Pondering the world

making something out of nothing

These are the drawers from the yucky cabinets I pulled out of the storage building.  They are now sifter boxes.  They even have handles on them for easy moving.

I left one drawer as the bottom catch basin.

I cut a square out of the bottom of the other drawer, stapled in a bigger square of wire mesh, and screwed some wood scraps on top of those nasty raw edges.  The wire mesh has holes just the right size to allow hollyhock seeds to drop through, keeping the empty husks on top.  That's what you see here.  I've collected about a quarter of a gallon bucket of hollyhock seeds so far.

Today I realized I can also use it at Christmas, after we've gathered up the used luminarias, to screen the chunks of candle wax out of the sand so I can re-use the sand again next year.

Reduce, re-use, recycle.

Now do you see what I see?

Once I took the doors off of the cabinets, I saw it:

A raised bed garden.  Yes, I know that some of the cabinets are particle board and only likely to last one year.  Let's be optimistic and believe that the garden itself will be successful, shall we?  If it is, then I can get better materials and rebuild them next year.  If not, I haven't lost anything, since I was going to cut the cabinets up and toss them anyway.

Cabinets have no back, and once I took the doors off, I had a box, which I cut in half vertically.

So far the tomatoes have perked right up; they seem to love their new permanent home.  Pole beans are planted behind them, green peppers in front, and I dressed them up with marigolds and lobelia.  In the large bed to the right are planted a row of okra and a row of nasturtiums, which I've never grown successfully before.  I hope to actually get edible flowers from them, which I plan to pop into an ice cube tray, cover with water and have flower ice cubes for our high teas. 

The smaller planters to the right have lemon cucumbers and a mixture of squashes--zucchini, yellow squash, and the little round green ones, whatever they are.

I hope in a couple of weeks to have little sprouts popping up all over, so I'll take more pictures then.

Do you see what I see?

Remember these?  They're the yucky cabinets I yanked out of our storage building back in January.  I had no particular plan for them, but I couldn't even give them away on Freecycle because they're in such bad shape.

In this photo, I'd already taken the drawers out and removed the doors from the cabinet on the left.  I figured that I should just break them up and put them in pieces in the trash.  They're looking pretty tacky at the end of the driveway.

I've learned that sometimes either procrastination or just getting diverted onto another project is a good thing.  Sometimes the right solution comes later.  I call it "simmering," like soup on the back of the stove.  The longer it simmers, the better it gets.

Sometimes my best solutions pop right out when I'm doing something that doesn't take many brain cells, like doing mountains of laundry or taking a shower.  I read once that most people only use about 30% of their brain power at any given time.  What does the other 70% do?  It simmers....

And sometimes I turn the corner and suddenly see the answer.  That's what happened last week.

Do you see what I see?  Handy Andrea's at it again.  Stay tuned.

Handy Andrea has new clothes!

Just in case you thought Handy Andrea has been lax lately, here's a photo of three new aprons that should keep me going for a while.  To say the first aprons I made were looking disreputable would be an understatement.  Faded and ragged around the edges would be correct.  The Health Department makes us sanitize dishes with a bleach water solution, which has a way of eating through fabric.  Not to worry--Handy Andrea can run a sewing machine just as well as a cordless drill!

I get as many comments on my aprons as anything else around here.  They're a "tabard" style, which means they go over my head and cover front and back.  I'm so short that purchased aprons just don't fit well.  That neck strap drives me crazy, the "waist" is down to my hips, sometimes it hangs almost to my ankles...  you get the picture.  Looks like I'm playing dress-up in some big person's clothes.  I also make the aprons reversible, so if I get something on the front, I just take it off, turn it inside out, and I have a clean apron.  I also sew the big pockets on both sides.  I don't do clothes without pockets any more.

Think medieval stuff for tabards.  I guess they're pretty big with the SCA folks who do the medieval re-enactment stuff.  Other than the wikipedia entry for definition and examples, the rest of the entries for "tabard" on Google are all about costumes and SCA stuff. 

The apron on the left was kind of fun.  I found two fabrics with tea cups and tea pots on them.  The one you see is black and white with tiny red accents.  You can just see the reverse side hanging down--it's dark red with black and white tea pots on it. 

I know you find this utterly fascinating.  Yep.  It's a slow news day.

 

a day of self-inflicted injuries

Some days even Handy Andrea can't do anything right.  Tuesday I managed to fall on the ice, whack my head on the grip bar in the shower, and spray paint my own fingers bronze. 

I'm talented that way.

Handy Andrea--Demolition Woman!--Part II

Voila!  Open storage space!   With exposed 2x4 interior framed walls!

What to do, what to do... ?  One of my problems was having a bunch of tools that needed to be hung up but no available wall space and also a bunch of scrap pieces of wood, curtain rods, roller blinds, etc.  May I say here that I really dislike that "clean-up-your-shop" idea of putting all those things in a garbage can?  Yes, it will keep them in one place and stop them from falling all over.  But you have no idea how many times I've walked by one of those and had the sharp end of a curtain rod rip open my arm or a rake tine grab my sleeve and almost take me down.  I am SO done with that.

Wood scraps!  Open framing!  Woo-hoo!  I cut a couple of wood slats the width of the walls and made bars across about 1 foot and 2 feet up from the floor.  Voila!  Now all those wood scraps, dowels, curtain rods and small skinny objects have a home inside the framing.  And after nailing a scrap 2x4 up about 6 feet high, I hammered in some big nails and had space to hang up rakes, shovels and all kinds of long-handled tools. Anything that didn't have a hole for hanging in the top of the handle does now.  Cool.

I actually have more fun figuring out solutions to problems than sorting through stuff and getting it organized, but I finally got to that by mid-afternoon on Tuesday.  It is now sorted into boxes by room and labeled, and I even created a document as I did it so I know exactly where certain items are (Christmas table runner?  check. Christmas placemats and silk poinsettias?  check!). 

And Handy Andrea is not yet done!  I have one more demolition project, but that may have to wait a few days.  In the meantime, I've emptied the back of the truck by a run to Goodwill and the recycling drop-off, so I'm ready to go at it again, dust mask and shop vac at the ready.

 

Handy Andrea--Demolition Woman!--Part I

It's official--I am over my post-vacation lack of ambition.  Monday I started cleaning out our storage building (the "carriage house") and ended up tearing out a wall.

Steve and I have talked about it, and he looked to make sure they weren't load-bearing walls.  It used to be a detached garage and it appears at some point someone did some construction, maybe thinking to live in the building or at least have a working bathroom in there.  They got as far as partitioning off a corner, putting in a wall to make a tiny room for a toilet, installing some really cheap cabinets (old, used, and probably free), and running some wiring.  That's it.

I use that far corner for storing all of our Christmas decorations, since we only have to get into it twice a year.  However, anything stored way back in that toilet closet is impossible to get to.  And since the cabinets were fairly useless and just took up space, I didn't have enough storage space.  And--you guessed it--the Christmas stuff just sort of got chucked into the main part of the building, wherever there was any room at all.  Add to that the fact that one of my employees--no longer with us--just threw Christmas stuff in boxes in spite of my instructions.  I had really wanted to put it away in an organized fashion, sorted by room and labeled so next year I could just go in and pull out the boxes I needed and maintain a little sanity. 

Stephanie and I had moved all the boxes into the driveway and taken down the junky cabinets, and they're now sitting in the driveway.  So I took my trusty Wonder Bar and hammer and started whacking away.  I took the sheetrock completely off and removed the wiring.  Steve then took his Sawzall and cut that frame wall out slicker'n duck poop.  Then he knocked the 2x4's apart and removed the nails so I could re-use them.

Which I promptly did, to make a shelf across the top of that area for my Christmas dolls (5) and miniature trees (2)  and other assorted stuff.  All wrapped up in plastic bags to keep them dust- and cobweb-free.  When you have an 8-bedroom B&B, you have a lot of Christmas stuff!

I finally did run out of daylight and have to pack it in for the day, just putting all that Christmas stuff right back in as it was, but at least I could get it all in there.

Stay tuned for Handy Andrea--Demolition Woman!  Part II.