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!

Tile

 This weekend I still hadn't figured out exactly what I wanted to do with the stairs or floor. So I decided to work on the kitchen backsplash.

Tile work seemed appropriate since our bathroom floor tile has been pulled up almost completely in order to dry out the subfloor.

I put the rugs back down over the subfloor since my washer and dryer are back there and I don't want splinters in my feet when I'm doing laundry.

I'm doing a lot around the house because my husband is now using a cane to walk. MRI says torn meniscus. Among other things.

Then he spilled water on top of his c-pap machine so it wouldn't work. Thankfully we got that dried out and working again so we don't have to buy a new one.

He sees the doctor on Tuesday so we'll hear what can be done or get a referral to another doctor who can tell us what can be done. Hopefully it's fixable with PT and won't require surgery.

So doll housing was a little more of an escape than usual.

I made a cardboard template and got out my beads/tiles.

I tend to use Weld-Bond glue because it will make just about anything stick. Then it was row upon row of beads/tiles. 

Can't forget to leave space for the open shelving.

And then a dry fit.

Once the glue dried completely I needed to grout it. I tend to use drywall spackle for my grout because it's cheap, you can tint it, and it's easy to clean up.

Now for a dry fit with the cabinets.

I like how it looks with the cabinets and countertop. 

I plan to make the open shelving look a bit like live edge and the stain to match the window frames and flooring.

I ordered some tongue depressors and I want to do wide plank flooring that looks like this:

I need to figure out if I can match that stain with what I have. If I start with the weathered grey, apply a coat and sand it down, then put something like golden oak over it maybe that would work.

I ordered more tongue depressors so I'll have enough for the floors on both levels. Obviously we don't want wood in the bathroom but everywhere else...yeah. 

And the blonde tones to the wood will warm up the space too.  I'm concentrating on the dollhouse because I can't do anything to our bathroom until the insurance company agrees with the estimate the restoration company gave them.

So we're in a holding pattern regarding the bathroom at the moment.  We do know that we'll have to gut the space completely.

And since that portion of the house is pier and beam we figure we'll make it the way we want it. A walk in shower (with a bench) and higher toilet, double vanity, all those will make life a lot easier for someone who has trouble walking.  Pier and beam means moving the plumbing wouldn't be as expensive as anywhere else in the house which is on a slab.

Plus if we go with a stackable washer/dryer (since ours are dying) and replace the hot water heater with a tankless we'll have more square footage and we could conceivably still have a small closet back there.

So I have plans. And we've been saving up because we knew we'd have to do this eventually anyway.

I'm crossing my fingers that this can start up soon.

In the meantime... miniatures are a lovely distraction. 

How are all of you doing?

Windows and Redoing the Front Wall

 So I have actually been working on the dollhouse this weekend. I started with the stairs again.

I still need to work on the floors but I decided if I'm going to use these stairs I want to move the window up further so I can put either shelves or a sitting area there.

And since I wanted to make the kitchen window smaller I'd have to redo the front wall anyway so away I went.

The windows are almost to the ceiling this way and it gives me more space for the backsplash and some open shelving. 

I need to do some sanding and a bit of touch up paint but I think the black frames against the dark blue will look good.

I think this will work better. It reminds me a little of my mom's kitchen window. She had spider plants hanging from the ceiling in macramé holders and that could be fun to do too.

Here's a look through the accordion doors.

So far I like how it looks. I need to prime the walls and paint them before I can do anything like the backsplash. And I need to do the floors before I can put the cabinets in. 

Hopefully I'll be making progress a little more quickly now.

Stairs

 So quick post about the stairs. I've been looking into options... Jodi suggested another container on it's end so it could be a stairwell.  Which I like. It just increases my footprint and that's not a good thing for me because I need a place to put this when it's finished. 

But it's something to keep in mind for certain.

I put my dilemma up on Instagram and got a suggestion of the stairs  with a slight turn, extending over the side wall.  Unfortunately the side wall is actually the container doors.  Since I went to a lot of trouble to make sure they'd open I'd like to keep them that way.

So I considered maybe doing one of the doors stationary and the other opening and making a squared spiral stair. Yeah that sounds weird I know. But do a search and oh yeah images come up.

I want a mid-century modern feel to the home, so I love the stairs without risers. The straight stairs are the perfect look but they obviously won't fit.

In exploring my options for stairs that have a minimal footprint I came across these.

I like them a lot. They're a bit sculptural and remind me of Marion's Spiral stairs that I love so much.  and they're minimalist which fits the look of the house.

I like these too, though doing that curved central post could be an issue. Something to think about though. All these options above have the railing along the central post though which has a very clean look.

This is a slightly different look and I like them, especially the railing and the look of the spindles. It reminds me a lot of Mid Century Modern stairs with the vertical slats.

Like these:

Something like this requires a lot of open space though and I don't want the house to feel cramped.

I was debating changing the windows over the kitchen counter, which would mean redoing the front wall anyway. If I change the windows on the other side of the front door it would give me a bit more space to work with.

No matter what, before I cut the ceiling/roof I need to have the stairs figured out.

Soo...the debate continues.

Hope you're all having a nice weekend!