Floor. Finally!

 I'm sure by now you're all aware of my ongoing debate about the floor and staining it.  I finally decided that I had to go for it at some point. Not sure what I would've done if I hadn't liked how it came out. As it is I wore out my arm sanding the 'floorboards' down between the different stains I used.

I started out with tongue depressor woodsies. I found a bunch for real cheap on Amazon and cut the curved ends off.

Since this is a modern house I didn't feel the need to drill holes for pegs/nails in either end.  That made the whole process go a lot faster. Though I did need to use my dictionary and thesaurus to hold the boards flat while the glue dried.

Then I added some detail with a Minwax Ebony stain pen.

I sanded that layer down which had the fortuitous effect of leveling off any slight bumps in the floor.  Then I added Rust-o-leum's Weathered Grey stain.

Sanding that down took a bit longer but I finally got it looking the way I wanted. And I added Minwax's Classic Oak over it. The Classic Oak goes on looking very reddish but it wipes down looking more blonde which I liked.

It isn't easy to see when I take a picture of just the floor. But the color shows up nicely when I put the cabinets on the floor.

Since I wanted to match the window trim and open shelving to the floors that was my next step. It went a bit more quickly since there wasn't as much of an area to cover.

And then I did another dry fit. 

With the flooring I need to adjust the tile backsplash just slightly because the floor raises the counters just slightly and I want the tile to meet the top of the counter, not start behind it.

But apart from that little issue I like how the shelves, cabinets and flooring look together.

The other big event of the weekend was my minis I bought from NattyCollection on Etsy.  I got the apples for the WQRC from this shop and I bought some more of those so I could make another apple tree if I wanted.

I really love my tree and I want to make more of them. Maybe in the little lanterns for my shop. Or just for me.

But there were so many yummy looking things that I couldn't resist.

Suddenly I'm craving macaroons.

But that's pretty much it for the weekend folks. No progress on the bathroom unfortunately. 

Hope all of you are having a good weekend!

Little Things

 I haven't been terribly productive these past four weeks. There's been a lot of thinking about 1:12 size stuff and messing around with 1:1 size furniture.

My husband needed a new recliner/chair & ottoman and we finally got one ordered. So I had to put that together. We ended up going with an ottoman and chair set so that he'd be able to put his feet up and be level which is better for his circulation.  Sadly, while it will work for him it doesn't match the rest of the 'décor' which is decidedly not mid century modern.

The chair has a back that will lie flat and the ottoman attaches to the front of the chair so it can convert to a single sleeper. 

You can see that the cats have decided the back of the chair makes the perfect spot to sit. The arms aren't wide enough for them to stretch out on.

Not sure why they decided to only put one leg on the front of the ottoman where it attaches to the chair though. It got caught in the carpet when he moved the ottoman back and forth.

So the ottoman didn't even last a week and a half. I tried to fix it with some screws and glue, and nope. Four hours later, busted again.

Good news is that the old ottoman is the right level for the chair so he can still keep his feet up. Bad news is that the legs on the chair and ottoman are 9 1/4 inches which is just about impossible to find. So if I want to add legs to the new ottoman I'll have to replace them on both the ottoman and the chair. 

Thankfully the chair is doing fine and the old ottoman will work for a while so it's not an actual furniture emergency.

We'd also needed new lamps for a while and I finally ordered what I thought was a set. Beautiful cobalt ombre glass. Sadly, it wasn't a set and it was also broken. Broken wasn't the stores fault, FedEx had kept it on their truck bouncing around for three days straight.  

But it being marked as a set on the site and it only being one lamp...that was their fault.  So... got a refund, and a 10% off coupon and had to order different ones.  They actually arrived quickly, via UPS.

My husband has also been home for two weeks straight and won't be working away from home until this coming Friday.  We also have someone at my workplace out with Covid. She's been out eight workdays so far and I doubt she'll be back tomorrow.  I haven't had a whole lot of energy or interest in much of anything except sleep!

I have been trying to do a few things with the Container House though. I got a coffee maker, a little cart and a pot for the stove or shelf.

I started to play around with some stairs to see if maybe I could make some that use a smaller footprint. 

I might try the same style stairs but with a round dowel, see if that works better. I think it will. Though I still haven't given up on the idea of  making the little home office on the first floor and the living room on the second floor and using the stairs from Shapeways.

I had a bunch of covers I collected and sized for 1:12 scale so I could make books for the house and I cut a bunch of them out and made some books.

Obviously, still working on them. But a few at a time.

I've been testing stain on my tongue depressors. I tried Ebony under Cherry, then pencil under Cherry and finally a combination of Ebony and pencil under Cherry. 

Of the three the ebony and pencil under cherry seem to look the best.  I ordered some other stain and I'll try it out maybe.  I also tried the weathered grey sanded down and cherry over it but it just looks odd. Almost muddy.

So I'll keep trying.  We'll see how it goes.

There is good news on the bathroom renovation front. We had a contractor come out two weeks ago, and he's got to bring his plumber back out with him, to see how feasible our 'plan' for the bathroom is.  But since everyone is still pretty much trying to repair the damage done in February it's hard for them to get the time to spare.

Our contractor is a pretty good guy and he's hoping to get his plumber out here this week. Fingers crossed.  He does seem to think what we want is doable so that's a good thing. 

I guess we'll see how it goes.

I hope everyone else has been having a smoother month of August than we have here!