August Home Improvements

We've made a little progress on our house this month. Nothing major - just a few little cosmetic improvements to make our house an even more pleasant place to live.  The first thing we did was to pick out and install the glass for the tops of our cabinets.  After all this time we finally got around to it - because we discovered that there's a really cool glass store in Kensington that has all kinds of different glass textures.  I wanted something slightly wavy and I found exactly the style I had in mind.

You might notice that the sample moulding piece I made way back in October of 2009  is still languishing up there on top of the cabinet as are the actual lengths of moulding that I painted and got all ready to go in March of 2010.  I have I feeling I'm going to have to do it myself if I want to ever get it installed.  All that's left to do in the kitchen, besides the door trim and the baseboards is this top of the cabinet moulding and the shoe moulding around the floor.  That's it.

After I get everything else done, hahaha, I want to take a class at the glass studio and learn how to do this:

I stole that picture from their website so I'm assuming they will teach people how to do leaded glass.  If you look around my house (or this blog) you'll see that I have a thing for clear leaded glass (as opposed to stained glass).

Considering how I had to live for five years of my life, I guess you could say I'm fairly adaptable and tolerant of things not looking the way they ought to.  I was absolutely horrified at myself when I first hung this construction paper over the bottom halves of the windows in the living room a few months ago to keep people on the street from looking in and being tempted by our new TV.

Doug has in the meantime informed me that if someone wanted to steal a TV they'd be going after a much bigger one than what we have. What do I know? I didn't even have a TV for six years after the fire and I think the one we got recently is huge.

Anyway, after a while I sort of got used to the construction paper on the windows and it wasn't until a couple of my good friends gently reminded me that this really isn't a good look for the living room that I decided to buckle down and make some curtains.  I've them on four windows on the main floor and four windows upstairs.


I think it's a big improvement, marred only by the fact that there is no window trim or baseboards there yet.  But you can't have everything now can you?  So why not put up curtains before the window trim is finished?  After all. we've got to keep the order of doing things UNUSUAL in order to maintain any kind of consistency around here.

When I was in South Carolina I bought a coffee table at an antique store for 75 dollars which I think is a pretty good deal.  It's very cute.  Check it out:

The table is oval with a glass top.  It's exactly the right size to go in front of the couch.  And if I get tired of it in the living room, it's metal, so I can paint it with rustoleum and put it out in the not-yet-screened-in back porch.

Next up is finishing the damn slipcover for the couch.  It has been languishing upstairs by the sewing machine for over a month.  I lost my momentum due to the sheer tediousness of sewing all of those long seams and then it got interrupted by curtain making and a dress.  (A dress!!!)  But now it's time to get back to it.  Sigh.  Here's what it looks like so far:

I'd almost rather pull weeds than work on this slipcover, so wish me luck!!!