Fun Monday - The Doldrums

The Church Lady is hosting this week's Fun Monday, and after a few days of being snowbound, she wants to know:
How do you beat the doldrums when you are stuck in the house either because it is too cold or too hot outside? Do you read? Cook? Complete a home improvement project? Watch movies? Scrapbook? Please share your ideas.

Oh, Church Lady... I rarely get the doldrums! Mostly because I'm always doing something. If you just look back at my blog, including the last post, you'll see there's always some project in the works.

Some may think I have lots of time on my hands. That is not true. Mostly what I have is a lack of money to do the things I want to do - which includes buying furniture, having my house painted, getting old fixtures replaced and tearing out old carpet and putting new flooring in. Because I don't have money, I have to figure out a way to do it myself.

I'd say 98% of our furniture is used or hand-me-downs. Which means the pieces aren't in the best shape to start with. It usually takes a little TLC to get them back into usability.

I learned to paint early in life (thanks, Mom) and enjoy it - so when I think a room needs a different color, I don't think anything of buying a can of paint and putting it on the walls.

I just followed directions when it came to putting in toilets or changing out faucets. Most instructions are pretty good these days. Understanding how things work helps too. Thank goodness for the internet, which has talked me through quite a few projects.

As for the couch project, I'm winging it. I had planned to carefully remove the material from the couch and use it as a pattern, but those darned staples made that impossible. Someone went staple gun-happy on this one! I'm also working with materials pulled from an old mattress - an experiment in recycling. However, this is a rather freeing experience. I know what I want to accomplish, have an idea about how to do it, and if it doesn't work, I'm out $20 for the old sofa and might get to buy a new sofa with my tax return. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will turn out well, though. I could always use tax return money for something else - like a new stove or to have electricians come check out my wiring.

Electricity is the one thing I will not mess with. Plumbing can't kill you....

Now go visit the Church Lady and the other participants of Fun Monday!

Couch Project - Part 1

This is my couch. I bought it for $20 at a yard sale. A couple of years ago, I did an emergency recovering because I was having family over for Thanksgiving - and it lasted a lot longer than I thought it would (mostly because I did it with sheets, which are really too thin to upholster with). I pulled all the maroon sheeting off and tossed the foam seat.

I'm looking at this and wondering... do I want to keep the rolled arms and the poufy bottom trim? I'm thinking no, but I need to see what's under there before I make the final determination.

The bones of this couch are good - the frame is strong and the springs are intact, but there are things I dislike about this couch too. The back is slanted away because the back cushioning is actually giant pillows. I don't really like that. The couch is also too deep to be comfortable sitting on. It's great for laying around, but when you have people over and they have to sit, it's awkward. The couch is too low and too deep.

I'm thinking I might restructure the back and build cushioning out to make a real back piece rather than rely on giant pillows. Again, I need to uncover it to see what is possible.

Hmmm... Immediately ran into unexpected stuff. Like long, barbed metal strips that run up along the back sides. And a bazillion staples. Apparently this couch was made to be disposable because no one in their right mind would sit there an pull out all those staples (and yet, I did).

As you can see from the stain in the picture above, we may have some rust problems with the springs. They've definitely stained the under cloth, but are the springs still strong enough?

The springs have also broken free from the frame in a couple of places. They appear to be held in place by these little metal red tabs - and the tabs have broken in half on the loose springs. Is there some place I can buy those metal tabs, maybe? Or do I need to fashion another way to reattach those.

This is getting pretty interesting. The arms have wood forms on either end to give them shape, then spars between them to give them strength, covered by foam. Debating on keeping that foam or replacing it. It looks pretty worn and gnarly. Also wondering if I want to keep that curved shape or make it less curvy. Need to consult with Darling Man about preferences.

This is the bottom. I'm wondering what these little studs are for. At first I thought maybe for when the couch sat directly on the floor (the feet may have been an afterthought), but they were covered by the upholstery material, so I'm not sure.

See how awful the foam looks? It seems to be in good shape, just looks bad. Still debating. I will leave it on for now until DM tells me how he feels about the big curvy arms.

I got half the couch undressed today. I'm hoping to get the rest done tomorrow so I can see what I have here and make some decisions about how to proceed. If my palms hold up, that is. I was using needle nosed pliers to pull out the bazillion staples and my right hand is bruised and swollen now. Yeah. I guess I'm a little nuts.

The best toy

It was true when I was a child... and it's still true. It's not the toy, but the box it came in.

When I was a kid, the absolute best thing in the world was building a fort in the back yard out of cardboard boxes. We lived two blocks from an appliance store and they were always putting boxes out for trash pickup. I guess my brothers and I were the trash pickup because we dragged home every box that was in halfway decent shape. Much to my parents' glee - and dismay - our backyard was regularly transformed into a maze of little brown buildings, augmented by lawn chairs and pine straw. We had a blast pretending to be settlers in the wild west or astronauts on a space ship exploring like the folks on Star Trek did.

We stayed out of Mom and Dad's hair for hours and days on end, only to wind up with a big, brown, soggy mess when it rained. Then the lump of formerly glorious cardboard would be hauled out to our own trashpile and wait for pickup.

This past week, I got my own toy. A lovely, big treadmill with a control panel on it to rival any Star Trek episode. It's a tool for training (and I LOVE my treadmill) and losing weight. And it came in a great big cardboard box!

Since our backyard is full of leaves and sweet gum balls, dogs and poo, my livingroom became the playground.

Control panel for the Star Wars style AV-26 land speeder

Landspeeder in all its glory - and the maker still making improvements

It was fun for a day or two. A great thing to have on a chilly Thursday night when Kylee came over and they turned it into a part of a house. The kids played with it all evening.

Still, there comes a time when you look at your livingroom and sigh. At least that time came for me. The treadmill is huge and took up almost all available floor space in my family room, so I wanted to move the couch into the livingroom - only with the land speeder in there, there was no room.

It's not exactly "House Beautiful" here. There's landspeeder in the middle of the room, materials harvested from the king-sized mattress I disassembled a couple of weeks ago, miscellaneous tables that were holding plants during the freezing portion of our winter... A broken chair (upside down) that needs to be fixed, and its mate that doesn't know what to do without it's broken-legged friend. Oh, and my tower fan which really doesn't know where to go now.

Darling Man began the restoration this morning. The speeder was taken apart and restored to just being a cardboard box. My mattress materials went into the box, was taped up and moved to the garage. The excess tables were removed and dispersed to other parts of the house, the floor vaccummed and the couch was moved in to await restoration.

The family room makes a little more sense now - at least we can walk through it without tripping on anything and the living room looks semi-civilized at the moment with the cushion-less couch sitting under the window.

Project Couch will begin shortly. Old furniture is MY favorite toy.

But it's not over yet....

Especially if you live somewhere other than Florida....

Wordless Wednesday - the End is Near

Saving Lives, One Dummy at a Time

Once upon a time, I was a Brownie. Then I was a Girl Scout. Then I was a high school student. Then I was just an interested, caring person. At each of these stages of life, I learned how to give CPR and how to do the Heimlech Maneuver.

In each case, a dozen people would gather 'round as Rescusi-Anne was unfolded from her carrying case and laid out on a table. Her mouth was swabbed with germ-killing rubbing alcohol , and an instructor would demonstrate how to blow in the mouth after tilting the head back, and how to find the sternum and position your palm correctly for chest compressions.

It was very serious stuff. And Anne looked a little scary, frankly. Eyes closed, mouth agape with perfect white, chicklet teeth and lump of tongue. The Annes I remember had actual yellow hair coming out of their heads - I suppose for a more life-like feel. I'm sure they were hard to keep clean though, so eventually she got a plastic do.

Even creepier though, were the babies. Same blank expression, but scaled down. No teeth. And you had to be so gentle with the compressions - you were always scared of breaking them.

Nowadays, rescusitation dummies come in all shapes and sizes.

Witness "Fat Old Fred"...

It's been years since I took a CPR refresher course. I've never had to use CPR on anyone (though I've used the Heimlech Maneuver several times), but now they have come out with new guidelines. Perhaps it's time I faced down Rescusi-Anne again...