Projects

Kitchen Cabinets:

When we first moved to our house, some of our kitchen cabinets were green (an ugly green!) and some were plain wood. In our hurry to get this place livable, we just painted them all. And lived to regret it.

The paint eventually began to wear off, so we repainted them several years ago. Now it's happening again:

There is nice oak wood under all that paint.  Mom keeps beating herself up for painting over the wood cabinets in the first place, instead of just stripping the ones that were painted green. But as I said, we were in a hurry; what's done is done.

More recently, we considered completely stripping all three or more layers of paint but were afraid it would be almost impossible to accomplish. Dad talked to another carpenter friend on the fourth of July, however, who told us of a heat gun (blow dryer on steroids =)) that would make the paint come off easier.  So, here goes:

It still takes a good bit of elbow grease, and some cabinets are harder than others, but it's coming. Once we get the paint scraped off, the cabinets will still need to be sanded before we put shellac on them.

The kitchen looks very strange without the doors:

Garden:

We managed to get our first pickings of green beans, zucchini, and corn this week before the deer did.  We may have actually found a way to keep the deer out of the garden: our grandparents put Christmas light through their garden, and it's seems to be working for us too! It looks kinda red-neck to have Christmas lights in your beans and squash, but whatever works!

snapping beans

 Quilting:

The quilt is coming along fabulously! We often work on it in the evenings, and this past Wednesday morning we had several ladies over and got a lot of quilting done!

Mandy and Abby, quilting for the first time

{underside of the quilt}