The last portion of 2017 and the entire 2018 year has been crazy. We bought a 2nd home in Burwell at the end of 2017 (day after Christmas) and remodeled it the first 1/2 of the year in 2018. It is now The Oxford Cottage Craft Retreat House, AirBNB and vacation home…more on that later.… Continue reading Goal Setting and Updates
I rescued some old wooden drawers from the curb that were bound for the trash. I had been trying to find a way to display some of the pieces we had picked up through our travels. I knew I wanted to do some shelving, but I realized that these dresser drawers would be the perfect way to group my stuff together and give me the look I wanted.
I have finished my desk. Things went slower than planned, but eating, sleeping, family and working are things I couldn’t ignore.
Here it is:
I left the harp and strings in the piano to keep the character and charm of the piece. I am so excited. I have actually been working at it for a few days and it is FANTASTIC. The height of the keyboard is perfect and it is so nice having the monitor at the correct height again. It really opened up the floor space and gave me even more room in my studio.
As I am looking at the photos, I realized I forgot to paint the board that I attached to the bottom after I removed the wheels. It is set just slightly back, so when I painted, I missed it, but I will get them done.
Here are a few photos of removing the base and some of the big pieces. Cleaning up the harp with the strings, etc took about 6-8 hours, because I had to use Liquid Gold on a Q-Tip to get between the strings.
I would love to hear what you think of my rescued piano desk. If you go look at this post, you can see the clean up and the story of the mouse.
I have been looking at and just loving old piano’s that have been converted to a bar. I love the piano and I think it is fabulous that these beautiful old piano’s that are not longer functioning are having the workmanship rescued by turning it into something beautiful.
That being said, I have been watching for an old piano that is obviously not able to be saved for the music to turn into my computer desk. I finally found one on Craigslist for basically free, but because I needed it delivered, I ended up getting it for $80. (They only asked $60, but it was a beast to get into my basement, so I gave them an extra $20)
Here is the photo from the Craigslist listing. I knew it was going to have spent time in someone’s garage, shed or even a barn, so I knew it was going to take a lot of cleaning up.
Well, I got started by scraping away some of the parts of the wood that had probably been stained or something like that when it was made. It could have been a shellac, but I just know that over the years, it was very easy to just scrap off with my Pazzles Mat Scraper.
Then I started removing pieces. The right side of the keys were a mess. They had obviously had some mice living there at some point. I found an entire bed, but got it vacuumed out and just pulled the stuff out by hand.
I started to remove the keys from right to left and about 1/3 of the way through, I look to my left and there was a little mouse. I admit, I swore under my breath, because I knew I was going to have to take care of the situation. More on that later.
I finished removing the keys. I threw away the ones from the right side where the mouse house was and put the ones from the left into a box for a future project. (I have big plans…*grin)
I would take a break for an hour here and an hour there to do some work for my job. Then I would go back to removing more pieces.
In the evening, as I turned on the Designer Chat for my job. I was working on things with my computer and I started hearing piano noises. I caught a little bit of it here after I saw him pop his head up to say hi.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw1dZKXC2Ic%5D
We got a few photos of him before we went and got the humane traps from my daughter, so that we could deliver Mouzart to the country when we catch him. I had hoped when I woke up this morning he would be joyfully waiting for me and ready for a car ride. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
I have since visited the hardware store and got some sticky traps. My hope is that he will still find the humane traps, but if not, then I will still get him out of the house in other ways. I may have lost the first battle, but I will win the war.
I’m not going to lie. He is kind of cute, but it is also freaking me out a little. Mice don’t scare me, but they scurry and that usually shoots my heart rate up pretty fast when I’m not ready for it, so I don’t like that part. Plus, sitting here working in my studio is a little rough today, because I am on high alert.
Here are a series of the photos of the initial clean up and taking apart. I will do a full blog on the actual process of creating the desk after I finish up here. I got a good start, but there is more work ahead. First, I need to conquer the smell. (I’m making progress.)
Before I got started.
Since we have moved to Lincoln, I have just not had my craft studio completely unpacked and put together. I have had items in other drawers and cupboards in other rooms and just haven’t been able to finish getting it all organized and put away.
Part of the problem is I came from a custom craft room. I literally was able to be there every step of the way when my custom craft room was built and it was exactly what I wanted. If you haven’t ever seen that room, be sure and jump over to my old blog here and take a look.
This room is much bigger and I didn’t want to do built ins this time…partially because if for some unknown reason we ever have to move, I want to take it with me. Of course, the plan is, we will never move again and it seems that is very likely.
Anyway, I realized I needed help to just get over the ‘hump’ of finishing things off. The base is here and I have a ton of stuff done, but I just need it to be finished, so I can get on to my craft projects. So I hired a professional organizer, Melissa from Solutions by S and S.
A few days before she arrived, I sent these photos to her to give her an idea of what we would be working on.
Melissa from Solutions by S and S is so sweet and professional. I love that she asked me what the purpose of each area was and worked around what I envisioned. She was just able to keep things moving a long.
Things got worse before they got better, but I totally expected that.
4 1/2 hours later everything has a place and I know where things go. I feel so much better and I feel relaxed and able to create. I know I will make messes as I create, but I feel so good to know where everything goes when it is time to clean up. I love that my new custom cabinet is organized and that there is still plenty of room for other items that I’m sure I will find as time goes on. Best of all, everything has a home.
For those in the Lincoln, NE area, I would highly recommend Melissa from Solutions by S and S and for those of you in other places that are ready to get a grasp on your craft areas or any other part of your house, I highly recommend hiring a professional to either get you started or as was my case, help you finish.
Now it is time to decide on paint colors for the tables and to add things to my walls, etc. I can also move on with the idea of teaching classes again, but I’ll save that for another day and another blog.
Okay, so for many years I have really wanted to get an iRobot aka Roomba aka vacuum. I’ve got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty, I’ve got who’s-its and what’s-its galore…..sorry, having an Ariel flashback there…but, I ‘get’ her. I love this stuff.
ANYWAY, my sister aka my enabler, Diane had me on FaceTime the other day and was showing me her iRobot….how “Jetson-esque” is that? Well, Jeff and I had been talking about getting a new vacuum and I realized now was my chance. Plus, I can always return it if it doesn’t work, right? So, I went and ordered the iRobot on Friday and it arrived on Monday.
I got this one here from Amazon. Yes, it is a refurbished one, but I make it a habit to buy refurbished electronics, if possible. I do this for good reason, when an item is refurbished and resold, it is generally an item that was never used and many times not even removed from its box, but before it can be resold, it will have gone through a very detailed check up, unlike those items that come off an assembly line and only 1 out of every 10, 20 or even 100 are checked out. I have never gotten a bad electronic item this way.
I’m not going to lie, I FREAKING LOVE this thing. I have also been watching it ‘work’ a little more than I should, but I’m getting a pretty huge thrill with it. Plus I’m sitting here typing up this blog and my floor is being vacuumed…come on, you have to admit, that is pretty dang cool.
Also, after it has done it’s work, it returns to the base and docks itself for recharging and when it does that, I clean it out. Now I just have to find something that will dust for me and I’m set.
Just for the record….this is NOT going to be returned. I LOVE leaving the house and coming home to a nice clean, crumb free floor.
I wanted to share a 30 second video to show it going under the furniture and vacuuming, but I can’t figure out how to do that yet. But, it also pushed out a soda cap so I could pick it up and put it away. It also pushed out a number of other little things that I didn’t realized had gotten under the bed and it of course, got the dust, etc. This is a pretty handy little doodad and I’m glad I got it.
So this morning we woke up to a house that had all of its walls. At about 4:00pm, we started tearing down the walls between the kitchen/dining area and the living room.
It is “kind of” dirty and messy at the moment, but here is the start. I will be giving updates as we get things ‘reassembled’ and remodeled to the way we want.
Here are some pictures of the walls coming down. Jeff and I had fun doing it and it didn’t take as long as we thought it would. It is so open and amazing.
