Spring in the Garden

New Old Dresser

I have a dresser that's been in various stages of stripping/refinishing for probably 20 years, and before that was in a flood in my great aunt's house. Mom inherited it and started to strip it but never quite finished. I, in turn, stole the dresser from Mom's basement because I loved the lines and of it and love free furniture. :) I've had it for 7 years now and never finished stripping it, so I finally gave up and decided to just paint it for Winnie's room. I never remember to take the right pictures when I do projects, so there is no before image but here's the after:

Okay, so it's only mostly "after" because I still haven't finished painting the carved details white. The green is "Moss" Krylon H2O spray paint. I hate rolling/brushing paint and love the ease of spray paint. I really liked that the H2O dried and hardened much faster than a brush-on latex paint would have and had very little odor. Unfortunately, all four cans of paint that I used on the dresser didn't have a uniform spray--it almost came out looking foamy, so it was really hard to get a smooth finish. By the time I'd sprayed all of the coats, most of the paint looks smooth enough, but it's not the even finish I've gotten from other spray paints.

Now I just need to buy some drawer liners. I have this funny quirk where I love antique furniture, but hate to think about my clothes (or Winnie's clothes, in this case) touching drawers that have been exposed to 100 years of dirt.

Books

Winnie reading to her newest baby.

Rough Start . . .

Matt started working at the public defender's office Monday. It was a rough start, thanks in large part to me having given him the wrong address. I wanted to go see where he'd be working, so I looked the address up on online and we drove by and checked out the office on our way home from work/school. It was after hours so we didn't try to go in, but didn't have any reason to think we weren't in the right place because their signage was on the door. Unfortunately, after waiting around for about 25 minutes for someone to open the door, and about 10 minutes after Matt was supposed to be at work yesterday, he discovered they'd moved--2 years ago! Oops! So much for my power to find anything on the Internet. When Matt arrived at the right office, he was told that that the person he's supposed to report to is unexpectedly out of town for a week, so they didn't have much for him to do--except go to some hearings at the court house that had already started.

The good news is that Tuesday went much better and Matt is getting to spend some extra time with Winnie.

On another front, they dropped the price of the Van Wagenen house another $50,000. Another $100,000 to go and it will be priced where it should have been all along:

http://utahrealestate.com/745603

I hope someone buys it that appreciates the wall paper in the bedrooms. The wall paper in the kitchen and the dining room need to go, but the bedrooms are lovely.

Slip Covers

I bought the fabric for my chair slip-covers. It isn't the Sunbrella fabric that I originally wanted, but it is half the price of the Sunbrella.

(On my screen the fabric looks a lot more green than it really is).

I'm going to use cream piping and put cream ball-fringe around the bottoms of the skirts.

Weekend Projects

I painted a wall between our dining room and kitchen with chalkboard paint this weekend. Right now it's pretty stark and black, but I think it will look great once it's gotten some chalk dust rubbed in. In our little house, I thought it was a good solution for providing Winnie with an art space--$10 in paint and some chalk. No extra furniture or big supplies. I was proud of myself for getting this project done the same day I bought the paint! Normally I'd let the paint sit on the kitchen counter for a few months before getting it done. I think I'm going to add one of Ikea's kitchen rail systems just under the bulletin board so that I can connect baskets to hold supplies and clips to hold up other art work.

Last year we put a stone patio in our back yard and this weekend I got most of the plants in, started my fountain and did a bunch of other necessary clean-up projects. I still need to finish a couple of smaller projects and mulch. I'll post some pictures of that when I finish--hopefully next week.

Irony

I saw part of a show on TLC the other night, called "Greenovate" where some people were remodeling their house to make it more "green". I had to laugh that in an effort to be green they were demolishing perfectly functional, solid wood kitchen cabinets with a sledge hammer.

"too many so-called renovations simply involve replacing things that are old and substantial with ones that are cheap and flimsy but just happen to be new. That seems less like renovation and more like 'ruinovation." Arrol Gellner