Putting a longtime dream above sanity and any consciousness of intercity traffic patterns, Eilene and I took a wild gamble and enrolled in the only intensive sixteen-week furniture upholstery class in North Texas. Held in an airplane hangar near a not-even-close-to-local community college two counties over, the class became so demanding on time it meant throwing all else on the back burner one night a week and making a two hour drive in 5:00pm traffic.
We were two hours late to the first class. And although we could choose any variety of projects separately, we focused on starting a single project together. Our donor piece was a ratty, threadbare $20 deceased-old-lady Craigslist project chair we’d stored in our family room for a few years in hopes of just such an opportunity.
We set out to deconstruct the existing upholstery in sections and label each piece, the goal being simply to recreate the old pattern identically with newer, more modern fabric.
After marveling at the unbelievable number of tacks and staples that needed to come out in order to clean up this chair, we were then squarely confronted with the long and winding history this piece of furniture brought with it. The gaudy blue fabric we saw on the outside covered two prior upholstery jobs, the original being a disgusting dark gold 1970s fabric, followed by an odd light-colored almost-carpet substance. On the inside of the frame, in very faint pencil, were the words “To Caroline”.
We were indeed a bit taken by the inscription and obvious intention and emotion that went into the work. But on further deconstruction, our romantic wonderings were replaced with the realization that Caroline’s thoughtful upholsterer did one of the most fantastically horrible reconstruction jobs we could have asked for. We were forced to ditch the old pattern, and a few weeks into the semester it was apparent we needed to create an entirely new pattern completely from scratch. Having thus far worked together on the same piece successfully and not yet murdered each other, Eilene and I added our own little inscription.
We also made rightfully sure, once we got the ball rolling, we stayed super-serious and stuck to the task at hand.
The next ten weeks saw a lot of cutting, re-cutting, stapling, re-stapling, and even a few acknowledgements when about to leave home at 6:30pm that we’d never make it in time to make progress (and either staying home or playing hooky to go hit the movies).
Beginning the class brought with it a host of fears and insecurities related to the possibility of trying and failing. Some weeks saw us procrastinating or stuck in stagnation, sometimes almost paralyzed for fear of screwing up the next phase in the reconstruction of something beautiful out of the drastically imperfect bits and pieces with which we began. We were at times disgruntled and argumentative, especially when progress was poor, or a roadblock proved difficult or intimidating. It’s easier to risk failing when we just avoid trying or can blame some external circumstance like lack of time, rather than face the risk of failure after truly exerting some honest effort.
As the course progressed, so did the level of setbacks we experienced in this first time working side by side on a creative endeavor. The more we attempted to make progress toward the overall goal, the more it seemed we were plagued by mismatched expectations of each other, communication breakdowns, unfair needs for mind-reading, and issues of leading versus following, amongst a host of other problems. There were moments when our hope was renewed with small bursts of progress and connectedness, but mostly we were landsliding toward the question of whether or not we’d ever be able to even work together on anything, or whether all our efforts were just going to fall apart at the seams.
Things tend to be darkest before the dawn. Our complications reached a crescendo just near the end of the course, and it became painfully obvious our issues and stumbling blocks in the project were less about the project and more about the issues and stumbling blocks we had with ourselves and each other.
Sometimes things need to be deconstructed in order to be put back together in a way that looks beautiful. Occasionally, the original pattern can’t even be used, everything needs to be reconstructed from scratch. But in reworking what’s salvageable and discarding what’s broken, the end result can eclipse even the brightest and most generous expectations.
I wish we could say that after sixteen weeks, we knew all there is to know about upholstering furniture. Hell, I wish we could even say that after sixteen weeks, we finished our chair. But neither is true. What we learned from our own project and watching the projects around us in class was that pieces of furniture are individual, as are the processes by which they are reconstructed. Only continued practice and dedication will bring different and specific challenges to light, and bring exposure to the ability to work through them.
When we made the drive out to the hangar for our last date with the chair, we arrived having moved past all our prior working difficulties. We were not only completely comfortable with each other, we were comfortable with ourselves and our own walk through the process of giving something a good try without having to reach perfection. In the end, giving it a shot was all that really mattered. We had a great last class, and enjoyed our stopping point of being halfway through the chair’s upholstery job.
As for the chair and its fate, we also realized at some point during the course that everything that anyone ever wanted to know about upholstery or anything else for that matter, it’s all available in some random instructional video somewhere on Youtube. But that’s another post, for another time.
Our bustling, midgeted human has blazed through his second year of life, turning two at the end of this past October. He was born just in time for Halloween.
Among his many recent discoveries is that the volume at which he yells my name is in direct proportion to the likelihood I’ll interrupt E mid-sentence to respond. Generally, the progression goes from “daddy?” to “Daddy?” to “DADDY!!!” I’ll answer “Yes, munchkin?” and he’ll point out the window at a passing vehicle and very matter-of-factly say, “Truck.”
And a truck it is. He should know, he’s absolutely obsessed with them. And airplanes. And trains. And cars. And pigs, and cows, and elephants, and giraffes, and dogs, and cats. And he can name them all, and make their noises. He can also identify “cupcakes”, and knows that the answer to “What does the cupcake say?” is “Yummmmmmm.”
Unfortunately, while he is also good at pointing out and identifying our neighbors’ animals, the response to our pointing toward a particular black and white cat from the next block and questioning, “What is that, L?” has shifted to “MINE!” coupled with a “gimme” beckoning hand motion.
And every once in awhile, he slows down enough for us to snap some photos. Whether he’s sneaking through drawers…
… or playing “ghost”…
… or picking out pumpkins…
… or telling Daddy “shhhhhhh”…
… or shopping for groceries (that we’ve already bought)…
… or Swiffering the hell out of the kitchen…
… or attending airplane shows…
… or bowling (who doesn’t love bowling?)…
… he’s always getting into something. And whatever he’s getting into, he gets into it knee deep.
And no, no we’re not yet cutting his hair.
With every good intention imaginable, we’ve had some flavor of table and chairs in this corner of the family room since we moved into this house. Though instead of a consistent place to either eat dinner or sit and make fun of drug-addled celebrities when we have company over, ninety-five percent of the time our table and chairs functioned as a mail bin or coat rack.
So, our Saarinen repros got thrown on craigslist (reaping an assload of money), and Munchkin Corner breathed its waking breath. At least now I don’t have to cringe every time one of our friends called our table and chairs “Jetsons furniture”.
The first order of business in furnishing any young boy’s fantastic toy extravaganza: find a LEGO table. A quick glance at the hundreds of dollars some places wanted for what amounted to a little short stack table with plastic plates on it immediately violated any notion I had of buying one.
Coincidentally, my eBay trolling wife almost immediately found a Pottery Barn Activity Table in perfect condition and snagged it for 39 bucks. With the table retailing for almost $350, somebody lost their shirt on that one.
The next step is to prime and paint it, and epoxy enough building plates to the top surface to create a nice, sturdy LEGO wonderland for our little midget.
We’ve already had to pull up the red area rug we covered the floor with, as he would run his metal shopping cart up to the edge of the rug and scream at the top of his lungs when it stopped dead in its tracks. But add in a hand me down IKEA bookcase, a whacked out scary, nightmarish painting E found at a tag sale, and the first iteration of L’s play area revisions has begun.
In starting work on our office, I replaced a medium sized portion of sheetrock, and put up new door casings. After letting the plaster set, I needed to sand everything down. Foregoing the small sanding bricks, I always opt for the larger pole sander heads, as they do the job more efficiently and with less effort.
The problem with joint compound is that with any sanding down, it immediately goes airborne and covers everything. The solution is a makeshift sanding “tent”.
The enclosed space helps catch all the dust and keep it isolated to the plastic-contained portion of the room. As long as I head straight for the shower afterward, I don’t seem to get plaster dust anywhere. Well, almost.
We’re knee deep in the depths of summer here in Texas, and that means the start of many indoor projects. We still have a ton to do on our Project House, from baseboards to trim, to fixtures, outlets and larger. After the intensity of the kitchen remodel, we’ve taken a long break from anything resembling work on our home. Things also got busy, and we suffered from either a lack of time, money, or both.
Now things are calming down, and we can stop and smell the roses (and hopefully the sawdust and lacquer).
In an effort to get rid of a lot of what hasn’t worked, we began trolling craigslist and eBay for things that would. E made some incredible finds. We paid obscenely low prices for our favorite 1950s and 1960s dressers and credenzas (or as our friend Wes refers to them, “that boring Mad Men shit”).
Our front room is starting to resemble a furniture warehouse, as we try to make room elsewhere for some of these great scores.
First stop on the project train? A room-by-room, whole house purge of items. I’d love to go through with big black trash bags. I’ll settle for E’s stock of Rubbermaids.
It took us all of four seconds after the artificial tree debacle to pendulum swing all the way back to wanting a real tree. E said she knew of a tree lot near our house, so last night we packed up the car and headed over there.
After walking around and taking in that fantastic tree smell for awhile, we took a walk through their tacky “Spray-Snow Winter Wonderland” room just for giggles.
We always have a a huge crisis of conscience when buying a real tree in Texas. Being New Yorkers, our dead parents would spin in their graves if they knew we spent more than $50 on a tree. So we walked past the $300 six foot trees up front, and asked for their Charlie Brown section. We’ve had luck doing that previously, I’m always surprised what constitutes a “reject” tree in some people’s minds.
As we turned the corner to Budget Row, we were greeted by some of the tallest, most full and beautiful trees on the lot, for a fraction of the price of the others. We asked the lot guy what could possibly be wrong with these and he said, “A lot of people don’t like them because the needles are stiff.” Anyone who has hung an ornament on a Christmas tree knows that stiffer needles keep the hooks on better, so we laughed and shelled out a comparatively miniscule amount of money. The total price wound up being 35% of what we paid for the fake the week before.
When we got home and got the tree in the house, I grabbed the Sawzall and lopped off a few of the bottom branches to give me enough trunk to get it into the base.
Though we can’t know for certain what L thinks about the tree until he starts talking, we’d like to think that the smile on his face last night meant that he knew this tree was super fantastic and the other one sucked big ass balls. After he touched it a few times and stared at it, we’re certain the “stiff needles” will probably be one deterrent to him mucking with the tree.
Then, as quickly as the day passed, it was suddenly time for bed.
Last weekend began our quest for a Christmas tree. E and I have both used real trees for quite some time now, including the last few years while we’ve been together. This year, for the sake of everyone’s allergies, we decided to purchase the first fake (excuse me, “artificial”) tree either of us have had since the 1980s.
After combing through websites and sale circulars, I found that Garden Ridge was having a 50% reduction in price on all their artificial trees, including their unlit models. We decided to go with an unlit tree simply due to the amount of lights we already have in the attic, we figured we could save a bit of money foregoing the prelit option.
It being a particularly quiet Sunday evening at our local neighborhood Garden Ridge, we turned L loose from the shopping cart and photographed some of the mayhem.
After having our newly purchased “reality challenged” Christmas tree sit in its box in our front room for nearly a week, I decided to clear some space and assemble the thing. I got out the base and unfurled the bottom layer.
I thought I was imagining things, but to me the bottom layer looked like complete shit. I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, and assemble the rest of the tree.
I slid each layer into the top of the previous one, and by the time I popped the top crown into the second-highest layer, I had a 7 1/2 foot tall towering piece of garbage. I tried again to think that maybe I was just misjudging the thing. It was obvious that each branch piece consisted of a bunch of wired twig pieces that needed to be spread way out to fill in all the blank space. L by then had long been asleep so, going against my desire to throw it off the front porch, I took a small nap before he woke up.
As L and I woke up, E arrived home. She strolled through the front door, looked up and said, “What the fuck? Please tell me our Christmas tree doesn’t look like that.”
I gave her the bad news and then, to check whether I was crazy, asked her what she thought about the whole “spreading out the twig pieces” deal. She agreed it was obvious that needed to be done. But the more we looked at this poor bastard tree, the more we realized there was just not enough spreading out that could be done to even remotely make Olive Oyl here look like something resembling a standard Christmas pine.
After letting Liam walk around this horrible piece of shit and completely ruining the first glimpse he’ll have in his life of what a Christmas tree looks like, we packed it back up in the box and found the receipt. I hope he’s not yet old enough to form a solid memory of what we did to his tree, I felt like a zookeeper who removed a baby squirrel from its mother and instead let it imprint on a pelican.
Needless to say we’ll be exploring other options.
It’s been a little over a month since I’ve last posted, and with good reason, everything’s gotten hectic.
E was brought on board at a great job, which means L went into daycare. Though he is benefiting greatly from socializing with other kiddos, it’s still extremely difficult to leave him in anyone else’s care after being by his side every day for a little over a year.
Having someone else deal with his allergies has always been a big worry, he’s very sensitive to a wide variety of food ingredients. The first day he was in daycare, despite us bringing particular things to eat and stressing the importance of his diet, he somehow wound up with a cheese cracker and a subsequent rash on his face. We luckily equipped them with Benadryl and a dosing chart, so he wound up okay. It was, however, enough to freak us both out and make us second guess everything.
He’s become a very, very happy little guy. He’s accumulated a medium sized arsenal of toys, and runs around the house with a few of them causing mayhem and destruction. He’s figured out how to open the latches on the dog food container, the result of which should be self-explanatory (as should the need for heavy items on top of the dog food container from then on). Since the day he entered daycare, we’ve taken to bathing him every night to get the cooties off, and he loves every second of it.
We’ve tossed around the idea of having him sit for some portraits recently, and just can’t bring ourselves to do it. Though it would be great to have a nice photo or two of him, as hardcore DIY people we can’t justify spending a few hundred dollars per sitting for a one-off. We decided it would be better to take what we would spend on a photographer, and buy a DSLR camera. We got a deal on a Nikon D40 that we simply could not pass up. This way, we won’t just have a photographer’s perfect photo of him once a year or less, we’ll have great photos of him frequently throughout his whole early life.
As I said, from this point on, we finished the rest of the kitchen in less than 48 hours. I was able to fit the door casings, do the rest of the cabinets and countertops, wire the range vent hood, and lay the thresholds at the edge of the door frames.
There are a few things left to do, like replace the ugly teal ceiling fan, original to the house. IKEA was also out of stock on the large doors needed for the stove side cabinet, so we’re going without for a few weeks. On the big bare wall above the sink, we will most likely do some open shelving.
We simply snapped some iPhone photos and uploaded them to Flickr, mainly because we are burnt out. We rushed and rushed to get this whole thing done by the time L’s birthday party rolled around. Now, I don’t want to turn another screw, take another photo, wire another fixture, or even look at the resultant mess of tools and scrap wood in the garage for at least a few weeks. The ceiling fan will get to have its last hurrah.
Overall, we’re quite thrilled so far.
It’s been a whirlwind weekend, with my mother visiting for L’s first birthday party, and finishing the entirety of the kitchen in roughly two days. I haven’t been this tired or poorly rested since L was two months old.
I had put together enough of the cabinets that I got my time down to ten minutes per cabinet. Despite that, it took me three hours to do the uppers, mainly due to a shitty studfinder that turned the whole stud finding process into a comedy of errors. It began with knocking on the wall to listen for solid areas, and ended with four unneeded drill holes through studless drywall. I finally got pissed off enough that I went to Home Depot and dropped $30 on a studfinder that actually worked. After working on cars, houses, electronics, and everything in between, I’ve found that 80% of fixing anything is having the right tool.
The uppers mount to a rail that’s drilled into the studs. The mounts are standard IKEA keyhole l-brackets.
One of our problems was the placement of the electrical lines for the vent hood. I was able to cut out two small holes in the drywall, feed the lines back through the stud, and down the wall far enough to perfectly line up with the input hole in the hood. We then patched the wall and repainted that section.
Here are the upper cabinets and vent hood, midway through mounting the countertop on the wall of lower cabinets.
