Voices from the past: Pop-pop's table

I am in the process of making decisions about how to refinish and update the dining room table and chairs that came from my Pop-pop's house.  I have some ideas of what I want to do, but it's still a work in progress.   I added the middle leaf in and realized a few things today!

This was the end where my grandfather and grandmother sat.  You can tell there is a lot more love in this end!

Before I moved it into the light, I don't think I fully realized how much pattern was in the top!

The ends are laminate on the top, but I think the middle is solid wood. 

 

I started by gently sanding the top of one end, and then rubbed in some leftover stain I had on hand.

The end opposite of "Pop-pop's" end...hmmm....I'm wondering if any cousin out there will fess up to to these little messages scratched into the wood?  I just know there is a story here!
 

 

The initials results are encouraging!  I need to do some research to see just how much I can sand down to get through the scratches on the top.  It needs more, but I wanted to be careful how much.

Shiny!

 

I do plan to do something with the chairs, but I had to memorialize this chair.  This is where my Pop-pop sat for all these years, and you can clearly see the effect of his hands on the arms.  I can picture him so clearly sitting at the head of the table where we shared so many meals.  And pies.  After each dinner there would be your choice of so many pies; he was not only a great cook but a great baker!

Pop-pop: I hope you will be happy with how I transform your table! 

How to: Install baseboard and quarter round

I am trimmed out!  I am slowly finishing up the baseboard and quarter round install in the living room and family room, and thought I'd share some how-to's and thoughts regarding install trim.  I am purposely doing this to avoid finishing the job.  


1) Buy, rent or borrow a chop saw.  When I trimmed out the basement after I installed the cork flooring last year, I cut all of the miters by hand.  Don't do that.  It was exhausting!  I found my chop saw on Craigslist for the bargain price of $50, and it has been worth every penny!

2) One piece at a time!  It is so easy to cut the angle the wrong way; you'll have to trust me on how I know this (one painful mistake after another!).  I tried to do two at once, but I'd get downstairs and either get the piece confused or still, even after trying very hard, cut the piece on the wrong angle.

3) Mark Mark Mark.  No, Mark wasn't here (I don't know him anyway!) but marking each piece is crucial.  I would think I would remember which was I was cutting, but forget once I went down the steps.  I would mark the direction of the cut as well as the piece that was being saved; XX marked the piece that was not being used. 

4) If in doubt, cut a little long.  Leave it a sliver on the long side, and take the time to slice it down if you need to.   No matter how hard you try, you can't add back once you cut. 

5) If your space is longer than your board, use an overlapping joint, not a butt joint. 

6) What doesn't fit perfectly can be perfect after  little wood filler or spackle. Really. 

7) Draw pictures if you need to: what an inside miter looks like, and what an outside miter looks like.  

8)  On ends, I cut at a 25 degree angle to leave a nice end that isn't a blunt straight cut. 

Words good; pictures are better, and pictures will be up....soon.  Hopefully the floor will be done....SOON!

Hat Trick: How to make a hat hanger from a baseball

I have been neck deep and tied up with install baseboard (you could say I'm based-bored), so today I just need to do something a little different. 

 Our basement area hasn't come a long way since I installed the floors last year, but it's been much used as a boy play area.  When I was cleaning out the boy's closet this summer, we realized how many hats he has!  Every time you play a new season of baseball you get a new hat, and they have piled up.  But when it's time for the big game tomorrow, I know we will be looking high and low for that special hat for the game.....

and we will find it!  There it is...hanging right on the basement wall!

I bought new baseballs and drilled into it and then screwed in a dowel screw, which is a screw with threads on each end. 



Then I screwed it right into the wall.  In this spot, there is a stud, so I pre-drilled and just screwed it in.  In other spots in the drywall, I use a drywall anchor.  When the hat is in use, you have a cute baseball stuck on the wall! 

As we find and hang other hats, it's adding a fun element to the "fan-cave". 

Updates from the house

Updates from the house, because the house, in the house, has been where I've been lately.  I snuck away today for a quick lunch date with my mom to just get OUT.  And now I'm back.

Yesterday: I had a sick boy, 3-4 floor installers, and a dryer repairman in the house at one time.  It was noisy, busy and boring stuck in the bedroom with a dog (who wanted to get out and help and/or lick whomever he could find) and a cat or two (not sure exactly who was under there) hiding in absolute terror under the bed.

Twenty-four hours later and things are much, much better. 

I have a floor where we've had torn up carpet or sub floor for a few weeks.

yes I know: those horrid curtains are already down. Fail.  New ones are in the works. 

The floor is lovely.  The Lowe's installers did a great job with a few challenging issues.

 

The dryer works.  The washing machine got a little updated also, and both work so much better than they have in recent times.  The mountain of laundry awaits me, but I am thankful to have laundry facilities!  The repairman made the mistake* of mentioning that dryers have longer lives the closer the vent is to the outside wall. 

 

We have a toilet downstairs again....and it's not in the dining room! Cheers for indoor plumbing!

 

 

I'm jumping in and attempting my first skimcoat experience, taking the bathroom from 1 layer to three. More on that later.  It's fun to find things as you peel back the layers of a house.

 

I saved the last box of flooring and some larger scraps from the floor.  It's about the perfect amount for a smaller, much smaller, project upstairs, one that I would like to attempt myself.

 

Now that all the extra people are out of the house, it's time to start to put things back together.  How is it that one room is being torn up and it tears up the entire rest of the house?

 

  On the most pressing to-do list for the rest of this week:

1. finish skim coating the bathroom and repaint;
2. reinstall sink;
3. install baseboard and quarter round in bathroom and family room.

 

* Mistake only because it kept me awake trying to figure a way to re-do our entire upstairs to get the dryer on an outside wall!  Darren Smith of Gordonsville was our repairman, and he works on all types of appliances.  He was great! 

 

Many thanks also to Transitions Flooring out of Ruckersville for a great floor install.  They did a great job!  More details on that are coming.  

 

 

Calgon, take me away!

This is the ugly side of doing things yourself: a toilet in the dining room and chaos everywhere else.  Two more days, but in the meantime, I'd really like to not be in the midst of this!

But I am.  And with this delivery yesterday, I think it will be worth it (fingers crossed).

I was a tad afraid to look in the boxes.....so I peaked at first and held my breath:

 A little braver, I opened one end of the box, and I think we will be ok with matching up to the existing floors, the issue which took us so long to figure out and make this decision.

 

I think it will be close!  Two days to countdown...and baseboards yet to removed, so I'm back to work!