D all the Ys: Recovering a Lampshade

Like any sensible person, one of my first thoughts on hearing that I could actually have a job was "Crap! Now I have to finish all my projects." I have actually been really good about doing projects and spending time with friends and doing lots of yoga. (Not so good at applying for jobs, but as you can see, laziness and patience paid off.)

But there are nevertheless several projects that are hanging about in an intermediate state that I would like to complete.

Here's the first one.

Time required: 15 minutes to complete project, 2 hours to wander around fabric store and choose fabric
Materials required: lamp without a shade, new shade, spray adhesive, fabric, newspaper, scissors, blue tape
Project ease rating: 0 swears

I know, 0 swears seems like madness! But this really was super-easy. I tend to be a little obsessive about finding the tutorial that perfectly matches my situation. And then I was like, fuggedaboutit. Let's start with the offending shade - just a plain old white lampshade from the as-is area, because I guess someone decided they didn't really want their lamp to have a shade.

For the record, my lamp once did have a shade. It was really cute, too, but it was thin and papery and after 3 or 4 moves I finally punched a hole in it. So the lamp base sat in the basement for two years and then I got the floors done and was like OMG I need to have all new nifty things but wait I have a lamp sort of!

I looked at a bunch of tutorials online and found them kind of lacking. Obviously not so lacking that I wasn't able to make the project, but I was left with some questions and there were some that were just outright giving bad advice.

So, first make a pattern. This is accomplished by wrapping up your lampshade in newspaper or other pattern-making material. If all you have is small half-sized advertising flyers because who buys the newspaper these days? then you will need some tape to make them bigger. You're probably too lazy to find the transparent tape and don't own any masking tape, so you just kind of tack it together with the blue tape you've got on the workbench.

Trim your pattern using the edge of the lampshade as a guide. It does not have to be exact. Really. It really doesn't. Lay that puppy down on your fabric. You can use your washing machine for a cutting table if your workbench is dirty, which it is, because you hammer and paint stuff directly on there and when the guys came to finish the floors, some of the finish glopped through.

Now, here is the part that you have to pay attention. Notice all the blue tape? That is because you cannot be bothered to pin the pattern to the fabric like a normal person. The tape is right there, while the pins are all the way up on the second floor. It does not need to be exact, because you aren't going to cut on the lines anyway. Your fabric needs to be about an inch larger than your pattern on all sides, because you are going to make a seam and fold the edges over the edges of the lampshade. So cutting exactly on the lines is going to cause swearing when you go to put it on your lampshade unless you have some really cute ric-rac to glue over the edge. Which is an option. But maybe you don't have ric-rac. You may have chosen only to have awesome things such as grommet tape and snap tape and death bunny shoelaces. You can use those if you want, but maybe not if your lamp is going in your grown-up living room.

So yeah. Cut out the fabric, but make it an inch bigger on all sides. Use fabric-cutting scissors for this or you will start swearing.

Okay, now it's time to bust out the spray adhesive. Some of the tutorials recommend hot glue. Here is a comparison of the two:

Spray adhesive: Comes in a can. Probably has toxic propellants and probably should be used in a well-ventilated area. Sticks to everything. Makes your hands really sticky. Takes a while to dry. If you don't position stuff right you can unstick it and reposition it before it dries.

Hot glue: Comes in sticks. Can use it in any room with an outlet. Makes your hands all burny when you touch it. Glops and forms bumps. Dries really fast. If you don't position stuff right you can throw your project away and start over.

Right, so spray your spray adhesive on the fabric and the lampshade. Two sticky things with extra stick!!!

Position your fabric.

Try to roll the fabric on. The fabric will probably end up sticking to itself, but you can just unstick it because you used spray adhesive.

When you've got it on there, pull and tug to smooth out any wrinkles. Yet another selling point for the spray adhesive.

Fold over the seam and spray it some more so it stays down.

 

Then turn your shade so you are looking at the inside. There's your extra. Now, if you're picky and want to fold over the same amount all the way around (because you're going to be wearing your lampshade, I assume, since I don't know when else you'd be looking at the inside), you can trim the edge and make it even. I did.

MORE spray adhesive for the edge and inside of the lampshade. You want that mess to stick.

Fold the edge inside all the way around. Cut slits every few inches. This is a sewing trick that allows the fabric to go around curves. That way you won't have it folding on itself. It'll just overlap itself neatly.

Some of the tutorials recommended using binder clips to hold the edges secure while they dried. You may choose to skip this if the binder clips are up on the second floor with the pins or if you are likely to end up with binder clips glued to the lampshade.

And here you are: a finished lampshade!

Final step: Go wash the dishes. This will not only provide you with clean dishes, but also remove the spray adhesive from your hands.

Here's the feline-approved final product, in situ!

Fear of Finishing

Things I procrastinate:

• Planning sequences to teach for yoga
• Tutoring prep
• Getting reading done for yoga
• Buying things (in the form of I see things I like and then "think about them")

I also procrastinate finishing things. Like right now, as part of my time off/unemployment thing, I am doing repairs. Tiny little repairs on baseboards, touching up paint.

I will spackle something, sand it down, apply another layer, sand it down ... I will do this for days. I will try to make it perfectly smooth even though the house is full of old bedsheets as dropcloths, rags, gloves, dust.

It is my house and my project and I can take as long as I want.

But what happens when I finish?

And that is the saga of my bedroom. I pulled out the carpet nearly two years ago. And it sat there. I painted but I didn't get molding put up or the floor refinished.

And now the floor is finished and what is keeping me from moving in?

Oh, I need to touch up the baseboards.

So why am I touching up the baseboards in the hall and downstairs?

How am I going to get the closet door back on?

Do I even want doors for the big closet? What else could I put there?

Can I put up molding myself or do I need help (almost surely I do, even if it is just someone to hold things while I nail them)?

What happens when I am finished?

How many days has this blog entry been sitting in limbo?

Why don't I want to get there?

Fabric decision time!

or, Indy-cision Time.

Now that I have floors, I need to do a few things. After a semi-epic home improvement store trip, I decided that choosing such a thing as a just-inside-the-front-door rug is beyond me and I'm going to do Jess's floor mat thing. I need a kitchen one too, but since I still haven't committed to redoing the kitchen, I may or may not need to make a decision. Actually I probably do because that floor is teh ugh.

Source: eastcoastcreativeblog.com via Katherine on Pinterest,
Honestly I never get tired of this picture.

But to do that I need fabric.

Enter Spoonflower, where you can make your own fabric. Or order fabric that someone else designed. (Yes, they have TARDIS fabric. Lots and lots of TARDIS fabric. Also gothy spooky fabric.) That second one would be better for me because no need tomake my own, but also worse because Must Look At All the Fabrics. Okay, not all, but all the damasks. Or all the purples. Or all the turquoises. Or all those. And some owls. Steampunk wot wot?

Let's just start with the entryway.

Walls are light blue.

I changed the entryway collage from the original one it took me a month to do, to one with purples and blues, you know, like the rest of the downstairs. I don't know whatever possessed me to buy red picture frames. Those are getting painted.

Here are the entryway contenders.

1 - Simple, fits my colors, and bright. A little light for something I'm going to step on.	2 - Doesn't fit my colors at all, but I'm a sucker for mixing patterns and words that look like they're from old books. And some of the designers say they will do custom stuff, which I take to mean "slap new colors on the design they already made."	3 - Bold, reminds me of Jess's print above, but otherwise probably not fitting in that great with the look I've got going, whatever that is.
4 - Fits colors perfectly. Bonus: not a lot of white, so it won't show the dirt. But both colors are about the same intensity/saturation. There's a bit of a dullness to it.	5 - Clear and simple. It is going on the floor, after all.	6 - Alluring, interesting, and that pop of red. But it does have brown. Brown is like "we didn't know what color to make your rug, so we made it brown."
	7 - Great pop of color, though still with the brown.

Befloor and After

I can't believe I didn't post a picture of the finished floor product. Chalk it up to setting automatic posting (if I don't do that I will tweek posts endlessly) and not being able to find the cable to connect the good camera to the computer. I took some pictures in the daylight with the iThing, so you can really see the difference.

You remember this disaster, right?

This is what I came home to after our yoga workshop weekend. I was a little bit like, whoa, three days and they've only gotten this far on the stairs. The rest of the floors were done. The stairs still had a long way to go. You can see that the risers are exposed but the treads still need work. The risers don't even look that great here; there were lots of dings.

The next day, the stairs were pristine. They still had to fill in a lot of the gaps with wood filler, but their piney beauty was now apparent.

And here they are, finished and gorgeous.

Dear readers, here are some things to know:

Sometimes, you really should not D it your Y. I am a huge DIY girl, to the point of stupidity sometimes. Like right now I should be coordinating some people to help me unpack and move furniture (really, we could have a big ol house-based dance and then people could move stuff up and it would be done), but I know I won't. Partly because it's asking people for help and partly because I want to Stain All The Things before I move them back in. But floors as damaged as these were? Totally need the professionals.

The other thing is a little more esoteric: People come into your life for odd reasons, and they are never the reason you think. Recall that I found my realtor through a broken boy who broke my heart. I found West Coast Swing -- and my floor guys, and community, and a new guy-possibility -- through someone who turned out not to be the right guy for me at all. Letting people be who they are and play the roles they end up playing, rather than the roles I want them to play, is a continuous challenge.

But it brings good things, if I let it.

Floors!

It's been a process.

Originally I was going to rip up the carpets myself. There is a strange part of me that enjoys ripping up carpets. I think it's because I like to feel like Xena. What is stronger than a woman ripping carpets off her floor?

Ha, trick question. What is stronger is a woman who realizes there is no point in doing that herself on a hot weekend, and exhausting herself, when she could weed the garden and go for a motorcycle ride and do yoga.

Took them less than an hour to rip up the carpet, roll it, tape it, put it in the back of the truck. Of course after that was taking up the tack strips and the nails, which is the real torture of it all.

But I was gone! Kitties in the basement, Auntie C coming to visit kitties, and me off to retreat.

I was amazed when I came home. They were not finished by any means, but holy wooden miracles, my floors are made of a beautiful light-colored oak. And they were so, so smooth.

Except the stairs. They're pine.

I would have loved to keep them light, but there's a lot of damage -- a patch job with a subtly different kind of wood, the stairs of pine. One section had to be replaced due to Rufus-damage. So I went with my original choice.

The up side: Beautiful new floors. A house that feels a bit more like a grown-up owns it and lives there rather than renting it to some sucker. A house that feels more like me.

The down side: My kitchen really, really looks crappy now.

Antici...

In just about two weeks, I am getting my floors done. I am so stinking excited. And, so stinking not-ready. As with all things, there is never enough time. I've been scrounging boxes out of the back room at work (no one ever recycles anything, apparently, but at least they don't throw things away?) and lugging them home (they're quite big and it's been quite hot) and packing up clothes, books, and dishes.

I never really finished unpacking from moving in, so you can imagine how this totally feels like going backwards.

And yet it is going to change everything about my home.

No more fur-encrusted carpets.

No more coffee and cat stains.

No more ugly light green.

So easy to clean. So elegant. So much more me.

It also means I've got some crafting to do.

The problem with hardwood floors, of course, is that they are hard wood and easily dinged. And not very warm, but I will worry about that later. Still, I do want some floor prettiness to break up the brown.

Jess over at East Coast Creative made these great floor cloths.

I love the totally geeky silly pictures these fine ladies take of their, um, creative process.

Source: eastcoastcreativeblog.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Of course I need fabric. Jess found hers at Joann, but Joann is a huge time-suck for me; I find myself spending 2 hours there and not buying a single thing. Fortunately I can sort their fabric online by color. UNfortunately I'm not seeing a whole lot of patterns I like, so that means MOAR WEBBYSITES.

Oh wait, someone, probably Jess and Monica, told me about this:

Source: spoonflower.com via Katherine on Pinterest

And hey, tablecloths! Oddly, finished fabric is often less expensive than raw fabric. And then it can just be repurposed.

Source: hayestone.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

The T-shirt surgeon in me likes this, even though it's not at all classy.

Source: etsy.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Painting rugs seems to be all the rage on Pinterest. (Once again it's Mon & Jess who made me aware of this trend...see, something did come out of working at The School That Shall Not Be Named!)

Source: mysimplehomelife.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

I'm not totally sure how non-DIY that will look, but I'm expecting that simpler is better. The Pinterest world seems to say that sisal absorbs paint really well; I think I'll try it for the porch rug first.

Hmmm ... time to contemplate, experiment, and see what happens.