Stairway progress pics

The weather cleared up, so after work I came home and started staining the staircase.  I did the newel post, railing, "front" of the spindles, and the "front" woodwork/baseboard.  I still have to do the stairs themselves, the "back" baseboard, the other 3 sides of the spindles, and the "cap" of the baseboards that we removed when we repaired the walls 3 years ago.  Still, we've come a long way, and I think it looks great.

Remember before??

I feel obligated to mention that that's before we even bought the house...  That's not our furniture!

A very scary "during" picture from another angle:

During the stripping:

And after sanding (and paint! and floor refinishing!):

And today:

The flash isn't terribly flattering to the color.  Imagine it richer and with more golden tones.  I tried to get one without the flash, but my tripod is AWOL, and I'm not really in the mood to go searching.  Suffice it to say that I'm really happy with how it's shaping up.  It'll look even better once we put the missing bits of woodwork back on.  There are a few spots that are less than perfect, but that happens with any old house project, I think.  I'll also have to get some wood-colored paint to touch up the spots of paint that absolutely refused to budge.  There are also a few spots where the old shellac/stain remains, and the new stain matches just about perfectly.  If you don't know where to look, you'd never notice.

And I remembered the other day that we bought woodwork at the Habitat ReStore that will match what we have and fit around the window at the bottom of the stairs...  Maybe I should start sanding that too.  'Cause woodwork really adds something.  Like making it look like less of a crack house.

I'm so excited!  We may actually finish the entire living room renovation/restoration before I die of old age!

Wasting time...

I'm waiting for Shayne to get up so I can work on the stairway.  Unfortunately I'm also looking at vintage-ish kitchen remodels.  *sigh*

Since we've realize we're not going to live in this house forever, we've been having some huge renovation dilemmas.  Like, how far do we take our dreams for this house?  We've pretty much scrapped the bathroom ideas since any bathtub I want would mean moving plumbing around.  I'm fine with that.  But the kitchen... is ugly.  And we absoloutely have to do something to it before we sell the house.  But how much "something"??

The el-cheapo laminate floor we installed last summer really should be replaced before we sell.  $125 was a great temporary fix, but it's really cheap.  And looks it.  I've dinged up a few spots by dropping large items, and I don't think a crappy floor would be a great selling point.  So the floor is kind of non-negotiable.  But what do we do?  Lay a subfloor over the scary linoleum, then some kind of linoleum?  Take out the base cabinets, get rid of the scary linoleum, and refinish the original hardwood?

And if we take out the cabinets, do we "replace" them with the originals out in the garage?  Paint the current dark wood to brighten up the room?  Just buy new hardware to spruce them up? 

What about my beautiful Chambers stove?  At 37" wide, it's not going to fit a standard opening.  And I so want to start cooking on it...

Ugh.  I'd probably feel better about it if I didn't cook quite so much.  For the past 2 or 3 months, it almost feels like I've been living in the kitchen.  And the more I'm in there, the more I hate it!

Oh well...  At least now it's super-clean and organized.  Yay for nesting!  I have at least 6 months before I have to even start thinking about what to do to improve that God-awful room.

One year of eating fresh/local

A little over a year ago, I made my first real shopping trip to the South Bend Farmers Market.  The market has been around pretty much forever, but I'd never really considered doing my shopping there until I realized how much better it is, for me, the economy, and the environment, to buy local produce.  Since then, with very few exceptions, I've bought my chicken and produce exclusively from local farmers.  I've also learned to can and freeze my own produce, cook more from scratch, and make my own jams and sauces.  This year I started gardening and just harvested my first "crop" of broccoli.  My next project is to learn to make my own pasta.

I've come a long way from the Lean Cuisine entrees I used to live on.  Now there isn't a single frozen dinner in my house.  Not many processed foods, either.  I wonder what the cashiers at Meijer think when I go through the checkout with a few gallons of milk, yogurt, butter, cheese, some baking staples, and a few boxes of cereal.

Most of the time I love buying only fresh/local produce, but right now I would really like to go take a nap.  Instead, I'm heating water to blanch a dozen ears of corn for canning and freezing.  Then I'll have to clean the chicken I baked.  And I bought more black raspberries, since they were on sale at the market; those need to be made into jam.  Since I have so many fresh veggies on hand, maybe I'll make a stir-fry for dinner...  So much for the lazy days of summer.  Lots of fresh produce + weekend = BUSY!

And I just realized that the reason my water was taking forever to boil is because I had the wrong burner turned on.  Duh.  This is why I need a gas stove, people.

Stairway of the Damned Revisited

John the handyman came over as promised on Wednesday morning at about 8:30 am.  He was still there when I got home from work at about 3:15 pm, just finishing his clean-up.  I know it would be difficult to mess up sanding flat pieces of wood, but I was still nervous about what I would find.  I have control issues with people working on my house; I'm going to be terrible with babysitters!

But I didn't need to be worried.  The stairway is fine, and I've only found maybe 3 spots that could use some touch-up sanding.  We'll knock that out this weekend, and we should have a fully refinished stairway within a few days.  It was definitely worth $150 to save myself 7 hours of work and untold pain and aggravation.  Poor John, though.  I don't think he'd agree to this project if I asked him again...  Not that I blame him!

I'm more nervous about finishing the stairway that I've been about any other project.  Thankfully, I've worked out a "system" for refinishing, and I know a lot more about staining and shellacking than I did when I first started sanding the stairs.  But it's just so BIG.  It takes up an entire wall in the living room and is extremely visible.  If it doesn't look good, it will ruin the whole room.  Yikes.  I'm also nervous because the top 5 stairs that we disassembled and refinished look sort of orange-y.  I'm not sure if it's the lighting on that part of the stairs, since the wood there is the same as the wood everywhere else in the house and I used the same method to refinish it...  But if I end up with an orange stairway, I'm going to cry.  A lot.  I think I'm going to test the color on one spindle and one tread to see what it looks like.  It would be strange to switch stain colors halfway through a project, but I just want to be sure it's right.  I couldn't take having to sand it all down again.

So...  Stairway touch-up sanding tonight or tomorrow afternoon, then sealing and staining on Sunday.  Wish me luck!!

My first harvest

This afternoon, I harvested my first-ever homegrown crop: broccoli!!

There are actually 4 heads, but the other one was already chopped up and in the pot.  The heads were each about 7-8" in diameter, which I thought was a very good size.  I had contemplated cutting them a few days ago, but now I'm glad I waited.  They seem to have grown a lot in such a short time, maybe because of the recent rain.  I was a little disappointed that it didn't taste better than store-bought broccoli, but I suppose it's something that they were so much bigger.  At least it didn't taste worse!

I'm really happy that it grew without any pesticides or fertilizers.  I used organic manure compost and organic potting soil in my raised beds, then put grass clippings on top to keep the weeds out.  It seems to have worked well.

It was very fulfilling to eat something for dinner that I had grown myself.  I think this homesteading stuff could get addictive...!