Adventures with Chainsaws

Back in August, a gust of wind proved to be too much for one of our oak trees. There was a damaged section of trunk, and the wood splintered. It took a while for the top half of the tree to fall down, so we left it alone till recently. I'm sad to lose this tree- it was a big tree at the end of our driveway and the branches gave great shade and coverage.

The tree started at this angle, about 45 degrees closer to the ground.

After a few weeks the weakened wood had splintered enough for the the top of the tree to be at a 90 degree angle.

A few weeks later, it finally gave in and broke off completely. Unfortunately the top half was still leaning against the trunk, which made it difficult to do anything with it. So we didn't. We just let it stay as it was.

Here's a view of the damaged part of the tree, right after it started splintering. Once I looked, it was quite obvious that that section was weakened and in trouble.

 Here's the other side of the tree, showing the bulging of the splinters.

The mangled ends after the tree finished breaking.

Here's what it's looked like since the leaves fell. Not very pretty.

A week ago our very kind neighbors came over and took the tree down for us. I'd asked one of them to show me how to use a chain saw so I could do it, but he expressed concern about the technicality of the job since the top part was leaning against the trunk. So he got together with our other neighbor, who's more experienced in such things, and they took it down.

They looped a rope around the top section of the still-standing trunk, attached it to the tow hitch of a Jeep, and ratcheted it tight before making the first cut.

Here you can see the fallen top part has slid down to where the rope is.

Tightening the rope before cutting a bit more.

Pulling the tree down.

And it landed right where it was supposed to. Yay!

Branches on the top part had to be cut then it lay on the ground as well.

Here's a section of the trunk where it splintered. It was just mangled. 

A few cuts and the trunk pieces were moved off the driveway. They'll finish cutting the trunks and take the wood home for seasoning and splitting. They both have wood fireplaces/heaters, and we don't, so giving them the wood was a no-brainer.

The chunk of trunk on the right hand side of the driveway, furthest up, is for us. We're going to let it season and then get it planed into a mantle beam by a local sawmill. We'll then hollow it out so we can attach it to the wall above our {gas} fireplace. 

I've always hated the minimalist mantle the previous owners installed, and thought the idea of a rough-hewn mantle made from a tree on our property was a great idea. I planned on using one of the other trees that need to be taken down, but since this one came down before we had a chance to take down any of them, we're using this tree.

{this is not what it looks like anymore- thank goodness!}

After they did the big stuff, I pulled out our {as-yet-unused} chainsaw and they walked me through the proper usage and safety precautions  of a chainsaw. I've been nervous about doing it myself (I kept having visions of accidentally chopping off part of a foot), but figured once I learned how to use it all would be fine. This proved to be true. It's fun to use! Though I do need to watch my body mechanics since I managed to get a migraine and trigger my sciatica because I was tensing up so bad while cutting the branches on an incline. Probably a flat cutting surface would be good.

Have you used a chainsaw?

Sorting Books for our Library

Yes, we have lots of books. 

The other night I sat down and sorted these piles and placed them on the bookshelves I built. Unfortunately, I miscalculated how many shelves I would need, so now I need to make a few more shelves before I can show you how it all turned out. I can't wait- I love how it's turned out!

As I sorted and organized, I also culled. Turns out that when you can't see all the books you have, you sometimes end up with more than one copy of the same book. Who knew? 

In fact, there's one book that we have three copies of. I'm really not sure how that happened.

While I pulled out duplicates, I also pulled out books that, for one reason or another, we didn't need to keep. Some questions I asked myself:

When was the last time one of us read this book?

Will we read it again anytime soon?

Can we get it from the library?

If we hadn't read it in a long time, weren't likely to read it again, and we could easily get it from the library if we did want to read it, it went in the discard pile. As I sorted, I noticed a trend: the fiction books we did keep tended to be books written by the same authors (series or otherwise).  Some are contemporary authors, but I also have several favorite authors that are out of print and hard to find at our library, so over the years I've bought most of their books on ebay.

I kept most of our nonfiction books, with the notable exceptions being duplicate Japanese dictionaries from our time at language school, several cookbooks that I'll never be able to use given their gluten content, and my old vet tech books from college. Yes, I graduated more than 10 years ago and still had some of my textbooks.

About 300-odd books that we won't be keeping.

I listed about 200 books on paperbackswap.com. This is my first time using it, but I've heard really good things about it. Basically you list books you don't want, and others list books they do want. When those lists match up, you send your book to the person who wants it. You pay the shipping, and in return you get a credit to request a book from someone else (they pay the shipping to send it to you). Within 24 hours I had 36 books requested and 14 more books waiting to be confirmed by the people who had placed them on their lists.

I'm sure I'll only have sporadic match-ups from here on out, but it was nice to get rid of a bunch of books at once (even if it was a bit pricey to ship 36 books, even by media mail). Sending 36 books gives me 36 credits that I can use to get books (1 credit= 1 book, 2 credits= 1 audiobook), plus you get 2 credits when you list your first book, so I have 38 credits available. Now I just have to wait for the books I want to be listed. And make more room on the shelves....

Some of the books weren't in good enough condition to be listed on paperbackswap.com, so I'll be dropping them off at Goodwill.

Right now the shelves are pretty full, so I'm going to have to sort and cull again to make room for new books. I love buying new (or used) books, but it's hard to let them go.

I've also determined to be a bit more choosey about the books we purchase and keep, especially children's books. Some of our children's books had been purchased in bulk lots off ebay, so I didn't get a chance to vet them beforehand. As LMS has read them, though, I've realized that some of them were definitely twaddle and not worth keeping. And I'll be the first to admit that some of our novels are twaddle as well (don't judge me to harshly!). But it's easier to recognize that as an adult than as a child.

Do you somehow end up with twaddle on your shelves too?

Living Room Progress

It's almost time to move the furniture back into the living room. The tongue and groove paneling is up and painted, the walls are painted, the crown molding is back up, and all the trim has been re-painted. I even painted the front door and the patio door. All that's left is caulking the crown, touching up a few spots, putting new fan blades on the ceiling fan, and cleaning up the mess. 

Now if I could just figure out how to finish my projects faster....

Princess Buttercup Halloween Costume

A few months ago the Little Miss decided she wanted to be Princess Buttercup for Halloween. I figured she meant the wedding dress

source

but she meant the red riding dress

source

Ok, not a problem- the red dress would be easier and a lot less fiddly than all the trim on the wedding dress.
I started by using the pattern I made for her Princess Leia dress last year, but I added a lot to the sleeves to allow for the very full sleeves.  I also added a bit on the sides and to the length to bring the pattern up a size.

After cutting it out though, I realized the bodice needed to be four separate pieces, not one, so I modified my pattern and fiddled with it a bit before it finally fit LMS right. I lined the bodice (but not the skirt) by doubling the fabric, but I don't think it was necessary, and I think the seams would lay a little flatter without the extra bulk. This would really depend on the fabric used, though. I used a polyester fabric with a really nice drape. It seems pretty similar to the fabric I used for the Princess Leia dress- it had a nice drape, also.

After getting the bodice sewn together how I wanted it, I sewed in the sleeves, then did all those gathers in the cuffs. The costuming site I consulted called it cramming, and while I don't know if I used the proper technique, I can say that I definitely crammed a lot of gathers into a tiny cuff.

Has anyone else noticed how hard it is to photograph the color red? 

I ended up graying the photos to make it easier to see the details.

After getting the sleeves just right I pinned the skirt pieces on, inserting pleats in the front and back for fullness. Then it was just a matter of sewing the bodice to the skirt, and then sewing the the side seams starting at the cuffs and ending at the bottom of the skirt.

The finishing touches were the hem and the grommets in the cuffs- I used my Crop-o-dile for the grommets and it was super easy.

Buttercup also wears a belt and a hairnet thingy, so of course I needed to make them too. I used some gold trim, some lightweight fusible web, some ribbon, and a small piece of velcro for the belt. 

I ironed the trim to the ribbon, then sewed around the circles to make sure it stayed on. I then cut the belt to fit around LMS's waist and sewed some velcro to the ends. I sewed the leftover pieces so they'd hang down on the sides, just like in the movie.

And since the Little Miss now has short hair, I made a wig for her to wear. I used one of the sleeves from the white t-shirt I used for the candy corn ruffle skirt as the base, and made it the same way I made the Rapunzel wig I ended up not wearing in the Disney Half Marathon. I hot glued some bead trim in a grid pattern, then glued it to the wig along with some trim around the outer edge of the thingy (not quite a crown, is it a headdress, a fancy hair net?).

I also pulled the hair back in a knot, like Princess Buttercup's.

We had our ward trunk or treat last night, so we took most of these photos before the activity. It wasn't till I started writing this post at 10:30 pm that I realized I forgot all about the belt, and LMS went around all night without it. 

Ooops. 

So we had to do another round of photos this morning so we could get the full effect. I love how it turned out!

Ruffled Candy Corn Skirt

While browsing blog posts in Google Reader, I came across the cutest ruffled candy corn skirt here.

She upcycled old t-shirts, but I didn't have any old t-shirts to use. I checked the dollar store, hoping to find some cheap shirts there, but they only had black t-shirts. So I went to JoAnns, where I bought 3 adult size L shirts for $9. Not as good as free or $3, but $9 isn't terrible, and I have some scraps leftover for other projects.

Because I used adult L shirts I had to cut down the white shirt to use for the skirt base, but from there I followed her directions except I made the ruffles 5" instead of 4", which resulted in a longer skirt.

Getting the ruffles evenly spaced is always the part that takes the longest, but other than that, it was a quick and easy project. And it turned out large enough that she can wear it next year, too :) She got lots of compliments when she wore it the other day. I think we got the t-shirt at Target on clearance after Halloween last year.

Fun with Fireplaces

This week was a vacation week for us, and I spent my time diligently working on projects around the house instead of going on fun road trips with my sister.

** I painted the vanity in the upstairs hall bathroom. The paint is still curing, so I haven't reinstalled the hardware yet, so no picture.

** I FINALLY finished painting the shelves for the bookshelves in the library. They're now curing also, so again, no pictures. While I was at it, I finished painting some other wood projects also.

** I worked on our living room. This included spackling and sanding the tongue and groove paneling, then priming it and painting it.  I then spackled the walls where the crown moulding used to be- I used an exacto knife to cut the caulk, but still managed to peel the paint when I took down the crown moulding. Then I sanded and primed in preparation for new paint. I also ripped out the fireplace surround and spackled and primed there as well. After that I taped off all the woodwork, and am now ready to paint the walls- no more dull gray!

I don't have pictures yet of the fireplace in it's spackled and primed glory, but here's a before picture. The black slate is ugly and I detest the 1 inch wide mantle- it's completely useless.

And here's a picture with everything ripped out, and the mess not yet cleaned up. I had to take a hammer to the slab in front of the fireplace and break it into 4 or 5 pieces to remove it- it was firmly glued to the plywood that was screwed to the 2x4 frame. Way more work than I anticipated, but at least it's done.

If you look closely, the hole above the fireplace looks a lot different. Turns out that the previous owners built a box that was smaller and less deep than the original TV hole (which is two feet deep). Our neighbors had mentioned that there used to be a TV above the fireplace, but I could never figure out how- the space was too small and there were no plugs. It all made sense once I pulled the trim off. We're still deciding what we're going to do with the gaping hole: drywall over it or create some hidden storage. I'm leaning toward the latter, but haven't yet figured out how to make the hidden storage look good and not be obvious.

Living Room Paneled Ceiling Progress

The night we moved into our house, I took a nice long bath in our new soaking tub. While I was drying off, I heard water dripping downstairs. I rushed downstairs and found water dripping from the ceiling.  I grabbed some plastic bins for the water to drip into and some towels to clean up the mess. The next day was Sunday (of course), but on Monday I called a plumber who came out and found the source of our problem: the coupler between the drain and the drain pipe had crumbled. Unfortunately, he only found this out after cutting 3 holes in our ceiling. After replacing the coupler, he patched the holes, but left the mudding and sanding to us.

After very close inspection (once we knew what to look for), previous water damage to the ceiling could be seen. We figure the prior owners (who only lived here two years) used the tub once, it leaked, and they never used it again. And they didn't tell us. Not cool.

We discussed just breaking out the mud and finishing off the patch job. There was two problems with this: I was doubtful we could make the patch job really look good, and I'm really allergic to the dust that comes from sanding down drywall mud. I get sick even if I'm using my face mask. And the dust would spread throughout the house, continuing to cause problems.

After some thought, I decided I wanted to put tongue and groove paneling on the ceiling. Mr M didn't have a preference, especially since he knew he wouldn't be doing the work because of his crazy work schedule :) Once we decided what we wanted to do, we still had to wait till some in-progress projects were finished. Which, of course, took a while.

So for the last year and a half, the ceiling in our living room has looked like this:

We bought the boards back in July because I thought we'd be able to finally get started. Of course, it didn't work out that way, so they've been sitting in a pile on the floor of the living room.

Until Friday night.

Friday my dad came for one of his short visits. Since we still hadn't gotten the paneling up, I asked my dad to help me finally get it done. He was kind enough to agree and to stay up till 1:30 am with me as we powered through the project. It's a good size room, but it only took 5 1/2 hours to cut and fit and nail all the boards.

I love how it looks! It totally changes the look of the room- my dad got a farmhouse vibe off it, and I'm hoping once we're done with everything it will have a beach cottagey feel. I have to spackle and sand all the nail holes, but then I can paint it and put the crown moulding back up.

I had originally thought I could do this project myself, with the help of a tall tripod that would hold up one end of the board while I worked on the other end. After installing the boards with help I have to say there is no way I could have done this on my own- not with the 8' tongue and groove boards. I'm so glad my dad was able to help me with this!

Materials:
21 pkgs of 5 1/4"x 8' primed composite tongue and groove boards (4 boards to a package)
Lots of 2" brads (already had)
brad gun
radial saw (for cutting boards to length)
table saw (for ripping the boards that were put in last and needed to be narrower)
jig saw (for cut outs around the electrical boxes for lights)

Method:
These boards are actually quite lightweight and only 1/4" thick, so we didn't bother with adhesive or even finding studs- just used lots of brads, especially on the corners of boards that butted up to each other. We started in one corner and worked our way across the room. We also moved up and down the room, turning when we came to the wall and working our way to the other wall, where we turned again. We tried to stagger where the seams were by using boards of varying lengths, which sometimes meant chopping a board shorter before nailing it up so that the seams weren't too close to each other. Because I'll put the crown moulding back up we didn't worry about butting the edges right up to the walls. Since the boards are tongue and groove, each one has to be fitted into the one next to it. Most of the time this went pretty well, but on occasion we used a section of a 1"x12" board that I pulled out the scrap bin to help push the boards together. We had to be careful not to ruin the tongue of each board, and the 1"x12" did a good job.


Why did we decide on the composite boards rather than solid wood boards? I had read some reviews that cited many problems with the tongues and grooves of the solid wood boards (they were in a package and couldn't be inspected before purchase). There were no such problems cited for the composite boards. Of the 21 packages we went through, we only had one board that truly could not be used- the groove ended up on the bottom of the board rather then down the middle of the board.  We set it aside, but we ended up ripping it down and using it to fill in the narrow space between the last full width boards and the wall, so we were still able to use it. The composite boards are also lighter and thinner than the solid wood boards, which is good, since we installed them on the ceiling. We could have used adhesive, but I didn't want to do something quite so permanent. I was a little concerned that it would be obvious that they're composite, but I don't think that will be a problem, especially once I've painted them.

Now I'm trying to decide if we should put white fan blades on the ceiling fan. I like the gray metal and it's a decent style as far as fans go, but I don't think the cherry wood fits with the beachy feel I'm aiming for. Thoughts?