I was supposed to paint a huge tuffet last week.  The base, five panels and the button.  No problem.  Got the idea all ready to go, all I have to do is get to work.  The problem is that the tuffet was huge and I had no time.  By "no time" I mean I didn't really want to work all day for four days. The good news was that the weather was crap.  Gray, dreary, cold and wet.  Absolute rubbish.  Might as well paint all day, right?  That was the plan.  Then, Friday night Katie called to tell me that Gramma had been to an estate sale and bought her a bed.

Katie had told everyone that she wanted a larger bed than the twin trundle she's had since she was fifteen.  When she moved out last month, she left the trundle under Josie's daybed and Kate has been roughing it for weeks.  So, my Mom, the greatest estate saler in history, was on the prowl and hit paydirt on Friday.  She bought the full sized bed; frame, mattress and box spring, dirt cheap but the catch was that Katie would have to pick it up.  Katie wanted to know if Zack and I could help her.  Of course, I said yes and Saturday morning we took the seats out of both vans and headed into the wilds of Edina to find the bed.

The bed was very nice and the sale was great. While Zack hauled the bed out to the empty vans, Katie and I did a little shopping.  She bought an old sewing machine table, a set of undersized wooden tv trays with stands and a set of china.  I bought a carved wooden chair with a needlepoint seat which was so old the wool was worn right off the canvas.  All together we spent $80.00.  That's a good estate sale.  Zack wasn't very happy because every time he came back from the car, we had more furniture for him to haul out.  And it was raining. He grumbled but he never stopped working.

We hauled the bed to Katie's new place and emptied the vans of all her stuff.  She took Zack out for lunch but I had to pass.  I really needed to get to work.

When I got home I was starving and I made the mistake of checking my emails while I ate.  There was one from my brother that I just had to answer and the answer got pretty involved and the next thing I knew, Jay was yelling at me to get off the computer and get ready to go.  We had a wedding up in Anoka at 3:00.

Having completely blown any opportunity to get any painting done on Saturday, I was happy to iron some clean clothes and put on shoes.  Because of the pouring rain, it took awhile to get to the site of the wedding.  It was originally going to be outdoors but Plan B worked out beautifully and the ceremony was lovely and the reception grand.  We wound up at a table populated by the Swinger's Club of Blaine.  Fortunately, I wasn't drinking or God knows what Jay would have bid on.

Sunday and Monday I worked all day and actually got the tuffet finished.  Take my word for it, that's a lot of painting.

Today I dropped the thing off at the shop and met with another customer who wants...a tuffet.  She told me exactly what she wanted and then asked me if I thought she should get a big one or a small one. Naturally,  I told her to go for the big one. Hey, my kids need shoes.

 I was very happy to be able to take the rest of the day off.  First of all, the sun came out and it got up into the high 70's for the first time this month.  I had a long list of things to do and I tried to do as many as I could.

First of all, I finally primed the new wall around the vanity we had put in our bathroom back in the spring.  You get so used to looking at an unfinished wall that you stop seeing it, but today I primed it and tomorrow I'll paint it.  I like the green that's in there now, but it's a color I mixed myself so I don't have any left.  I think I can mix something close.  I ought to be able to.  I've got about fifty cans of paint up in my office.

Then, I scrubbed the kitchen table and put a new coat of varnish on it.  I like to re varnish it at least once a year.  I put two coats on today and I'll apply a third tomorrow.  It's easy and now the table looks like new.

Then I went to the Burlington Coat factory to check out linens.  With her new bed, Katie has no sheets that fit it.  I checked out the price of full sized bed sets.  As with everything at my favorite store, the prices were great.  She can get 300 count cotton for $24.99 or go as cheap as $9.99.  Or she can spend half again as much at Target because she wouldn't take my phone call.  Your loss, Kaykay!

I don't even know how it happened but the next thing I know, I'm looking at drapes.

Last spring I painted our tv room.  At that time, I took down the mini blinds hanging in the windows.  One of them had several broken slats so I chucked it.  Why rehang broken blinds?  Then, like the wall in the bathroom, I just stopped seeing the fact that my tv room windows were only half covered with blinds.  All summer long, one window had nothing but the brackets.  Classy.

I hate our tv room windows.  Originally the room had two sets of these stupid windows, facing each other.  The good thing about them is that they're huge.  The bad thing is that they only open on the bottom third and they're horizontal crank outs that, when fully extended, only open to about a forty degree angle.   The upshot is that even with a hurricane blowing in from the park, we get no air flow.  I'm a fresh air junkie.  I want to live on the roof like Beverly Penn*.  We replaced one wall full of these awful windows eight years ago with an enormous sliding door to the deck.  The door has never had any kind of cover.

And now I'm at the Burlington Coat Factory, looking at drapes.

$166.00 and four hours later, I'm too exhausted to move but my tv room has a new lease on life. 

Gone are the last of the mini blinds.  In their place are a full window treatment with gauzy white shears and heavy, twice lined, energy saving curtain panels in a lovely color that looks just right with the pale gold on the walls and the green carpet.  I put hold backs, those curved hooks you screw on the wall, by the windows so that the drapes won't get in the way unless we want them to.  For the doors, I bought the longest rod I could find and hung it fifteen inches beyond the sides of the door, so that the curtains could be opened completely off the door.  No loss of doorway, no loss of the view of the backyard, but at night if I want to watch Californication while my neighbors kids are in the yard, I don't have to worry about traumatizing them.

The drapes have changed the look of the room completely.  It now looks like a room that grown ups live in.




* a character from Mark Helprin's wonderful novel, "A Winter's Tale".

 

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