theladyrebecca | Entries tagged with house projects

I haven't posted in forever, because I haven't sewed in forever.

Okay, so that last part isn't 100% true. I did attempt to make a new slip last week, since mine is completely falling apart. But since I was only home for abut 30 mins a day last week, and that included when I needed to eat dinner, I have yet to finish it. All it needs is a side seam and the waistband put on, so hopefully I'll finish it this week.

What I really need to be working on, sewing-wise, is the commission. Now that Big Fish is open and I don't have rehearsal every day, I should have time to get to that very soon. But first I have to play catch-up on all the things I haven't had time to do for the last 2+ weeks, which is mostly house/yardwork. I've already mowed both lawns in the last two days, went grocery shopping, and cleaned the kitchen (and I went to the gym and walked Lion). Today, I hope to run a couple errands, go to the gym, give Lion a bath, clean the living room, put up two new towel bars and a new curtain liner in the bathroom, spray all the weeds in my yard, do a load of laundry, and put away all my clean laundry (including from the last load I did).

I know, realistically, this will not all happen today. But luckily, I have tomorrow after work as well, and I finally get Friday off again this week. (I normally work M-Th, but I've had to work M-F for the last three weeks, plus longer hours during the week, plus rehearsal every night.) Naturally, I'm feeling very burnt out at the moment, which is why sewing has not also happened yet.

The really nice thing that I'm looking forward to, though, is that I get to take an absolutely relaxing break in a few weeks! My mom and I wound up booking a last minute Alaska cruise a couple weeks ago for the end of May. And I'm rather looking forward to being forced to do nothing at this point. But I definitely do need to finish the commission before then!

Crossposts: https://theladyrebecca.livejournal.com/314939.html

My closet is finished! It actually wound up being a pretty quick project. On Monday, I installed the left side shelf/rod/brackets, which took me a little over an hour, and seemed somewhat difficult. Yesterday, I turned the shelf unit around, and oddly enough, the wood was much nicer on the back side, and it fit against the wall better that way. I realized if I anchored it back to the wall, it would still be quite functional and probably pretty sturdy, since it had previously held quite a bit of weight. So that's what I did - it has two screws anchoring it to what was the back workbench support beam, which I left up on the wall. I also added the shelf/rod/brackets to the right wall, which took me under an hour, even including a 20+ minute break to allow my drill to get a tiny bit more juice (it died when I put the shelving unit screws in). I'm hoping it was the lack of a full charge that was the reason why two of the screws were not going all the way in. I'm going to go back and try those this afternoon - they just kind of got to a certain point and stopped...

I ordered some more garment bags on Amazon prime, and they should be arriving by tonight, so I think I can even move a bit more in to the closet, though I have a feeling I'll wind up needing to get even more bags. I'm probably going to leave most of the silk and possibly the wool things inside, and put everything else out in the outside closet. Also, anything that is too long for a 72" garment bag will have to stay inside, too. I can't wait to have more room in my coat and bedroom closets, and be able to get the garage a bit more organized.

My next project will be a quick jaunt back to sewing - I have to get estimates done for two commissions, plus I'm making my mom's birthday present (which is a tool roll-up for her glass tools). And then I'm back to house stuff, painting the 5 lower cabinet doors for my kitchen, installing a new shelf/towel bar in the bathroom, and (hopefully) figuring out my leaky faucet. That one still seems really daunting!

Crossposts: https://theladyrebecca.livejournal.com/314611.html

I got some done on my house projects this weekend. Namely, my friend's husband came over on Saturday with a chain saw and helped hack up the trunk/base branches of the giant shrub on the side of my house, so that is now gone! Or rather, it is a stump, and about 4 branches that didn't fit in my yard waste bin this week. The branches will go in next week, and I will either live with the stump, or eventually decide to dig it out. But this means I can get to my gutters! So that will be one of the next things on my list, when it stops raining. I have to clean the gutters on that side, mow both lawns, and shape the rest of my hedges. And I found 4-5 gutter guards left over from when I did the back of the house, so I can go ahead and put those up while I'm at it.

In the meantime, while it's raining, I have my indoor projects! The closet has definitely climbed to the top of the list. Unfortunately, I had to return some of the things I bought from Lowes, because it turns out that not only can they not cut closet rods, they can't even cut closet shelves! When I called Home Depot, they said they could, so I am going to stop there after work today, buy two shelves and get them cut, and probably buy rods from them, too, if they can cut them. Otherwise, I guess I have to go with the extendable metal rods. I also have to get screws so I can put the brackets up.

On Saturday, I managed to get the workbench out. For one thing, I did find another spider behind something that had been leaning up against the wall under the bench. Luckily, this spider was stupid, and when I started spraying him with poison, he came out from underneath the workbench (on the floor), and I stepped on him. He was the only other one I found, though. Taking the workbench out was really hard. They really had nailed/screwed that thing in there, stripping the heads of all the screws in the process. I was able to get all the screws out, though I had to do it by hand, and wore down my phillips head in the process (the drill couldn't handle how stuck they were). I got enough of the nails out that I was basically able to lift the plywood tops of the bench up, and bend a lot of the nails out. It was really tough. And now I have even more plywood that I don't know how to dispose of, this time with nails sticking out of it...

The shelf unit that had been "built in" to the workshop was actually only screwed in to the wall with one screw, and it is super flimsy when it's not leaning on the wall on one side. So I'm going to put that out at the street and hope that someone takes it, so that I don't have to dismantle it. I might get a cubby or shelf unit eventually, but I have a plastic drawer set that I will put in there for now. I'm just excited to get the bar and shelves hung!

Crossposts: https://theladyrebecca.livejournal.com/314208.html

Because I knew this would happen, I am probably going to work on the closet before the two more important projects.

Last night, I went in and cleaned off most of the workbench, including killing the biggest spider ever. I sprayed him with poison, he pretended to die for like 10 mins, and I thought all was well. Then I hear a tapping noise behind me, and it's because this humongous spider has come back to life and was so large that his feet were literally making tapping noises on the wood as he walked. Gross! So I sprayed him with a lot more poison, and before he could come back to life again, I used one of those claw extended reach things to squish him with a piece of poison soaked cardboard (that had been to near to the spider to remove from the workbench in the first place). Then I threw a tissue over him, and picked him up within the tissue using the claw grabber, deposited him in a trash can, and then squished him with the claw some more. I just needed to make sure he was really dead.

So anyway, the workbench can now be removed. Though I am kind of paranoid that I'm going to run into another spider! And last night, I ordered hopefully all the closet supplies I will need, though I know that's a little premature. But I got brackets, shelves, and rods. It will wind up being kind of walk-in closet style, with a rod on either side of the entrance. In the back center, I hope to have some sort of shelving unit that can also act as a desk, because I want to see if the room would also work to do voiceover in. There is a shelving unit currently in the storage room, that were presumably built by whomever built the workbench, so I'm hoping that I can maybe just move that, since it would save me from dismantling it.

I'm still trying to figure out lighting. Right now I have one of those clamp-on ikea desk lights in there, but I'd rather have something with a bit more even light. The problem is that the only plugs come from a surge protector that has been mounted on the wall by the door.

Anyway, I'm hoping to have a little time tomorrow to start dismantling the workbench, though I also need to take a little time today or tomorrow to do yard work as well.

Crossposts: https://theladyrebecca.livejournal.com/313929.html

I'm still editing pictures from the three costume events I attended in March (the Outlander Ball, Emerald City Comicon, and the Victorian Festival). I've been posting some pictures from all three on instagram, and once I finish editing, I'll try to do a little picture post of each of the first two events on here.

In the meantime, I'm on a sewing hiatus this month. I'm kind of in between roommates this month, as my current roommate is partially packed up and mostly living at her mom's house already, and I don't yet have one finalized for May yet (I'm hoping to this week, though!) Because of that, I've decided that it's time for house projects:

I still never finished painting my cabinet doors and drawers from my kitchen, which I started and abandoned back in Dec 2015. My goal for this project is to get the 5 lower cabinet doors painted, plus at least two drawers (I've become used to using the drawer spaces as shelves, so I plan to continue doing that for two of the four existing spaces).
My bathtub faucet has been leaking for like a year, but has gotten pretty bad the last couple months, and I'm sure it's hurting my water bill. So I really want to get that fixed (though I have no idea how!)
I want to shape all the shrubs in my front yard. They were nice little round things when I moved in. Now they're pretty huge. I'm almost done with removing the giant shrub on my side yard, though - all I have left are the thicker base branches, which I will need someone with a chainsaw to help me.I'm hoping that I can still get my ladder up even with the base branches there, though, because that means I can finally clean the gutter on that side of the house (and probably install some gutter guards).
The project that I'm most excited for, though, is revamping the storage closet area in my garage. It was built as a workroom, with a waist-high workbench on two walls, and shelves on the third wall. I'm going to remove the workbench and set it up as a closet! It already has actual dry-walled finished walls, so I think it's pretty well-sealed. I would love to be able to put up actual closet rods, and hang all the costumes in garment bags, but if I can't figure that out, I will get another ikea wardrobe, and move my existing one in there, too. I'm even wondering if I can set up a little space in there to do voiceover work. I've been wanting to get into that for a long time, but haven't had a space available for it.

So anyway, there really won't be any sewing updates for the next month or so, other than a commission I might have, but I will be posting about housy stuff here!

Crossposts: https://theladyrebecca.livejournal.com/313824.html

I wound up getting an order on Thursday night, so all my wonderful plans to work on my coat and do my taxes on Friday went completely out the window. But luckily, I had enough of the right colors in my stash that I was able to do the whole order without going to Joanns first, so I was able to complete that and get it shipped out on Friday.

Yesterday evening was my only other sewing time this weekend, since this was the first weekend of performances for Oliver. But I did finish cutting my sleeves out, and set them (and they look so smooth - I usually avoid fitted sleeves, but am quite pleased with these). I also applied interfacing to the lining facing, since I had somehow skipped that step. Then I started playing around with hood shapes. I haven't mocked it up yet, but I think I literally tried on every hooded garment I own in order to figure out what shape I want. I want something big, so that it harkens back to something historical, but I also need it to be functional, and I don't want to do the 18th c cartridge-pleated back. And it seems like a lot of modern coat hoods are three-piece hoods. But I think I'm going to test a two-piece first, then try the three-piece if that doesn't work.

The other thing I'm trying to figure out is that if I do the hood shape I'm testing first, I have enough wool left for three pieces. I need four, if I want to use the same fabric as the inside of the hood. I have another blue wool that is just slightly different that I could use, but when you put the two side by side, you can definitely see the difference. However, I think that even if I just put one line of trim (maybe faux fur?) around the edge, it would give enough of a separation that you can't tell the difference. Or I could piece the inside of the hood. Or do a totally different lining.

Anyway, once I figure out the hood, I can get the whole rest of the coat assembled, hemmed, and add the buttons. I don't have rehearsals this week, so I'm hoping I'll finish it all soon.

In other not-so-good news, one of the switches in my breaker box kept flipping off yesterday, even with nothing plugged in, so I think my budget for Europe just took a huge hit. I'm just hoping it's something that an electrician can fix quickly, because I don't think I can afford more than an hour! (I mean, I can't even afford that, really, but I'm going to have to, unfortunately). It's $220 just for one hour! :(

Crossposts: https://theladyrebecca.livejournal.com/266086.html

I found buckram locally! That was definitely a relief. I thought there was no chance, but one the fabric stores in Seattle carries it for $5.50/yd, and no shipping cost! Luckily, I was up north of Seattle yesterday anyway, too, so I only had to drive about 30 mins out of my way, instead of around two hours round trip. It was worth it. I got five yards. :)

I cut out my pieces last night, and started assembling them. I decided to use two layers together, since a few people recommended that, though unfortunately, this buckram didn't seem to realy want to fuse to itself, so I basted around the edges.

At this point, the whole buckram frame is assembled, and I've wired the brim and around the bottom of the crown. Next I get to cut fabric!

mandie_rw's crazy hat colors are definitely rubbing off on me, because I've decided to use the little piece of orange silk leftover from my 1760s gown for the outside of this hat. The inside will be ivory silk (that for some reason I can't remember what it's leftover from!).

The hat frame

These are the fabrics for it

We also finally moved up the bar in my sewing room closet. We moved it so high that I can hang the black bustle gown skirt in it without bustling it up (which is good, since my pleats were already getting really crumpled). And all my Regency dresses are off the floor, too. I'm hoping that I can fit everything long in this closet, and use the guest room closet for the shorter things, so that we don't have to move that bar up as well.

Here's a pic of my 6'3" boyfriend with the closet. It's really tall now!

I got very little done today. I managed to get my regency bodice mockup cut out and sewn together, but have yet to try it on, because I didn't feel like putting on my corset, and didn't get any of my skirt pieces put together. However, I did pick up the top half of my new-to-me china cabinet (we picked up the bottom yesterday, from a seller on Craigslist, but the top was too tall to fit in my bf's van, so we had to rent a uhaul). We brought it back, stacked it on the bottom section, and then ran out to a conformation class for my bf's dog. It was very informative, but I think he has a long way to go before we can show him. Finally, when I got home, I was able to start filling everything into the china cabinet! It looks really pretty in the dining room - it's almost a perfect match to the stain of the table, too. And now the top half is already full.

Here's a couple pictures. The top was being blocked by the dining room lamp, which will really need to be moved to over the table now that the china cabinet is in, but there's a nice little pediment on top, which clears the ceiling by about 6".

It has lights inside, with three dimmer levels. This is the brightest setting.

I finished touchups on the kitchen walls this morning/early afternoon. Unfortunately, not only did my painters tape not have a great seal, but it also peeled paint of the undersides of the cabinets when I took it off. So now I'm going to have to do some touchups on those, too. Oh well. At least the walls, are done, and the color is perfect!

My bf has just about finished my laundry area, too. He has to fix something in the plumbing of the sink faucet, but that's it! It looks really good, but I haven't taken any pictures yet.

And after I finished the painting, I cleared off the stuff that had accumulated on the sewing table, and hung up my inspiration board, so now the table is usable. I'm excited to build my new fancy table, but this flimy fold-out one will do for now (I'll probably have the other one early next week). I was really wanting to work on the silk bustle gown, so I started playing around with draping and pattern shapes. I think I used view B in Jean Hunnisett for the green skirt last year, and I really like how that turned out, so I'm starting with that as a base, and then elaborating. It's amazing how quickly those fabric yards add up. I think I have 12 yds total (I should probably check), so I have to be careful!

Before I pulled out the silk, I took a few pics of my sewing room as it currently is. Besides the new table, I will also be adding shelves, a tv, and possibly a pegboard, but I like where it's headed!

It's been a good couple days, though I haven't sewn anything else yet. Yesterday we headed up to Seattle to do the last clearing out bits of the apartment. I'm glad to have that place (and my old roommate) off my hands. We managed to fit my old couch in my boyfriend's van, and Value Village accepted it as a donation. And to top it off, as we were dropping it off, the person in front of us was donating a table saw, and the person in back of us, a computer monitor, both of which they gave to my bf when he asked. So he got to come home with some presents (not to mention the giant air compressor his work was getting rid of.) He spent a good portion of today testing out his new saw, and was quite pleased, and it has already come in really handy for the work he is doing to set up my laundry area.

This morning was pretty low key. I finally got to meet our neighbors next door, and they seem absolutely great, which is always nice (I spent 2.5 yrs in my apt, and never met anyone else in the building). And the reason we met them was because we were hanging out outside for a while because it was snowing! I went outside to go rake leaves, and was so surprised and ecstatic to find snow falling from the sky. It stuck, too, and continued coming down for a few hours, so although I know a lot of it melted this evening, I think there is still a little on the ground. (Needless to say, those leaves did not actually get raked.)

After I came back in, I started in with prepping the kitchen walls for painting, which mostly meant spending several hours just taping things off, as well as cleaning the absolutely disgusting floor area that was underneath the stove and fridge (like, my medium brown laminate floor was basically black). I swear, the prep work takes forever! After I washed the walls, and ate dinner, I finally got to begin painting, and even that took a few hours. I have one coat done on all the walls, plus a little bit of touch up. I'm sincerely hoping that's all it will take, because although the guy at Lowes said I would just need the small can, there's less than 1/4 left - definitely not enough for a second coat. I'll find out for sure in the morning. I'm pleased with the color. It's a sort of deep, dusty turquoise. I hope it doesn't read too dark for the small space, but I think it will work well once the cabinet doors are on, and the fridge and stove are back in place.

Oh, but next time I think of painting a room in my house, someone please talk me out of it. Thank goodness I've grown to like the lime green walls in the bathroom!

And for lack of sewing, here's a couple pictures of snow!

I was bad and did almost no house stuff today. I put the handles on the three finished drawers this morning, but one of the drawers is for some reason not going all the way in, so I'm going to have to sand down the tops of the sides so that it will fit, and repaint them. Bummer. I didn't paint any other drawers either, because it was so freaking cold in the garage. We have a space heater in there, but it doesn't do much, since there's no insulation. Plus, it's way easier to paint when the garage door is open, and again, too cold. It got warmer mid-day, but was busy with a job interview, plus picking up table linens from Value Village and a new kitchen faucet from Home Depot. And then later I had another chiropractor appt, and by the time I got back, the garage was again just too darn cold. Maybe I'll brave it tomorrow.

My bf did replace the faucet though, so now we have a nice pretty one with a pull out nozzle built into the faucet, and no leaks! That will certainly be nice.

If it is too cold, I'm determined to unpack the remaining boxes. I have one box that's waiting for whenever I get a china cabinet, but I also have two boxes left in the sewing room, and two in the bedroom, plus I still need to put most of my clothes back into my dresser.

Oh, but all that said, I did finally finish going through all the LJ posts I'd missed out on! I still need to read through a few of the longer ones, but I have those open on my computer ready to go. :)

Only 9 more pages of LJ to read!

Today, I painted two coats on three drawers, went to the chiropractor for the first time ever (apparently I'm old and falling apart now), and painted one coat on two more drawers. The first three drawers will be ready to put in the cabinets tomorrow morning, once I put their pulls on. I'm excited!

Of course, on the down side, I also discovered that my leaky faucet (which we were already thinking about replacing) has decided to go full blown crazy leaking thing, and leaked all over the inside of the cabinet. We turned off the water in the kitchen, though there is still a small drip occurring. I have a job interview tomorrow morning, but I'll be hitting Home Depot on the way home to pick up a new faucet, and hopefully my bf can install it tomorrow afternoon. Luckily, I have a $100 Home Depot gift card (Thank you, Sue!) to use for the faucet. And on the plus side, the leak underneath the sink did make it much easier to remove the two layers of nasty old peeling contact paper that was down there. Maybe I'll pick up something pretty to replace it with while I'm out tomorrow.

After the kitchen, the second biggest project we've accomplished was a banquette for the dining room. It is made out of two Ikea 1x4 Kallax units as the bases. Unfortunately, our dining room is not square, so we had to be creative about putting them together. Basically, we wound up sawing one of the 1x4's into a 1x3, and moving the other cube over to the other unit, so we could make one long and one short unit to fit our dining room and table better. Once those were all secure, we took plywood (cut to size), and 3" foam (also cut to size), and wrapped them together with batting, which we stapled to the back of the plywood. Then we wrapped all that with our fabric, which is a lighter canvas from Joanns, held/folded it tightly over the foam, and stapled that to the plywood as well. We are still planning to screw the plywood/pad pieces to the Kallax units, but they've been tested by my family, my bf, and I for the past week, and they more or less stay right in place even now.

I love how they turned out! Most of the cubes are being used for board game storage, and I have a bin in the end one where my table linens will be stored. I may add some sort of curtain to mask the board games, but so far, they don't bother me.

The dining table was a lucky find on Craigslist for $90, with a leaf that stores inside. The chairs are still my two old folding chairs that go with the small wooden folding table I use for historical picnics.

My parents left tonight, so I have a bit more time to post (though I still have 15 pages to catch up with my reading!)

The biggest house project my bf and I have been working on is re-painting the kitchen. This was the kitchen before:

Very peach and green. Aka UGLY!

We started by taking off all the cabinet drawers, painting the bases of the cabinets. They already had a 3/4 full can of paint in the garage in a nice whitish color, so we saved money, and used that (or at least, we thought we saved money - I had to go buy more so that I can finish the project).

Once we painted all the cabinet bases, this is what it looked like. A marked improvement!

The next project was to redo the counters. I know I want to redo the entire kitchen (and probably dining area) in a year or two when I have money. But since I don't have money right now, I looked on Pinterest, and found some tutorials about painting laminate counters to look like marble. So I did! I mixed some of the things from the tutorials. I used two coats of Killz primer, and then used three shades of gray acrylic paint, which I drew on with the tip of a goose feather, and softened with a softening brush. Then I did two coats of a polyurethane as my finish. Unfortunately, the first coat took absolutely forever to dry (the can said two hours - at 10 hours, I gave up and started to use a heat gun) and we wound up making a couple of blemishes in the surface. I think I wound up mostly successfully masking them.

While I love the look, to be honest, it is definitely not durable. We've already noticed some bubbles near the sink (though they did seem to go away overnight), a couple dings from the dish rack, and a random transfer of some sort of text from some paper that refuses to come off. And that was all even after letting it completely cure for at least 3-4 days. But again, I still love the look! My parents said that if they hadn't known I had painted it, they would have thought it was marble.

I also painted the shelves the night before my parents arrived.

This is where my project currently stands. I hope to get the drawers painted tomorrow, since it's been a real pain not having any! After that, I still need to paint the walls, and the cabinet doors. Then the kitchen will be done! I'm hoping I can get all that done by this weekend, but so far, everything we've tried has taken way longer than expected.

More project posts to come!

Wow... So, apparently I haven't read anything on here in 18 days? Sorry! I am attempting to catch up now, but that's 22 pages worth, so it might take me a while.

The main reason I've been gone is because I've been working on my house. That's right! We had a successful closing on Dec 14th, and from then till the 23rd, I was spending every day working n various aspects of it. It's very far from done (the two main things being painting the kitchen walls and drawers/cabinet drawers), but my parents flew in on the 23rd for Christmas, so work is basically on hold till they get there. I will post pictures in a later post, since that requires a lot more effort.

The other reason I haven't been on here is that after getting the house, I promptly lost my job. I was planning to quit in a few months anyway, and while I'm dissapointed that there's no money coming in right now, the timing actually worked perfectly, because it's given me way more time to work on my house. And honestly, I only took that job in the first place so that I could qualify for a mortgage. However, since the only time I've had for LJ since I started the job in April was while I was at work, I haven't found time to fit LJ back in my new home improvement-centric schedule.

Besides working on the house, I've also had a bunch of caroling gigs. We had our last two on Christmas Eve, so now we're done for the season and I can hang my Ravenclaw dress back up. However, other than some small mending that I did last night, I won't be sewing for a while, since my sewing room is in quite a state. I'm hoping to get back in there in a couple weeks. In the meantime, I'll just post about home projects!

But in any case, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! It's been very cold and rainy here, with low snow elevations, so I decided we had to go out in search of snow. And after a half hour of driving, we found it! So I had my first ever kind-of-white Christmas. Here's a few pics: