A chair is reborn (I hope)

The closer I looked, the more daunting the task seemed to become. Not only was the fabric shot, which was very obvious even at a glance, and the foam cushion was totally rotten, but for some odd reason there was a lot of rust. The chair has never been exposed to the elements, so it simply must have gotten nostalgic for its freezing-rain home in Denmark and pulled in some moisture. As the hundreds of upholstery staples were pulled, some were so rusty they broke and had to be removed a piece at a time with pliers.

There is plastic trim that encircles both the seat and backrest, and it’s still in good condition. Now comes the search for appropriate foam for the seat. It has to be firm yet not harsh to sit on. The fabric is already decided on, and is whimsical compared to the original very conservative gray. If I can pull this off, I will have a very comfortable little secretary chair, one that was useful for about five years when we bought it new in Hollywood.

Musical stairs

Do you like musical chairs stairs?

Thanks for the lead, Susan!

Wish list

Starbucks has the bucks to hire competent copywriters.

So here’s my wish: Hire some cup slogan writers who know the language.
It’s it’s, not its.

Comin’ down the home stretch…

Still a bit wet, the final finish is looking good so far. Sometimes when it completely dries, dull areas appear. I don’t know what causes that, so I carefully “sand” them out with superfine steel wool, then re-do the entire top again.

The color is unbelievably rich. It’s hard to remember the rough nasty old wood I started with. There are some lumpy areas where the wood simply refused to lay down and die, no matter how much sanding, gluing and cajoling I applied. They give the top character. (Isn’t that the perfect justification for sloppy workmanship?)

I am going to make new legs. The sapling wood has far too much “figuring” and is very distracting to the final piece. There is one more piece of old red fir up there leaning on the side of the building that I will try to use if it isn’t too split and ragged. Otherwise, it’s off to the fine woods store.

A winter’s firewood

We decided to get out to our woodpile and put some of it in the shed before the rain comes. Here Karla loads piece number 289 into the truck from the stack, which is four feet high by about 80 by 90 feet. That’s a whole lot of work to cut and split, 225 cords, and we are bushed!

All right, for real we didn’t cut this wood. This year we got too late a start on cutting and splitting our own firewood. Even when a tree has been dead for a couple of years, cutting it down then cutting it up will reveal that the wood is still very wet. So we have to split it to speed drying, then wait. And wait. We should cut firewood in the spring so it has a chance to dry during the hot summer. But in the spring we are doing too many other things to take the time for that. The wood we bought works out to about 28¢ per chunk, and that ain’t bad. Besides, the location of this wood is high on a mountain where we had great views of Deadwood Mountain, where I lived from when I was 12, and clear down to the town of Coarsegold, and further on down to the Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino with its 11-story hotel tower, and far beyond down to the San Joaquin Valley. Quite an amazing view.

The end is near

Like the guy in the cartoons wearing a robe and a long beard warns passersby with his sign, “The end is near,” sometimes I get to feeling that way myself. This table project has been quite a learning experience. It won’t be finished till I get it exactly the way I envisioned at the start. It was going to be a simple project where I could use some old red fir boards that had been leaning up against the outside wall of our storage building for several years. Then I tossed in some pine saplings I had cut years ago at the high ranch, and a wide pine board that I had cut on our sawmill over a decade ago. In the meantime, I did some research on finishes, and the project took on a whole ’nother dimension.

The picture shows how the finish is coming. There must be ten or twelve applications of a witch’s brew of oils, and there is one more to go (with two applications): Tung oil and linseed oil with shredded beeswax. Then, finally, I am finished with this task!

Next: Re-upholstering some old chairs. (Another thing I have never done. Wish me luck!)

Getting better all the time

I have a tendency to keep wearing something till it falls apart. It’s not that I’m cheap, I just like the feel of something that keeps getting better. Take this shirt for example—I’ve had it for ten or fifteen years. It used to be presentable in the best of company; I could even wear it without self-consciousness to high-end hardware stores. As time went on the sleeves wore through to the point where it was difficult getting my arms to go through them without poking out at the elbows, so I hacked them off and it became a summer shirt. The rest of the holes don’t interfere with putting it on, and have the added advantage of letting in a welcome breeze on occasion. If you were to ask what this shirt is made of, it started out as 100% cotton. Now it’s a blend—95% cotton, 5% air.

Just my luck!

Isn’t it typical—here I just paid for a one-month Muni Pass so I could tool around San Francisco on any bus I choose and along comes this money-saving offer on private jets. Dang. Missed again!

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.…

—Emma Lazarus

But first, get me outta this snowstorm! Here Hilary braves the elements on her quest to acquire more horseflesh. She and Karla and our neighbor Candy drove to Holbrook, Arizona on a mission to rescue some of the last batch of Premarin foals to come in from Canada. They got four of them: Hilary bought a bay filly, Karla got a palomino colt, Candy picked out a buckskin colt, and Patt, the ranch’s hiker helper contributed the money for the last one, a roan colt. All are quarter horses, with no mix of shire or percheron as many of our previous Premarins are.

After just being weaned and suffering the effects of a near-non-stop trip from the north, these little guys are wondering what’s next! They were delivered to a feedlot, taken out of the trailer, and gathered up to get into another trailer for the trip to Furnace Creek in Death Valley. What a contrast to go from the snowy chill of the north to the balmy warmth almost 200 feet below sea level.

Their manes and tails were matted with cockle burs. It must feel odd to have a big number shaved into their sides for identification—certainly cold when the blast of wind through the trailer hits it. But now they will finally have a chance to calm down and be showered with tons of love from their new human buddies. Next—naming. Karla has already rejected my suggestions of Bottomless Money Pit and Fang. Oh, well. I guess naming’s just not my thing.