TWO THINGS

Last week I found this storage cart at a local thrift store. $12.00.  When I took the top layers of fabric off the top (2 layers, one of which was John Deere, hence the green color to match during that era), there was the original plastic/foam covering - it was originally a child's toy box. This week I spray painted it white and bought a new foam cushion and fiberfil for the top and experimented with different fabrics. Sher reminded me of the red and white I bought at Quilting by the Bay in Panama City, so I covered the top with that, and added the casters. Now it looks like a child's toy box, not what I intended. I didn't want the botanical fabric on it, although I like it a lot - just not for the room it would be in. So I decided to paint the diamond middle border some vivid colors like aqua, red, maybe some yellow centers. And if that doesn't work, I can always spray paint it again...  If the painted border turns out decent, I'll show ya! On second thought, maybe it is a child's toy box. A 64-YO one.

So far I've spent about twice as much more than I paid for it, so a good sized storage box for $36.00 and it was fun doing it. Except for the staple gun. It doesn't work like a nail gun - that trigger is hard to pull!



Another project underway - repairing the front porch. Yesterday when Charlotte was visiting, two of the concrete-slab workers came to start taking bricks off the front of the house in order to realign them with a new concrete porch. There are four (or five) steps up to the porch, so it's fairly high, and over time the fill dirt underneath the concrete has settled, and voila! We have cracked concrete that has pulled away from the house, settling a couple or three inches below the bottom of the bricks. The house is fine; the brick just has to be reworked and new porch poured. I suppose they'll put more fill dirt in to make it level and stable... Or rebar or something. Whatever it is that concrete workers do. (And did so well with Paul's garage slab.) So far most of the bricks they've taken off haven't been damaged. A few will have to be replaced, either with something very similar to the buff (which I'm sure has changed color over the years) or... a random pattern of another color brick. Or replace with cedar or cypress... 

Before they started, one said, "You might want to take any pictures off this wall inside." When they did start jack-hammering away, I thought I might have to leave, but it wasn't constant, and I closed the door to whatever room I was in. They stayed about three hours. Lucy hid. Oscar barked. Tommy slept.