Sunday, January 26, 2014

Benched

Finally, time to post! I've been hard at work last weekend and this one, finishing up the project my terrific husband started earlier in the month. What project, you ask? Only one that's been on his to-do list since September, when he received as a gift funds toward a woodworking project  He promptly purchased the supplies he needed to make a workbench as directed on this website, which he planned to modify for use as a potting bench. Of course, no sooner did he plan to get started then he found a job. This was of course fantastic news, and it's a great job that he likes very much, but all the free time during the week he had planned to devote to woodworking vanished rather quickly.

This was all well and good, but we realized recently that the time was approaching to start seeds indoors if we wanted to be able to transplant them at the proper time this spring. This meant that he had to get started, and soon.  So he did.

It took him a little bit of time to make all the cuts, and a few hours here and there for assembly. His mother (best mother-in-law ever!) stopped by last weekend and lent a hand with assembly as well. Over the course of the past week, I have put 2-3 coats of waterproofing onto the surfaces of the bench that we think could potentially get wet, sanding in between each coat. I hope to never have to use that stuff again; the fumes were terrible and I was very nearly sick. Serves me right for trying to apply the first coat at night in a poorly-lit room such that it took ages, but I was excited and wanted to start right away. The first coat took five days to dry, but I brought in the space heater for the other two so as to keep the room above 50 degrees, and was able to finish the other two coats this weekend. It is not perfect, but it'll get the job done.

There were many photos taken during the building and assembly processes, but I unfortunately cannot post them because the hubby is away on business and he took the camera with him. My fault for not uploading them before he left. I do, however, have photos of the finished product, complete with artwork that I framed this weekend and installed on either side of the bench using brick hangers.

The end result? See for yourself:


Ta-daa! Not bad for amateurs, eh?

(L): The kale and asparagus posters were a lovely gift from my sister-in-law,
who obtained them through her employer, Island-Grown Schools, on Martha's Vineyard.
The posters were designed by Hayes Design Studios and illustrated by Ashley Chase.
(R): The blue poster is a woodblock print of The Mountain School in Vershire, VT.
My husband spent a semester studying there in high school. The original frame was trashed,
and it was too important to let languish.  The artist is Sabra Field.

 Atop the bench are glass jars to be used for canning.


With the grow lights installed. We have two shelves
for starting seedlings and for growing greens,
and the bottom level for storage.

With the top grow light on to show the difference.


So that's that. Now I'm just waiting on peat pellets for the seed trays so that we can start growing things!

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Rhapsody in Blue

Repainting the house has been a rather slow process; we've been here over a year and have painted less than half of the house. Part of this has been financial as I did not care to buy cheap, low-quality paint. Part of it has been difficulty in choosing colors. I already am leaning towards repainting the guest room and guest bathroom because I don't like the Hollingsworth Green much after all. So I've been a bit tentative in choosing colors. However, the kitchen walls were getting gross because we don't have a backsplash, so that became a priority, and I wanted to paint the walls before we picked a backsplash, as noted in the last post. So I bought several sample cans and put a number of swatches up on the walls. The one Nick liked best was Farrow & Ball's Parma Gray. I was leaning towards a 50/50 mix of the Parma Gray with F&B's Borrowed Light.

 
Parma Gray on the left, Borrowed Light on the right.


Benjamin Moore might have been able to match that combination, but I had my doubts, and Nick thought the deeper color would work well in the kitchen since it's a well-lit room. In poking around online, I found that most folks feel that BM can't match the depth of F&B paint even if they do match the color closely, and that you do actually get your money's worth with F&B. Plus, our kitchen doesn't actually have that much wall space so I knew we could get another room out of the gallon of paint. So I bought the bullet gallon!

The paint is made in England, and our darling little local paint shop didn't have the color and finish (Modern Emulsion) I wanted in stock. So I ordered it Monday, it arrived Thursday, and I picked it up Friday morning. Hadn't originally planned to paint this weekend, but once I had the actually paint I was rather excited about the idea. Spent the first half of Saturday cleaning off the counter tops, washing the walls, and taping off trim and cabinets. By the time that was finished, it was nearly 6 pm which was a bit late to start painting, but I'd already planned on it being a late night. The first coat took a bit over an hour, and then I waited about 3 hours to recoat (should have waited four according to the can but I was impatient).

The results? It's far less gray and much more blue than I had anticipated, but I think that's on me, not the paint. It got darker and bluer as it dried, which was interesting to watch. Yes, I watched paint dry. Nick said it looks almost exactly like he thought it would, and he loves it! I like it - am working on love but still getting used to how very blue it is. I had a friend growing up whose mother had a kitchen in a similar color and she filled it with tacky goose figurines, so I have a bit of an odd association with the color. Need to work on getting past it and trusting Nick's judgement. Plus, it's not done yet; needs a faux roman blind over the window, a new light fixture over the sink, and a backsplash. Then it'll be done. I liked working with the paint very much, though.  It splatters less than the BM Regal, and the odor was quite mild. Used maybe 1/3 of the gallon to put up two coats. Don't know that I would say it's a better paint with regards to depth of color, but I'm quite sure I'm not qualified to judge that.

But enough rambling. See for yourself!

The original kitchen (photos taken right before and shortly after we moved in:





The newly repainted kitchen:


It is very, very blue, but I think we can make it work! Leaning towards a dark grey or brown mosaic backsplash - we'll see.

Where was Nick during all this, you ask? Hard at work in the garage on another soon-to-be-finished project that I will post soon!


Sunday, January 5, 2014

Happy New Year!

A new post for the new year?  I'm only a few days late, right?

There are a few new happenings around these parts. First, I am quite excited about the order I just placed with Seed Savers Exchange in preparation for the upcoming growing season. We have many seeds from last year that we will continue to use, like our carrots, beets, chard and kale, but some veggies needed replacing. Lettuce seeds are only good for about a year, and Nick wasn't at all happy with our broccoli or eggplant. So we've indulged in a few things...Yay seeds! We have also invested in 10 lbs of Purple Viking potatoes from Seed Savers to grow our own potatoes this year. My sister-in-law taught us how to do it using basically a food-grade giant trash can; looks like fun. In order to improve our efficiency at starting seeds indoor this year, Nick's planning on building a whole indoor gardening bench/potting bench setup for the sunroom, complete with grow lights and plastic sides to keep the warmth in (and the cats out) during the cold winter. He has the lumber but hasn't had time to put it together. Time is running out to start seeds, though, so that has moved up on the priority scale.


I've been playing with colors for the kitchen. We're simply tired of not having a tiled backsplash, but would prefer to have a paint color on the wall with which we could coordinate said backsplash. So there are swatches of various colors of gray and blue-gray all over the kitchen walls. Nick has been making fun of my indecisiveness. We're leaning towards Farrow & Ball Parma Gray, which is really a blue with a bit of gray in it. Very pretty. A bit darker than I was thinking, but given all the bright white cabinets it could work nicely. It's one of Nick's favorites and so far he's been right about color choices and hanging artwork...Will decide soon. We like it more than the Benjamin Moore colors, but it's a significantly more expensive paint. However, I would only need a gallon and would probably have at least a third of a can leftover to paint either the sunroom or the master bath....