Stools- Pulling It All Together

While Steve is running around doing last minute measurements on our next upcoming BIG project, I am working on a little one in my She Shed. 

Last October, on one of our jaunts over to the Habitat Humanity Restore in Marinette, I found these folding bar stools. I wanted them for in front of the task cutting bar area in my She Shed.  Extra seating for visitors, or for grandkids to belly up to the bar to eat snacks or work on projects. 

$5 each and they came home with me! 

Now to update them---  I covered the fabric seats with tin foil,  which is a very good way to cover something up to avoid the overspray. No tape and no plastic.  I spray painted the legs to a nice gleaming smooth white. I also bought new little white rubber cap ends for the bottoms of the legs so they did not damage the floors in the she shed.

Once they had dried, I sewed new covers for the seats in the blue fabric that matched the sunroom furniture that we had in the she shed, at that time.

All that I has to do was cover over the tops and staple it underneath. Easy peasy. Well guess what? I no longer have the blue furniture in there and it was time to recover them again! 

So, this morning, I started methodically pulling out staple after staple, removing probably 50 Staples per stool! When I want something done, I guess I overdo it?

I had some leftover upholstery fabric from some other projects, so I used it to sew two new covers for the stools.  This will make them harmonize more with the furniture that is now in my She Shed. I like things to coordinate and match.  I was never a "Lets Throw One Odd Colored Thing In a Room For Contrast" kind of person. 

To sew the new seat covers, it's really just a circle with a long rectangular strip sewn all the way around and a little seam where the ends meet. The rest of it is just rough fabric because it will be tucked underneath the underneath the stool seat and stapled into place. Again, with probably 50 more staples--- LOL! 

There we go, the blue cover is off. Originally these were a hunter green fabric, probably reminiscent from the 80s or early 90s. So we will see now for a few minutes, and then it will be covered up again.  For how long, who knows? 

I have to hide the dogs away upstairs in the bathroom. They hate the sound of the staple gun, I don't know why. While they were carefully hidden away, I worked on stapling all of the way around the stool, to securely attach the new fabric.

And there we are! All covered now and back into place. Probably until we change color schemes again?

Since we moved the two mission recliners down in the She Shed, the darker richer tones of the fabrics blend in better.  I like it! 

I was lucky that a while back I had bought a big hunk of that paisley rich toned fabric that matches our dining room chairs--- and it was pretty close to the fabric on our living room couch.  With that fabric, I already covered this nice storage ottoman that sits near the doorway entrance of the She Shed. We store extra blankets and quilts in here. But most of all it is a perch for the dogs to sit on to look out in the backyard. We also use it as a bench to sit down and put on our shoes or boots before going outside.

I also recovered these footstools a while back. 

They are purposely for the dogs to look out into the back yard, or for the grandkids to sit on. I am so glad that I had the extra fabric from working on those to redo the two bar stools today.

~~~~~~~

Our little Finnegan is now on his fourth day of antibiotics. I have to really trick him into taking them. He is TOO smart! He can smell the pill on my fingers as soon as I take the pill out of the bottle. No matter what treat I try to hide it inside, he still finds it. I have buried it in pieces of raw hamburger, rolled it up inside of a pepperoni treat, I have stuffed it inside of a wad of cheese, and nothing seems to work. So I end up doing it the forceful way by just poking it down the back of his throat and closing his mouth until he swallows. He hates me for it, but it's the only way to get the pill down his gullet. You should see the look he gives me afterwards! 

His appetite has been very sporadic. He'll eat a little of something, and then turn up his nose at it the next time I try to give it to him. I've been giving him little assortment dishes on a paper plate to pick and choose what he wants to nibble on.

It is like we have become a delicatessen around here, and he is calling the shots.  What a pampered pooch?

Of course, Binney is all too eager to 

clean up what he doesn't want! 

Hopefully after his infected tooth is pulled on Monday, things will get back to normal. As it is, little Binney is getting quite jealous that he's getting all this special attention. I am essentially hand feeding him his entire breakfast and supper just to be sure he gets some protein into his system. But I can tell he's feeling better and he's more alert and curious and trying to figure out what's all going on here.

We are having some very strange and dark weather here in Wisconsin today. There is a storm front moving in so there is a heavy cloud cover, but also there is a problem with the smoke from the fires out in Colorado. There was a weird orange cast to the sky and it got darker and darker. By 10 a.m. it was so dark the streetlights came on!

Steve was out back taking care of some of the firewood from the trees that he cut down, and even our backyard light with the dawn to dusk light sensor went on. 

I went out on the front porch and the air was very very heavy and the darkness descended all around. The winds had not yet picked up, and the darkness had such a strange orange tint to it. You can see the street light is on and this is so unusual for 10 a.m. in the morning?

Inside of the house, we had to turn on lights. It really gave an eerie feeling, and the air felt static-y like electricity. It was only in the 30-degree range so it's not like it was tornado or storm front moving in that causes an electrical storm.

It just seems so strange to have the house so dark. Different people on the local Facebook page were commenting over the eerie cloud cover that was going on in our area. I poured another cup of coffee and decided to just leave all of the lights on in the house to see our way around.

On Edit: From my sister she got from weather Channel: This is not smoke from western wildfires. The orange tint to the sky is the result of several layers of clouds in the atmosphere right now. Sunlight is getting through the top layer, refracting off the snowflakes flying around in there and giving us this orange (spooky) color we see at the Earth's surface.

About noon the cloud cover let up a little bit and things got brighter. But then the winds started up from the south and are blowing in quite a bit of rain. They said we are due for between 2 to 3 inches of rain today. If the temperature were any lower, that could be snow! 1 inch of rain equals about 8 inches of snow. So I guess I'm pretty glad that the temperatures are still up in the high 30's. It's a bit early to end up with a couple feet of snow in October.

Well, we are measuring up some things for the next project, so I better go help Steve and add an extra hand to the calculations.  It's best with 2 people looking it over, just in case we miss something.  Stay tuned!