Newly Recovered Patio Umbrella

The picture to the right is the old cover.  A new umbrella cover was made and completed in November 2011.  The love the mum fabric.  The only thing I need the do this weekend is to spray on waterproofing and let it dry.  Below is the new cover.

I taped all the raw edges and seams with a dark brown fabric.  The inside is as beautiful as the outside at least to me.  I made a matching tie for the umbrella when it is closed.

Lastly Alaine (my upholstery teacher) and I designed a umbrella cover too.

It’s Done!

I finished painting and staining the deck on the last day of August. All I needed to do was unpack the new wrought iron furniture

and hang the sherpherd hook and lantern brackets.

I decided to spray paint the brackets the same accent color I am painting the screen and storm windows. They were finely ready to hang last Friday. The finishing touch came in the mail yesterday. The previous owner left lanterns with candles in them but I found solar Arts & Crafts lanterns to replace them and they look perfect.

The umbrella fabric needs to be replaced and that is my current upholstery project. Here is a picture of the new cover. I was checking the fit before I start covering the seams and umbrella edge with dark green binding. The umbrella should have the new cover on by mid-October.

To celebrate the finished deck I pulled this out of my pantry.

Things are Moving Along in the Basement!

The floor along the east basement wall is now painted. I finished putting the fourth coat on the floor at 4:50 AM on Tuesday before going to work. Now I need to allow the paint to cure one week before I can set up my shelving.

Last night I started to move the jelly cabinet and other items so I can start to prepare a new section of the floor for paint. I noticed there is an area by the chimney which needs a coat of hydraulic cement before I can start painting it. So I will do that over Labor Day weekend and then I can paint it the following weekend. I cannot believe I might finally finish working on the east basement wall section this fall and I will be only six months late of my goal. I still will have the 2/3 of the north wall left to do and that is where the laundry tub, washer and dryer are located.

PS: I done painting the deck but need I want to put out the new furniture and put the hanging baskets up before I show it off.

Slow Going but I am still progressing forward.

We did not get the forecasted rain until early Saturday morning so I spent Friday evening putting the first coat on the remaining balusters and called it a night. We had intermittence rain over the weekend so I needed to change my plans on working on the outside of the house. Saturday morning in between going to Mineral Point’s Farmer Market and doing laundry, I prepared the basement floor for painting. I first vacuumed the floor and then washed it. It took many buckets of clean water to clean a 15 x 8 square foot area. The rain did help me find where water was coming in the floor’s south corner. I applied hydraulic cement over the leak. I now need to wait a week for the cement to cure before I can start painting the floor.


Later on Saturday I removed the glass panes from the storm window on the wall I am stripping and also stripped it of paint. The storm window’s lower joints needed to be glued back together. The bottom section of the window has some rot in it and some time this week I will be applying wood harder to those areas. After I fix that area and fill in some other areas with wood filler, I can prime it and reglaze the glass panes before painting it with the accent color “Hodley Red”.

Sunday was again spent canning and freezing vegetables. I canning another 4 quarts of Amish Dill Pickles and preserved my first ten 12-oz jars of Dilly Bean this year. I did find time to make an eggplant and zucchini casserole and roast cherry tomatoes for a pasta salad. I love the “Roasted Cherry tomatoes and Garlic Pasta Salad”. It is a great way to use all those cherry tomatoes up, I found this recipe in Martha Stewart Magazine last year believe it was in the October issue. Look it up because it is a keeper.

Updated 8/23/2011: The recipe I wrote about is called "Rigatoni with Roasted Tomatoes" from Martha Stewart halloween 2009 special issue, p. 114.  I looked for it on the her web site but it must not be posted anymore. 

Its Primed

Yesterday I spent the day priming the deck and got some of the balusters painted with the first coat of paint.  The weatherman was forecasting rain after midnight last night so I tore off all the papers last night.  We recieved no rain last night and are not expecting until later this evening I could have spent other day home and maybe finished the job but instead I am at work due to a bad forecast.

Still Scrapping the Wall

I took more time off last week to work on the house.  I spent Wednesday and Thursday scrapping paint off the wall.  My goal was to finish scrapping all the paint I could reach before I needed to climb on the roof to remove the rest and I almost made it.  This is the wall were the electrical wires are attached to the house and it took longer than expected because I needed to be aware where the lines and the hook up was at all times. My father is a retired electrician and I asked him how I needed to keep safe while working around the wires.  He told me the bare twisted wire was the ground and I could touch that connection to the house but the other two black wires were not to be touched.  He told me not to wrap my body around the wires while scrapping.  It is not easy trying to use a heat gun and scrapers to remove the paint and work around those wires so it took a little longer. 

Friday I decide to take a chance that it would not rain and started staining the deck.  I only got the deck floor and stair treads done before the sky turned very dark.  I have been trying to make up my mind about staining the whole deck with the color "Dragon's Breath" and I finely decided that I am not going to do.  I will be painting the hand railing, stair riser, stringer and rim joints with the "Tarrytown Green" and the balusters will be painted "Brookline beige" (the color of the clapboards).

The deck would have been too dark if stained in one color and using a three colors combination on it will make a nice contrast.

Finally I Am Back to Working on the House.

The garden is now in maintenance. So all I need to do there is pick the produce, water it, weaving the squash & cucumber vines in the trellis and tie up the tomatoes. I also stop selling plants at farmer's market the last weekend in June. This allows me an extra half day on the weekend to get other projects done at home the rest of the summer.

I took Tuesday and Wednesday off this week to get a good start on two projects to be done this summer. The first is to finish waterproofing the basement. The basement project was put to a halt late February when the paint in the upper southeast corner started dripping down the wall. See "Painting the Basement" more information. I spent the both mornings painting the wall, so now have 3 coats on the south wall and 2 on the east wall section. Watertite paint recommends 3 to 4 coats on cement wall. I plan to spend my weekend mornings down there painting on the last coats this coming weekend. I still need the paint the east section of the wall with the fuse box and water softener tank in front of it. I need to do some repair on those sections because my hydraulic cement failed to bond in some areas.

On my afternoons off this week I started to sand down the deck to the bare wood. I finished sanding any area I could get my 5" oscillating disc sander into by 7 PM on Thursday. All I need to do is use the detailed sander on the remainder of the deck and if necessary do some hand sanding before staining it. I pick out a Benjamin Moore semi-transparent stain called Dragon's Breath which nicely compliments the Brookline Beige on the clapboards. I would like to paint the deck railings similar the front porch. I would like to paint the spindles with the Brookline beige and the hand railing with the Tarrytown green but I am waiting until I see how the stain color looks on the deck floor. I hope to finish sanding the deck this weekend hopeful the 90F weather will hold off until Monday.