Today we took Marnie’s daughter, Aryn, to a bunch of estate and garage sales so she could see how it’s done. We went to quite a few sales, but we started at one that was supposed to have been the estate of a lady who had once been an antique dealer. She had a lot of Asian art and things and Aryn found a beautiful kimono for a very reasonable price. Marnie got a few things too, and I ended up with quite a selection of goodies from that sale. And we all got quite a selection of goodies throughout the day!
One of the things I brought home from the first sale was a “grab box” full of random things for $5.00. After unboxing this box I wished I had bought all the other grab boxes they had as well! Here are the unboxing photos:
This is how it looked when I got it.Here we go!Red Mystery TinI poked it with my finger and I still don’t know what it is. The red came off on my finger, so ink pad, maybe? It seems to be Chinese.Very cool stand-up magnifying glass for beadwork, etc.Brand new rubber stamp shaped like a calendar. Silver cord. I don’t know what it’s made of, but it would be great if it was conductive!Brand new set of tiny 8mm letter stamps.Brand new stamp pads, green and black.Very handy file set.Bondic. I think it’s a glue thingy? I will have to Google it.Rub-On metallic colors. I can think of some projects I might use these on.Scratch Removal Cloth – removes scratches from paint. Maybe I will try one on my van.Yoku Moku tin. Probably originally contained cookies.Kind of a tangle.Besides the tangle of jewelry pins, a bag of jewelry pins, a nickel, a pushpin, safety pins, a tangle of gold wire, jewelry clasps, a necklace with knots in it (says “sterling” on the clasp) and some black cord.Paint palette, I think.Watercolor paints.
Pretty neat stuff, huh? The magnifying glass and files alone are worth much more than $5.00. If you know what is in the mystery tin, do tell!
The pièce de résistance of our day for me was this:
Finally, I got an old typewriter!! I’ve been looking for one for a long time that was in good shape and the right price. Yay!! (It’s still in the car because it weighs a ton and I need to clear a space for it before I have The Hubs bring it in.)
So a great day for estate and garage sale-ing! Success!!
I got new hiking boots! I went to REI because my old Ahnus have a lot of miles on them and are looking a bit wonky, and I needed some new waterproof boots for fall, winter, and spring hiking. I was looking for a pair I saw advertised in an email I got from a different outdoor gear company, but REI didn’t have those. I tried on a pair of Altra Lone Peak mid-high shoes and although I wear regular Lone Peaks for summer/dry weather hiking, I didn’t like the mids as much. Then I decided to try a couple of other pairs and liked the La Sportiva pair. Then I tried the wide women’s size and I liked that better for the wider toe box. Then I was disappointed because they only came in brown and not black, but THEN I realized that the men’s version came in black/gray and would have a wider toe box. And THEN the lady helping me told me that she has these same shoes, and they are very grippy and she loves them. So I was sold, and I can’t wait to wear them on Friday for our hiking adventure! (And if they don’t work out, I can return them, that’s why I buy my shoes at REI!)
Ahhhh…nice, peaceful, goes-with-everything black.Grippy Vibram soles — look at those lugs!
Don’t forget to read the other installments in this saga — (1), (2), and (3)!
First…my oops. I couldn’t see into the magazine pockets of the table while I was staining it outside. I had brought my flashlight out to shine into the pockets to see if I missed any spots, but its batteries were dead and I didn’t go back in and get another flashlight. When I brought the table in to the house, the light illuminated a couple of glaring spots that weren’t stained. So when I should have been applying poly, I had to spend more time staining. Arrgh!
How did I miss that?Hard to reach area.
After I stained the entire inside of the magazine pockets I checked the table and found other places I had missed, so I went after those spots. Many of them were cracks and crevices where I had to use my thumbnail in the rag to push stain into the ridges and crannies. This was made easier, however, by the fact that after rummaging around in my sanding/refinishing bin I found a whole box of gloves that are a more normal size than the yellow ones I bought. Yay! I really need to take a good inventory before I start a project, don’t I?
See that small orange area in the crevice?A box of gloves. They are size XL (belonged to The Hubs) but still better than the yellow ones.
I went to the TV tray to start with the poly on it but when I looked at the top there were areas where the honey oak color was peeking through the kona stain, so I wiped more stain on it and left both projects to dry AGAIN. Sigh. It’s weird, because the top of the tray was pretty much bare wood, and I don’t know how that honey oak showed through. It’s hard to get rid of, that honey oak.
Why, honey oak, why? It also looks like there are “rag strokes” on the top. SIGH.
I went out to check the projects AGAIN, and saw that the top of the table just didn’t look right. I got out the stain AGAIN, and used a slightly different method to do the top — I glopped on a ton of stain and just wiped it from end to end with the grain of the wood without leaving any stops in the middle of the top. The stain is fairly fast drying so doesn’t give much wiggle room when you are trying to get a smooth surface. WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT?!
Since by the time the stain was completely dry it was the end of the day already, I didn’t get poly put on the projects that day. Finally on Monday after my errands I put the first coat of poly on the projects. In the meantime the projects were sitting in The Hubs’s small office, which I’m sure crowded him a bit!
When I finally had time again to work on the projects, I started to wipe the poly on the TV tray. I did the top first and did the legs when I did the second coat on the top. I planned to put three coats total on the TV tray top for durability since I anticipate it will be used for food and drinks. I did a first coat on the whole magazine table, except I forgot the inside walls so I did those when I did the second coat on the top. For the magazine table, I’m only doing two coats on the top and the shelves, and one coat on the rest of it.
When applying polyurethane, you are supposed to sand with 220 grit sandpaper or fine steel wool between coats. The can of poly says it should dry in two to three hours, so I waited three hours before sanding, wiping off the sanding dust, and then adding another coat of poly on both projects. I used some synthetic extra fine “steel” wool that I had and that seemed to work well. The table and tray both do look better with the polyurethane on them.
Last, I put the third coat of poly on the TV tray. Once it was dry I folded it up and put it away until we need it! It turned out well and I look forward to using it someday. I put the magazine table to use right away in back of the couch where the magazine basket used to sit.
Next project will be the kitchen table. I have to wait to start that until The Hubs has his days off, since it’s a big piece of furniture and I will need help moving it from the kitchen to the patio and back again. I’m trying to figure out whether I want to take the table top off the leg to be able to get at it better, but haven’t decided on that yet.
Here are the before and afters!
Looks lots prettier than it did, but not as good as I’d hoped.Very big improvement, turned out great.
Takeaways from these two projects:
~ Have better tools to prepare furniture for refinishing if I ever decide to bring home something with a lot of detail again. These tools here would be very helpful. Each one has a different grit of sandpaper and it looks like you could really sand out those small spaces with these.
~ Bring your glasses when you shop, so you won’t waste money buying the wrong thing.
~ Check the supplies you already have carefully to see if there is something you can use there before buying something new.
~ Get gloves that fit, if they exist. It’s hard to get into small spaces and do detail work with giant floppity gloves on. (And check your stash to see if you already might have some gloves that fit okay.) Remember to actually WEAR the gloves the whole time once you get/find them.
SO much easier without the gloves, though.And then remember not to rub your face. I’m not exactly sure how this happened…
~ Sand a lot more than you think you need to. I think I should have sanded the magazine table before I put the stripper on just for good measure, or maybe I should have just skipped the stripper altogether for this project and all its nooks and crannies. For the kitchen table project I will have to use stripper since the tabletop is painted and I want to get the paint off, but I think it might not have been necessary for the magazine table.
~ Practice furniture redos on items that were free or cheap and that you aren’t too invested in, because things don’t always turn out the way you want even when you follow instructions.
And finally:
~ Even if your project doesn’t turn out quite the way you’d hoped it would, be glad that you learned something!
Boy, did we have a yard sale adventure today! First, we went to a sale in south Salem where I found these things:
Sewing Machine Attachments – 50 cents a box!Ceramic hedgehog!Succulent plant for Marnie!
THEN, we went out to southeast Salem in the country to the most awesome sale! It was the lady from Mama Roost vintage, and her husband is the guy who used to have Craig’s Camaro Connection in town, so I was having a super time collecting a pile of goodies and Greg found some good stuff too. There were bags of free things!!
My pile at the sale, and that wasn’t all! I had to guard it carefully, at least 3 people tried to raid it, ha.The Hubs talking with CraigMore of the sale, note the gray ’65 Chevy pickup in the background.
Here are all the things I got:
Vintage Chenille Bedspread and Fur CollarChenille pieces, vintage European linen pieces, lace tablecloth pieces, wool blend pieces – all FREE!Old suitcase for my suitcase stack and A Child’s Garden of Verses bookVintage cotton blanket, Quaker lace tablecloth, tablecloth with ruffle, 3 vintage linen towels.2 oval frames and 1 fancy frame with glass in it – that frame has little flowers on it2 large bulletin board framesEmbroidery hoops and more chenille piecesVery large frame — 24 X 36 for $5.00!Vintage sign holder — I’ve been wanting one of these in case I ever decide to have a booth at a vintage show.And the pièce de résistance — a giant old window for just $10! One pane is broken, but that’s ok!
Can you tell I was having a very good time at this sale? So many wonderful things! She had some denim jackets she had sewn vintage fur collars on, but none were my size so I didn’t get one of those. Everything was such a deal and I am very pleased! Most of these things will be living at my house and won’t be sold, unless I change my mind.
I had a nice time talking to Mama Roost and The Hubs enjoyed talking to Craig about car stuff, and he came away with a tool box, a metal bench, and a wheelbarrow (which he unceremoniously stuffed into my van – I will have to vacuum it again). We had to go home with the treasures in the van and take the big truck back to bring the window and sign holder home. Now I must get to cleaning everything and figuring out what I want to do with it all! I’m thinking of making some sort of banner with the fabric scraps. Or ten banners, there are so many! Wheee!!
I didn’t paint the chairs last Tuesday, but instead waited until today (Saturday) to paint them, partly to let the primer cure a little more, and partly because the weather is only going to be in the 70s today instead of the 90s and paint works a little better when it isn’t so hot. Phase 4 begins as follows:
This side is painted now.
Remember when I said I was going to primer the underside of the chairs and then do the top parts? Yeah…I didn’t. I just set the chairs right side up on their boxes and painted everything I could reach. And you know what? I missed some of the underneath parts and I’m not going to paint them at all. To be honest, I’m tired of waiting and just want to get my chairs back in the kitchen where they belong, so I don’t want any more delays (i.e. waiting for paint to dry). The paint I’m using is Sherwin Williams Pro Classic Semi-Gloss in Whitetail, which is the same color as our kitchen walls.
I painted this side of the chair and checked to see that there were no drips. Then I waited 2 hours for it to dry before turning it over and painting the upper side. While I waited for the paint to dry I recovered the chair seats with the new green Scotchgarded outdoor fabric. It should look nice with the white and I’m expecting the fabric to last a long time since it is easy to clean and meant for outdoor use.
To hold the new upholstery on the seats, I used a staple gun I hadn’t used before. Last time I recovered the seats I just used hot glue which worked fine, but this time I wanted to try the staple gun.
The Staple Gun
At first I couldn’t figure out how to close it after I loaded the staples. I took it to The Hubs who informed me that I had put the staples in upside down. It didn’t occur to me that it would be different from a regular stapler, duh! The staple gun worked okay, except it didn’t shoot the staples in all the way and I had to pound them in with a hammer. I tried many ways of holding it and changed the setting that is supposed to change how deep the staples go, but nothing fixed the issue. Also, sometimes it shot out two or three staples at once.
Not sure why this was happening.
After I cut the fabric I noticed that it had many fold marks, so I got out the iron. I ironed it with an old flour-sack towel over the fabric to see if that would work just in case the fabric wasn’t ironable, but I finally just ironed on the fabric and it worked fine. I used the linen/cotton setting with steam. I forget what the fabric is made of.
This is what the underside of the seat looked like after I stapled the fabric down. Then I suddenly realized that I had covered up the holes for the screws that hold the seats to the chairs. Oops! I thought I might have to take the fabric off and start again, but The Hubs assures me he can get the seats attached to the chairs without a redo.
Not the neatest.But this side looks great!!Painting the chairs.
After a few more rounds of painting/drying, I finished painting the chairs today. I haven’t attached the seats for real yet, I want to wait until the paint is completely cured. Here is one chair, in all its glory. Ta daaa!! They aren’t perfect, but they’ll do. Now to schedule a time to work on the table!
Ta daaaaa!!
Here’s a reminder of what the chairs looked like before:
I like stickers. I have liked stickers since I was a little girl. When I was in middle school they started selling rolls of really neat stickers at the card and stationery stores, and you could buy just one sticker at a time. They were shiny and glittery! It was awesome!
Anyway, I still enjoy stickers, especially waterproof vinyl stickers and decals, and I put them on water bottles, coffee cups, my bear canister, and my car windows. (Not on the paint. Never the paint!) When it comes to the stickers on my car I change them occasionally, because I don’t like to drive my sweet ol’ hooptie around with stickers that are half coming off. A couple of weeks ago I noticed a few of my stickers on the car were looking a bit shabby, so I ordered some new ones.
These are the old stickers:
Two of my favorites, the “Conquer” sticker and the “Onward” bear sticker, were coming off and had turned a funny color. The other ones I intended to replace were the Bigfoot and the one that says “Hiking is always a good idea.” They just didn’t look so great anymore.
I ordered some new stickers and decals from Etsy and they came this last week, so I set out to remove the old stickers from the window. Easier said than done! At least for me. I was using an X-Acto style knife to remove them, and that was taking awhile. The Hubs came out and saw what I was doing, and then went to the shop to get a regular flat razor blade to remove the stickers for me. He just went zoop, zoop, zoop, and the stickers and leftover sticky were all gone! (I won’t use a naked flat razor blade because I stuck one in my thumb once. Ow.)
This is the decal on the passenger-side back window. I hope it stays on for a long time, I really like it.
Here are the new decals and stickers (sorry the window is so dirty, I did run through the car wash last week but it didn’t stay clean very long):
The “Mountains, please” decal and the kitty sticker both have some brown spots, but I am going to keep them until they start coming off the window. I really like the “Mountains, please” decal, and Marnie gave me the cute kitty sticker.
The “Be Strong and Courageous” comes from Joshua 1:9, one of my favorite scriptures.
I really like the King James version (below). “Whithersoever” seems like a lot more places than just “wherever”, ha. It is spelled wrong in this meme though! “Neither” is also spelled wrong, but I like the photo and you get the idea. “Dismayed” means feeling distress or anxiety, typically at something unexpected, or to look around in terror. I tried so hard not to be afraid or dismayed when we were hiking in SoCal and kept coming upon rattlesnakes. Talk about looking around in terror! I don’t know if I succeeded in obeying God’s command there. That’s a tough one sometimes. But thankfully we live in a nice, venomous snake-free area and don’t have to worry about them here!
After The Hubs scraped the stickers off and went back to the shop I realized I had forgotten the decal on the driver’s side back window which I also wanted to remove. I liked it but it was pink glitter and didn’t really match with the other stickers. That decal looked like this but was a rose-gold color, about 5″ X 5″. Thankfully it came off easily with my X-Acto knife.
I have an idea of something to replace it. I will share it after I put it on the car!
For the last year or so I’ve been trying to spiffy up our fenced side yard (or garden, if you live anywhere but in the U.S.). This year The Hubs had put up a tall fence made from large pallets he got for free, and last week he applied some used motor oil on the boards to help preserve them. Did you know that would work? Reuse and recycle! It doesn’t harm anything, but is obviously not something you would want to use on wood that was going to go in the house.
The Hubs changes the oil in our cars himself so he had plenty of used oil. You can also see our dandelion farm in this photo.
Now we have 4 different styles of fence in our side yard, but since I am going for the vintage “rustic” look I guess it sort of works.
One of the things on the “Honey-Do” list was to put up a bunch of things I wanted on the fence to give it more character. Today was the day for that, so after going to Home Depot to get supplies The Hubs got to work. Yesterday I had laid out each thing on the ground where I wanted it on the fence, so there was no decision-making today and it all went fairly quickly.
First he hung up some old windows he got last year. You can also see the metal “Dandelion Farm” sign, and an old trowel he came across when he was rototilling for the vegetable garden this spring. The 50-gallon drum is covering what’s left of a tree that we would like to get rid of. It was about 20 feet high and very bushy with branches all the way to the ground and The Hubs cut it down, but it is coming back so if it is covered it will be less likely to grow in again. It is a very determined tree.
Old windows.Window and stars, and cherry treeLil’ KittyYou know Bigfoot. I’m not sure why this stump is still here, but now it’s covered with ivy.
I got the little metal kitty from a company in Vancouver, WA called Rusty Birds. They have all sorts of cute animals and other metal art. The Bigfoot was made by The Sis-In-Law, he is about four feet high. They have a life-size one at their property!
Gazing ball, squirrel, container for squirrel corn, old gate, Dandelion Farm sign
The gazing ball above has been around for like 20 years, it used to be sort of forgotten under the myrtle tree and it survived for many years there. This is the first time it’s really had its own spot. There is space on the fence for many more fun things, and I will be on the lookout for anything that I think will fit in. In fact, I am planning to order this shortly. Isn’t it the cutest?
Kitty Biscuits!!
The fence has much more character now, and the patio is getting there with my new bear and container garden. None of this is perfect, of course, and there is still much to be done. I don’t do much yardwork because I’m allergic and The Hubs isn’t much bothered by the aesthetic of the yard, so we have a dandelion farm and 4 kinds of fences. But I am making the best of it, ha.
The Hubs made this fire pit for me. It is also rustic.The neighbor won’t cut down his blackberry bushes so they come into our yard. We left these because some birds live in this section.
As I noted in a prior post, I bought this sign the other day, intending to put it up on our front fence to give the neighbors a giggle (The Hubs doesn’t mow the lawn every week, and our “grass” consists mostly of dandelion greens.)
The Hubs doesn’t especially like this sign, so I showed him a stencil available on Etsy that says “Dandelion Farm” and said I could get the stencil and make a sign with a piece of wood and some yellow paint. He said there’s no fun in that, and that I should make my own stencil, and that it would look better if the letters weren’t so perfect. Now, I am not a person with much drawing talent. I can draw rectangles, and I need a ruler to do that. I said HE could make a stencil, because he is an artist. So, he went out to the shop and came back with a roll of white paper and an old fence board and promptly went to work.
The Hubs, diligently making a stencil
After he finished cutting out the stencil, The Hubs brushed most of the moss off the front of the old fence board and laid the stencil on top. I kept the letter “middles” off to the side so they wouldn’t get lost, and started painting the letters that don’t have middles. I just sort of dry-brushed the paint on (DecoArt Patio Paint in Fiesta Yellow). The Hubs made sure I knew that there shouldn’t be “globs” of paint if I wanted the sign to have a weathered look.
I painted the letters without “middles” first.
After going to pick up a motor and some car parts very graciously donated to The Hubs by Marnie’s Hubs, I got to work on the sign. Since we didn’t have any spray adhesive (and I don’t think it would have worked with the rough fence board), I just held the edges and letter middles of the stencil down and painted around my fingers. Well, and on my fingers.
Here is the finished product. I like all the letters except the M. I should have re-done it before I painted it.
The finished sign
Here is the sign hanging up on the side yard fence. The Hubs wouldn’t let me put this one on the front fence either. He says the neighbors are all trying to make their places look nice and this would look too primitive. (Unfortunately we aren’t trying to make our place look nice, because we can’t afford it yet.) He said we could put it up on the side fence at the top so people could still see it. I think it would look adorable on the front fence and would like to add some other vintage-y looking signs and things, but they would all have to be bolted to the fence somehow so nobody would run off with them! We live next to an elementary school and near the high school, and while we don’t get a lot of kids walking down our street we do get a few crazies and I have had an incident with my doormat, so we don’t typically put decor at the front of the house. I have a few things on the back porch (which is actually on the side of the house) but mostly decorate the fenced side yard.
It does look a little primitive, but still cute.
I have a bunch more things to hang on the side yard fence. I’m hoping The Hubs will help me put all those things out in the next couple of mornings before it gets too hot out. I’ll post photos when the fence is decorated!
Two and a half years ago I wrote a post about a local Pacific Power public service television commercial I remember seeing as a child (read the post “Kite Man” here for reference). Today, I am incredibly pleased to announce that the video, after being lost for years, is finally on the internet! Thanks, Jason Rouse, and thanks to Rob for letting us know where to find it! Here it is:
The Kite Man
Over the last couple of years I’ve realized that I’m not the only one who wanted to see this again and show it to the next generation. It is one of the most read posts on my blog, and there are numerous Facebook pages about the subject, including this one: Search For the Kite Man.
How many of you hear the word “frogs” and still automatically respond “I like frogs.”?
every day's just like starting over 