Winter Projects 2022

 As winter swirls around us and snow again falls we continue to find projects to occupy our time and keep us busy. During Spring, summer and fall I garden with a passion but during the cold months of winter I keep myself busy with needlework and projects inside the house. 

My first project was this little oak night stand. Years ago I stopped buying modern furniture and started buying antique furniture. You would be hard pressed to find anything not built before World War 2 in the house. My preference was solid wood and sturdy enough to stand up to a lifetime of children and grandchildren. Many of these pieces have done just that. Many have been passed on as we age to our children for their own homes. This little table I bought mid 80's at an antique auction in Florida along with a matching dresser and highboy. The night stand has been used rarely but because O Wise One wanted to use it to hold his CPAP machine beside the bed which holds water I wanted it to have a more modern and waterproof finish. So I stripped, sanded and refinished the oak. It turned out wonderfully for a piece that I would probably date to the 1940's atleast. 

This piece started out life as an old treadle machine. O Wise One rescued the remainder of it but the machine and top were not salvageable. So he stripped the metal stand and restored it. Disengaged the wheel and I stripped and refinished the small oak side drawers. For the top he rescued a slab of oak out of the back of a friends pickup. It has a blemish and was headed to the wood stove. He left a live edge or bark edge on it and I sanded, stained and finished the top. I plan to use it as a plant stand. I want to find some small white porcelain drawer pulls for the drawers. 

Late last winter I stripped, sanded and refinished all my upper cabinets. They are solid oak,  40 years old and original to the house. Once stripped I stained the oak with a golden pecan stain. We also added new brushed nickel hardware. Once done we added tongue and groove wood above the cabinets and painted bright white. A new kitchen window also. 

  

Last month we stripped, sanded and refinished the bottoms to match. Now I am not going to lie to you. Those cabinets were quite a job even for the both of us. But we are so happy with the outcome and how they turned out. Most people would have pulled them out or just painted them white but we wanted to salvage all that beautiful oak. Next step is a new counter and backsplash. Not really quite sure what yet but we will let ya know.

And those are our woodworking adventures thus far for this winter.

Everyone stay safe and warm.

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

*****************************************************

I can also be found at

https://thebackfence.freeforums.net/

Winter Projects

Remember when we were in school and had to write paper in the fall on what you did last summer. Well this was my winter project. This house was built in 1984 and these cabinets are original. Custom built oak cabinets. Bottom line I cannot replace them with solid hardwood cabinets of equal quality or workmanship. So what do you do. I had a choice of painting them or refinishing. 

I chose to strip and refinish. I spent the winter sitting at my dining room table staining and refinishing the top doors and frames. Good Lord this is time consuming but they came out beautiful. I went with a golden pecan stain and a semi gloss polyurethane. New updated hinges and pulls and the top is done.  

What do you think? I know painted cabinets are in style right now but I am somewhat partial to wood. I think beautiful wood well maintained is timeless.

Oh my Lord I stripped 36 years of grease and grime off those cabinets. It lightened them so much. And spent hours sanding.

Then I did the same to all the bottom doors and the drawers as well. I painted all the insides of the cabinets a bright white with a good high gloss scrubbable paint the O Wise One bought a good heavy linoleum and covered all the cabinet shelves and bottoms with it. All I have to do is literally wipe these cabinets out to maintain and clean them. 

As you can see from the picture above I still have the frames to do on the bottom and all the cabinets will be done. I hope to catch up this summer and complete them so I can put the doors back on.  Then new counter tops and back splash. Keeping everything very white and light because of the darker wood. 

I also refinished and added this to my little bathroom along with a vessel sink.

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter

Everything Old Is New Again!

While the temperatures are warming up here in Tennessee the rain is unrelenting. The area that we have moved to gets over 5 FEET of rainfall a year.  Here on the top of this mountain rain is almost daily right now. Not the pouring rain and spring storms that you see in spring in Missouri. Here it is mostly the slow and soaking drizzle for hours on end and sometimes all day long. O Wise One and I have decided that the good people of  this part of  Tennessee should have webbed feet. But we have to hope that this rain continues once we get our garden planted. 

In the meantime O Wise One and I have rehung our old door. Over a century old this door has cranberry glass  and is truly exquisite. It has hung in my homes for the past 20 years or so and has made the trip to Tennessee beautifully. Not wanting to put it on an exterior doorway because of the cranberry glass we have decided to hang it on the bathroom doorway and I will sew a curtain to go over the glass on the inside of the room for privacy. O Wise One ripped down that perfectly good and shiny new vinyl clad piece of junk from Lowe's that came on the house and put up our century old bunged up door that I originally purchased out of a farmers shed for a whole 12 pack of beer over 2 decades ago. 

Right now O Wise One is making wide door frames and base blocks and a beautiful molding cap to go on top of the door frame to more closely match the period of the door.

Our mirror over the bathroom vanity is a century old solid tiger oak mirror off an old dresser long discarded. And beside it sconces with pull chains. Anyone else remember those. We will add wide base molding and a crown molding up top to finish this room off.

Lots of bars for safety in the bathroom as we strive to prepare this house to grow old in.

And trying to tuck additional storage in every nook and cranny that we can. In the small homes that is so important to be able to have a place for everything. Trying to stain and sand cabinets inside is a real pain though.

So even though it rains almost daily right now we still have lots do inside to keep us busy. For two people so used to planting it is hard to wait. O Wise One has 6 raised beds started but we have not planted anything yet. We wait and observe what the climate will do and try to figure out a strategy in this almost temperate rain forest environment. So different from our prairie gardens of old. It will take lots of composting and soil building over many years to compensate for the shallow soil that this mountainous area is known for. O Wise One has already found a local rabbit grower and started collecting bags of rabbit poop for soil amendments and our first order of business was three large wire composting rings for leaves. As we start to see seed potatoes and onion sets in the stores we wonder if we won't be skipping the early spring planting season while we prepare beds for later spring and summer crops. Right now we watch the locals and study the environment and plan how and where we will plant what as we make plans for our future crops. Luckily our freezer is still full and our pantry has lots of jars left to carry us over until that first harvest.

Until next time....

Blessings from The Holler

The Canned Quilter