This 'n That- August 2, 2015

I am slowly catching up to things at home now that the overtime has ended at work. One of the things I need to catch up on before I possibly miss the chance is older episodes of The Daily Show. I am actually months behind, but have caught up to a few here and there including some of July.

I am going to be very sad to see Jon Stewart retire from it, but have to respect his reasons for leaving. I read a good article in today's The Detroit Free Press from Julie Hinds that pretty well nails it as to why I loved the show and him as host. He has been so funny lately skewering Donald Trump, oh man, think of all we'll be missing!

I have been feeling guilty that I am not getting as caught up as I should on taking care of the yard, but it's just been too damn hot! This has been the hottest driest summer since I moved here, and it has been so hard for me to get motivated to get outside because basically I don't feel like sweating like a pig.

I'm hopefully going to complete my latest sewing project of another summer dress today, but would like to get back to working on refinishing the top of the drafting table too. I don't think that I ever featured one of my earliest completed refinishing project before; this antique desk chair I bought from Steve's shop downtown. It had a kind of light brown finish on it, but it mostly needed to be redone because it was pretty nicked up over time. It is actually a very comfy chair.

With the pending move at some point by next spring, I keep thinking about the antique chair I got from Eddree that needs to be re-upholstered. I don't know how I'm going to deal with that yet, but it's definitely in the back of my mind.

Woodworker Frank Howarth

Over on Colossal.com today there is a post on woodworker Frank Howarth who has his own YouTube channel called Frank Makes, for the stop animation films he makes of (at least some) of his projects. Definitely worth a look-see.

Wet Weather and Beautiful Wood

Woody & Boo

It's hard to believe it's almost May. We have had rain every single day for the last week, but are supposed to get a complete turn around this week with it drying out and temperatures in the 70's. I'll be out there mowing in shorts again in a few days, woo hoo!

This weekend was definitely back and forth with the rain, and this afternoon after the last bout of showers, all the cats came in to nap, and Woody and Boo ended up curled up together in the big chair.

With the wet weather, but longer daylight hours I have been getting more sewing and needlepoint in. This weekend I put the collar on the blouse I am working on, and today made the buttonholes and sewed on the buttons. All I have left to do on it is sew on the sleeves and that will be done. The needlepoint is now about 80% done with some of the design and colors still being determined on the fly; but it's coming together.

I don't think I ever featured my dresser in the posts of furniture projects of the past. The dresser itself has a long history. It has a signature on the back and I decided today to try and find information online about it. The signature is Carder & Sons, Kalamazoo (my hometown). I couldn't find anything on Wikipedia, so I decided to Google it. And it brought up a book on Kalamazoo history, and it looks like that furniture company may have existed back in the 1880's. I pretty well knew it was over a 100 years old, and that is strong evidence of it.


It is a very solid and nicely built piece of oak furniture. My personal history with it started back in the early 1980's when my brother Mark gave it to me before he hitch-hiked out west. I had done an initial stripping of the really dark stain on it in the driveway back home, but it stayed in that rough condition until 2006.

There were two things that lead me to start the final refinishing of it; my neighbor Dave passing away, and coming across the decorative keyhole covers in the drawer of my secretary desk. I had figured I better take advantage of having the back deck to work on it while I still had the chance, thinking that I might have to move in the near future (that's where Dave comes in). Well, 8 years later, I'm still here and Dave's property is still up for sale. (This is the short version, the long version is too long).

The keyhole covers were my other
inspiration, because I really wanted to see them on the dresser after all those years. I love the curved upper drawers and curved top as well. My dad had gotten me the beautiful round brass knobs for Christmas one year back in the early 80's, and I found the pulls that complimented them in 2006. I do everything by hand, so it's a lot of elbow grease, but I totally love very minute of it. I use Homer Formby's Tung Oil, I like a natural finish where the beauty of the wood shows through.

The weather was good starting in April that year, so I went to it and got the dresser all sanded and refinished within about a month. I would go on to refinish 4 other pieces of furniture by October of that year. I was really on a roll, and the weather was good all summer.

My desk is finally done!

Woody & The Late, Great Miss Kitty

I finally finished my desk (see pictures below)! It was my goal to put this desk back together on my Christmas break this year. It took two days, and I was actually a little worried when I got started because I did not document anything as I took it apart, and that was 3 summers ago.....

The picture at the top is reference for how it was before I started. The finish was not a consistent color and the wood pulls were different sizes too. I think it's an old army desk from one of the bases here in Washington, I bought it from my friend Steve Stimson from his former antique shop.

The wood is maple, and it is a nice sturdy piece of furniture. The chair I also got from Steve, but at a different time, and it is also maple with some beautiful grain patterns here and there. I refinished the chair in 2006. 

Woody & Pauline

 

It looks like I will have to compete with Woody and Pauline for this spot when I need to set up my sewing machine...

This n' That

I love the Greek Fest, and went twice this year, with Jo on Thursday and Jo, Denise and Debra on Saturday. As always the food was fantastic, and the weather was sunny and beautiful. I was hoping that more of the Around the Corner gang would have joined us, but hopefully we will have a nice crowd at Christmas for the Cookie Party.

I have gotten a lot done on the desk in the last month. I finished sanding, and as of this morning, put the third coat of oil on the last two sections. I will put on one to two more coats, and then the real fun will begin of putting it all back together. The weather is supposed to be nice again this week, after some rain tomorrow, so I should be able to be to get most of that done by the weekend.

Sadly, this Saturday may bring an end to the "Davemobile". The transmission went out on the 1983 Buick Skylark I got from my late neighbor Dave in mid-June, and I cannot afford to fix it. I will be getting the car towed away and sold for scrap, I was hoping it was going to make it 30 years, but that was not to be.

I had fun catching up on the past week of The Daily Show from the conventions. There were too many funny sections for me to embed all of them here. But of course in between the humor were some pretty wry observations as well, I recommend checking them out.

Early August Happenings

I haven't been posting very much lately, because the weather has been so nice, I've wanted to get out in it. I've been working a little on sanding and oiling the last several sections of the desk. I really want to get it ready to put it all back together this winter.

I kind of forgot I took these pictures until I took the memory card out of my camera to download a few things. Sometimes when you are taking pictures it's hard to tell exactly how something is going to turn out and I was very pleased with these pictures of this little frog on the Hydrangea outside my back door. I love these little frogs, and sometimes unfortunately, so do the cats. They like to paw at them and make them jump, but Munchkin killed one the other day when he kept carrying it around in his mouth from one place to another. I know that he doesn't always mean to hurt things, for him it's curiosity mostly.

A Sunny Saturday

Pauline - Saturday, May 19th

Tom Cat - Saturday, May 19th

It was such a nice week weather-wise, and I'm glad I spent most of the day working in the yard and enjoying the sunshine with the cats before the weather turned.
After mowing, I had to trim a few sections of the apple trees that were covered in tent worms; those things are so disgusting. The trees used to get them really bad a long time ago, so I'm glad it was just a few spots, and within arms length for me to take care of it.



I worked a little on sanding one of the sections of the desk that I've been working on for 3 years now.
I hope I can get it finished this summer, at least the sanding and oiling of the wood. I can always assemble it inside once the weather turns cold in the fall if it comes down to it. Then it will create the dilemma of what to do with the table that is in it's place.    

I am getting ready to watch the last episode of Series 2 of Sherlock in a few minutes; I think it's going to be a nail biter. I was really bummed this past week when I saw that NBC is not renewing 'Awake'. Just like when Detroit 1-8-7 was cancelled by ABC, it's really frustrating to see something so well done getting tossed out in favor of the crap that will be on in it's place.          

The Secretary Desk - Part 2

My friend Jo said she was curious about what the secretary desk looked like before I refinished it. This is the only detailed picture I took before I stripped the desk itself.
I started with the drawers and stripped and sanded those first, you can see the bottom drawer here for comparison.

The cubby holes were a bit more work to sand, but they are so handy for my monthly bills. The actual fold down desk part was no longer part of the desk when I got it, but I actually like it open like this.

 This picture was taken after it was all stripped and I was still in the sanding stage. I managed to get it all done in one summer, the weather was more co-operative back then.

It was kind of awkward to have to lug that in and out the back door when I worked on it on the back deck. I got a work out that summer!

The Secretary Desk - Part 1

 I got this desk from my friend Steve Stimson when he used to have his antique shop downtown called The Lone Wolf. It was my sixth refinishing project that took me the whole summer of 2007 to complete.
It was kind of bittersweet to strip it, because it had a really cool gold stencil on the drawers and the lower frame. But the paint was really in bad shape in a lot of spots and somewhere along the way someone had spilled some white paint on the side. So I decided to tackle it.
It turned out to be made of beautiful Tiger Maple, and I used a simple finish to let the grain of the wood stand out. It was worth all the work.
I put new casters on it, and it rolls around much easier (and quieter) than before. The cool thing about refinishing a piece like this, is that it is not going to be perfect when you're done, because it has it's own unique character.

 I had never noticed when it was painted black that the drawer pulls were not evenly placed on the drawers. And not only that, but not all of the pulls matched; one was clearly homemade. It originally had those half-dome style pulls, but I had to go with the round so that it didn't look totally weird when I was done.
The other desk I got from Steve, is an old Army desk (possibly from Fort Ebey on Whidbey Island) and is something I hope to finish this summer. I started on it in the summer of 2009 I think, and got the drawers and the top all stripped and refinished. But circumstances have prevented me from finishing all of the base, and I really want to get that back together.
I don't have any pictures of that project yet, so that will be for another post, at another time...