OhMyGoshILoveIt!

Have I told you lately how awesome I am? Because, really, I am awesome.

Behold, all the wonder of our newly-redecorated nearly-completed master bedroom (click for closeups)!

♫ dum da da dummmm ♫

Isn't it pretty!? OH! Wait. No, not pretty. Very Manly bedroom, right dear?

If you're curious, here's the "before".

I added a mosquito net afterwards, but I'm not sure I'm crazy about how it looks. What do you think? I'm just so sick of bug bites. As I type this I have a mosquito bite on the knuckle of my index finger and it is driving me crazy.
-er.
Crazier.






Here are some more detailed photos.

Headboard.

Side table.
(note cute bead-board detail at the back of the shelf.)

and a general view of the room.

It's only half completed though. I still need to buy that cabinet for extra storage and figure out whether I'm painting the narsty dresser that was there or trolling for a new one on Kijiji. It also needs some wall decor.

But it's a lot better than it was.

Some of the expenses:

Side tables: $26.60 ea.(made 'em)
Quilt: $24 (Quilt store in Kingston)
Appliqued Quilt:  Wedding gift from my auntie.
Headboard: $21.49 (made it)
Lamps: $10 ea. (walmart) I wish they were a little taller. The price was right. I might put something under them.
Fabric storage cubes: $7.27 ea. (walmart)
Fleurs: $4 (walmart)
Curtains: Free (shopping in my linen closet - originally made myself with lace purchased at fabricland)
Mosquito net: Free (shopping in my linen closet - originally purchased at IKEA)
Trim: $35 (Despot)
Wall paint: $45 (Benjamin Moore)
Flooring: $143.04 (Despot - I'm guessing we used 4 boxes?)

Sub Total (because I'm not done yet): $360.27

Dang. It adds up fast.

[sits a little sticker-shocked].

Factor in another $120 for the cupboard and we're talking $480.27. Right. So... I guess I'll be painting that early-ugly* dresser.

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*Early Ugly, at least in my family, is a design style. Like saying "Art Deco" or "Arts and Crafts". Things that are best described as "woopsy" or "ticky tacky" often fall into this category. A subset of the Early Ugly design style is the Early Bordello style. You will not find either of these at the lodge.

More sawdust

In addition to the two cutie patootie nightstand/bookshelves that I created for the master bedroom, I also slapped together a headboard. Here it is on the deck receiving a coat of paint.

I'm not as happy with this project. It still turned out nicely, but I cheaped out on the wood (no, dear, 'frugal').... I frugalled out on the wood and bought dimensional lumber; i.e./ the kind of stuff used for wall studs and such.

The problem with this wood is, well, it's just not pretty. It's got knots in it, and chunks out of it, and stuff stamped on it, and chew marks from the mill blades, and those darned rounded edges! Surely it takes more effort to produce a board with a rounded edge than a square one!? *sigh* It's also darned near impossible to find a straight board without a cup or wow in it.

All this to say, while it went together moderately easily, I spent a fair bit of time after the fact loading it full of paintable caulking (ALEX, where would I be without you!?) to fill the seams and crevices.

Today's lesson: spend that little bit more for the pretty wood.

I made this!

Oooh, I never tire of saying that.

We've already established that I'm cheap and that I like to make stuff. Mum says "You're not cheap, dear, you're 'frugal'".

When I realized I needed nightstands for the "master" bedroom (somehow a room that wee deserves air quotes. It's not exactly grand.) and they had to be diminutive to fit in the space available, I knew my only hope was to build my own.

Enter Knock-Off Wood and her fantastic shelf plans. Ana is my hero. Her design was too wide for my needs, so I rejigged it to narrow them down to 16" wide.

One Monday evening I ditched the captain and the boy (who had softball practice), and took the princess to the Despot, plans in hand. I'm not positive, but I think I heard the store manager cackling and rubbing his hands together gleefully at the sight of me.

Maybe I just imagined that part.

The princess and I toured the aisles, gathering up the goodies I'd need. 1x2s, 1x12s, (also 2x4s, 2x3s, 1x3s and some panelling but that was for another project). Oh, and some wood screws. And some wood filler.

I got some odd looks in the lumber aisles and plenty of "Can I help you?!" offers, but we were good. I had it all under control.

Because I don't have a table saw at home, I talked nicely to Peter (the man with the massive saw) and he chopped up my panelling and 1x12s . What a godsend that service is, and I never would've known about it if Ana hadn't mentioned it on her blog. Peter was impressed with my organization as I was able to tell him exactly what I needed.

The princess clapped and cheered with every cut Peter made. I bet Peter has never had a cheering squad at work before.

We carted all the wood home and I set up shop in the garage. I needed the following tools:
- square
- pencil
- tape measure
- compound mitre saw (loves my saw. Yes. It's my saw. Not the captain's. I got it for a birthday present.) Any old saw would do, but this one is lovely.
- drill
- drill bit (for pilot holes)
- countersink bit
- #8 1-1/2" flat-head robertson wood screws
- robertson screw driver
- wood glue
- sanding block
- safety glasses
- clamps
- wood plane

I probably could've managed without the last two, but I'm glad I had them. The only thing that I wished I had had was a nail gun. Ana, at Knock-Off Wood, recommended using nails, but I just ended up mashing my wood - and my thumb -  with the hammer when I missed, so I switched to countersunk screws. I suspect Ana has a schmancy nail gun. *envy*

One problem I encountered during the build was that my 3/4" laminated pine shelving (the 12" boards) were not the same thickness as my 3/4" thick 1x2 strips. I had to break out the wood plane to shave down the 1x2 strip on the top so that it would be one smooth surface.

Here's my first unit before I used the wood filler to cover the screw holes. My plan is to fit a 12x12" storage box/basket/bin into the bottom shelf and leave the top shelf open. Not bad for my first wood-working project since grade 8!

---

Special thanks to Ana at Knock-Off Wood for the excellent shelf design and instructions.

Tee Hee!

♫ This makes me haaaaaappppyyyy! ♫
[more to follow soon]

Sooooo close

We made some serious headway cleaning up the Master Bedroom last weekend.

The electrical was fixed, and we removed the Lazy Man's Drywall Seam™ and replaced it with real drywall tape and mud. Look how fast I'm sanding. My arm is a blur! (I am so awesome.)

The walls were primed.

I decided, since the existing baseboard differed on three walls out of four to splurge and buy all new trim. $34 (+tx) for 10 eight-foot lengths of 3-1/2" trim? Sold! I'm going to put it around the door frame, too.

And then we painted. Blue Bonnet is SUCH a pretty colour. You'll have to trust that this photo makes it look garish because I didn't use the flash, but it's much much softer in real life (see the photo below). I was anxious because it went on so pale that I thought the blue was going to be indiscernible. It darkened up slightly as it dried, and it is the loveliest, softest robin's egg blue. So pretty. Don't tell the Captain though. He won't want a pretty room.

We got the flooring in on Sunday but ran out of time to fully, properly install the trim. I was bummed. I had really hoped to get the trim finished and the bed back into the room. Oh well. The wall colour is more representative in this photo. You can Oooh and Ahh again about the flooring, if you like.

Next up: Trim, furniture, and decor.

I went to the DC school of drywall taping

How about we all agree that I don't give up my day job just yet. Sound good?

You, see, I really have no future as a drywall mudder. No matter how much my runty heart yearns for an excuse to spend my day tottering around on stilts (I'm allergic to elephants*, so that rules out the circus, too), I just don't have the mad mudding skills to take me far in the land of drywall.

Exhibit A:

I have learned a few things about drywall (this being my first foray into taping and mudding):

1. Fibreglass tape is awesome, sticky stuff.
2. Drywall compound is not the same as spackle. It's gloopier.
3. Having an 8" drywall taping knife is essential.
4. Joining a seam between two bevelled pieces of drywall is WAY easier than joining a seam between, say, a piece of drywall and an uneven jaggedy bit of panelling.
5. You can fix a multitude of sins in drywall compound with adequate sanding.
6. You need full body armour when sanding if you don't want a powder coat.
7. You can't skimp on the layers of compound if you want to hide a seam really well, no matter how badly you want to forge ahead and prime and paint the walls. If you do, the seam will still show.

 That said, I'm satisfied with the results. Sure, it could be better, but It's Just a Cottage. I'll let perfection slide, just this once. And only because I don't have anyone to yell at about doing such a crappy job.

*No. I'm not. Gullible much?

Wanna come visit?

"Yes?"

"Great! Here's what I'd like you to work on. "

 

My sister, Aunt Mlel, and brother-in-law, Uncle Gleg, came to visit the lodge this past weekend. 

I am, quite possibly, the world's worst hostess. If you pass anywhere close to the Lodge, you get dragged into helping out. I'm generally kind enough to let you pick your poison (I have a lengthy list of options), or you can pull something together yourself.

Uncle Gleg headed under the cottage with a drill and some deck screws to secure the cross-supports on the joists to the hangers on the joists (something the inspector encouraged us to do). Of course, I forgot to photograph that, so you have to imagine him down there with the drill.

I'll wait.

[whistling to herself]

O.K.? Ready to continue?

Aunt Mlel, meanwhile, got creative on me and decided she wanted to take a mop to the icky ceiling soffit in the living room. Really? O.K.! Not going to argue with that one. Here's a mop. Heck. Here are two mops. You need a ladder? How about this one...

What surprised me was how effective a mop and some water were at cleaning up 90% of the crud on the ceiling! We still need to replace it eventually with something more.... ceilingy, but at least now it's a bit cleaner.

Once Uncle Gleg was done under the cottage, he helped out with the macrame electrical we uncovered in the master bedroom.

He re-oriented the pointless junction box, found a cover to put on it, and he went on an archaeological dig in the garden shed to find some wiring staples to tack the wires down properly. It's a bit more presentable now. I found the random assortment of wall studs in that wall entertaining. Check it out (I have a non-flashy version but it's blurry, so you're stuck either way):

At least one of those boards might even be load bearing. [claps hand to cheek]

If you're unwise enough to stray too close to the Hodge Podge work vortex, rest assured, we will feed you.

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*Monty Burns is copyright of 20th Century Fox T.V.

Paint paint paint paint paint

Sometimes it feels like all I do at the cottage is paint.

Paint paint paint paint paint paint.

There's nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make anything look and feel cleaner and the lodge could use a super-sized dollop of "cleaner". Painting is something I don't mind doing because the satisfaction of making something look better is immediate. Also, I'm less likely to pound myself in the thumb with a hammer while painting.

If you're curious, these are my all-time favourite painting brushes:

A 2" short-handled sash (angled) brush with nylon bristles and a rubber grip. I could paint forever with one of these little monsters, and they're great for free-handing trim.


The latest area of the lodge to be attacked with a sash brush and some paint is the pantry/tool closet in the hallway. Someday it will be just a pantry again.

Here's what we got when we bought the place:

Remember these? Pine panelling, retro orange plastic inserts?

Zekzy.

Well, here's what they look like today:

Quite an improvement.

I like having closet doors again (made by Handy Dad and painted by Painty Mom) to hide away the mess. Dad is demonstrating the "how to keep the closet doors closed" technique. Because the doors are flat, and square. And the pantry itself? Not so much. Because this is Hodge Podge Lodge. So we'll be buying some door latches to hold the pantry doors closed.

Pedal Boat

If you're a bright bunny (and let's face it, if you're reading this blog you have to be, because I don't attract knuckledraggers), you will have noticed the paddlepedal boat resting on the front of Dad's pontooooon in my last post.We finally picked it up from the friends who were selling it to us. Or, Dad did. He's so awesome.

As soon as the boat appeared, the kids HAD to go out for a paddle. And the captain, being the fun-loving safety-minded dad that he is said "NO!" because it was pretty windy and  the lake was a bit rough.  And it was.

This, in turn, started the "Can we go now?", "I want to go too!", "Why can't we go out in the boat?", "The lake isn't that bad, Dad.", "Just for a minute?" and about 87 other rapid-fire demands/inquiries/complaints.

"What's the worst that could happen?" I ask. "They'll capsize and get wet."
"No." Says the captain. "They'll drift out into the lake and I'll have to go after them."
"Drift!?!?" I respond. "They'll be tied to shore!"
"Ohhhh!" says the captain, warming to the idea, clearly not having thought of tying them up. I am so modest brilliant. What would you do without me!?

To put an end to the badgering, I finally convinced the captain to let them go out, provided they had their lifejackets on and were tethered to shore. The wind would blow them back to land, not out to sea, and if they got into a real mess, we could just haul them back with the rope.

And here are the clearly miserable kids out in their new boat, heading for West Grape Island.

They only pedaled around for about 15 minutes before deciding the lake was too rough, but at least we didn't have to listen to anymore of the whingeing.

Happy Father's Day!

A belated Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. I got to spend Father's Day with my Daddy, or, at least he was buzzing around in the periphery while I spent my day slogging in the master bedroom on the walls and floor.

Here's what he got up to:

A bit of fun with his chainsaw.

One of the prickly hawthorns at the shore is na'more.

And the view is considerably improved from the deck. Though, of course, in my stupor of exhaustion, I forgot to take a decent photo of the improved view.

Was I dropped on my head as a child?!

 Damn you Magic Eight Ball!

There's something not quite right with me

There has to be something not quite right with me when a YouTube video about a store full of used junk makes me sit up and plead with the captain, "I have to go there!!"

(the video is almost 10 minutes long as buddy tours you around the warehouse. Duly warned.)



Right now I'm keen to poke around in their screen doors, sinks and faucets, windows, french doors, regular interior doors, light fixtures, scrap wood, ceiling tiles, architectural gew gaws...

Kijiji, you might have some competition here.

One man's trash...

When we (I'm using the royal "we" here. Really it was Dad and the captain. I was just supervising.) were using sledgehammers to dismantle the cupboard in our bedroom, we discovered a bunch of fabric scraps at the very back of the top shelf.

Most of it was junk, but two pieces caught my eye: a pretty embroidered denim and a soft blue cotton. They had to come home with me.

Nice, no? There's wasn't much of it, so I decided to make two toss cushion slipcovers with the fabric on hand. One side of the cushion is the embroidered denim, while the other is the solid blue.

Because I had limited quantities of the denim, the pillow shams are only about 12.5"x12.5". My pillow forms are 14"x14", so they look a bit like a fat man in a denim shirt at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Why do I only sew pillows? They're FAST! And they're cheap. I made these two in half an hour, not counting the button, and they didn't cost me a bent dime because I had all the supplies kicking around from previous projects.

Check out the little button I added to keep the fat man in his shirt:

Is cute, no?

I don't know yet where these will live. Let me know if you have suggestions.

Demolition derby!!

We missed the demolition derby at the fair this year. Boo.

To make up for lost fun, the boys were set loose in the wee master bedroom with a sledgehammer to extricate an unsightly cupboard... thing... that previous owners had built in one corner. The kids were determined to watch, so they were ordered to stand in the opposite corner with their backs glued against the wall. For safety reasons, you know.

The shelf-y cabinet thing used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

Ahhh. Space.

For the record, the grey-ish coloured wall in the photo is the only section of drywall in the entire cottage. One 4x8 sheet, pretty much. When I see that small section of drywall, the inquisitive side of me asks:
"Why is there dry wall there and nowhere else?"

Presumably because they had to replace the panelling?

"Why did they have to replace the panelling?!"

Water? Ants? Squirrels? Blood splatter?!

And the answers to the questions just spiral somewhere I'm not sure I want to go.

In this photo you can also see the icky underpad out in the hall from the carpeting I ripped out of this room. To the budding CSIs in the crowd, there were no blood stains in the carpet. There was, however, some water damage in one of the corners. I don't know if it predates the newer steel roof or not. It makes me nervous. Anything that has the potential to blow up into a massive and expensive rectification at this point makes me nervous. Water damage is one of those things.

Also, petunia-dwelling rabid doves with long gnashing fangs and crazy eyes. They make me nervous too.

I plan to replace the dismantled shelves of doom with something a bit smaller, but still with adequate storage. Maybe something like this? →

I like that it's white with recessed panels in the doors. But is it too pantry-ish? Certainly the price is right.

I wonder what I can find on Kijiji.....

Slave labour

Funny... when you mistype "slave" (as I just did) you get "salve". In the case of helping hands at the cottage, my slaves are my salves!

The extended Birnbaum family paid a visit the to lodge for the first time this past weekend.

Here's the captain's Sister and Mom getting into That Damned Boat™. Not shown: them getting out of That Damned Boat™ when the captain flooded the motor again. [much gnashing of teeth]

We really need to pay Harris Boat Works a visit to have them look at it.

Eventually he got the boat started and we puttered over to the island.

While they were at the cottage we put them to work. This is the price anyone visiting this year will likely pay: sweat equity. The captain and his Mom took the lawn mowers to the meadow yard. You'll have to take my word for it that she's in the picture. She was tackling the flat open area at the top of the hill (behind the poplars). She definitely got the hottest, nastiest job of the day. What a sport. Doug (our neighbour with a riding mower) came out to help just as they were finishing up. He has a bit of a sick sense of humour, that Doug. I like him.

The captain's sister helped clean up parts of the rock garden around, and in some instances, in the dock. It's such a huge garden and it has been let run completely wild for many years by the looks of it. Definitely an ongoing project. At least I'll have somewhere to deposit my hostas when I divide the ones at home.

Not to be left out of the fun, my own mum got put to work with a roller and paint again. Since she did such a crackerjack job painting the kitchen cabinet doors, I asked her to put a couple of coats of paint on the pantry doors that dad built for me. ♥

It'll be nice when we can use the pantry as a pantry instead of a tool cupboard.

Dad spent some time herding Maggie (Mum and Dad's spoiled baby dog) and the kids on his boat while he gave it a cleaning.

Dad, Eric and I spent the rest of the afternoon demolishing the "master" bedroom, but you'll have to wait for another post to see that project.

TOP QUALITY

Guess what else we found under the bed with the deer clock?

A massive knife set!

And it is TOP QUALITY stuff (so long as you're standing on your head such that "top" is really down at floor level).

You can tell it's TOP QUALITY because the packaging tells you that if you bought each knife individually, this set would cost your $80! (For the record, the 8" chefs knife in my kitchen at home was a little over $100. One knife.) And they're serrated knives, so we know we'll never be able to sharpen them, but that's o.k., because they Never Need Sharpening™. I think they must be made out of adamantium, like Wolverine's claws.

Wolverine. From the X-Men. Ya, o.k. So I'm showing a bit of my geeky side there. Moving right along....

Where do you store your TOP QUALITY knife set? Under the bed of course. With the deer clock. And a couple of boxes of peel-n-stick tiles (giggle), and a newspaper from 2004.

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p.s. marvel comics doesn't know I'm using this image of wolvie without permission and it's their trademark, so let's just keep that to ourselves for now, because I am not in any way affliated with marvel, wolvie, wolverine, X-men, Alex, imagesbyalex.com or really, much of anything. 

p.p.s. Though if professor X wanted to give me some mutant powers, I might not say no. Crud. My geek is showing again. [tucks it back in]