DIY and planting

This sums up my approach to a lot of problems

Outdoors the go-to is pachysandra. Medically it's aspirin.

Yesterday Gary came over, determined to get stuff planted despite the pouring rain. So we turned the kitchen into a potting shed.

Note the squirrel deterring qtips. Both of us and the kitchen smelled powerfully of peppermint oil after this. So I probably won't get squirrels in the kitchen any time soon.

If it ever stops raining, we'll get the pots outside. 

Happy day everyone, and here's an example of things I do daily, don't we all..

Rain rain go away, but it's not the disastrous flooding some people in nsw are struggling with, good thoughts to them.

Struggling at home continues with resistance. Today I'll leave Know Your Rights info at the library. And I've signed up for two tickets for T***ps birthday military parade. Yes, you know how that strategy works..sand in the gears. Anyone can sign up..Google on it, you'll get the sign up link.

Two places. Which will be two spaces..

Recycling meets diy meets textile rescue

So here's the reveal of the latest home improvement feature, my new shabby chic portiere:

A fellow artist is moving, getting rid of a lot of items, and had beautiful linens she will never use, came to her through her family, probably old, and this piece came to me.  

It's actually a banquet style table cloth, linen, much heavy openwork and stitching and drawn threadwork, and was stained.  A bath in Synthropol took care of most of the stains, so I decided not to dye it with coffee, my first thought, but leave it alone.  I may take closeup pix for Art the Beautiful Metaphor and see if anyone can help identify the style of work and techniques, but tonight I just wanted to gloat a bit.
 
Then the decision on the  place for it to rest.  Too narrow for the window I originally had in mind, but very nice as a gathered full portiere in the bedroom, just slung over a tension rod.  No damage done to textile, and now it can hang a while, until I get up the gumption to starch and press it.  No harm in letting it hang for a bit, to release some of the creases.  And it hides various unlovely items like file boxes and vacuum cleaners and out of season decorative items.

The country style chair was a dumpster find years ago.  So you could say the textile is slumming a bit.

It definitely lends a shabby chic air to the place.  Color is ecru cutwork and drawn threadwork on white linen, and I see this doorway from my bed, so it's a good place to enjoy the piece.  I'll see it every day, and honor it and all the stitching work in it. It's hung a few inches up off the ground, so that marauding kitties don't get caught up in the openwork.

 

More DIY, well, more like Delegate it Yourself

For ages I've been wondering if it's possible to convert one of my current bathtubs to a walk in shower without major renovation.  I was musing with a friend ages ago if it would be possible to cut out a section of the current bathtub and put in an insert to seal the gap and make it watertight, so I could just step in.  She was very amused at what she took for a flight of fancy, and I didn't pursue it at that time.

But today, as I was looking through links about bathroom conversions, I found this, yay. 

And I've sent it to my lovely across the street friend, artist, and contractor, to see if we can work together on this.  This is another of my steps to Stay In This Home, just a safety feature I've started thinking about, it getting a bit more iffy to step over the side of the bathtub to shower.  

I'll still have one full bath, though.  And that's another part of my Big Plan.  If ever I need a person to stay with me, the Nook bedroom has its own full bathroom, great privacy, doors connecting and can be closed to the hallway, all that.  So this is just some longterm thinking.  I'll leave that bathtub as a full one, but convert the other bathtub, the one leading off my bedroom.

Anyway, as they say, that's the plan!  much cheaper and less disturbing than tearing out and replacing the bathtub itself. So here's where I ask if any blogistas have experience with this?  any precautions? additions?  the bathtub in question already has a grab bar installed years ago for Handsome Partner, and a portable shower stool, and a hand held shower, so that's all in place.

DIY, aka sometimes postponing works

So I found this morning that sometimes it pays not to know what to do right away.  When I do know, it's a matter of warp speed action. But when I don't, it pays not to.

So yesterday I finally thought why not just try this?  I had wondered for years if I could grind old fashioned oats in my coffee grinder and get oat flour.  Reasoning that it's like a small mill grinding grain for flour, so why not.  And I finally did it.  And it does make flour.  Why didn't I do this before.  Now I can have oat flour easily.

So I used it in a Martha recipe for apple oatmeal crumble, which actually, get this, wanted oat flour! perfect timing.  This is a mag from the lot I got via freecycle recently.  Not a fan of eating apples raw, but Granny Smiths in cooked form are good.  And this recipe didn't ask for a lot of sugar, and none of that ghastly syrupy stuff a lot of recipes think you should use.  So here's the result, and very nice it is.

It's breakfast food, I claim, since it's oatmeal and apples...and the dish is a freecycle.

Then among the suggestions for upcycling my cabinet doors, the one for a plant stand, using casters, reminded me with a clang that somewhere for years and years I've had a set of self stick casters waiting for a job to do.

Work of a moment to remove the old hinges and handle, stick on the casters (touchingly caring instructions remind you they're unidirectional, and to put them all on facing the same direction!) and here's the result. 

 Looks a bit like a big roller skate, or a low tech Mars vehicle, but it works a treat! see it in action here

and here.  The big ficus tree can now be rolled about easily, yay.

Thanks so much for the idea, Irene.  And I still have another door for a tray or a frame or something.

DIY strikes again

There's just no knowing when an idea will strike. And with me, to think it is to do it.  Which is how I found myself, chanting my usual mantra: Ready!  FIRE! Aim! all dressed up for a meeting, up a ladder removing the doors from a useless cabinet, high up, above the refrigerator, I ask you, and empty for years now except for the odd adventurous spider. 

The picture below is of a similar cabinet, above the stove, but that has uses.  I omitted to remember pix before I tore the doors off the other one...

So here's the situation: I had suddenly thought, ah, what if I take off those doors, I bet I can do that without much trouble, and then put some lovely American and other art pottery in there to just see and enjoy instead of looking at two closed doors with nothing behind them, that have been annoying me for years?  

The idea of open kitchen cabinets, always appealing in the mags,  is only good if you have presentable dishes in sets and well, that's the impossible dream.  Taking the doors off my other cabinets would look like an explosion in an international mug factory. But this one I could do.

Pausing only to find the step stool, and locate a screwdriver, then start again on finding I needed a Phillips' head and the first one was a straight slot, I climbed up, very awkward to reach over the fridge but I did get the screws out of the cabinet and as hoped the entire door, hinge and all, came off with no sign it had ever been there.

Wiped it down, including the top of the fridge, which urgently needed someone taller than I to observe that it needed wiping, and at this point needed to leave for my meeting.

Home again, meeting successfully concluded, and I installed a few favorite pieces up there, safe from marauding cats, easy to see and enjoy all the time. 

 Herendt hound from Hungary, Boehm spaniel from NJ, German porcelain birds from I guess Germany, Trenton Delft bowl, lovely antique piece that, and two great Rookwood Pottery vases.  And a pedestal from Rookwood, designed after the manner of, but not by, Shirayamadani. All lovely to see and much better than the previous view.  And what I left on the shelves whence I took them in the living room. are all glass pieces, much happier together than mixed with ceramics.

And as usual, cost:  $.0.00.  I didn't charge for finding tools, unscrewing the doors, putting away all the doings afterwards.

However, I would like blogistas to consider what might be a good use for these doors?  

They're in my outside storage area right now awaiting an inspiration. Note that I've preserved the screws, on the grounds that You Never Know.  Never in my history have I actually used screws that I've saved like this, but, You Never Know.