House and Chair Progress, End of July

Since last week there has been a flurry of progress on both the chair and the hill country house!

We have accomplished a lot this week! (Still looks like a tornado hit it, but things are really starting to happen.)

• We have placed the existing cabinets in position to double check our measurements. 
• My dad has been busy building some matching cabinets to fill in voids.
• We've chosen our countertops.
• We've arranged for a local stone yard to install limestone rock on the kitchen walls. It will match the fireplace.  
•  Electrical wiring is completed. Dry wall will go up starting today. 
• Flooring should go in when the dry walling and stone work is complete, hopefully beginning the end of next week. 
• Our sinks and faucets have been ordered. (They have to be here before the countertops can be templated.)
• We've confirmed that the antique fireplace summer cover will fit nicely above the new range mortared into the limestone. (Isn't he cute! I expect to see him there in front of the new range a LOT when the house is finished! I'm referring to my husband, not the summer cover, although it is cute too and will also be in front of the range!)

•     Plumbing has been installed for the new laundry room.
• I bought an antique Secretary at a local thrift shop. It will match an antique bed I had in storage at my parent's house. $160
  

While here in Pleasanton, my sister and I are still working on the upholstering projects when we can find the time.

I bought an ottoman for $10 to recover to match the chair I'm reupholstering. It is in pretty rough shape, but has good springs.

I began removing the old upholstery and found layer upon layer of tacks! Under this were even more layers! 

On the chair, I covered the springs with burlap, attached the edge roll to soften the hard wooden edge, and put the webbing on the seat back.

I attached the "pulls" (pieces of burlap adhered to the foam with spray adhesive and used to soften the hard edge of the foam and attach it to the seat).

Over this went the dacron. 

Then I started attaching my upholstery fabric. Yes, it's a little "funky", but this pinto pony fabric fits the hill country theme! It was a $66 a yard fabric on the clearance rack for $12 a yard. It is a heavy weight upholstery fabric and I think it will add a whimsical touch to my decor! 

Here the seat is completed, along with decorative nailheads around the legs. The arms are not finished in this photo.

Here you see the ottoman with its dacron over the stuffing)and the chair together. The ottoman still needs legs. The foam is cut to fit the back of the chair. 

Its beginning to look like a chair now!

We'll be spending a long weekend at the hill country house to make sure everything is ready for all the work that will begin next week.

Today is our 44th wedding anniversary, so we will celebrate by eating out tonight on the San Antonio Riverwalk! It will be a wonderful diversion after all the work!

Have a great weekend!

Tying Springs and a Mimic in Nature

My sister and I got a little bit more progress done on our chairs. We got the springs installed  and tied.

We also took templates of the seats and seat backs to the upholstery supply shop to have foam cut for them. We really thought they would just cut it while we waited, but they had a backlog and we will have to go pick them up later this week. That means the progress has come to a halt for now.

In the meantime, while in the hill country this last weekend, we saw even more wildlife. First a huge road runner ran by with either a lizard or snake in his beak. (Sorry, he's way too fast for a photo!) All I could see of the captured meal was a white underbelly.

While sitting on the back patio, we saw a Hummingbird Moth ( Hemaris thysbe, the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth or Common Clearwing) enjoying the little pink trumpet shaped flowers of a shrub nearby.

Can you see him? He hovered over each flower just like a hummingbird does and sucked the nectar with his long proboscis. This beneficial moth is often mistaken for a hummingbird. He is about 2 inches long. 

We're off today to choose countertops! I'm really nervous about it because this is an expensive item and I don't want to make a mistake. It will be installed after the cabinets are finished.  My dad is making some extra cabinets to match the ones we already have. He has also made an Eastern red cedar island countertop for us. (Have I told you my daddy can do absolutely anything!)

Have a great week!

Saving a $4 Chair! Part 1

Did I show you this chair? I bought it at the thrift shop a couple of months ago. It was $4.00!!! The springs were missing from the seat, but it seemed to be in fairly good condition.

I began the process of stripping off the old upholstery. It was tacked on, not stapled. Removing about 2 million tacks (only a slight exaggeration!) took about 2 hours with my sister helping me. We didn't have the tools we needed to do this easily. 

Half way finished! I failed to get a picture of the horsehair and cotton that I found inside. It was so deteriorated and nasty, I threw it away. I know that sometimes upholsterers save it. I decided that I didn't want all those old dead skin cells and animal dander!

After removing all the old fabric and stuffing, I glued up any loose joints with wood glue and left them clamped to dry for several hours.

I screwed "clips" down to hold the No Sag or Sinuous Springs. My sister, Darla, is working on a beautiful  antique set at the same time. We  shared tools and helped each other out while we tried to figure it all out!

Unfortunately, the battery operated screwdriver ran out of power and we had to plug it in for a few hours to recharge. 

I decided to "clean up" the finish a little. I wanted to keep the old patina, but make the scratches less noticeable. I used denatured alcohol and a soft rag. This "melts" the old finish enough to redistribute it some. This will not work on polyurethane and modern finishes. It only works on lacquer based varnishes.

   

Before and after of the same leg.

By this time, the heat and humidity were beginning to take a toll on us, so we quit for the day. When I post about the chair again, probably next week, I will be installing the springs and putting webbing on the chair back. 

Patriotic Quilt Update

The Patriotic quilt has been quilted and a volunteer is binding it. We hand quilted all the stars at the Fourth of July Celebration (the quilting bee!) and machine quilted the remainder. 

Here is a closeup before trimming the sides to prepare for binding.

Detail of the hand quilting

The unbound quilt. The binding is the red and white stripe.  The photo does not show the stars quilted in the red squares, but you can see them in the first photo.

Soon it will have a home with a deserving veteran!

Hill Country Finds!

Some of you may not know that way back in the dinosaur days, this hot, dry south Texas land was under the ocean. The hill country limestone used to be prehistoric sea shells. Just walking around briefly on our property, there are many fossils to be found. I just have to reach down and pick them up. I wonder what the native American's who lived around here thought of these? 

I also had the opportunity to visit the thrift shop in Kerrville as well as the thrift shop in Pleasanton. In Kerrville, I found the vintage Nebraska souvenir plate you see in the photo. The other two plates were found in an antique shop in downtown Kerrville. I have decided that a wall arrangement of vintage souvenir plates would be a lot of fun! So far, I've found the plates for between $1 and $5 each, so it is inexpensive as far as art goes! If it looks the way I envision it, it will add to the Texas hill country "look"! As far as my research and experience shows, that elusive "look" is a mixture of antique, western, French country, Tuscan, Mexican, Spanish and rustic. The operative words seems to be "mixture". It's the type of decorating that you recognize when you see! It is relaxed and casual with a mixture of rustic and formal furniture and accents. There is a huge retiree population in the hill country and most have traveled extensively, so souvenir plates make sense to me! We've also traveled a lot, so it will bring back memories for us. I will have to plan a lap quilt to go along with this theme!!

After coming back to Pleasanton last night, I made a "bee-line" for the thrift shop here and found a few more! I'm sure I will get pickier as I collect them for the wall. The three found in Kerrville are the best so far. I think some of the ones from here might not be as vintage and don't have as much color as the first three. They will work until I have enough to fill in a wall, though. I think it will be fun!!! I was told that they are getting harder to find in thrift shops!

Remember the porcupine last week? Well, this week left us feeling a lot more tender toward the wildlife on our property. We were walking around when we walked up on this tiny little fawn. He was the size of a cat!  He was staying so still and trying so hard to hide, that my husband thought he might be dead. Then his ear twitched. Poor thing was freaked out, I'm sure! We took a very quick phone photo and quickly left the area to let him get back to his mother or his mother to him, whichever was supposed to happen. He was gone the next day, so I guess they found each other. 
Electrical work is almost finished and we are waiting on a bid from a stone mason to see if we can afford to put limestone in the kitchen and on the support columns. It would match the fireplace limestone. If not, I may need to learn a few new skills! I am really wanting the walls in there to be rock. I think it would be fantastic!
I am also waiting on an iron summer cover to arrive. I have in mind putting it above the range, mortared in and framed with fancy limestone edging tile. Here is a photo of what I ordered:

When we lived in Georgia, we had a huge old Victorian house with 10 fireplaces! Eight of them had summer covers similar to this! Of course, we left them when we sold the house. I would love to have just one of them today!
I'm still very anxious to finish the kitchen, but I believe the day will come! Have a great week!
                                                         

July Fourth Picnic, Patriotic Quilting Bee and a Prickly Hill Country Visitor!

 

Do you remember the Patriotic quilt? Here it is last Friday during the Independence Day celebration at my sister's house. She lives on a farm and has a beautiful yard shaded by large trees and carpeted with lush St. Augustine grass. There were over 100 people there that day! Here are some of the quilters busy on the quilt.

There were a couple of men who hovered nearby. I think they would have joined us if given more time! While we quilted, others played "washers" (similar to horseshoes), 

..went on pony rides...

...ate barbecue brisket along with great "fixins"...(baked potatoes, pinto beans, salad, watermelon, desserts)

Here's Doug with his bottle of water, and NO, the hula hoops were not part of his picnic activity!

Some just sat and relaxed! 

The quilters worked until it was too dark to see well. A couple pulled out their phones and used them for portable lamps so they could put in a few more stitches! (Oh, modern technology! What did our grandmothers do in this situation?)

The night ended with fireworks, of course! I failed to get a photo of the fireworks, but there were plenty! 

We left early the next morning for the hill country house where more electrical work was completed. We delivered a water softener to be installed by the plumber. The water there is extremely hard and a softener will save our new appliances from wearing out so soon. (Not to mention the lime that deposits around any faucet!) I pulled the carpet and pad out of the new laundry room in preparation for putting down a suitable floor. I also pulled up the tacking strips around the perimeter of the room. The plumber ended up putting the connections in a place that was different than we planned  (out of necessity, not a mistake), so I need to make a new laundry room plan. 

Oh, I saw my first porcupine! We were walking around outside just before nightfall and saw it "lumbering" down the hillside about 20 feet in front of us. He made his way to our peach tree and climbed up like an acrobat! (It seemed he was much more adept at climbing than walking!) It was too dark to get a good photo and all we had was an iPhone, but here is proof.

Well, I'll leave you with the knowledge that porcupines can climb trees! I will never feel safe under a tree again!