"The Project"

I think there were only 6 times in the course of the past week that I yelled an expletive and said I was taking this back to the transfer station. What was this "secret" project? A table. A pretty cool looking table at that. Hubby and I have been talking about how nice it would be to have a table we could use for having guests over. Right now we sit at the bar in the kitchen. I pulled into the Transfer Station last Saturday and saw this beauty! Well...not beauty, it needed some love.

Poorly painted table with more chips than I could count, BUT awesome hardware!

Before even consulting my better half, I went to Lowe's (for the 8,304 time since moving to Fairbanks) and picked up what I would need to strip off the bad paint job and refinish it.

Trip #1 of 3

 I had great hopes of the table being solid wood. If that was the case I figured it would be the find of the century. As soon as I started to strip off the paint I was pretty sure my antique table was antique crap, but still cool antique crap.

They make this look MUCH easier in the infomercials! 

MUCH, MUCH Easier!! 

After scrapping the table for two days, and trying several types of strippers (ha...paint strippers) I ended up trying Citristrip. Despite the fact that I have the patience of a 5 year old, I would use this again. I needed to wait MUCH longer, but it worked just as well, and didn't smell horrible!

 After my dreams of real wood went out the door, I tried to think of another plan of what to do with the top.

In the meantime, I took it apart and got ready to do whatever I had yet planned. I sanded the top to even it out. If I had more patience I would have used wood filler to fill in some cracks that I didn't. Oh well.

My husband is the one suggested that I paint the top. We went to Lowe's (trip #8,305) and looked at paint. We talked about it and decided that it would be fun to paint it with chalkboard paint. We picked a dark green color to match our kitchen. I picked a bright glossy white for the legs.

So lots of painting, and painting, and painting and it was done! I reassembled the table, tightened everything up and ta da! A table!

Like my footprint on the underside? Opps. Need to clean that! 

Both sides lift up to make it into a large table. It's pretty cool. 

One of the two drawers. I need to special order the
hardware 2 1/4" handles aren't very common. 

I'm pretty excited to use it. What do you think? 

At It Again

My poor husband. He has to put up with me and the stupid things I do. I have been telling him for about a month now that I wanted a weed eater. Tuesday I stopped by the transfer station. The same guys who are there all the time were hanging out by their cars (sadly, I'm afraid there's another girl out there writing a blog about the girl in the Ford Ranger who is always at the Transfer Station.) I decided to do a quick spin. I'm always looking for things for my garden, and hoping to get ideas for my future greenhouse.

While walking around I noticed a weed eater. It was next to a woman's pile, so I assumed that it was hers. I'm not exactly an aggressive person when it comes to picking up junk. It's junk, but still fun to look.  It did look nice, and it was electric (so I figured it had a better chance of working.) I ended up asking her if it was hers. She had a big old pile she was going through. She told me to take it, and if it doesn't work, bring it back. Brilliant lady. It didn't dawn on me to do that.

Guess what! It works! I can't wait to cut stuff down. Also in my haul were two trellises that match one I already have for my garden. A window for my non-existent-still-in-planning-stages-greenhouse, a beautiful blue pot to plant herbs in the spring AND a lawn mower. Yes, I've lost it. I hang with a 5 month old. Give me a break. I love free stuff. It's like the free section of Craigslist, but without the interaction with people. Perfect! I guess some people take stuff and sell it. I could never do that. Bad karma. 

Does the lawn mower work? Nope. It looks brand new, so I'm going to try to get it going. I'm sure I can Google small engine repair. My poor dad is going to think I'm nuts when I call him and ask him to talk me through fixing it. Another reason that FaceTime is awesome. (Sorry Dad.)

**Edit**Called dad twice today. I think he knows what's up and is ignoring me. :) (Kidding...kinda)
 

Do we need a lawn mower? Not right now. Hell, it's snowing. I just really want to get it started. Why not. I can get it going and take it back if we don't need it.  Have I ever fixed an engine before? No. How hard can it be? I mean seriously. I'm sure I can Google it, or something...right?

Lights Out

I'd like to think that even though Bug is a clone of his father that he takes after me in several ways. One, "hopefully" is his love of sleep. This morning I woke up at 9:30 (opps!) with a still sleeping Bug (he went down last night at 9:30.) I KNOW that now that I've written this, that he will start waking up every hour on the hour again. He did wake up at 7, but his dad heard him (I'm mother of the year) and got up with him, and Bug feel right back asleep. Aww. Sleep. I've missed you SO much. 

Since hubby is still furloughed, we can get some projects done around the house. A few weeks ago I bought a leaf blower at Lowes. The thing has come in handy. I think I've used it 6 times, and it never looks like I've make a dent. We've had some wind, so I "think" all the leaves are finally off of the trees. Today I went out to tackle them once and for all. 

Before

After about 2 hours

I cleaned, raked, and blew the leaves for about two hours. The leaves on the right of the picture are on a bank, so not as high as it looks. Then it started to rain...then we lost power. I gave up! This is the second time that we've lost power in three weeks. We are now going to look at a generator.

After the power went out our tenant called me.

Tenant: "Is your power out?"

Me: "Did you pay your bill?"

Tenant: " I got a bill! When did I get a bill?"

Me: "You didn't, we don't have power either."

Tenant: SILENCE

I am an awesome landlord. Seriously. I don't think he likes my sense of humor. I did figure out though that when power goes out, the heater in the cabin doesn't work. There is no way in good conscious that I can let him out there and freeze so at some point we might have a 22 year old on the couch at night.

Last week we bought cabinets for $15.00 per cabinet. they needed a good cleaning, and didn't all match, but were the best we could find on short notice. I wasn't about to spend $400 on cabinets for the garage.

Cabinets - Before

Here they are up on our walls. Like I said, it was really hard to hang cabinets on the walls, BUT they are up. I am not sure if we are going to paint them, or leave them as is. It sort of annoys me that they don't match. We are in the process of hanging peg board up under the cabinets on the left. Hubby built a work bench, so soon we'll have a great work space.


See the little blue sled? That's for Bug! It's the cutest damn thing. I can't (well, no, I can) wait for him to use it.

One man's trash...

Is probably still trash, BUT IT'S ALL MINE.

I WILL NOT end up on Hoarders. I WILL NOT end up on Hoarders, I WILL NOT end up on Hoarders

Since we are now on day 3 of the Furlough I got to run some errands without Bug. I LOVE being around him, but sometimes it is just quicker. As I mentioned the other day I ran to the Transfer Station (aka-town garbage drop off site) while on my journey.

I-LOVE-THE-TRANSFER-STATION

Yes...I love the dump. Remember that spot that people drop off items that someone else might find value in?

GUESS WHAT I GOT!!

Ready?

Ready!

A Christmas Tree! A perfectly good, nothing wrong with it, lights still work, Christmas tree. I was so excited. There Mr. Tree just sat, and everyone was passing him over. I saw the value in him. Sure, I probably will end up getting a real tree, BUT how cute will a little tree be on my porch. OR I will find a family that can't afford one (and if this furlough keeps going that will be us....kidding...sort of...)

After my Christmas tree find, and I finished my rendition of Jingle Bells, I spotted another treasure. An end table. Sure the drawer was busted, and they tried to fix it with screws that stuck out...BUT still. I saw it's true beauty.

Once I got home and my husband finished shaking his head at me  greeted me he helped me unload my treasures. I promptly plugged in the Christmas tree and started singing (note: I am a HORRIBLE singer, so it was more of a torture session for my husband.)

Next he fixed my end table. He took out the screws and put in better ones and then drilled holes into the back. It is now our laptop holder! It is great since the cords are no longer in the way.

The other two pictures on the bottom are my finds from the other day. The ones on the left I'm going to use to plant herbs in next summer, and the plastic trays are to start my veggies!

Sadly Bug was napping and my husband had my unplug my tree. Bug will have to wait another month or so until he sees it in all its glory! He has however been staring at trees at the stores since August, probably not that big of a thrill for him.

Bug looking thrilled

Oh last thing...someone commented about the size of the vegetables. I bring you the 18# baby and the 18# cabbage. While there isn't a long summer, there is 20+ hours of light for a lot of it. :)

Transfer Station

I have quite the adventure from the weekend, but that will have to wait until I have a laptop. We are currently watching Dr. Who. :)

A quick rundown
-one dead pig (rip pig)
-2 truckloads of dirt
-4,763 wheelbarrow loads of dirt (estimate, but close!)

And the transfer station...aka the result of many of my future projects! More tomorrow!