Project Planning & Goals

Hello again,

I realized the other day that I am working on projects as I remember I'm doing them and I think that means I need to do a little goal setting.  It may be that some of these don't happen, but these are my somewhat ambitious goals for this blog for the next few months.

#1) Finish E's Space Invaders quilt (and, of course, show you the whole process)

#2) Finish the clothes quilt for my bed (this one is the one that might get bumped)

#3) Buy my first pattern and make myself something I can actually wear.  I'm short on work clothes, so I think this will probably be something totally boring and practical. (Though super exciting for me if I succeed!)

#4) Find a pattern I like and make my first pencil skirt.  Then make a whole bunch more. (Remember that thing about needing work clothes?)

#5) Do something about the masses of too-big T-shirts in my life.  I have a whole drawer of these that I want to try to fix or alter or turn into something else.

#6) Make Casey a dog bed as pretty as he is.  It's going to be in my living room.  I would like it not to be ugly!  My puppy is so pretty - he should have a dog bed that does him justice.

I think those are pretty adequate goals for the next 3 months.  I suspect that quilting those two quilts will be the thing that breaks me. 

We'll see how that goes!  I have ideas and I'm scheming at least.  I'm always happy when I'm scheming! :)

Till next time,
A

Making a Bar: Part 2

Hello again,

When I left you last time, we had just stripped, sanded, and primed a dresser and gone off to procrastinate with beer and video games.

Painted white, the dresser was actually quite pretty and there was some discussion of really making it white.  White, however, would not go very well with the rest of my decor and in a house with two dogs, would probably only be white for about a week. 

We spent awhile going through the colors in my apartment, because I am horribly indecisive about color.  That might explain why my walls are still white even though I've lived in this apartment for two years....

As you can see, most of them were pretty dark and solid.  This piece is going in a corner all by itself and I want it to stand out as a strong piece. 

I was not a huge fan of the black and Q was not a huge fan of the blue for this piece.  We thought the grey would be incredibly hard to get right and so discarded it.  I might do a rubbed blue when I find something to put the TV on. (That's another story all together!)

That left us with a nice, rich red, which I loved the idea of.  We decided to go fairly dark and try for a somewhat shiny finish.

That was all well and good, but then I went to my local hardware store and made this mistake of telling the guy who was at the paint counter what I was going to do with the paint.  He decided that since it was going to be a bar, I should use deck paint, which he said would be the same consistency, but dry harder. 

That seemed totally fine until I got home and discovered that he had given me concrete floor paint instead, which is not the same consistency.  It's more like stain.  But, of course, we didn't quite realize that until we had already started and the hardware store was closed.  Sooo...we did what Q and I usually do and went for it anyway.

Now, one cool thing about the super-thin paint, Q was painting with a foam brush and it left lines in the paint that looked like wood grain. I think it took quite a bit of concentration, but she made it look like this piece was actually made of wood! All those spots where the laminate was damaged came out looking like knots in the wood.  Awesome accident!

I wish I had taken pictures of the colors as it evolved, but sadly I did not.  Coat one - coral pink.  That's right, really, really pink.  For those of you who know me, you will understand why this required a drink.  I do not do pink!  The second coat was a kindof magenta-like pale red color that I couldn't describe accurately.

The third coat, however, started to look red.  Like fire engine red. Or maybe cherry red. At this point, it was 2am and we decided it was time to go to bed and see what it looked like in the morning. Sadly, Q's flight was in the morning, so she didn't get to really see the finished product.



Once it dried, it looked awesome!

I had bought these fabulous knobs for the top drawer:

I love them. What? I'm Irish - the knot-like quality appealed to me.

I had planned to only put them on top drawers, but then I realized something important - the holes drilled for hardware on these were 96mm, which apparently doesn't give me lots of options. My local hardware stores had nothing and I am not a patient woman. I wanted it done now!
 

So I did something I thought was going to be a little odd. I put knobs down the front in both holes instead of wide handles. And, lo and behold, it looked fantastic!

I really thought that would look strange, but in the end, I absolutely love the double row.

And this is where just going for it benefits Q and me - I ended up loving the bright red too. I realized once I put it in place that it is exactly the same color as the roof I can see out my window and it is beautiful in that space. :)

Only problem - now it makes the rest of my furniture look shabby! Clearly, I need to step up my game in the rest of my house.

Once I really set it up and get glass shelves to go above it, I will post again about the first finished corner of my house. For the moment, I just keep stepping back to admire it. :D

So once again, before and after:
 

Hope you love it as much as I do!

Till next time,
A





Making a Bar: Part 1

Hello again,

Apologies for the break in broadcasting.  My best friend Q was in town and we did a big project that took over the quilt making time.  So rather than the usual, here is the project we worked on in two parts.

I recently found out I didn't get an apartment I wanted that was much bigger than mine, so Q kindly decided to help me start fixing my house to make me feel better about this.  And now, I have plans! Lots and lots of plans. :)

Step 1: replace my weird kitchen cart in the corner of the living room with a functional bar that I can really use.  And Q had an awesome idea - take the icky dresser I got for free that is not really being used in the bedroom and turn it into a bar.  Brilliant!  And, because the universe smiled on me, it fit perfectly - like 1/32 of an inch perfectly.

Only problem?  It looked like this:

Yeah, the starfish and pale blue do not work in my living room.  Also, those handles slide back into the dresser really easily and that is frustrating. 

So Q had the awesome idea of stripping and painting this thing a color that I would love and making it a bar.  Brilliant, obviously!

While she was visiting, she decided to start stripping it.  Now, we didn't actually realize this thing was not going to be easy. It was made of laminate and had been painted with one of those special, unpleasant primers that makes paint stick to laminate.  Yeah, it looked simple to strip in the beginning:

So.... Apparently laminate with primer on it is made of evil. Pure, un-remediated evil.  Q started the stripping while I was at work around 2 in the afternoon.  She was still going when I got home at 6 and started to help. 

Now, Q knows what she's doing.  Since I had two dogs in the house, we were using the indoor-safe primer, but she's used it many times before.  Our supplies were:

Really - it didn't look like it was going to a combined 14 hours of labor to strip!  It really, really didn't.

Finally, we got it stripped after delivered pizza and a fair amount of beer...

Yeah, it looks awful, doesn't it? And there were places where we just couldn't scrape the paint off, so we had to do way more sanding than expected. Those little curves on the drawers? They make it really pretty, but they are also annoying as all get out to strip and sand.
 

However, with more beer and more pizza, we got it all ready to be primed and it started to look like a real piece of furniture finally!

Now isn't that prettier?

Once it was all primed and looking like a real piece of furniture again, we took a night off and played video games....

Hooray for high scores in all the version of Pac Man and Qix and Space Invaders and Galaga.  That's right... We are video game queens! :)  (If you live in DC, the bar that has all of these is the Board Room on Connecticut, by the way. It's awesome!)

Part Two coming up, where we have some problems with paint, color confusion, and a beautiful finished product!

Till next time,  
A