by Kara

I’ve been meaning to do a post on Zoe’s room for a while now. Now that we are maybe almost possibly moving, I guess its a good idea to write about it before she’s in a new room.

Zoe’s room is by far my favourite room in my house. Its bright, neat, and girly, and it was so much fun to decorate!

Before it became “Zoe’s Room”, this room was an odd conglomeration of office, guest room, and storage area. It was – I forget what colour the walls were. Green? Yellow? Brown? I’m sure my husband would remember. All I remember is that it was dark, and it had a very faded carpet covering a beautiful wood floor. When I found out I was pregnant, it became my mission to empty the room of all its old furniture and turn it into a beautiful nursery. At 22 weeks, I found out I was having a girl, and the design ideas began.

After the room was emptied, my husband tore out the old carpet. Since there were some areas where the wood had been painted, we had to paint the floor, rather than stain it. We chose a very light grey, and I love the final effect. It makes the whole room bright and airy. We painted the walls a light purple. All the furniture is white, and there are dark grey curtains that match the dark grey and yellow rug. The walls are decorated simply: A canvas print above the book shelf, a shelf of frames above the change table, and some wood prints above the crib.

My favourite piece of furniture in Zoe’s room is this shelf. I’ve always wanted one of these Ikea shelves, and I love it in this room. Its so organized. The black boxes are filled with blankets, shoes, hats, bibs, dolls, and teddies. I plan on filling the top shelves with books as we build up our collection.

I also love the canvas print and picture frames above  the shelf. I got the canvas print from Winners after Zoe was born. It is a perfect match for our colour scheme. The picture frames were purchased soon after our first ultrasound as I was searching for the perfect frame for the ultrasound pictures. As you can see, they’re both still empty. I wound up getting a simple white frame for the ultrasound pictures, which is still sitting on the shelf above the change table.

I decided not to get an actual ‘change table’, but rather to use a small dresser. This way, when I no longer need a change table, Zoe can still use the little dresser.

The black shelf beside the change table is filled with disposable diapers and wipes. At home, I use cloth diapers which are stored in the top drawer of the dresser.

Decorating Zoe’s room was a big project for me when I was pregnant. A lot of people told me just to do it after she was born, since she would be sleeping in my room for a while at first and wouldn’t care where she was sleeping afterwards. But it was important for me that this room be ready to welcome our baby. Its true that I didn’t use the change table for the first 2 weeks of her life, and she did sleep in our room until she was 5 months old. But I loved knowing that she had a place in our home, a beautiful room where I could put her down for a nap or where we could sit on a rocking chair reading books.

By Katie

A while ago I found this great stump.  I can’t remember where it was, but when I found it, I thought, “That’s a great stump.  I like that stump.  I will make something with that stump.”

So I took the stump home.

The stump was rather rough, so I took a palm sander to it.  I started with a 40 grit sandpaper and slowly moved up to a 200 grit to get a nice, smooth finish.  All said and done, it took me about 3 hours of sanding to get it smooth.  I had enough for the day so I put the stump in Will’s shop.

Some time passed.

Fall came.

Atticus was born.

Christmas, spring, summer, fall, Atticus’ first birthday, Christmas, spring.

Vivien was born.

We finished our house renos. Christmas again.

We listed our house.  We sold our house.  We bought a new house.

Will asked, “are we taking this stump with us?”

Of course we are!!  Thats my current work-in-progress, dude!

We moved.  We settled in.

Will organized his shop.  And asked, “Are you ever going to do anything with this stump?”

I told him to stop pressuring me.

We took a family trip to Habitat for Humanity.  I found 3 castors  (they didn’t have 4, boo!)  for $2.  I bought them for my stool.  Will laughed at me.

We found out we were expecting twins.

Summer came again.

Then one day, I was returning a pair of pliers to the shop and saw my stump.  And I thought to myself.  This is the day.  This is the day that my stump turns into something more than a stump.  This is the day that my stump achieves its destiny.  The sun shone through the window on my stump and I heard a choir singing.  (I did actually think of my stump achieving its destiny.  I have a rather melodramatic mind. However, it was overcast so there was no sun, and there was no choir either.  Though, if I win the lottery that I never play, maybe I will hire one to follow me around to sing in concert with my melodramatic thoughts.)

So my stump came inside to my work table.    I knew I had a bit of dark brown stain from a previous project that I thought would look good.    I used a piece of an old sheet to wipe the stain on because I didn’t have cheese cloth, or stain cloth on hand.  And we always use an old sheet for these sorts of things.  It works.

 I did 3 coats of Saman Colonial stain.  It’s a very watery stain.  Will hates using it but I don’t mind it, but I probably won’t choose this brand again.  Miniwax is a much nicer stain to work with.

Since I was planning on using my stump as a stool/side table, it needed to be wipable and stain-proof, so I did 3 coats of laquer as well.  I had a bit left of this left over from a previous project as well.  It dries nice and hard so I knew it would be perfect for my stump.

The last step was the castors.  It would be easy to balance it if I had 4, but I only had 3, which made it less easy.  It was even less easy to achieve balance because the stump was oval shaped, not circular.

But I prevailed.  I marked out the centre point and drew a circle around it.  The theory is that in order to achieve balance, you have to have your castors on the 3 points of an equilateral triangle.  So I marked out those positions and screwed in my castors.  (I only did one screw in each, because I figured I would be moving them)  There was one side that was really tippy so I moved all the castors to try counter-balancing it.  There was still some serious tippage, but I didn’t think moving the castors equidistantly would help.  I moved one castor to try balance the tip and it worked!  So my castors do not form an equilateral triangle, but I have a tip-free stool, so a win for me and a lose for math!  (Just kidding,  I realize that if I did math equations that took into consideration the weight, height and shape of the stump, I would come up with the prime location for the castors.  But I didn’t want to, partially because I didn’t know how to, partially because it was getting late.)

I took my stool to our living room.  I set a cup of coffee on it.  I tried to take a picture, but they were fuzzy, so I waiting until daylight was coming in the windows.

That’s the story of my stool.  My project that took 4 years, 4 kids, 2 houses and numerous jabs from Will, but I got it done.

If you have any small, easy projects that you want done with absolutely no time-line at all, let me know.  I’ll get it done for you.  Maybe.

by Kara

Last week, I did my first ever furniture DIY: a dining room table. It turned out great!

Our old dining room table had come with our house, and it was old! Not only that, my ever-fidgeting fingers had picked at the table top until strips of the veneer had peeled off. It always had to be covered with a table cloth, which was a Giant Tiger deal that was too big and never stayed centered. It drove me crazy.

Our new table was given to me my by sister-in-law. She had used it when she was first married and had intended to give it a face lift, but had never gotten around to it. She said that if I wanted to redo it, I could have it. Not only that, she said I could work on it in her garage. And so, I went over to her house for two or three days, and I sanded the table down to the pine.

That was nearly 6 months ago. When I was 8+ months pregnant. But when my due date came and went, I decided to stay home and [patiently] await the birth of my daughter. And after my daughter was born, every time I went to visit my sister-in-law it turned into a cup of tea and a long afternoon of chatting, instead of the work dates that we had planned. And so my beloved table sat in her garage for days, weeks, and months.

Last Wednesday, my husband made the 20 minute trek to pick the table up. He brought it home late that evening, and Thursday morning I finally began to stain it. I chose a

dark walnut stain. It was the premixed MinWax stain from Canadian tire, since it was cheap and easy to choose the colour I liked (they had samples of what it looked like on different woods). I love the end result! I did three coats of stain, with 4 hours in between each coat. The can said to use either cheesecloth or a brush; I used cheese cloth, since I felt that would be easier to apply smoothly. It worked quite well, but I was very glad for my rubber gloves! I had to buy cheesecloth anyways to ‘wipe off any excess’ stain after it was applied. Friday, I began to apply the polyurethane finish. Again, I used the MinWax brand from Canadian Tire. The application of polyurethane was slightly more difficult, since it required a light sanding in between each coat. I started with a sponge brush, as suggested on the can, but found that it did not apply smoothly. For the third coat I used the cheesecloth again, which worked much better for me!

In between the staining and the polyurethane-ing, I painted the legs of the table white. I had some of the Behr paint & primer mix in Ivory Palace from when I painted the trim in our house. This went on nicely. Again, I did three coats.

The table top after one coat of stain

Freshly painted table legs

The table was stained, varnished, painted, and dry by 11:30 on Saturday morning. My husband had removed our old dining room table, and I dusted and vacuumed the dining room to make it ready for its newest piece of furniture. The table looks perfect, and I no longer have to deal with a slippery table cloth. All in all, I love the finished product! I’m now looking for two shelves that I can stain & paint to match the table. Hopefully, those will be my next project; but I’m picky, so we may be waiting a while.