Happy Birthday Shasta!

Our dog child is 2 years old today! Yeah! Though she still acts like a puppy, her energy is perhaps a little less than when we got her at 6 months. She does seem to have a bit less range on the scooter.
Anyway, we sent Shasta off to doggy camp (daycare) for fun today because she seems to really enjoy it! We are trying to clean house for my father's visit the week after next. We have quite a lot of stuff still sitting around. Time to either repack and store stuff, put it away, or just get rid of it!

We tried another session of paint stripping this morning on cabinet doors from the cabinets we removed in the basement. Today's effort was mostly unsuccessful. It required quite a lot of effort and just barely scraped off the top layers of the paint. We think perhaps the paint is oil paint and we'll have to treat it with linseed oil first to soften it. But we don't have any linseed oil right now, so we're just going to clean up and set this project aside for now until our next hardware store run.

Here are some recent cute photos of our dog child. =)

A Bit More Shopping

We are pretty much done shopping, but we have picked up a few more purchases this week. Our master bathroom has virtually no storage other than a medicine cabinet, so I've been poking around on craigslist for a couple of weeks to find a suitable piece of furniture that would hold a few spare toiletries.

This week, I found this mission oak commode (a small cabinet originally used to hold a bed pan) being offered by someone in West Linn and tonight we went by and bought it. The seller claimed it was originally made for the Multnomah Hotel in the 1910s and their family acquired it when the hotel remodeled in the 50s.

Yesterday afternoon, we dropped in at House of Antique Hardware to purchase picture rail hooks and cord. We had expected the business was a hardware store but it turns out that it's more of a warehouse. They were nice to us and still sold us what we wanted, but it was certainly more of a hassle. We haven't actually hung up any art yet, but we're prepared now.

Today we received a new runner for our entryway from Overstock.com. Jeff's and my textbooks have also started arriving; Jeff's books definitely look more enjoyable to read!

We Stripped — Paint

When we first arrived in Oregon, we bought a used Silent Paint Stripper from a Portland blogger named Dawn. She has a really amazing craftsman that she's already stripped the paint and she sold us her now unneeded paint stripper.

Then, a couple weeks ago, we bought some painted douglas fir cabinet doors salvaged from a kitchen remodel from a nice lady on craigslist. Today, we finally found the motivation to try out our electronic paint stripper.
The process is pretty simple, but it really only works well on the flat portions.








We stripped all the flat portions that we could get to and now we're trying a chemical stripper to get the profile we can't get to.

Dawn also gave us some Soy-Gel and we're giving that a try. We've applied the stripper and we're letting it work while Jeff enjoys a short nap this afternoon. (Stay tuned for the results of the stripping experiment.)

Results, a few hours later:
Paint is still in the small profile grooves. We don't have a scraper small enough to fit that curve and the wire brush seemed to be tearing up the wood. Overall, I'm pleased with our first try. Now we just need to track down some better tools for our next effort.

Maybe for our next effort, we'll pull out one of the doors from my sewing room and do a real project. =)

Plants Retrieved

This morning, we had a lovely lunch and visit with Ross and Wendy. And Shasta had an especially good time because she got to play for several hours.

While the girls were hanging out playing with the dogs, the boys (Ross and Jeff) were working putting in posts for their new relocated dog run.

Another goal of this visit was to retrieve our house plants; they had been at their house since February 2009, when they agreed to "plant-sit" them for us while we travelled for a year. We were way overdue in picking them up and we're grateful they took care of them for us. Jeff somehow managed to squeeze them all into the vehicle.

Fence is In

Jeff and our neighbor, Jim, put in the fence yesterday morning.

Then this morning Jeff and I finished up painting the last panel. We are finally done!

Jeff and I do still need to paint the installed portion of the backyard fence the prior owners installed earlier this year before we bought the house. I'm hoping we'll find the motivation later this week. =)

We are currently talking with the neighbor about some possible post caps for the fence posts. I'm hoping for something along the lines of copper caps or, even better, a french gothic cap like this, because then it would match the fence on the other side (that shared with the other neighbor).

Peaches Finished!

We finished canning the last of the peaches this morning. Final tally: 16 almost-quarts (ex-Classico pasta jars), 4 pints of jam and 4 pie fillings. We're pretty proud of ourselves because we had never before canned sliced peaches before this year. And we were getting pretty efficient by the end.

More Peaches!

We bought 34 pounds of peaches earlier in the week and today the fruit was finally ripe enough to can. We put up four pie fillings, one batch of jam, and a large batch of peach slices in jars. We should have finished them all, but we actually only managed to finish one full box and part of the other. Tomorrow morning we'll have to finish up canning the rest of the fruit before it spoils.

I have been poring over so many home repair and bungalow books lately that my brain has gotten quite tired of focusing on the house. I actually picked up a "brain candy" book today I brought from my grandmother's house and read it. It was sort of an odd love story, but it was fairly entertaining and a quick read and now it will move along on its way (out of our house).

Jeff got a new toy in the mail today! (I thought I had ordered green, but it came and it's sort of a turquoise color. Oh well.)

I'm still trying to plot my plan for curtains and shower curtain in our upstairs master bathroom. I think I figured out what I want to do and have started sketching it and drawing out pattern pieces. Pictures may follow tomorrow, if I have a chance to get started.

Though, we may have to spend the afternoon painting. We still have a bit of fence to paint and it's possible it won't be raining, so that probably needs to be a priority. Sigh. (I'd rather sew!)