Nani blog updated

With TWO videos, and some pictures.

Nani blog updated

I've updated Nadine's blog with pictures of her first paid hair cut.

Also, a quick story just about Jen.

One of the things I really like about living in Maryland is that we quite frequently have geese fly over our house, honking at each other. Those of you who did not grow up in the beautiful wasteland that is the desert will not understand this, but it's still strange to me to live among wildlife, especially large birds. So I thoroughly enjoy hearing and seeing the geese.

A few weeks ago, huge flocks of geese flew over our house every day, and I loved the loud cacophony of their honking. I finally got a picture of them flying over us. Seriously, there were at least 40 geese flying together. So cool.

Nani blog updated

Click here.

We can't stop patting ourselves on the back (which I know is prideful, but . . . whatever)

When I bought my house 8ish years ago, I bought a set of living room furniture at a garage sale. The upholstery is hideously ugly and dated, and itchy, but the cushions are actually really soft and it has fantastic wood detailing.

About six (maybe even seven) years ago I bought fabric to re-cover the loveseat. But I knew this was a lofty project that I hesitated to begin, so the fabric has either been in a drawer or haphazardly draped on the loveseat.

So, on December 30 (a month and a half ago; this was a LONG time coming) I finally decided to see how much effort it would really take to re-cover the dang thing. I had to use a screwdriver to pop out the wood covers on top of the screws that hold the wood panels into place. 60+ years of glue made that sometimes difficult, and I scratched the crap out of some of the holes. But we removed the panels. That was a huge first step (and, now that it was scratched and somewhat disassembled, we were forced into action).

Next I cut the back of the couch to reveal its inner workings. We saw that the main cushion is really only held in place by staples and elbow grease (well, and the springs; but we decided to just put the new fabric directly over the old, which saved lots of time and headache), so we got excited as we realized this was actually something we could do. The fabric was barely not wide enough to be pulled and stapled, so I used my sewing machine to sew two panels to either side of the fabric.

Luckily Todd has a staple gun; this project would've been near impossible without it. And it was really fun to use.

Then we got to work on the sides. In order to do as good of a job as the original, we'd need to take apart the arms (this is a really well made couch). I wasn't willing to risk us being unable to reassemble the couch, so we rigged it using techniques we saw as we disassembled the couch. 

Todd is very handy and an excellent problem solver, so he figured out ways to seamlessly integrate one piece of fabric into another. You can barely tell that the arms have two different pieces of fabric. And that some of it is tacked with cardboard and staples.

The wood panels on the arms made it much easier to drape the fabric on the arms (we totally learned draping on Project Runway), because the seams were covered by the wood panel.

I hand-sewed several parts, like the piece of fabric across the front, but it was actually enjoyable because I got to use an upholstery needle. That's an addicting implement (yes, I know how nerdy that sounds).

I hand-sewed the seat cushions, because I didn't want the stress of figuring out how to do it on the machine. They're not perfect, but they look pretty good, and as of last night they're done!

The finished product is AMAZING. I know we shouldn't toot our own horns, but seriously, I'm so happy with it. Now I want to bring it back into the living room (too bad we don't have space for it). I love that the wood detail stands out so well in it now--it got lost in all that horrible yellow and brown before. Though we now have the problem of owning a white piece of furniture (yikes; obviously I bought the fabric years before having children was even an issue), but that's ok--if it gets nasty, we'll just cover it again.

Here's a before and after (I wish I would've taken a better "before").