Artful Antique Tool Storage and Display

So, I don't really keep this blog up to date anymore. All of the things have been happening around here but some of them have made it to instagram....

But overall; I have become a social media slacker. #firstworldproblems
This is a post I wrote a long time ago and was just waiting to take a final picture for. Today is the day!


I have a thing for antique tools and industrial trinkets.

They are such a beautiful combination of form, function, elegant design, and craftsmanship. You can look at them and truly say 'they don't make em like that anymore!'. Because this, while it does a great job, is darn ugly:

Bumblebee jr.

My engineer grandfather was a man of many tools. A good example is his file 'collection': off the top of my head I'd say he had at least 20, with more than a couple duplicates. Since he passed away I have been fortunate enough to inherit some of his treasured tools and hardware items.

Sprout gazes into the distance, lost in her dreams of becoming a lumberjack.
Alas, she knows it's a dream that cannot be.....curse you, lack of opposable thumbs!!

I want to use the tools where I can; to keep them, and his memory alive.  I would also like to have them on a wall somewhere to be able to appreciate how beautiful and special they are.

Not so much going for crazy:

Ettore Guatelli

As I am sleek and modern:

source

source

source

source

I like the idea of using a framed out space to delineate that these are pieces for display, rather than 'Hi! I'm sadistic!'. I tried hanging Sprout's saws artfully on a wall, but it came across more 'Preppers' on a good day, and horror flick on a bad one. Those babies came down soon afterwards.

I picked up two matching heavy duty wood framed cork boards from Public Surplus for $10.

Sorry Sara plain & tall, it's Cork board plain & wide's turn now. 

I knew I wanted to cover them with fabric and mount them on the wall, but I had no fabric laying around that sung out to me. As I'd just dispatched with a good chunk of change buying fabric to make slipcovers for the living and dining room seating, I was not about to go out and bleed more money. It tends to stain the fabric anyway.......
There was some gingham laying around that was heavy weight and would tie in with the lumberjack/tool/etc. thing, but the high contrast colors would not work in an already high contrast yellow & magenta room. I dug through a craft box and found bottle of dye, so I did a test run.

+

=

um......what the what??
Not what I expected.

Actually, I think it's way better than expected! The blue dye clearly did not come out blue at all, but the shade of purple it ended up ties in well with the rich magenta wall on which it will live.

progress

As you can see above, I covered the cork boards with the dyed fabric. I started at the top, and using a staple gun attached the fabric going down both sides and then across the bottom. It was important to keep the fabric tight and be mindful of the pattern to avoid wavy lines everywhere. I had one box of oil-rubbed-bronze colored upholstery tacks laying around, which I used to anchor the front in several places.

The dye is not totally even, nor is the pattern completely wave-less.
Oh freekin well! I'll be putting tools all over the thing anyway, and there are too many other things to worry about; like when will I get around to laundry/sleeping/riding my scooter/etc.? Yeah I'm 30 and said scooter. Whatevs.
I put the better of the two panels right above the desk, and hung the other one wonky-side-to-the-window. (Wonky side pictured above)

I used silver push pins to hold down each item because they don't distract you visually from the tools.

board for all the small tools

Because these are HEAVY, I used 50lb wire in a triangle method to distribute the weight and ensure the structural integrity of the frame.

will be hung from the horizontal section on a anchored screw

I did not have enough D-rings, so rigged up a different kind of bracketed attachment at the bottom of each frame.

thats dust from drilling, not crumbs

It worked great and validates my hardware-hoarder tendencies.
I think Grandad would be proud.

hey there craiglisted (free!) mcm day bed, let's snuggle
and pray no tools attack us

-Lindsay

It's My Cat in a Box

Mr.Beans loves him a good cardboard box. He's a cat. That's what they do.

cheezburger.com

His favorite spot to sit is at the junction of the entryway, kitchen, living room, and dining room. From that vantage he can see everyone and everything going on. When I put a cardboard box there, he's in heaven.

cheezburger.com

Because of the location's high visibility, leaving an old shoebox there is unattractive from every room in the living space. I had thought of building him something, but Public Surplus did me one better and presented a hilarious alternative. He jumped in that thing no more than 3 seconds after I put it on the floor, and looked very pleased with his new wheels.

This is what a happy Beans looks like.
He's stoic and whatnot.

My 4 year old brain took over at that point and I proceeded to push him around the living room hollering 'wheeeeee!!' Animal abuse says you, but he was actually really enjoying it! He first bent down and looked out the front 'window' of the bus, and then lost his $#!t attacking the moving wheels.
To Mr.Beans' credit: he puts up with my overly affectionate and ridiculous behavior towards him very well. Exhibit A:

There was a viable, medically necessary reason for him to wear that tuxedo.
I swear.
(this time)

So I've gotten rid of the perma-cardboard box that used to live at his command post and replaced it with the bus. He'll still get the occasional box to play in, but the bus is a big visual improvement for the space. And it continues to be a source of entertainment for guests. Or just me on a Tuesday night.

$1 well spent!



-Lindsay

Letting Go of Good Stuff

I have too many ideas and too much stuff to fit in my home.

In my dreaming and object hunting, I acquire really neat stuff for which I have grand plans. Somewhat regularly, I will realize that I'm never going to get around to executing my plan for an item, or it clearly just isn't working in the space. In an attempt to give as good as I get, not be a hoarder, and not create more trash, I take several avenues to move items along the furniture/home goods continuum.

wine rack and console table both interesting, both re-homed

1. I'll generally offer things to friends that seem applicable to their lives, ex. a guy on my team at work was moving to a new place and needed a dining room table: boom! He now has a newly refinished dining set for the low low price of 'Please take it! I'll help you move the thing'.
2. If I don't know of any specific person to attempt to force an item upon, and don't think I could reasonably sell it, I'll post it on Facebook to see if any friends could use it. This is a new strategy that seems to be working, but I'm going to try and keep it to a minimum to not carpet bomb people.
3. When I think the money I could get would outweigh the hassle of selling an item (anything less than $25 I'll just give away), I will post it on Craigslist for sale. This recently got me a cool $100 for an antique teacher's desk that cost $20.

Before, from PublicSurplus. Covered in tape with broken drawers.

After, with some love, fixes, and refinishing

4. When I have something that someone could want, but is odd, piddly or I want gone asap, I'll Curb Alert it on Craigslist.
Today on my way out the door I unloaded a tub overflowing with huuuge (1x3's) wooden blocks, took a picture, and posted em. I had an art project in mind when I bought these for $5.....but when I picked them they were twice as big and twice as many as I was prepared for. I kept a couple pieces to use for scrap wood, but the rest had to go.

I really should have built a tower out of them on the sidewalk.  Damn.

I don't want to just take take take. I feel like finding new homes for things I can't use helps me maintain some level of good-deal karma. There has been quite a purge of items around here lately, so hopefully I'm paying it forward for future deals.
:)



-Lindsay

Dishwashaaa

In a previous posting, I talked about my kitchen and the 'antique' appliances it came with, and how I'd replaced the stove. The second item on the hit list was the dishwasher.  Here is the story of how it's replacement came to be.

Since my new stove was nice and shiny stainless, I set out to find a new (to me) stainless dishwasher. I know dishwashers are among the cheaper appliances to buy new, but I'd been seeing a bunch of good looking ones being sold on Public Surplus. Turns out there's some mandate that all dishwashers in schools now have to be commercial grade, so they are dumping late model, perfectly fine non-commercial machines.
Through a serious commitment to lunchtime auction stalking, I saw one for sale in my area that looked promisingly modern. Sure it was white, but I could use a little paint to deal with that.
The bidding was fast and furious. Ha, just kidding. There was one other person who seemed interested, and only $10 of interested. The final price of the dishwasher after taxes, buyer premiums, and bid price was ONLY $11.86!!!! I was flabbergasted and cautiously optimistic that it actually worked, seeing as it was listed as condition 'unknown'.

A friend of mine lives out by the school district the dishwasher was from, and as is my normal food-for-help exchange scenario, she agreed to help me pickup the thing and then we'd go have lunch. I'd bought a small desk from the same school district and planned on stuffing both items into in the back of my Subaru Outback. Since a bigger item like the stove had already fit no problem, I had an over inflated sense of confidence about what could be hauled. The guys at the loading thought I was nuts, but both the machine and the not-so-small-after-all desk fit perfectly with the back seats down. I drove home nose to steering wheel and managed to lug the thing up the stairs by myself.

Plumbing is something I know nothing about and as there are immediate, serious, and super bad consequences for doing it wrong: I figured a professional installation would be worth every penny. Luckily, my Bf's parents gave me a very generous housewarming gift which covered all those pennies.

I've since painted the dishwasher to match the stove. I used appliance enamel on the top and bottom, which my girl Mary in the paint department was able to color black.
On the front panel, I applied two coats of aluminum paint to ensure good coverage. When they were dry, I painted on a third coat that I let dry halfway and then dragged a stiff brush through horizontally. This gave the panel a brushed look which made it look closer to real than just flat painting. I then over-fiddled around and it turned a bit splotchy. I need to learn when enough is enough. Perhaps in another 30 years. It will be an easy fix with another brush-dragged layer at some point, but at the moment, the general appearance of the kitchen is much improved.

Old and New

i take pictures like an off kilter drunk apparently
sorry

Stainless tile backslash post later. :)



-Lindsay

Porch Couch. Say it 5 times fast

There are two balconies off the back of my unit (for some reason that sounds like the beginning of a song or a pickup line to me, but anyway) facing the lake. The view is lovely, they are exceedingly private and were two of the many reasons I bought this place. I have been working to turn them into usable, comfortable spaces for myself, the  fur-balls, and guests.

Below are some MLS pictures of the space pre-me.

dining room/living room balcony

Master bedroom balcony

the view, with the lake just visible through the full trees

My general goals for this year with the living area balcony have been:
          - keep kamikaze cats from launching off in pursuit of birds
          - seating to accommodate several people comfortably
          - have a flexible space which can accommodate open air projects (ex. furniture refinishing)
          - plant something pretty
          - plant something to eat
          - make an interesting, but not view-obscuring plant stand
          - get rid of nasty indoor, but used outdoor, carpet
          - something to lounge/take a nap on
          - somewhere to set for food and drink
          - make the most of the wall space with thoughtful decoration
          - provide some sort of lighting until electricity can be brought out

I've made progress on every point, and have more goals for next year, but in this post would like to tell you a little bit about my friend: the porch couch.

Porch couch lived many months or years (I'll never know for sure, but that's ok, it doesn't pain me) unloved and undervalued, as boring and stained seating somewhere in the Fairfax County government system. I found him through an amazing adoption website for abandoned institutional items. Public Surplus. I feel bad for all the cast off little things, so I adopt (probably too) frequently. I'm so grateful that P.S. could bring porch couch and I together for the low low adoption fee of $27.58. As my dad pointed out, I couldn't even buy the wood to build it for that price.

poor little guy, just look at that unfinished oak

I got him home via 495, up the 8 stairs to the door, through the house, and standing up vertically in a corner of the porch; thanks to the muscle power of unwitting assistants.

Scene: Mom and Dad stop by after dinner to retrieve their truck I'd borrowed for the day to pickup the couch.
Dad [seeing couch still in back of truck]: oh wow. That's a big couch! You can pick that up by yourself to get it inside?
Me [puppy dog eyes and big smile]: oh no! I thought so (really I did, it got loaded into the back so easily. I must have glossed over the loading dock and burly man-helper part), but now I think I really need your help....
Mom [laughing]: It's getting dark. I'll carry the cushions. good luck.

I 'knew' the couch would fit in its intended sheltered nook in the porch, but I definitely wondered if my measurements or PublicSurplus' were off as I wrangled the thing from standing on end to resting on it's legs, because lemme tell you, that sucker has about an inch of clearance on each side when in place. Its fantastic, but I'm glad my knee didn't sustain (yet another) injury, as I thought it might while tweaking it sideways and nearly falling into position.
I wanted a rich dark tone for the wood, and tested out a couple different stains that I already had. A combination of Jacobean and Ebony looked to fit the bill. After removing a surprising amount of tape from the frame, I painted the stain mixture on, and porch couch looked like this:

fake-tan couch

Eeehhhh, not so rich. A little blotchy n orange. Perhaps it originally hails from the shore? (if you catch my [long shore] drift).
Oh my word. Sorry for that groan you just let out.
Anyway, 2 more coats later and a handful of colorful words directed at all the damn nooks and crannies in the frame, it looked great.

As for the cushions - those covers got stripped off and immediately thrown in the wash. Beyond the gross thought that they had been sat on by countless people who had not washed their hands before that tax lien hearing and nervously fiddled with a cushion seam, or crop dusted their ex while waiting for divorce court; they were stained and nasty looking. The covers came out of the wash spotless and bright, but the boring blue, kinda corduroy fabric was not comfortable to sit on and didn't have the look I was going for.
Recycling to the rescue! In my sizable 'collection' (ie. backlog/horde) of fabric, I'd squirreled away the old shower curtains from my last apartment and Al's last bathroom update. These seemed like everything I could want to upholster the cushions: free, bright, related patterns, complimentary colors found in nature, free, water friendly, visually interesting, available, not a grain sack like everyone on pinterest, and free.
I laid out the two shower curtains with an additional outdoor fabric from 'the collection' to make sure they would actually look good in real life and not just my head, and to estimate if I had enough fabric by using the old covers as a template.

This is Sprout. She wants to help.
She's huge (that's the cover for a back cushion she's pretty much covering),
enjoys bird watching, being brushed, and sounding like a squeaky toy.

This helped me figure out that I'd have to do all the top cushions in one shower curtain, and all the bottoms in the other. With the blue striped fabric filling out gaps, I had just enough yardage needed to get them all covered. The green seemed to be the slightly more durable and less stain-able fabric, so to the bottom cushions it went.
To help the manufacturing process go a bit more smoothly, I made patterns out of some more fabric from 'the collection' for which I had no plans.

This is Navy. She does not want to help.
She wants to say something. She's gonna put it out there;
if you like it, you can take it, if you don't, send it right back.
She wants to be on you.
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait..........she......she wants to be on you.

The pattern making phase was slowed down by the puddle of cute that plopped on the cushion immediately when it was placed on the floor, and would not move. But, if these are the times that try crafters' souls: I'm a-ok with that.
Anyway...
I made my cuts so that all the different fabrics would make one large rectangle when sewed together. I did make some mistakes because it was a Friday night when the bf was out of town and honestly, I was distracted by TLC and my glass of wine. But such is life, and you're only gonna see one half of the cushion when its in place anyway, so bottoms up and move along. I completed the assembly of each rectangle with double-stitched seams to keep the fabric from running or tearing under the strain of many *ahem* users, and did a contrast stitch at the joining of each piece to keep the seam lying flat, for additional durability, and cuz its darn purdy. Al especially appreciates a good contrast stitch, and as he is not a big fan of his old shower curtain (not of me using it, just the curtain in general), so I thought this touch would give him something to particularly like about the upholstery. With my rectangles ready to go, I had another glass of wine and made single-piece-style envelope cushion covers. Most tutorials show how to do an envelope cover with 3 pieces, but that's 2 pieces too complicated for me. There's a good single piece tutorial here.
I proceeded to wrestle the covers onto the cushions - seriously; with stiff cushions, the fabric overlap, and tightly fitted covers, you're working for it. It was then I realized the curtains were open and my neighbors would probably no longer talk to me for fear I'd murder them or their furniture. More room on the couch for me I suppose.
Originally I was going to make four more seams on each cushion to make proper boxed corners since the cushions' foam is shaped like a block.

But, it was late and 24 more double-stitched seams were just not going to happen. So, I tucked in the corners (this lady has good pictures of it - thank you google for helping me find illustrations after the fact), put the cushions on the wooden frame, and made a quick lumbar pillow to make it look like a real boy outdoor couch.

Voila! I give you Porch Couch.

short, dark, and sturdy. he's what dreams are made of.

-Lindsay