Category Archives: General Farm Stuff

January Cure assignment Flowers and Kitchen

10 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, January Cure, Uncategorized

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laundrypurge1After Laundry Purge

This weekend’s assignment is to buy flowers. This is a great idea and I understand the concept, but at this point unless I plop them on top of the washing machine they are impractical. Obviously, I need to go ahead and print out the entire January Cure schedule so I don’t do things like decide my big project will be gutting the laundry room the day before I’m supposed to deep clean the kitchen <cough>.

laundrypurge2Laundry Closet Purged

There were small appliances, beaucoup light bulbs, cleansers, sponge mop heads from mops long gone, vacuum bags, dog grooming supplies, and tons of miscellaneous gleefus accumulated here for lack of a better place to put it. I purged the heck out of this room. Filled the dumpster for the first time ever. The purging of the laundry room was a resounding success. However, all the leftover stuff had to land somewhere while I was cleaning those near empty shelves. That place was every available space on already cluttered kitchen counters.  I have, thus, doubled the work for myself in the weekend project of getting rid of kitchen clutter and deep cleaning the kitchen. ARGH!

kitchenclutter1kitchnclutter2

Before I get started, let me tell you an amusing story about that laundry purge. Notice in the photo of the closet shelves, that there are no longer any sliding doors. John removed them for me. The space is tiny. The door into the house had to be closed while he removed the sliding doors and took them, one at a time, outside to the barn. I was in the house. I did not realize he had leaned one of the sliding doors against the interior door so that he could open the outer door. I opened the interior door to take a peek at his progress which, of course, caused the sliding door to begin to fall. I did mention how tiny this space is right? This space is, in fact, shorter than a door. I made a desperate grab to catch the falling door, missed, the sliding door hit the exterior door slamming the interior door against my arm and pinning me to the door like a rabbit in a snare. Thankfully, my cell phone was in my pocket and I had the presence of mind to grab it and call John before he got back from the barn and tried to open the exterior door. Unfortunately, his cell phone was not in his pocket and it began ringing uselessly about 15 feet away from me in the bear trap. In desperation I pulled, twisted, maneuvered, pulled, twisted and maneuvered my arm out of the door (thank god fat can be manipulated and there’s an argument for having that piece of pie). The problem of a possibly amputated arm became how now to get into the laundry room.

The thought of just building a new laundry facility and a new wheelchair ramp, oh I dunno, out a window somewhere, occurred. I’m seriously contemplating removing the interior door and adding a sliding barn door there anyway, so my second thought was “Just get the damned Jigsaw and we’ll cut the interior door out of here now and be done”. John, thank god my kids grew up watching MacGyver, found a steel rod, bent it into a Z, managed to open the exterior door enough to stick the rod through, catch hold of the lodged door and lift it up out of the way and got it out of there. That process typed out much quicker and easier than it actually took, but he got it done and we were back in business.

This is amusing now because A. I didn’t lose an arm and B. didn’t give the local fire department an interesting story to tell news crews. My grand plans for being Donna Reed once again thwarted by my inner Lucille Ball.

Okay, now to get back to the Cure. John just left for work so I promise not to try anything remotely lethal until he gets home.

January “Cure”

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, Rural life, Uncategorized

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There are several sites I visit every morning in my quest to finish William’s to-do list projects. I found them when I was searching for ways to DIY the backyard furniture. Every day they have articles that help me accomplish at least the things that need to be done before I can tackle an item on the list and often have ideas on ways to do the items on the list.

This year one of the largest items on the list is laying tile in the bedroom. Well, there’s no way to tile the bedroom until said bedroom and closets are organized to the point they can be easily cleared to lay the tile. Apartment Therapy is doing their annual January Cure (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/collection/january-cure-2015-468) and I elected to participate. Lord knows the house needs cleaned and organized, but also, the lack of organization is in the way of completing Billiam’s List.

Of course, the very first thing on the list is FLOORS. Our assignment from Jan. 2 – Jan. 3 was to vacuum and clean floors and rugs. OH, and buy ourselves some flowers first to make ourselves feel better about it. Well, the flowers were supposed to come first, and I bought them, but then had to find space on the cluttered counters to put them, which meant cleaning space on a counter before I could get to the floors.

Manual wheelchairs and upright vacuum cleaners are not happy together. I have bruises, scrapes, and a lump on my head from each time that damned vacuum attacked when I moved the floor attachment so much as 3 feet. I don’t even want to know how high my blood pressure rose while constantly having to disentangle the cord from the wheels and brake handles, and why the hell can’t manual chairs easily roll over a cord no thicker than 1/4 inch?! The floor is my nemesis, the vacuum is possessed by the spirit of Ted Bundy.

In spite of the 6 hour battle with the vacuum, I did manage to get the rugs clean, for a day, and all but the heaviest furniture vacuumed under. It was time to mop/scrub/pray over the floors. Mopping our tile has produced less than pleasant results forever. If I use nothing but clear water, the result is two days of living in a house that smells like a combination of locker room and kennel filled with dirty wet dogs. If I use anything at all to combat odor, I get a sticky film that does not come up no matter how many times I clean rinse it. The end result is always that it looks better and smells better with coffee stains and barn dirt than it does after I spend a day mopping and scrubbing.

Again, please don’t tell me how well vinegar works for this. It doesn’t. I continually believe that vile, smelly liquid will work and all I end up with is vinegar odor added to the kennel/locker room aroma of a sticky, haze covered floor.

Yes, it would be easier to hire someone to come in and clean the floors, but A. I can’t afford to hire this out every week and B. I’d have to have everything organized first so that furniture could be moved out of the way. I live in a puzzle box. If one thing needs to be moved, 4 other things have to be moved first.

So, in the first three days of my January Cure, I managed to place cut flowers, vacuum three rooms, clean rugs, and partially mop/scrub/pray over most of the main room. No. There are no before/after pictures. At this point, I’ve just made a bigger mess.

Our assignment for today is to move through the house, and make notes on things that need to be changed, organized, cleaned, and repaired. I’m afraid my list will be long and arduous. Once the list is completed we then narrow it down to the 3-5 items that will make the most difference in each room. That smaller list will be almost enough to put me in bed the rest of the day just thinking about it. However, I’m fairly brave at home so I intend to see this thing through. I’ll play heroic stuff on the stereo and cowgirl up.

If you’d like to join me in house cleaning and organizing hell, pop over to the Apartment Therapy January Cure (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/collection/january-cure-2015-468) and come commiserate or brag with me. In spite of my struggles and abject failures, the house has GOT to come out of this better than before.

 

 

DIY Bedspread

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, Rural life, Uncategorized

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This post is about a happy accident. During the great tie-dyed patio curtain fiasco, I’d dyed the first 9 x 12 cotton drop cloth using Rit dyes. When washed, the colors faded badly. They were extremely muted versions of the original red, orange, yellow, pale blue and dark blue dyes I had used. I folded it up and hid it from myself thinking the ponies would have a colorful “tarp” for the winter.

Today, as I was folding and putting away laundry, and washing my sheets and pillow cases, I made up the bed with fresh sheets. I was about to toss a light blanket on for a spread when I spied the curtain failure. On a whim I tossed it on the bed and discovered that a 9 x 12 cotton drop cloth is the perfect size spread for a king sized bed! The softer muted colors actually look pretty good in my dark bedroom. The curtain which would have been dim outside, actually brightened things up in my room.

For 15.00 (at Harbor Freight) and a few bottles of Rit dye, I have a durable, washable bedspread! I have pets, so “I can’t have nice things”. Anything in this house has to be able to withstand the washer and dryer. This spread will stand up to the punishment Baxter, the cat, will dish out. dropclothbedspreaddropclothbedspread2

Billiam’s Backyard and Patio Reveal!

01 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in General Farm Stuff, Grief, Home and other Repairs, Rural life, Uncategorized, Wood Crafts

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First of all, I need to thank John. Without his help some of these things could never have been accomplished and the rest would have taken me two years instead of 6 months. Secondly, I want to thank Ana White for the inspiration to Do It Ourselves, and the little family at More Like Home for adjusting some of the plans on Ana’s page so that the projects could be built with 2x4s and for their other 2×4 projects. Thank you to the Apartment Therapy and Houzz sites for their daily decorating inspirations. Thank you to the guys at Articulate Motion for keeping us in pallets, donating a chunk of fabric, and adjusting the metal fire inserts so that they could be used in the dining table. I want to thank the DIYers out there who showed us how to make Beer Bottle Tiki Torches and inspired our hanging bed. Speaking of that hanging bed, I want to thank the wood gurus at Home Depot for putting us on a safe path on that journey. Finally, thanks to all the friends and family who cheered us on and helped us through this traumatic year.

So, here we go! This is what the patio looked like before when we were in the first week of the redo:

patiosouthendbeforepationorthendbeforeBleak wasn’t it?

INSERT FANFARE HERE!

patiotriumphpatioreflectionpatioatnightpatiodiningareapatiogardenconversationareabeerbottletorchespatiobeerbottletorches1patiotablefireinsertshangingbeddressedup

DIY Sofa/Daybed

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Wood Crafts

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Needing a sofa for the den, I’d been looking around for inexpensive ways to build one that would be nice looking, yet be nearly indestructible. You see, again, we’re real people and this house is lived in pretty hard. We also have indoor pets who, despite their small size, can find ways to destroy just about anything. Thankfully, we’ve always had a sense of humor about the chaos, sort of. William used to laugh a lot more than I did when viewing a little dog sitting amidst a pile of chair stuffing, “We can’t have nice things” he’d giggle, while I’d be envisioning doggie handcuffs and mugshots. Bless him, he always was the “better half” of this relationship.

I’d already begun building a patio sectional from plans here: http://www.morelikehome.net/2011/06/our-new-outdoor-sectional.html and had built a very nice patio work table with plans on that same site. Loving the work with inexpensive 2x4s I went back to that site and found plans for a “Simple Modern Sofa” http://www.morelikehome.net/2012/10/day-31-build-simple-modern-sofa-with.html

So, we went to work. First, John started cutting the 2x4s according to the cut list on the plans, and while he was cutting, I drilled the appropriate pocket holes. This way, by the time John was finished cutting the boards, the pocket holes were almost done and within a few minutes we were ready to start putting the frame together. We didn’t speak aloud the niggling feeling that “Wow, this is pretty big”, and trusted the plan, which clearly said “Simple Modern Sofa”.

sofaback2Here you can see John assembling the back of the sofa, drilling into the pocket holes. That blue handled clamp you see is a truly nifty device from Kreg called a right angle clamp. It is built so that one jaw of the clamp is pointed so that it fits down into a pocket hole and holds both boards firmly to prevent movement.

I recently heard that the average height of humans these days is around 5’3″. This would explain not only why I have trouble finding size 12 jeans that don’t hit above my ankle, but also why so many furniture plans seem more suitable to children than to my 5’7″, mostly leg, frame. Having been unhappy at the height of the patio chairs in the sectional plans, we added a few inches to the height of the sofa. We should have added fewer inches, because I didn’t take the depth of the cushion into account.

sofaslatsJohn is adding the seat slats for the sofa here. We had finally begun to mention, in passing, “hmm.. this is pretty big”, and at one point I, half jokingly, said “Well, if it’s too big for the living room you could replace the cheap daybed you’re sleeping on with this.” We weren’t deterred. I needed a sofa darnit, and the plan said, this is a sofa.

sofafinishedBecause I am sick to death of staining, waiting, urethaning, waiting, sanding, waiting, urethaning, waiting, etc. We chose a lovely brown paint, Glidden Stewart House Brown, which looks like devils food cake batter in the can, and goes on the color of Hershey’s Syrup chocolate. The chocolate references are important as well as accurate.

The finished “Simple Modern Sofa” looked great on the enormous patio, as you can see in the photo above. We had to open both sides of the patio door in order to schlep it inside where it magically doubled in size. If anyone would like to buy a gorgeous, sturdy daybed with room for a trundle underneath, just let me know, I happen to have one. I’d be willing to trade this great twin sized bed for a dachshund proof sofa.

In the meantime, I’m going to need a great deal of chocolate in order to live with a bed in my den.