Kristi's Sofa Table

Kristi was asking me about my sofa table (blog here). I told her it wasn't too expensive.

Kristi brought up the neighbor who had a big pile of wood out for the big trash pick up. I told her I had seen that pile and that J wouldn't let me stop.

So Kristi and I went (at 10:00 at night) and scoped it out for ourselves.

She has big plans for that board. But we got enough wood to build the base of the table. 

We just had to go to Home Depot to buy the top.

We got home, and started looking at the wood we had pulled out of the scrap pile. It was warped. So we went back to Home Depot and had to buy more pieces for the base. It took forever, because Kristi is a perfectionist. I think we looked at every single 2x2 in the pile. 

While we were building the table, Jett came over to play. Kristi built him a ramp to race his cars out of the warped wood.

Which ended up being brilliant, and I took the wood to use for my carnival games.

Kristi snapped this picture after he threw his snot rag at me. He was teasing and giggling.

And loving on his Kristi.

While I was slaving away. Being critiqued by the perfectionist. 

Looks fabulous.

Reupholstered Headboard

I made our headboard seven years ago (blog here).

If I was to do it over from scratch, I'd do some things differently. Be more of a perfectionist about cutting the foam, for one. I also wanted more buttons. The french cleat I thought at Home Depot has held up beautifully. If anyone is interested it's this one.

I'm tired of this headboard. I am tired of brown. Brown is out. Gray is in. I've been meaning to reupholster the headboard for months now.

The before (and all of my glorious mess because hey, we friggin live here ok).

I bought a bunch of grey fabric thinking it would be perfect. When I got it home, my lighting made it look purple. I'm so glad I have two and a half yards of purplish grey fabric I'm never going to use.

So I bought (much smaller) samples of other fabrics that I also did not love.

This seriously took months and multiple trips to different stores. Until I finally found one that I thought would work. So I took my headboard apart.

Realized I couldn't re-use the original buttons. Those suckers do not come apart. So I had to buy all new buttons. And of course, cover them.

Drilled more holes for the buttons.

And started putting it back together.

I looked at a few tutorials on Pinterest and there was one thing that saved my life and let me increase the number of buttons like I wanted. It was the double headed needle. Previously I would thread a normal needle, put it all the way through to the front, catch the button, and then poke it through to the back. It was surprisingly difficult to get it back through all the foam and find the hole. 

The double headed needed is super long. I threaded it, and poked the top part through but didn't pull the needle all the way through.

Then I took the thread off, caught the button, and re-threaded it. Then I just pulled the needle out. Super easy.

I had J push the button down on the front and tied the back to a button.

J thought it was weird that I didn't staple it first, like we did with the first one, but this is how the tutorials said to do it.

I don't love it. It's just ok. I think I should have used a darker fabric. And I'm kind of irritated. Do I reupholster it a-friggin-gain? This is why I have decorating issues.

I do love the buttons though. J said maybe if we buy new bedding it'll look better. We'll see.

Solar

As of March 27th, solar is officially active!

Shelf for Danielle

My sister Danielle is a hair stylist.

She also beat cancer.

She's kind of amazing.

She was married recently and that post is here.

For work she rents a two-person suite with her friend. A girl she thought was a good friend. Danielle was a bridesmaid in her wedding.

And her friend was stealing her hair color. Danielle came back to work after her last surgery to everything moved around, so it was pretty obvious. I don't know who steals from a friend, but even worse, stealing from someone with cancer who wasn't getting paid when she wasn't working.

I don't know why people can't be normal. But maybe my expectations are too high. Which kind of bums me out.

I told Danielle I could build her something. She wanted a shelf to hang on her wall that locked. She came over with her bottles and we figured out the dimension of the shelf.

I had a couple pallets of wood J's brother gave us for free.

It was easy to knock apart with a mallet. It took me awhile to take the staples out but I figured out a system.

The trick is to tap the staples gently. It takes time and patience. You can't tap too hard because the metal bends and makes it impossible to pull out. So light tapping.

Then once the heads are out far enough...

Leverage the pliers with the hammer to pull the staple all the way out.

These dogs were cracking me up.

This only took a couple hours, but I ran out of weekend so I stopped here for a week. I didn't dare send Danielle a photo because I thought it looked like crap. I knew it would look better with stain but at this stage it looked dirty.

The next weekend was supposed to rain Saturday and Sunday, so I took Friday off from work. I wanted to get this done quickly. A locked cabinet was going to be a big middle finger to the thief. I was picturing her clients coming in, looking over, and wondering why her suite mate needed to lock up her product. 

Because your hairstylist steals from cancer-fighting friends and you should find a new person to do your hair. Danielle comes highly recommended.

I did some math and figured out the wood for the doors, then glued and nailed them together.

I had a thin piece of plywood for the back in my garage. Between the free wood and stain I already had, I only spent money on the hardware.

I put the hinges inside. Not that I thought the thief would stoop to trying to unscrew it....but since the intention was to stop the thievery, I was just being safe. The hinges left a bit of a gap; I think there is a certain type of hinge you can buy if you want it to sit flush inside, but it wasn't bad.

There was one minor hiccup. When we were screwing in the metal piece for the magnet closure, I must have twisted the wood because I got a nasty surprise when it suddenly popped apart. I should have done that part before the hinges so it could lay flat.

Everything had been going well up to this point, and I had been suspicious, just waiting for an issue. I couldn't just have one project where things went smoothly. But I didn't cry this time, so that's a plus. I just had a moment of groaning in the fetal position....and then I stood up, scraped the glue off, cut off the nails, and put it back together. I tugged on the other door to make sure it was secure and it was fine. It was so weird that it came apart like that.

I finished it that day and texted my sister.

I met Danielle at her salon. Her little man had fallen asleep in the car.

It looks pretty fabulous. It's funny because it doesn't look hard, but it probably took me seven hours.

Gonna have to buy your own color you bug eyed stink mitten.

Dream Catcher

I saw a half moon dream catcher on Pinterest that I have been wanting to try. My sister Kristi and I had a craft night.

Kristi was working on a K while I worked on my dream catcher. And we were eating strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar. Be jealous.

I painted the tips of my feathers gold.

This little dog is so curious and has to check everything out.

Before our craft night I had soaked a bunch of branches in water to bend them into the half moon shape. I took them out of the water, dried them off...and broke just about all of them. I was able to bend one branch without breaking it, so I put some string to hold it in the half moon shape. Then I put the jute on for the dream catcher part. I took off the string that was bending it in the half moon shape, thinking the dream catcher section would keep it in shape. I was wrong. The stick went back unfolded back into its normal straight line shape. I didn't take a photo because I was pouting but it looked ridiculous.

This was also in the middle of my whole mirror fiasco (read about it here). I really felt like Pinterest had failed me. You just can't trust people who make money off their blogs. They tell you how easy it is but it's a lie. Just buy it online while you're hanging out with your sister eating strawberries. And then leave positive feedback for the seller because there's a little bit of anguish in certain projects.

Kristi made a very nice K but she was still pondering some finishing touches. So a couple weeks later she came back over. I used my Dremel to shorten some screws for her so she could add her arrow and knob pulls (to hang necklaces) and it was done.

I would have been thinking jealous, negative thoughts about her perfect project except....she brought me a stick with a natural curve she had turned into a dream catcher. What a thoughtful sister!! I added the yarn at the bottom with the feathers. Then she helped me drill a hole at the top so we could nail it to the wall and it was done.

I'm kind of in love with how these photos line up to make one long photo because that was not intentional. Must be the universe's way of apologizing. 

So fabulous. I guess the secret to a successful Pinterest project is a talented sister who can make it happen.