this weekend mathew and i spent a lot of time in our separate factories…
mathew was in the garage, a.k.a. his shelf factory! in true mathew fashion, it was only after he’d had all 16 shelves cut, glued and clamped that he began to question why he made them so complicated… he used plywood but wanted to have a fancy front edge that would show (similar to an original built-in cabinet in the hall) so that involved adding a small strip of solid wood to the fronts.
here they are after the solid wood has been planed and routed. beautiful, huh? worth the time? probably…
to match all the other wood in the office, finishing involves sanding, staining and 2 coats of tinted poly.
i thought it was fun that each shelf has a very different wood grain. mathew used whatever wood he had lying around…
here are some of the shelves in place. the final cabinets will have doors with wood and glass. oooh…
meanwhile, upstairs i was working in my “chair factory” re-covering some chairs we’ve had since college, that i first re-covered about 10 years ago. the fabric made me nervous though… when i picked it in the store it seemed like a fun choice but when i brought it home it screamed, “SHINY!” it’s a gold tapestry type fabric with matte red and gold circles. fairly low-key, right? haha.
i got to work and after some trial and error and a little help from mathew…
…we have new chairs! the thing that makes them extra new is a nice layer of foam cushioning on the seat.
if you ever decide to do this at home, a word of caution: if you have chair backs that curve in two directions, make sure you buy a fabric that has some give. i’m an experienced seamstress but these chair backs proved to be more difficult than a fitted pair of pants. with mathew’s suggestion to cut on the bias (he pays attention when i talk about fabric?!) and darts across the top we finally got these chairs to work! they are still shiny, but super-comfy and we like them. mathew is even considering making 2 more chairs to match so we can have a complete set..!
and in between the shelves and chairs we had a visit from mathew’s sister eva and our friend bob. (left) after spending the day at the always awesome, hardly strictly bluegrass festival, eva came over to take a power nap before her 11pm student nursing shift at kaiser. we got to catch up with her during a late meal of homemade pizza. (right) and bob was in the neighborhood and dropped by for a visit. of course, whenever an architect or engineer drops by there’s always lots of discussion inside and out about what to do next…
and it wasn’t all shelves and chairs this weekend. (left) mathew filled the gap between the two different crown moldings. better, huh? he also filled the gaps between all the tin ceiling tiles. i painted the bay window alcove ceiling, filled, sanded and primed the outside window sills and painted all the wall touch-ups, because “oops” happens.
(right) when mathew went to sand and put the final coat on the outside window sills he decided to scrape and sand the surface just beyond that as well, because it REALLY needed it! of course i don’t have any before photos, because it was just ugly and embarrassing… we cannot wait to have new paint on the exterior of the house! we’d hoped to get it done before the winter but since rain has already started it will have to wait till next summer. we’ll have almost a year to figure out what colors we’ll use…
hope everyone had a good weekend!