Last Project Day

 
Thursday, Marie and I head for the North Country Trail annual conference. So any projects that were to get finished had to be done today.



First, we finished the library wall. In the picture, Marie still has a tiny bit of painting on the eave board to do, but it really did get all done. My contribution to that project today was to take off the old eave trough, and cut out an replace a rotten section of the eave board which was how the bees got in. Then I filled all the holes where the eave trough brackets had made holes big enough for bees to get through. And I scraped and primed the eave, which had almost no paint left on it. Then we discovered that the board under the lip of the threshold of the door was all rotten. So I did a quick and incorrect fix on that, but it will be fine for a while. Maybe for as long of a while as I will need to worry about. (It's the reddish-brown board at the bottom of the door- waiting to be painted too.)

OK... that project is DONE. It would be awesome to continue around the building, but I don't know if it will happen this year.

The Hoosier cabinet is all together! Just a few little things to do, but you won't be able to tell. In order to get the polyurethane all on, I got up once in the middle of the night to do a coat. It was a sunny day and not humid, so we baked the small pieces in the sun on the deck to get them dried well.

We started putting it all back together mid-afternoon, but the doors weren't all dry till after supper.

One of the things we bought on our shopping trip the other day is some plastic placemats to use as shelf liner. Here's how they look. I like it!



I didn't get enough new screws, and I want to think about some of the hooks and odd bits of hardware I had inside, but I can get those little things done next week.

I did one more repair on a drawer, and one drawer slider support. I spent a fair amount of time figuring out why the large bottom door doesn't open well. The problem is not the door, but the drawer above it, and it can't really be fixed. Over those 91 years of use I mentioned, the cabinet has sagged just a tiny bit in the middle. The solution isn't bad. The drawer just needs to be lifted a bit when the door is opened. I can live with that now that I understand the issue.

A bit of philosophy before the final picture. This cabinet project was not a "restoration." The use has taken a toll. The entire back of the bottom section had to be replaced about 15 years ago, and some braces added, or it wasn't going to be useable at all. The people who have used this cabinet (my Grandma Leary, my mom, and me) have all added various hooks and whatever to make it serve our purposes. When you look at the final picture you'll see that the enamel counter also has a tiny sag. So it was never going to be pristine again.

Some people might have looked at it and said something like, "What a piece of junk. It's not worth fixing. Just paint it bright blue, add decals, and use it for a potting bench." However, it means a lot more to me than that. Besides, I've mentioned that I don't think I can cook without it!

So, the end result is far from perfect from the standpoint of someone like Leigh or Leslie Keno. However, it's so beautiful to me I can hardly stop looking at it. And I know I'll be able to cook on it for the rest of my life.

I have almost all the original accessories too. Here it is with the flour bin installed (boy am I happy that will be back in use!). There is a coffee jar, a tea jar, and a round sugar jar. You can see the spice jars in their rack on the door.

I'll finish washing all the things that belong in it and put them back next week. There will be a bit of rearranging and sorting too.

Marie has been like a whirling dervish today. She also cut back a huge patch of wild grape that was threatening to take over the side of the house, and hacked off weeds that were growing through the "terrace" floor.

Tomorrow morning, though, we HAVE to get ready to leave. End of the projects for this year!

	See Hoosier Cabinet- Day 3
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