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

Living Room Cabinet

Jeff and I are thrilled that we've finally put the last piece of furniture into place in our living room! It's not perfect, but it's absolutely going to tide us over until we relocate to our retirement quarters. A little confession here: I snagged this piece from FB Marketplace a few months back without fully grasping how large it is. Sure, the listing had measurements, but did I measure our space? Nope! Lesson learned.

We initially wanted it against the other wall, but there is a floor register in that corner, and alas, it has no feet to lift it up. So, we made do and shifted it to the other wall where it only partially covers the vent. 

Giving it a good polish with Feed-N-Wax has made it look fantastic. I'm looking forward to finally unloading the plastic file tubs of office supplies that have been kicking around the dining room for several months.

After scrolling back through earlier posts, I now realize I never mentioned we also swapped out our dining room table. The amish cherry table we got back in August 2015 was lovely, but the chairs were wobbly and were beyond saving. So when I stumbled upon an absolutely stunning Joinery table on Craigslist in September 2022, it was too good to pass up. It came with just two matching chairs, but I hoped I'd eventually find more. I was even ready to part with the two original chairs when I found a set that would work. 

After unsuccessfully searching for more than a year, this past February, we finally decided to just order four matching Kelly chairs from The Joinery. They're expected to arrive in about six months, and we can hardly wait!

I'm grateful my husband was able to go back to work so we can afford to make some changes. It's been fun reworking our living space this year.

Dining Room Rug Cleaned

Our dining room rug was looking pretty grungy so we decided to have it cleaned. We took it into Renaissance Rug Cleaning a few weeks ago and finally picked it up today. It looks much nicer, they even managed to get the barbeque sauce off it.

We spent more on the cleaning than we did when we bought it used, but I think it was worth it because I really do like the pattern and colors. We dropped off the living room rug when we picked this one up. I'd never had rugs cleaned before so I decided to start with the cheap one first, just in case I wasn't happy with the results.

Once I spend a bit more time tidying up the dining room, I'll take photos of it in place.

I also found a set of solid cherry joinery furniture for the living room. The pieces are currently at In-Ex Upholstery company; they're being recovered with green/earthtone fabrics.

They lived in a sunroom and have some sun-fade damage on the arms, but I'm sure I can repair it. That's the advantage of solid wood furniture. Once we get the cleaned living room rug back, I'll have them deliver the finished furniture.

New Media Console

We bought a new-to-us media console (finally). I've been looking for over a year, but I'm so picky that it was hard to find something on craigslist/Facebook marketplace that met all my parameters. Even this one didn't meet all my parameters, but I really liked the style so we bought it anyway.

This actually came with three amazing doors, but we took two of them off so the remote controls would work. We'll obviously keep the doors for some future time.

I'm hoping to eventually buy or make three replacement doors and put in speaker fabric in place of glass to help keep down the dust.

This winter much of our theater gear is being replaced. In November, we got a new 65-inch TV for Jeff's birthday. It was a huge upgrade from our 15-year-old 37-inch TV. And this past week we ordered a new receiver and speakers for Jeff after the old subwoofer set off the smoke alarm in the middle of the night. It seemed like a good time during the holiday sales.

Quick Desktop Project

In January we ordered Jeff an Uplift Desk frame, but the solid wood tops were crazy expensive; like $550-1000 expensive. I couldn't bring myself to spend that much when we have a garage full of wood and some pretty decent tools. But⏤as is so typical for us⏤neither of us had enough motivation to drive the process so the boxes just sat. 

After a bit of looking around for more affordable options, I had an idea. I would look for a beat-up table on craigslist or FB marketplace and we would simply take it apart and, if necessary, sand down the top and refinish it. I obviously preferred something that was solid wood and could be cut to size without exposing the cheap inner core of veneer pieces.

Finally, I found this table on the marketplace for $25. The wood is a bit more knotty than I prefer, but it was an amazing deal and was solid wood. 

It was slightly larger than would fit in Jeff's desk space so we needed to cut 3" off one edge. It took us far longer to clean up the table saw and space around it than the actual cutting. Then I got started on sanding right away and am nearly finished putting on a few coats of finish.

Hopefully, we'll finally be able to assemble the desk tomorrow but it takes 4 hours of drying time between coats of the finish, so we'll see if I can get enough in throughout the day today.

I'm still hoping once the weather gets nice outside we'll still work on something more decorative with lots of different woods for Jeff's desk, but this will do for now.

Bedroom Furniture Upgrade

With the basement remodel we are planning to shuffle around furniture so it's been making me rethink what furniture I'd like to have long term. A couple years ago, I found a Sorenson Reverse bed from The Joinery on craigslist. I really wanted it, but I missed out on getting it. So, when I found another one a few days ago, I knew I needed to try and get it.

This time, I was successful! We took it to storage temporarily. We'll run back and get it in a couple of weeks.

Sorenson Reverse bed made by the Joinery

And I have to admit, I also ordered a coordinating nightstand and dresser from eBay. They're being shipped from Glendale, California. These are the photos I grabbed from eBay.

Stickley Harvey Ellis Long Dresser

Stickley Harvey Ellis Nightstand

I was bummed they only had one nightstand, but now that I know what I'm looking for, I'll put in automated searches to see if I can eventually find another. And, in theory, I could buy a new one from Stickley, but I'm usually too cheap to buy new furniture.

I've decided to embrace the multi-wood look so when I found this bookshelf on craigslist, I needed it too. It sure is nice that Jeff has an income again. LOL

Even though I like the current oak bedroom set, I'm pretty excited about the new furniture. I've had wanderlust for a couple years now but Jeff really doesn't want to move so I'm trying hard to settle back in. It will be nice to have a change.

Garage Progress

So far this year I've been spending a lot of time sifting and getting rid of stuff, the garage is no exception. We had this old workbench that the prior owner left behind and it was piled high with junk; this is how it looked last September. We finally managed to clear it off and sold it on craigslist. 

Our goal was to make room for the table saw to fit in the garage. Once the workbench was gone, we rotated the rolling wood rack and pushed it against that back wall. 

As a reminder, this is how the garage looked in Aug 2019 when I originally posted about wanting to organize it.

This has been a bit of a slow-going project, but I am pleased overall with our progress. There is still some junk we need to deal with in front of the wall with the tubs, but the garage is much better and more useable now, especially since most of the tools in the photo are on mobile bases and can be rolled out of the way. 

I have some ideas for more woodworking projects I'd like to try this summer, but we are feeling strongly the pull to get in our car and go places, so we may not get much done this summer beyond keeping the plants watered.

September Already?

Our Prineville remodel is at a standstill right now because Danny Dark, the contractor we were planning to hire, told us he might have to decline the job because his crew supervisor may be leaving. We're waiting for an update from him before anything moves forward. I will probably wait for another week or two and then hire someone else if I don't hear back from him.

I have received some tile and Marmoleum samples but we still haven't finalized any colors so I don't know which we'll be using. I'll post photos once we figure out more details.

We have plenty of projects on our Portland house to work on, but Jeff has been so busy with election volunteering that we haven't worked on any of them. I predict little will happen in Portland until December. So, I've focused on downsizing projects I can do myself.

I finished shredding several boxes of old financial records, then Jeff dropped off the final two boxes and we paid to have them shredded. I've also been working on scanning old family photos. I had five boxes total of photos to scan, and I think I've mostly finished four of them. The last one is really difficult because it is tons of miscellaneous small photos in no particular order and all different sizes. It's really time-consuming when everything is a different size.

We've been trying to organize belongings to start moving over to Prineville when we visit. Having overlap between the houses is a bit problematic because we don't want to move our furniture to the new house until after we've sold the big house in Portland. We really need the nice furniture for staging. But we do need at least some furniture in Prineville so we can stay there for visits during the remodel.

So, I am currently cruising around on craigslist trying to find some good chairs to keep permanently and perhaps a cheap dining room set and some bedroom furniture we can use temporarily and resell once we move over. I 💜craigslist. I've never found better deals on good furniture any other way.

This morning we found a couple of Stressless Recliners that don't feel used at all for about a third the price of new ones. Now that I've sat in them and realized how comfortable they are, I don't want to move them over yet. LOL

Craigslist Purging

In addition to shredding records, I am trying to get started on purging furniture that will not be moving to the new house, especially the stuff that is not in current use. In case any of my Portland followers are interested, I'll show some photos here.

 Antique push button recliner. The fabric is worn out on this one. I'd be pretty happy with $150 for this one.

Antique oak chairs. I picked these up at a garage sale several years ago and we never really used them. They've been sitting in our basement for ages. Somebody cut the legs off, so the seat is only 16.5" off the floor. I'm only asking $10 each to get them gone.

Long term, we're also looking to sell the living room furniture, pictured here.

And the parlor furniture.

And the guest bedroom furniture. 

Ideally, I'd like to use the furniture to stage the house for sale but I'm not sure we'll have enough time to sell it all at the last minute.

New-to-Us Rug

I've had a saved search in craigslist for a hand-knotted rug for quite a while now. I was looking to replace the dining room rug which we had bought on Overstock back in late-2011. While I had liked the rug, it proved to not be very durable. Shasta started licking it nervously when we had a friend live with us for a month, and made holes in it.

The rug we're getting rid of

My craigslist search brought this up last Friday. 

I excitedly made arrangements to go out and see the rug. Now, I would quibble with the seller that the rug was in excellent condition; it has some non-trivial damage. But it was a hand-knotted rug made by Nature's Loom and the colors were perfect for our dining room and the price was right so we brought it home with us.

Dog approved.

Cleaning/Downsizing

I can hardly believe it's already the end of January. I don't know what happened to the month. I haven't really been posting because we mostly spent our energy cleaning and downsizing.

We had a friend from out of town come stay with us for a weekend so we spent the first two weeks of the month cleaning and dusting for that visit. Even when our rooms were tidy, they were so dusty that they were filthy. We spent at least a couple days wiping everything down with damp rags to remove the dust buildup. While cleaning the house was sort of unfun, we have really enjoyed having it clean the two weeks since.

We are trying to arrange our schedules so we maintain it a little better. Once upon a time, we had a bi-weekly maid, but we can't afford that anymore. So we are now trying to schedule a once-a-week cleaning (by us) of one of the floors, i.e. main floor, upstairs or basement. Our hope is by alternating each week through the different levels we manage to keep the house from getting so filthy again.

This past week we worked upstairs. Since we'd just cleaned for the visit, we were able to focus on another long-neglected activity. It only took us 8 years, but we finally hung some art in the guest room.

Scattershot Progress

I have been randomly jumping around from project to project the last couple of weeks, in an attempt to get some overdue projects done before we shut down all the house projects to focus exclusively on writing in November.

We did get back to the brackets in the bathroom, but it was delayed because I decided I wanted to paint them a different color. I had painted them the fake-chrome I used in the basement, but it looked really stupid next to the real chrome. So, I went and bought heritage white spray paint that was a close match to the tile and recoated them.

They went up pretty well, though there are a couple of scratches I need to touch up before I declare it done.

The brackets painted fake-chrome

Painting all the pieces

Heritage white paint color

Jeff is struggling to get the chrome hooks hung because the screws they came with suck. They keep stripping, no matter what prep he does. Yes, we can replace them, but there is at least one stuck in the wood that we haven't been able to remove. Jeff's talking about grinding it down with a dremel tool.

Since he gets way too much anxiety from these kinds of frustrating projects, I'm considering finding a handyman who can spend a few hours installing hardware throughout the two bathrooms we never entirely finished.

I 💜 Craigslist

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Craigslist rocks! I had big plans to finish the garden shed this month, but I got on a serious—but really overdue—tangent. I've been sifting our massive piles of packed boxes in our basement.

It's been a bit of a horrendous project so far, but it's getting easier. Originally, I was hoping to sell a lot of the stuff, but I've realized that the difference between selling something for a dollar versus giving it away is often days, or weeks, if you can sell it at all.  So, unless something is really valuable, I'm just listing it for free on craigslist. I spent six months trying to sell boxes of virtually brand new clothes and never had one person come take a look. Instead, I had Jeff deliver the six boxes to a homeless shelter and now we can feel good about helping.

I should have had a garage sale this summer, but I never got motivated to get ready for one. Now that I'm inspired to work on this sifting project, I'm just trying to keep my momentum going. I've already used the excuse of waiting for a buyer too many times in years past. Some of these boxes have not been unpacked since 2006, when we originally moved to California. It's past time just to get this stuff gone. This big house has way too much junk in it and I'm ready to clear it out.

I have a few embarrassing photos, but I don't want to post them until we're finished and can post side-by-side with the after photos. Hopefully sometime next week the basement will be more picture-worthy.

Selling the Cherry Wood

It's been 3.5 years and we haven't done anything with this huge pile of cherry wood. We need to dig some space out of the garage so we've decided to sell this wood. Do any of our followers have any clue what kind of price we should ask on craigslist?

We have finally almost unburied ourselves of the huge pile of tile we bought in 2015. We used the subway tile in the bathroom and after months of listings, we've managed to sell most of the colored trim tiles. Whatever is left at this point will probably get donated to The Rebuilding Center or I'll put a free ad on craigslist.

We have too much stuff. We have so much stuff to get rid of. I pretty much have ads on craigslist all the time. We definitely have to participate in the Laurelhurst garage sale this year. (Yes, we could donate a lot of stuff, but it turns out when you have almost no income a tax write-off is worthless.)

Backyard Project Plans

We have gotten almost nothing done the last month. Jeff went off to Texas for a long weekend of WW2 reenactment and brought home a cold-from-hell. This stupid cold just won't go away.

We're finally getting better though, so we're hoping to return to productivity. We have two backyard projects we're hoping to finish in the next month, if the weather cooperates. The first is to install safer steps on the back slope; something along these lines. (I'd link the article for the project, but it's no longer there.)

We bought some used pavers off of craigslist for the floor of the back patio. We were originally planning to use salvaged bricks and concrete chunks, but this was just too good a deal to pass up. Since their size is uniform, it will certainly be faster to lay them down. Aaron picked them up in very rainy weather, so they're muddy in this photo.

This is what the bricks looked like in the craigslist ad

I'm juggling so many small projects, I can hardly keep track. I'm hoping to finish lacquering the woodwork in the bathroom this weekend. Barrett (the tile guy) has been flaky as usual this week, but he does seem to be eventually showing up. Late is better than never. I'll post progress photos when he's done for the day tonight.