have to dig out my tripod and take one without the flash to get a real idea of the depth of the layered color, but you get the idea. It's not white anymore!! Not even close!


What I did to layer the color was put one coat of ColorPlace Jungle Orange in a satin finish (from WalMart) all over the walls with a 3/4 inch nap roller (for textured walls), and let that dry for about 4 hours. Then I used a smaller, lower nap roller with a very small amount of Valspar Terra Cotta Red in a satin finish to do like a dry-rub layer over the top. I did the first layer quite lightly since it's easier to add more color than to take it off, but actually liked the first results a lot and decided to stop there.

I love how the room is coming along! I get tons of compliments on the paint treatment. It's the first room you see when you enter through the back door, and it really sets a tone! Well worth the extra effort!

TIME: One Day.
COST: $35 in paints, plus the usual brushes, rollers and trays. (you can get a pack with all you need at WalMart or Home Depot for about $10.

A Four Year Project

That really should have taken about four days...

Four years or so ago, I grabbed two cute little arm chairs out of someone's trash pile. The upholstery was pretty gross and the wood pretty banged up, but the lines were very nice,they had good detail, and they weren't wiggly in the least. So I took them into our apartment, despite my husband (then boyfriend's) objections, crying out how lovely they would be once I refinished them.
Shortly thereafter we took a trip to the fabric store where I picked up the red fabric that is on the seat of this chair here. The back of the chair is the original gold crushed velvet. The seats of both chairs were disgusting enough that I pretty much immediately tore the covers off and stitched these new ones to recover them. And this is how they sat for about 6 months until we moved out of our apartment building and into a two family house where I had space to sand them.
Which I did to one.
The sanding, you see, caused quite a bit of noise (I used a Black and Decker Orbital sander) which landlords didn't seem to appreciate, and mess, which stressed me out, it being someone else's house. And so there the chairs remained, half sanded and half covered, for about four years.
But then we moved into our great big house out here in the boonies! So the work finally continued. I ripped the backs out of the chairs, grabbed my trusty sander, and took them out to the deck. It took me about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, to get all the old stain and polyurethane off. (Yes, I wore a mask and goggles.) I intentionally left the old stain in the recessed parts (not that it was coming off very willingly) because I wanted to stain them a slightly lighter color to bring the detail out more.

Next I applied three coats of MinWax stain/poly combo in Dark Cherry. The directions advised letting them dry for six hours, but they still seemed tacky after seven, so I let them dry overnight in between each coat. I used the old covers as patterns to cut the new ones, but the old seat and backing were fine, so I reused those. Hot glue held things in place while I stapled them in with an industrial stapler, and Voila!

A chair is reborn! I have to make another trip to the fabric store to pick up some kind of trim to cover the upholstery edge of the seat-back, but I think they look pretty good. Unfortunately, I've realized that they are about 6 inches shorter than the ideal piece to furniture would be in the place I want to put them... but they'll do for now. And then at some point it will be a great excuse to go furniture shopping!

TIME: Realistically, about a week.
COST: $90, if you're starting from scratch
Fabric- 2 yards at ~$10/yd.
Orbital Sander- I owned mine already, but a new one will cost you about $50.
Stain/Polyurethane- About $6
Others- (brush, mask, safety glasses, fine-grit sandpaper) About $15

Fun in the Suburbs

Speaking of ways my husband and I keep ourselves entertained... we chased a balloon over the weekend. I think it was Thursday night, I was watching an old movie and heard something that I thought was thunder, but didn't sound exactly right. I muted the movie a couple of times to try to hear it more clearly, but really didn't care enough to actually turn the TV off and go investigate. Moments later, my husband came tearing in the door calling for me to put on my shoes and come outside. I already had my shoes on, and thankfully I had put on real clothes (you know, jeans instead of flannel pants) so I grabbed the blanket off the couch (it was chilly out) and ran out to meet him.
Now, he's all kinds of excited grabbing my hand and pulling me down the street, babbling something about a balloon caught in the trees. I didn't entirely understand what was so exciting about a balloon in the trees, until I connected the thunder sounds with the balloon word and realized he was talking about a HOT AIR balloon being stuck in the trees.
I apologize for the picture, I took it on my husband's cell phone, so it's a little crappy.
So here's this hot air balloon with it's basket caught in the trees firing it's flame every few seconds desperately trying to clear the ridge. And we have it from our friends on the next block over that this is a regular autumnal occurrence. Apparently a hot air balloon has landed in the shopping plaza driveway across the street once, and another time in the church parking lot, which they knew were mistakes, but weren't quite sure where they actually were trying to get to. So, when the balloon finally cleared the trees, rather than heading back to my cozy place on the couch, we decided to accompany the kids on a wild-balloon-chase to find out once and for all where these balloons were heading.
So down the street, around the corner and toward the school went me and my afghan, doing my best to keep up with the 6 and 8-year-olds. After about a half mile, we chased it down to the middle school football field where it landed right smack in the middle of the pee-wee football game! Okay, it was a bit off to the side of the field, but the ensuing chaos was still pretty entertaining.
Looking at ourselves from the outside, we couldn't help but laugh at our excitement over such a little thing, but we actually enjoyed ourselves! Running down the street with childlike abandon, trailing my blanket behind me and not caring who saw because half the neighborhood was right behind us, it's a freedom that you can only find out here is the good ol' suburbs.
TIME: About 2 hours.
COST: FREE!!

Flooring... Flooring Once, Flooring Twice...

While my muscles were nicely built up from hours of wallpaper remover removal, I thought I would continue the manual labor streak by tackling the god-awful green shag wall to wall carpet in my would-be dining room.
Not to mention that the super-white trim on almost white walls greeting me every time I came in the door was beginning to depress me. I didn't have the budget to put down the wood floor of my dreams immediately, but I was hoping that the plywood under the carpet would be in good enough shape that I could paint it a nice dark brown and live with that for a few months.

I began by thoroughly vacuuming the carpet in hopes that pulling it up would be much less gross that I suspected it would be.
It didn't help much.
One corner of the rug was already loose, so donning some goggles and work gloves I began pulling from there. With a little elbow grease and an ENORMOUS dust cloud, I had the carpet up in three strips within half an hour. The edge of the carpet was periodically nailed down to tack strips (which are strips of plywood with upside down nails in them) but where the carpet ripped rather than popping the nail, a pair of pliers did the job.
The carpet pad under the carpet came up equally easily (and filthily) to reveal about a quarter inch layer of solid dirt which I scraped, swept and mopped away to get to my...


Linoleum.
Old, glued, stapled and nailed down linoleum. Now, getting up the old loose tiles that had been stapled down was actually pretty easy- I just had to work the staples loose with the edge of my scraper and pull them out with the pliers and then the tiles floated right off. The problem came with the ones that still had viable glue- they came off in about one inch square sections. But they did come up!
What didn't come up so easily was the afore-mentioned tack strips. I would get the edge of the scraper under one piece, then use the hammer as a lever to begin prying it up, and the wood would immediately splinter. There had to be a better way. And there was!

My mother-in-law.

I cannot lie. I did go to Lowes and purchase a tool specific for the job that neither my mother nor the man that led me to it at Lowes could remember the name for. It was not a Cat's Paw, they knew that, but a more specific and useful tool. And useful it was indeed! It made the job of removing the tack strips require very little actual force, but quite a bit of patience. Of which I was running out after about three quarters of the room of tiles- patience, not force.

BUT! The new tool intrigued my mother-in-law (who was visiting from India and staying with us for a couple of months.) In India there are people that do these jobs, not tools to bring home that make it possible to do them yourself! The afternoon after I had purchased the tool I found my mother-in-law sitting on a little green stool, doubled over and prying up my tack strips.
Honestly- how lucky can a girl get? I offered to take over for her, but she professed that she was truly enjoying the opportunity to work on her son's new house.

Far-be-it for me to reduce my mother-in-law's joy! So I let her keep going.

For about 6 days she worked an hour or two a day and got up every last speck of linoleum and plywood. Down to the plywood I was aiming for anyway.
Which, sadly, was covered with glue residue. I hoped that leaving it exposed to the open air for awhile would dry the glue out and then I could paint over it. When I discovered the cat stuck to the floor (ok, not TOTALLY stuck, just walking in circles in slow motion with his paws sticking to the floor) a week later,though, I realized that my plan was not going to work.

So this is where my dining room floor is at the moment, and will remain until the wood-floor funding materializes. Don't you just LOVE the way that the filth from the carpet filtered down through the tiles and left that great checkered pattern on the glue residue?
Now, I'm sure there's a way to dissolve the glue residue and therefor get rid of those squares so that I actually could go ahead and paint the floor. But that, I'm certain, would involve chemicals, and mess, and my mother-in-law has gone back to India, so I'm on my own! For now I've covered a good portion of the floor with a nice rug (I pulled it back here to show more floor, but you can see it there- isn't is it lovely?) so the current state isn't driving me too crazy, so I'm leaving it. For now. (That AMEX rewards points gift card to Home Depot is in the mail somewhere!)

Besides, there are other things in the house that are driving me crazier that the state of the floor, and will be easier to fix. Like that white on white-ish wall color (back up the first picture there) I mentioned earlier... I'm feeling highly motivated to do something about that!

TIME: About a week.
COST: $20 so far!
Not-a-Cat's-Paw (15 inch pry-bar)- about $10
I already owned goggles, but if you don't own a pair, you really ought to invest the $5-10 to get a basic pair if you're thinking about doing any DIY projects.