Crazy Furniture Project

I have three large tables in my sewing room. Here are some old photos. It's beautiful furniture, but it takes up most of a room.

After we move, I won't have a whole room for sewing so I've started looking around for a smaller setup. Of all the options I found, I liked this Amish sewing cabinet best—in cherry, it's $3800! I wanted to order it, but that's a lot of money.

But then I ran across this solid cherry Mission Craft desk on craigslist for $400!

My hope is to convert it to a sewing cabinet without destroying it. We'll obviously have to cut a hole in the desktop, which is pretty scary, and install a sewing machine lift. I've written a number of local woodworkers, and so far I haven't been able to tempt any of them into taking the project.

We may have to try this one ourselves. What could happen? LOL

What's Up With Us

I'm not quite sure what happened to the rest of the year. It feels like we've spent most of it in a non-productive haze, which is why I haven't posted much—there didn’t seem to be anything noteworthy to report. That's changed now.

This past August, Intel announced layoffs that affected most of Jeff's group. Although Jeff wasn’t laid off, he was offered a role he would have disliked, so he chose to leave with his colleagues. Fortunately, we have a friend in a high-level position at Hewlett Packard Enterprises who helped Jeff quickly find a new job. It's a fully remote position, which includes some travel for customer visits.

Taking advantage of his newfound flexibility, Jeff spent a week visiting his mother at her retirement community in Anaheim, CA. He is always impressed by the vibrant social life and the close-knit community there—a lifestyle he now envisions for us. And not having to do yardwork and cook everyday is also a feature. So, we've decided to move into a retirement community ourselves. We're currently exploring options, ideally looking to be closer to family in California. Thus, our search has extended from Southern Oregon to Northern California.

Jeff dropped by Mountain Meadows in Ashland, Oregon this past week and was quite taken with it, making it our top contender. Finding the right home could take some time, as they only have around 50 detached single family homes available in the community. Luckily, we aren't in a rush.

This waiting period will be our opportunity to focus on downsizing—a necessary step, considering the homes in the community are about half the size of our current one. It looks like we're in for a serious "stuff diet."

Storage Emptied

We made it! We actually finished clearing out storage last Sunday, but I've been too distracted to post photos.

As an aside, I thought it was interesting all three walls of this locker were patched. I wonder if someone who rented this space before us broke into all three of the adjoining lockers. It never occurred to me to be worried about folks breaking in this way. Consider yourself warned.

We still haven't figured out where to store the extra black wire racks that no longer fit. But we did finally decide to let the white cubes go. I'm trying to overcome my tendency to hang onto things just in case we might need them later.

We've started setting up the workout area.

We are currently searching for a used recumbent bike for me. I don't really want to buy new, but if I haven't found something by Black Friday, then I'll probably break down and buy new.

Jeff already chose the set up he wants (the Inspire FTX) but we'll probably wait until Black Friday to buy it as well. That will give us a good deadline to get everything cleared out and have the spot ready for it.

Storage Almost Empty

We've been steadily chipping away at our storage unit, visiting every weekend to bring home a load. It looks like just one more trip and we’ll be completely moved out—right on track for our end-of-June goal!

Letting go of things we probably won't need again is still a challenge for me. It's tough parting with items that 'might' come in handy someday, but I'm working on it.

Back at home, we've set up all the racks, including one for our canning supplies. Back when we lived in a rural area, canning was a big part of our routine thanks to the abundance of free or inexpensive produce. However, since moving to Portland, those opportunities have become scarce. It just doesn't make sense to spend a lot on fruit for a few jars of jam, so I’ve been downsizing our jar collection. Just this past week, I managed to clear out three large boxes!

Our next puzzle to solve is finding a new home for several boxes of fairly valuable books. Since the county library system stopped accepting donations at the beginning of the pandemic and hasn’t resumed, and I’m reluctant to simply drop them off at Goodwill, I’m considering selling them. It does mean more work, but I'm thinking of starting with a few of the most valuable ones to see how it goes. Who knows? It might turn out to be a worthwhile endeavor!

New Joinery Chairs

They've actually been finished for a couple of weeks but we were never able to make it into the workshop to pick them up during their business hours.

We bought four side chairs to match the two armchairs that came with the dining room table. We had them use the fabric that we used for our living room morris chairs. Now we just need to recover the seats on the original two armchairs to match. 

It will take a while for the cherry wood to darken so they'll look lighter than the rest of the furniture for a while.

This was definitely a splurge. The Joinery makes beautiful furniture but it is more expensive than we are typically willing to pay. I definitely prefer to buy used whenever I am lucky enough to find it but I looked for a set of four matching cherry chairs for more than a year before I finally broke down and ordered these.

Still Playing With Stencils

While the starter edition of the Linearity Curve program is severely limited, it remains my best tool for removing backgrounds and cleaning up blemishes from bad scans. I'm finding it quite enjoyable to play around with the program while watching TV with my husband. When I'm ready to create the cut files, I plan to subscribe for a month so I can export SVG files again.

I'm hoping that once we've finished emptying out our storage, I'll be able to pull out my Cricut and start experimenting with cutting out one of the designs. By then, hopefully, I'll have decided which one to tackle first. LOL

Here are the latest options I'm considering.

I actually edited this one because I thought it would look better with more petals.

Excelsior Fresco Stencils catalog, 1924

Excelsior Fresco Stencils catalog

Blue Label catalog, 1900

Excelsior Fresco Stencils catalog

Devoe Art Stencils, c. 1910

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I tried to make the ties look a little better, but they still need some work.

Blue Label catalog

Living Room Stencil?

I've been playing with my stencil files again. I don't know for sure if I can cut them out with my Cricut, but if I can't, I suspect I have at least one friend with a laser cutter. (I'm hoping, anyway.)

I've spent like four days playing with images trying to come up with a stencil that I like but I don't really know what I want and I keep changing my mind. The downstairs rooms are more difficult to choose colors because we can't use light paint colors because they will get lost in the wall paint color.

I think I maybe have settled on this first one but this one will be a lot more difficult to fudge corners and add extra bits to fill space.

Sherwin Williams 41 from their 1910 catalog

I also prepped the files for this stencil, but I'm worried with all that orange it won't look good over the green wall paint. It does have the advantage of being stencil-able in one pass.

Blue Label 1559 from the 1900 catalog

This third option was the one I picked to do several years ago but now I've mostly abandoned it because I'm not convinced it will look good over the green paint.

Alabastine 305 from their 1920 catalog

I am experimenting with adding a large painted field below the flower but that may not work well because the stencil area is so large. 

One of the main reasons for this post is because I wanted to mention a new-to-me program I found that is super helpful for making stencils. I was trying to use my Cricut Design Space software and it was super frustrating because it just wouldn't do what I wanted it to. It's possible it would work better if I paid them the $15/month subscription, but I only use it a few times a year and have no use for any of their art files.

Anyway, when I clicked on one of my svg files it came up with Curve software. What? I don't even remember downloading that, but I must have. Anyway, its long name is Linearity Curve Graphic Design and the starter version (which is what I've been using) is available for free. I just uploaded my stencil clip art file, asked it to trace it, and it was super easy to remove the background and make changes. I have only used it for a few hours and I'm already a fan.

Update later: I spoke too soon on the free Curve program. I made the HUGE mistake of letting it update and now it's practically worthless unless you pay them. Sigh.