Fiber Snob

I love to knit. And not just with anything. Only the best yarns appeal to me: fine and exotic wool, silk, alpaca, mohair, linen, cotton. Basically, something that actually exists in nature and not just in a chem lab. (More on this theme in a couple of other posts over the next few weeks.)

Why does this matter on a home decorating blog? Because my love for fancy fibers bleeds over into my decorating. We've been on a quest to find some pillows for our sofa. We found one pair many months ago from Pottery Barn that perfectly complimented the blues and reds of our decor. And better yet, in a linen/cotton blend! They live on our leather sofa and are oh so comfy for a mid-afternoon nap, being perfectly stuffed with just the right amount of feathers. That's right, no polyfill for me! (At least not when I can help it.)

The gray sofa did not get such special treatment, and kept two pillows on it from our old apartment made of blues, browns, and greens. It didn't clash, but it just didn't look right. Here's an old picture, just to show you the pillows I'm talking about. See? Kinda blah. (The red/blue one is on the left.)

But all that changed last week when I was bargain hunting on Pier 1's website. A teal mongolian wool pillow (still on sale! snap one up now while the link still works!) Made of real wool! (You laugh, but Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Target were both selling Mongolian "wool" pillows made of 100% polyester.) Be still my heart! Suddenly in the mood to keep hunting, I also found a beautiful red silk pillow, also on sale. So I submitted my order (they do a nifty in-store pick-up kinda thing) and then, in store, found some beautiful citronella lamps in the exact same shades (they'll live indoors when not in use, but obviously will only be lit out on our porch).

Aren't they pretty!? In addition to being a soft, comfy place to rest my head, the teal pillow makes a wonderful cat substitute if I need something to pet when no one's around. And the colors go perfectly into our decor.

Last year we also invested in a beautiful Jacob sheepskin--yes, it looks like a cow hide, but it's really sheep--which we thought would look nice in back of the sofa and would be a nice place for the cats to lay. Well the cats couldn't care less but we think it's a nice textural accent. So here's the sofa now (complete with kitty--must have felt jealous of the pillow).

Reclaiming Our Land

Let's review where we're at with our backyard ivy project. I'm just a little late getting around to posting everything because once the mosquitoes came out in full force, we haven't touched the yard at all. So we stopped work by early June and the latest picture below is from late June, once we got the grass to come up. But it's still impressive, even if a tad delayed.

First, a refresher on last fall:

By October, we had ripped out about 50 square feet of ivy and managed to get grass to grow in its place:

The leafy trees in the foreground are lilac bushes that were really languishing from lack of sunlight and invasive ivy. Since they weren't happy there and I wasn't happy having them there (they were right in the middle of the area I wanted to clear and open up), it was time for them to go.

Here's a better picture so you can see them (you can see that these pictures are all from very different seasons by the flowering tree on the right, which is totally bare in the pictures above--it's in the top left--and full and leafy down below):

My parents and D got the lilacs moved to the front while I cleared a giant swathe of ivy from where they used to be. Then it was time to plant grass seed. Meanwhile I kept working at the ivy--you can see below that we got some new grass but there are still some bare patches where I continued to push the ivy back.

Here's the final picture for the year: no lilac bushes, no bare patches, lots and lots of grass where the ivy used to be. Of course the rest of the yard is a mess and we still have a lot of work, but I'm proud of our reclaimed land--probably about 200 square feet that we didn't used to have!

There is still a little ivy under the tree but that will be easy to remove come fall. And all without weed killer!

Quikrete Quick Fixes

We noticed that we had a lot of ants crawling around the edge of our house and when we traced their path, we saw that they were passing through tiny cracks in our concrete near the garage. Quikrete to the rescue! Do you know about this stuff? (Editing to add: this is Quikrete Hydraulic Cement, specifically. Not some other kind of variety of goop made by Quikrete, of which there are several.)

Quikrete is cool. My parents showed us a while back how awesome it is at fixing mortar and paving work but we never had a chance to get back out and try it for ourselves until recently. All the work we did with this (well, mostly D; as usually I just took pictures) only took about 20 to 30 minutes and was dry to the point of invisible by the next morning (probably sooner, but I didn't go back out and look). All it takes is a disposable cup, a stirrer of some sort (we use twigs, kabob sticks, popsicle sticks, etc), and some water.

The work we did to fix the ant problem actually didn't come out well in photos, so I'll show you another problem we solved thanks to Quikrete. While we had it out to deal with the ant holes, we decided it was about time to fix the mortar around our stone walkway, which had a lot of missing pieces that accumulated water and grime. Here's a couple of examples:

So we got down to work. The hardest part about Quikrete is figuring out how much water to add to get to the right consistency (it probably says so right on the bucket but where would be the fun in that?). So we took a little mix and a little water and mushed it together. We added a little more of each as necessary until we got a nice putty. Then it's time to act fast, because Quikrete, like the name implies, dries really quickly.

The key, as my parents taught us, was to work in small batches. So we didn't mix all of it at once, just enough for each crevice.

Here you can see the wet Quikrete right next to some of the broken up pieces that we managed to pry out:

Here's some more:

The color was a little dark because the Quikrete was still drying, but as I mentioned above, by the next day I couldn't even tell the difference between the new stuff and the old stuff. We had a lot of success using Quikrete on the mortar between the bricks around our basement windows, too, though I don't have photos.

OK, I'm done extolling its virtues. I promise I wasn't paid or anything. But yeah, this stuff is pretty great!

Drywall repair

Boring title for a boring job. The repair of our chimney required putting a sizable hole through our basement wall. Since the chimney people seemed hesitant about their ability to fix the hole, I decided to do it myself (they did knock $50 off the bill in the end). I may not know anything, but I'm more motivated to do an acceptable job.

After doing a lot of Google searching and Youtube video watching, I felt I knew what to do.

Above is the hole. It's roughly 16 inches wide and 10 inches tall. I made a test cut on the right edge. It's simple to cut drywall - you just take a sharp knife (or in my case, box-cutter), score the drywall several times, and then you can punch out the piece.

Now we can see clearly how they cut through the (strangely spaced) studs, which needed to be fixed.

I cut the jagged hole into a nice rectangular 22x16 box. I cut intentionally to the stud on the left, but decided not to go all the way to the stud on the right since it was another 6 inches away. This was a good idea because Home Depot sells little pieces of drywall that are 24x24 in size. It would have been extremely annoying to work with a full-size piece. While I was at Home Depot I also picked up a 10 foot 2x4. I cut it into smaller pieces and screwed a couple of them into the existing studs to give support to the  new drywall.

Here we go! As per the random online instructions (this time from Lowes), I cut the new piece slightly larger (with some beveling) than the hole. Which made it impossible to fit in. Cursing Lowes, I then had to cut an 1/8 off of two sides. Not easy. But I eventually got it to fit.

Drywall screws installed, including one securing the "old" wall to the "new" stud (on the right side).

Then I started adding the drywall mud with some big plastic trowel things. It would have been easier with proper metal tools but it didn't seem worth spending another $30+ on something I don't plan on doing (ever again?).

First I laid the mud down, nice and thick (about 1/8 of an inch), then I put the drywall tape on all of the edges (which we already had, thanks to the in-laws with foresight!). 

Here it is 90% done. At this stage all I'm doing is laying down a light coat, sanding, then repeating until it blends with the old wall. I can see a little bubbling of the tape in one corner, but I doubt anyone else will ever see it. I hope. The next step is priming and painting. Ugh. 

There's no way we want to try to match the white of the rest of the walls, so it's going to be an accent color. Since the basement is white with nondescript furniture in it, we are free to paint this wall whatever we want. Any suggestions?