Mr. Man is Away and Q is in the Hedges.

I am buried deep in the hedges today, trimming branches that have been ignored for years.  The hedge is well over ten feet tall (almost twice as high as I am) and despite the tools I have acquired I am reluctantly going to have ask for Mr. Man's help.

I don't like asking for his help.

This is indeed ironic as he is Mr. Man, the epitome of a rescuer, helper, superhero; assisting everyone who is in need at any moment.  I sometimes want to hide his phone so others cannot find him.  In fact, just the other day I received a random text stating, "You husband is the bestest!"  I figured he'd helped another person crossing his path.

Needless to say, I don't want his help.  He is the superhero and I am Q, holding the fort, arranging his schedule, and playing with the cool gadgets.  Today's high efficiency spyware include extendable hedge clippers and a 6' tree trimmer.  Oh, and a rickety, aluminum ladder.  The only spying I get to do is looking at my neighbours as the hedge branches come down.

I have been in this position before.  Two years ago I wanted to redo the upstairs bathroom all on my own.  And I would've done it easily had I not had to trim the ends of the quarter-round.  I may be good with a saw (cue the dresser story) but this would take a saws-all or some other power tool unfamiliar to me.  Would I wait for his help? Of course not.  My son (a bystander during many of my schemes) and I found the proper tool in the basement, attempted to put the blade on and "go to it."  Unfortunately, I could not get it to work.  I would have to give up and ask for help.  It was the sensible thing to do.  But I was determined.

My memory is lacking in how I managed to figure out how to work the saw, whether I watched youtube, or asked Mr. a hypothetical question, "Say, for instance, someone wanted to know...?" But I found myself running the saw fairly perfectly.  No sweat.

It was the next morning as I was on my hands and knees sawing bits of wood out of the wall,  I heard the words, "What the hell is that sound?" and the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Mr. came to the bathroom door and found me in my favourite nightie, barefoot, with no headgear, furiously holding on to this whirring, beast of a tool.

He told me to stop and tried to offer his help, but I had a saw in my hands. Q, determined not to need a hero, had lost her mind.

Instead Mr. Man stood nearby, watching over me, ready to call 911 should I injure myself.  There's my hero.  Looking back, I should've let him help.  Determination does not mean smarts.

So, although he won't let me learn to use the mitre saw, I have paved my way into other cool gadgets.  And today as I am in the hedges, I am fully dressed, with work gloves.

I just close my eyes, though, when the branches fall on my head, and wait for him to come and do the tall stuff.

The Week He Went Away: Part 2

So, I have six days left before Mr. Man comes home, his dresser is in two, and I am quickly losing the respect of my eight-year-old son as he helps me drag several dressers upstairs to hide the evidence.  Perhaps your mother is a bit crazy, I think, as I look at him heave-hoing on the other end.  If you are just joining me, you have read this first.

The Search:

I need to get to an appointment the next day which is several kilometres away, so I take the opportunity to search through secondhand stores for dressers. I search and I search. I panic a bit. But I keep searching.

All I need is a decent dresser, and I can paint it if need be. That's what I was supposed to do in the first place.  I find huge, ugly, heavy ones that would not fit into the van, and I find teeny tiny ones that wouldn't even hold all of his socks.  A friend told me to look at some brand new ones, and the price tag was ridiculous.

The Confession:

The best way to confess, I've found is either while you have scissors in his hair, giving the scheduled haircut, or in this case, while texting him in Edmonton.

Him: I'm looking for a gift for you but I think it might be too expensive.

Me: Same here.

Him: What?

Me: I have a confession. I cut up your dresser and now I have to buy u a new one.

Him: Oh. Take back those 14 pillows you bought, and you can afford one.  (I like pillows.)

Obviously he was having too good a time to really care about a dresser he hated in the first place. But he wasn't keen on me paying for a new one, either.  Especially since he was spending so much on this trip out to Alberta.

The Find:

Finally, two days before he came home, my super niece (now 16-years-old, woot-woot!) and I lugged a 5' long ugly brown dresser out of the Salvation Army for $20.  Samantha, who swears she will buy my book of crazy someday, kept shaking her head and saying, "I can't believe we just picked up a dresser".

Really, she shouldn't be surprised by now.  She's been around me enough.

Here is "The Before":

The Fix:

So the kids and I got working, unscrewing the handles, setting up a painting station out in the mudroom, and by the time Mr. walked through the door early one morning, the paint was drying and he would soon have a dresser.  Phew.

So here is "The After":
I primed and painted with spray cans (I am very impressed with how little it took), leaving it an antique white and then painted the handles a Tremclad brown which kept a nice sheen.

He likes it, (I know he misses the periwinkle sometimes), but it is keeping together well, and at least his socks fit into it.  It sits nicely between our two bedroom windows, and my favourite painting by Mrs. Google sits above it.  My first Sally-Ann refurnish! 

So now...what to do with this? 

Erin

The Week He Went Away

This post has been a long time coming as life has filled up my days, and funny stories with Little Miss have taken the forefront of my "nutters" blog.  But some of my faithful followers have been asking when I'm going to talk about what I did the week Mr. Man went away.

Now I don't tend to sit still for very long, as my mind gets working on the "what if?" questions and "oh, look what's on Pinterest!" exclamations.  Despite his support, Mr. often rolls his eyes, and whispers to our son, "Your mother's crazy."

Hmph. Am not.

On a particular Monday night, Mr. left with friends on a week long trek out to Alberta.  Tuesday morning I dragged out several dressers in the house, carried them downstairs and prepared to make a stunning, lots of drawer space, spectacular, "oh, you are amazing and so thoughtful" surprise for my husband.

I knew what I was doing. My dad's a carpenter.

Originally I was going paint it an elegant antique white, and change the knobs, but then I thought:

1. Ooooh, he'd LOVE a bigger dresser!  Let's combine his tall boy with one of Little Miss's and make one wide dresser, similar to this:

Centsational Girl

2.  When I realized that all the highboys in our house were different heights, I found this one on Pinterest, and thought I could stack them!

Before Meets After

So I measured and measured again, and it would work! (So I thought). Once stacked, however, the top drawer was actually over 6 feet up, even too tall for the Dutchman I married.  So what next?

3.  Let's cut off the bottom drawer! 

Again, no sweat.  I am a carpenter's daughter.

Now I may be a bit naive, but I knew power tools were out of the question without someone hear to apply pressure and drive me to the hospital. I found a bunch of handsaws in the basement and went to work, sawing horizontally around the fourth drawer, slowly, so I didn't get "sawer's shoulder" or some real-life ache like that.  It took a while. Once it was finished, it looked like this:

OK, it's not made of spectacular material, but my friend, Paul, said he was impressed how straight I cut it.

Well that's because I am a carpenter's daughter!

I lifted the upper part containing three drawers on top of another wider dresser, and it looked great - until I looked at it from the side.  It was hanging two inches off the back of the bottom dresser, and there was no way to hide it.

By this time it was 4 o'clock, and I had accomplished nothing. A feeling of dread came over me and I sat down on the couch. I just sawed my husband's dresser in half.  The same dresser that my parents had in Yellowknife when I was little. I felt really ill.

And so I thought,

4.  I have to buy Mr. Man a new dresser.

This isn't the end of the story, but at this point I did learn something. When looking back over the years of partnering with my Mr., I could run through numerous ideas I've had where he said, "NO."  I'd pout, and sometimes get my way, but ultimately he was always right. It wasn't a good idea.

So, while I am the imaginative, spontaneous one (in my safe, little world, mind you), Mr. Man is the sensible, "seeing the big picture" one.  And together we make a great pair.

When he decides to go away for a few days, this is what happens.

So really, it is all his fault.

Erin

The Re-Upholstered Chair: Part 2

Let it be said that I, procrastinator extraordinaire, have finished something.  That's right.  I've finished my grandparent's arm chair.  For history on the chair check out part 1 here.

It went from this: (a broken seat, stained material and loads of special memories...)

...to THIS (shiny, gold and beige stripes, comfortable, sit-able and elegant)!  Now to put it somewhere safe.

It really didn't take any sewing once I bought the right tools. And since the material was only $40, and the tools were under $10, it was a steal. Interested in doing this yourself?  I followed everything on this site here.

My mother-in-law, the all-knowing seamstress, told me I did not have to do the piping, so of course I did not.  I'm lazy. I also did not put on the skirting since it looked good without it.  If I had waited to do it, the chair might not ever have been finished.

If you know me well enough, you know I've recently discovered that patterns are a trigger for my epilepsy.  This, of course, was discovered AFTER I bought the striped material, and I had to pause a few times while covering the difficult pieces while my brains unscrambled. But I was determined to get this done.  Mr. just shook his head while I went back at it.  "Your mother's crazy," he mentions to my son. Umm, perhaps.

I am really happy with how it turned out, and now I can say I've re-upholstered something. Can't say I'll jump into this type of project again (especially with vertical stripes), but at least Mr. Man won't be throwing out my chair any time soon.  Or be sitting in it.

What have you been working on?

Erin

A Re-upholstered Chair: part 1

Today I am stepping away from my "normal" nutters posts to share a project I am working on to relieve a little stress (and to persuade Mr. man not to throw it out).

My grandparents gave me a petite arm chair when I was in my teens, covered in royal blue faux velvet. As upholstery hobbyists, the two of them had put together this little beauty themselves.  The seat was deep and low to the ground, and the arms, delicately curved, were set in, making it quite narrow.  It was never built to house a large man, and low and behold, it was broken by a certain caped gentleman.

Several times he has threatened to put it out on the sidewalk with a "FREE" sign on it, but I keep hiding it in different places, out of his reach. This chair has gone with me to every apartment and house I've ever lived in, and since grandpa has been gone for several years, and now grandma, it has huge sentimental value.

So last week I set to work taking it apart, and seeing if I could fix the seat.  This is by no means a tutorial, but I am following several on pinterest :)

I took several pictures as it came apart, so I could go backwards when I put it back together.  I found a beautiful gold striped remnant just big enough to cover the chair, making the cost of fixing this girl at just over $40.00.

I paid Little Miss $2 to pull out hundreds of staples. I pulled out several hundreds more, and together we cut out the pattern on our new material.

There were a few surprises as we tore the chair apart: the webbing had come out the bottom because it had not been long enough, and there were, in fact, no springs in the chair seat at all.  I knew I couldn't handle installing springs, so I figure once this is all put together, Mr. Man will still not be allowed to sit in it (...or kids ...or cats, for that matter).

And, ew...we found horse hair. Bleck.

The chair was made of solid wood, but wasn't very secure, so Mr. drilled some added support into the legs (the first screws that had ever been put into this chair) in between thousands of staple holes and a few ancient nails.

The cat made herself a fast home in among the seat padding for a few days while I was in the cake shop.

So yesterday my son and I fixed the seat.  The Fabricland staff were great at pointing out what I needed, and off I went with the webbing, extra seat padding and gold striped material.  Monster sat at one end of the seat and I at the other, pulling, measuring, weaving and stapling until my back ached.

We were so proud of ourselves!

Whether or not this chair lasts in our busy home, I feel empowered taking on this project, and a bit sentimental. As Monster and I were examining the chair and determining how to put in the seat, I found my grandfather's markings underneath, measuring where to place the strips, and allowing us to follow his silent instructions.  It was surreal to say the least.

Next week perhaps I will get back at it. March break is filling up with play dates, and Veggie Tale concerts.  And my lower back has staple gun aches.  I'll go back to my KitchenAid mixers and convection oven for awhile.

What are you working on this month?
Erin