The Grands are coming!

Company coming....tomorrow! And as anyone knows that makes or builds things, dusting kind of gets placed on the back burner. My daughter and her husband opted to stay in the shed on the air mattress with the baby while the six children are here in the house. While Dear Hubby was cleaning out the shop I had a bright idea...The dust is a little thick around here so why not resort to the big guns!

After the house got a thorough dusting, the guest bathroom was scrubbed from head to toe and stocked with towels. The office is going to be the bunkroom for the boys so I removed all the extra furniture and pictures that were against the walls and put them in my shop.

We'll be spending time with them and all my projects will wait for me. The office is ready now

and I will get the "honeymoon suite" out in the shop ready for my daughter and her husband and baby. We are so looking forward to their visit and I will post pictures of different things we will be doing while they're here. Have a great day!

Solving Problems...

I kinda left you hanging didn't I?! The first problem wasn't a major one, just something that was going to take a bit of time. The original roombox didn't have a front on it

and I wanted to be able to have my sister-in-law hang this on the wall and also keep the contents pretty much dust free. Dear Hubby cut a new back piece for me but it somehow developed curvature of the spine while it was in my shop.

The curve was too strong to force flat with the 1/8" plywood that came with the kit so the back piece went for a swim in the bathtub.

I let it soak for awhile in hot water and just before it wanted a glass of wine and a back scrub, I took it out, dried it off a bit and took it out to the shop. I put it on the floor and looked for something heavy to weigh it down. My husband's belt sander was handy so I put that on there along with a couple of paint cans. Then I thought, "Wait a second, belt sander on wet wood equals rust," so I put a piece of plastic between the wood and the sander.

Dear Hubby would have wondered how his belt sander got all rusty on the bottom...I came back into the shop and decided to address some of the window openings. The are cut with rounded corners and my window frames didn't fit into them.

The folding box cutter knife made short work of squaring up the corners

and I got first one sheet done,

then a second one.

I would have tackled the third one, but my hands were getting tired. I'll try to get this glued together this weekend as I might be on hiatus for awhile...I have grandchildren coming to visit! So I hope you are all getting a little taste of spring, have a great day!

Cabinets and Skeletons....

I like how these cabinets look together!

Today's the day to sit down and put the first coat of paint on them. I don't remember if I told you the name of the color on these. It's by Ceramcoat and is called "Sweet Pea"; and the outside of the bottle isn't even close to the actual color.

One down, one to go!

Now that these are both done, what to do while the paint dries....

I think I'll take another look at one of those topless cabinets.

I needed something for the top...hmmm, maybe there's something left in this old kit that I cannibalized a while back for another project.

After digging around in the box of pieces, I found that the top to this dresser kit will fit with just a bit of trimming.

I measured and marked the piece and cut it with my exacto knife.

That looks pretty good!

I think I will remove the large wooden knobs and find something else. I just used my wire cutters and carefully twisted them out.

I save them as you never know when you might need something like this. I started poking around for some alternate knobs and came across these brass brads.

I glued some round wooden beads on the bottom too. Hmmm, just not sure.

I was ready to start sanding when I remembered the dust mask. After the incident the other day, I put the package up high where the minions couldn't get to them. I confidently snapped one on and heard cackles coming from the direction of the tall cabinets. It's the skellies!

I hadn't seen them since we got back from the bike trip this summer. They were glad to see me but kept elbowing each other and smirking...well, I think they were smirking, it's hard to tell with these guys and I swear that guy in the middle is mooning me. When I asked what was going on, they just mumbled something about, "nothing..." Needless to say, I was suspicious. One look in the mirror told me the truth.

The minions couldn't reach the dust masks, but the skellies are good climbers and not bad artists either...So I just sat there looking like a skellie while I sanded away on this little cabinet. I decided I didn't like the round feet either, so pulled those off and rummaged around through the same furniture kit and found a bottom molding piece. I think this will do just fine.

Time to put this aside for awhile, I have another problem to solve. Have a great day!

Finishing Work on the Tall Cabinet...

After cleaning up the kitchen, I decided to go into the shop and start the third fabric bolt cabinet. The first thing I did was burn off a bunch of calories sawing the overhangs off of each piece.

After all of these were cut flush, I started to reach for my little yellow sander. The minions stopped me. "Remember to use your dust mask!" they said. Since I am an obedient master, I put it on only to have all of them laughing hysterically. (They do that alot...)

They got ahold of my dust masks again!

After the hilarity died down, I told them now they owe me those banana donuts I've been smelling for the last two days. They wandered off muttering that I was a party pooper. What I put up with around here....So, here we are back at the cabinet sanding away.

These cabinets are alot easier to sand while they are in pieces so each piece got a thorough sanding and I got them ready to be glued together.

Here it is all assembled!

Tomorrow, we can start painting. My sister-in-law has a cat and I found one that I think will work in her quilt shop; that's her on the lavender cabinet...or is it a him, I'm not sure now. Anyway, after all this work, I think I deserve a cookie don't you? Have a great day!

I Love Saturday!

I couldn't get to sleep last night so wandered into my shop to start putting together one of the fabric bolt cabinets. Dear Hubby was contentedly snoring, so I didn't think he'd hear me making a ruckus in the shop. I pulled out this cute little hand sander that I found in my toolbox.

The sandpaper strips stick with velcro and the yellow part is a soft foam that doesn't hurt your hand and I can't for the life of me remember where I got it! It's an inch wide and 3 1/2 inches long and I searched the internet and couldn't find it anywhere. I will keep looking as I just love this thing and I think you will too. It worked perfectly sanding these little hutches and got into corners that my fingers couldn't. As soon as I find the place I bought it, I will let you know so you can buy one too. Once I cut off the overhanging parts of the hutch, I glued the parts together and into the clamps it went.

I used pony beads for the feet on these and the feet on the first one have snapped off a couple of times. I tried this glue on the feet for this one, hopefully it will hold better.

Here it is ready to paint!

By then it was 1 in the morning, so I decided to go to bed rather than start the next one. Today, I decided to make some homemade cookies as it has been awhile since I made any. I had this recipe held up with a magnet on the side of my fridge so thought I would give it a try.

Mmmm, looking good so far.

I took the first batch out and turned to put the next one in. When I turned back around, there were the minions each claiming a cookie!

I was a little hesitant to take this guy's cookie away...

They came out delicious, even with the minion footprints. I used mini chips and I think they would be just as good with 2 cups of chips instead of 3 but I will leave that up to you. :) I wandered out to Dear Hubby's shop and he was cleaning out his old toolbox...guess what I scored:

Even if I don't use them, when Bill is working in the house, many times I have the tool he's looking for so he doesn't have to go all the way out to the shop. So it is 70 outside today and the sun is shining, hope you are having a great day!

Topless Cabinets! Oo! La! La!

Now that the sideboard is done, I got started on the remaining two fabric bolt display cabinets. This is the one that Dear Hubby is going to cut on the bandsaw.

I'm a chicken when it comes to bandsaws..heard a story years ago about a girl who sawed her hand off by accident in an art class. So, I leave the bandsawing to my Hubby who is much more familiar with it. I have 2 of these cabinets that I need to have the tops cut off of, so Bill set up his saw and very carefully cut them for me.

So now I have the two tops that I need.

I was also left with two topless cabinets that look like they could be made into something too....Ahhh! Don't get sidetracked!

As I was typing, Bob was being very "helpful" by reading everything out loud.

When he got to the word "topless", pandemonium broke out in the shop and before I knew it, all the minions were scrambling up onto my keyboard to take a look-see.

They were all disappointed and I said, "Hey, this is a family blog!" So they all moaned and went back to mind their shops. I smelled banana donuts cooking earlier, so maybe they will share some with me...Yum!  I just set the pieces together on my bench and realized I had a shelf to remove and also some pieces to saw flush with the sides.

As long as these fit tight against each other, they will fit on the back wall of the quilt shop. After a few seconds in the microwave, the shelf was removed.

I thought while I was there, I would try removing that middle door from one of the topless (still talking about the cabinet guys....stay put!)cabinets. Silly minions. I saw a cabinet in Walmart the other day with a shelf in between the two doors and like how it looked. It took a little longer to get the door off, but I succeeded.

This has some real potential, I am going to see what I can do with this after I've done the quilt shop. Oh, and did I mention that I cleaned up another section of my shop?! I have been trying to work around piles of other projects and finally decided to separate and organize all the stuff that wasn't part of the quilt shop. So here it is, all cleaned up and ready to make another mess on! LOL!

Have a great day!