What, did you just paint?

So that's a comment we got on someone seeing our kitchen for the first time in a couple years.  It doesn't look like we did very much and was actually a pretty cheap project, but lets just say there are 400 man (and woman!) hours from March-August that have kept us really busy. 

It started with needing to rip up the old linoleum because we knew the original maple was under there.  Of course that was a disaster because it was linoleum, plywood, linoleum, fuzzy felt paper stuff bonded to maple.  This is one of the better views:

While the floor was being done, we figured we'd knock the tiles down off the wall and splurge on repairing the plaster.  Also see nasty linoleum that could only be cleaned with ammonia.

That was 2 months in and then the trouble started. The floors looked great.  The walls looked good.  But the painted woodwork lookes pretty bad.  Not only was it beige, it was cracked and peeling, slightly buried in plaster residue.  Being 5 months pregnant, I figured I'd only have the energy to sugar coat it with a coat of white paint until *someday* we could strip it.  But the plasterer suggested what we were afraid of, that getting a decent coat of paint on would be marginally less work now and certainly more work in the future than stripping it.

So we started on one window.  It took 40 hours.

We didn't know the best way to tackle this.  We had knowledge of all kinds of tools and methods at our disposal but at the end of the day were just trying to naturally figure out what worked.  We figured out an alternating approach with the Mr weilding a heat gun, then I would come back with a few coats of stripper, back to the Mr for sanding 60-80-120-220 grit, and I got the glorious (and I mean it) job of staining and laquering.

It's a really disheartening process.  It looks bad enough when you start stripping, and then it progressively looks much worse, until you finally start getting clean wood.  But wood, especially old growth original wood is extremely resillient and it's really amazing how you can go from before to after:

  

 

  



 

 

 



Simplicity 3762

When I find a sewing pattern I like, I usually end up abusing using it several times, at least until scotch tape can no longer hold it together.

Simplicity 3762 was no exception.  I made it three times.  Once in the original shirt form, but with the maternity sizing and generous ease above body measurements, it was gigantic.  I made it early in pregnancy and it was not the confidence booster.

I made it later for a dress to wear to a wedding and scaled the fit down significantly.  The length of the shirt extended easily into a dress.  It was the first time I managed topstitching and finished all the details.


The third time I made it, I was not in maternity mode but I was itching for a maxi dress.  I had just over 3 yards of knit and all patterns I could find insisted I needed four!  I also really didn't want to trek to the store to buy a pattern, so figured I'd patch something together with ones I had.  With some creative layouts (the fabric is going the 'wrong' way) I managed to get it together.  The only problem is I was a little short on width, so the flare at the bottom was off.  But it doesn't have to be perfect, I'm not wearing it to a wedding or anything.

welcome!

Oh just what the internet needs, another blog!  We're always googling something and because our interests are so specific, we've really been helped by others experiences and hope to share ours in hopes we can help others.

What can you expect to see here?  Beekeeping, city living, restoring a 1928 Chicago bungalow, maintaining and restoring two 19_8 Fords, traveling, and more.