Tabled!

You might remember this little dining room set we used to have in our old kitchen. It has a 36" table and the four chairs. Doug inherited it after a work event where they were getting rid of it and it has served us well for a long time and is still sturdy and comfy.

Today our new dining room set came in! I found it online at Ashley Furniture, then looked at Best Deal Furniture where we got our bedroom set and sure enough, it was $30 less there. I found it on Amazon for another $7 less, so we took that information in to Best Deal to see if they would match the price. He did so and subtracted another $8 beyond that! Guess maybe it was because we were repeat customers? Not sure. 

At any rate, here's Doug holding the bench seat and two screws and posing politely for me as we began the process of putting it together. 

I've acquired another best friend: the flexible shaft attachment for our new drill/screwdriver! If we hadn't had that we might still be sitting there tightening all of the screws by hand - and there were a LOT of them. 

Before we worked on each piece of the puzzle, we examined them for fatal flaws and - gratefully - found none. We did find an oddity in the chair below. You'll note that the left side has no center hole as the right side does. Hmm. There was a teeny-tiny hole where it should have been, so we got out a big drill bit to finish the job, hoping I could drill it straight enough to make it work right. 

As I studied the corner a little more, I saw that there actually was a full-sized hole on the back side of the wood; it just didn't go quite through. So it took about one second to drill the rest of the way and we were all set. 

Ta-da! And here is the final product. It's 36 inches wide by 60 inches long/3' x 5' with four padded chairs and a bench. It fits perfectly in our little dining area! I'm so glad we didn't go for one with an extension because there would have been nowhere to go with it. I love it!!!

One other thing: we are now the proud owners of these SIX fine Allen wrenches that came with the dining room set. So how do these work? Well, the ends of them are six-sided and are great for the final tightening down of the furniture screws. 

So (having had no prior experience with this particular tool...) I grasped the wrench by the shorter side and turned with my might. After half a dozen my fingers were red and sore, but I rallied and continued until the second-to-last chair. At which time it suddenly dawned on me that if I held the wrench by the LONG end, I would have tons more torque and could save my sore fingers. Oops. 

We finished up the set and then I thought I should go back through and just give each of the screws another little tug to make sure they were tight. Yikes - many of them needed another turn or so! Lesson learned for the next time I put together a new unassembled dining room set: hold the right of the wrench for the best results!

Stuff

Door stuff

Miracles never cease: the living room closet now has DOORS! Exciting stuff around here. As expected, closing up that space gives the room an entirely different look.

I knew that with the squishy new carpet they would be a bit too tall, so on the first one I sanded like crazy for, um, two or three hours with the power sander (yeah, crazy is the correct word) until it seemed like it might have had some effect. When I measured it against the other door, it was 3/16" shorter. Which looked like an awful lot to have to sand on the other one. I brought it up with Doug and he said I was welcome to try using the circular saw to cut it off. He showed me how to run the thing and I went for it. It was awesome! All it needed after that was a quick rub with some sandpaper and it was ready to go. 

The curved corner where the door meets the baseboard needed to go up higher, so I got to use the jigsaw for that. Slick!

I got a better shot of the large screws I put in the end of the doors (described in a previous post) so I can easily flip them to paint both sides during the same session - below.  Of all of the tricks I've picked up on YouTube for these house projects, this was one of the most useful!

Doorknob stuff

So as soon as we signed the papers on the house, as a security measure we went to Home Depot to get new lock sets - and therefore keys - for the outer doors. I wanted to replace them with lever handles, so we just grabbed the ones in the first image below and installed them as described in one of my early posts. Well, as time has gone on, every light fixture we bought turned out to have a silver/gray nickel finish. 

 So I told Doug I wanted to get nickel finish door handles for the rest and replace the first ones and would save some cash by finishing the doors rather than buying new ones. So we got some lock sets shown below for the refinished doors and I think they do look better.

I hated to have to just give away the gold ones, so bought some satin nickel spray paint to see if we could salvage them. I lightly sanded the one below with 320-grit paper, wiped it down, and sprayed away. I think it turned out pretty well, but I don't like the shiny sparkle it has and it's not really dark enough to match the real nickel-finish ones. So we'll be relegating this one to the back bathroom and replacing the others after all. Guess we saved a few dollars at least!

Laundry room stuff

We got a little cabinet for one corner of the laundry room so we can store detergent and cleaners just above the washer. Added a little rack to hang up clothes, a clock, and our ironing board and we're good to go. Now if we could just find our iron... I know I saw it somewhere. Come spring, that shed is going to be invaded!  We also bought some shelves for food storage and other supplies. Feels good to  have somewhere to put stuff!

 

Bathroom stuff

Maybe I'll back up a bit here because I had a bit of a lapse in posting.We found a corner shelf for the bathroom that fits perfectly in the odd little space just past the where the door opens. Since we got a vanity with minimum depth to have more people-space to stand, there's very little space to store anything. So this works for me!

I found some cute gray-and-white checkered towel sets at Burlington that went nicely with the shower curtain and colors and we were all set! We really do like our curved shower rod. Unfortunately, there's still more to do in this room as the top right shelf in the third image below has hairline cracks at the ends. Fortunately, I've acquired some Bondo and will soon be learning how to repair fiberglass!

Other stuff

We've scheduled the plumber to come to do the "bathroom rough" on 3/26, so I'm excited about moving forward with that final room. They will be moving the toilet and sink plumbing closer to the door and adding a corner shower at the far left end of the room. So stay tuned!