Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Cleaning and Painting

I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but those were a couple of my small projects this weekend.

I have this white square planter that's a couple of years old. The little lemon tree in it had been long dead, munched on by the deer and then sadly neglected. The wood had started to peel and fade, so it was time for a new coat.


It looks much better afterwards; in fact it's almost glowing in the twilight. You can also see one of my two new lavender plants in the foreground (which brings the front yard to 5 total, different varieties) and a newly planted Queen Elizabeth rose in between. I'm hoping the lavender will act as a small barrier to keep the deer away from my rose.


Some friends of ours were celebrating their 10 year anniversary this weekend, and I wanted to get them a little something special. A picture frame came to mind, and I found this wooden black one with carved flowers in the front.

I thought it was missing a little punch, so I masked off the edges and painted the flowers a deep red. Here's a before, and "in progress" with a grey primer:



And the deep red, all finished.


On Sunday I climbed onto the roof to scrub the skylights, which have gotten filthy over the last year or so. Right after I got up there, Casper trotted on over to see what I was up to, and then Mouse joined him in lounging near by. I can definitely understand why they like it up there, it's a fun spot!


And finally, here's a project from last weekend. My husband and I upgraded from an older full/queen size futon mattress and got a custom built California king mattress. What a difference!

So of course we needed a new bed frame. The one I built a long time ago got dismantled, and we found some plans online for a platform bed. With a little tweaking here and there, we now have a beautiful redwood bed frame, with plenty of room for storage underneath!


Marms supervised the whole thing.




The old bed will eventually be turned into a small planter, just like the wood futon frame before it. (The marigolds in the second picture are housed in that planter.)

And there are all our cats except for Spook! She came in last night with a couple small wounds on her neck, which look like a bite or a scratch. She held still long enough for me to put a compress on it and make sure she wasn't in any immediate danger, but we're still going to have to keep an eye on her and hope it heals up well.

Meanwhile we're going to have some stir-crazy kitties while they all stay indoors for a bit.