Upholstering a chair: part 1

This post, and subsequent parts, tells the story of my numerous attempts at upholstering an old chair.

I will start by stating that a much better and more detailed step-by-step was hosted by Little Green Notebook in NYC. So read that too!

I found this chair dumped on the curb in our street:

As you may or may not know, I am a big of old things and old furniture. And an even bigger fan of free things! So I took it upon my self to give this bad boy a brand new look.

The first step was to unscrew the seat, and remove the 2,677,831 staples that were holding the vinyl to the wood (of both the seat and the back).

Friends allow me to warn you: this is BACK BREAKING work. Yes, you will endure a lot of back pain, and your knuckles and arms will be sore, and you'll step on staples and scream sometimes. Professionals have a garage or studio where they can work with the chair at chest height, which I suppose would be nice... but at home we just worked on the floor.

By we, I mean my mom and I. She was visiting at the time and helped me enormously, in fact I dare say she removed 80% of those annoying little staples all by herself. Bless her little hands.

Next! I had to sand down the current finish on the chair, by hand. M helped with this as well, and this time we worked outside.

I don't know what kind of lacquer exactly was applied on the chair, but as it turned out it was a really thick layer of it.

This took many hours of brute work which could have been saved had I had a power sander...

Wipe with a wet cloth and time to apply the new stain!

In this picture I was working at my neighbor Lisa's backyard, because she was also sanding and staining her old chairs at the time (one of hers is on the left).

Here comes the fun part!

Or so I thought.... turns out the old varnish was still on the chair! It was just deeply, deeply engrained in the wood. So the chair did not take well to the new stain, at all. I tried all different spots of the chair, I tried different brushes and sponges and different stains. I tried 3 coats to see if it would even out eventually, or end up with some weird cool look. But no,  nothing worked and it looked like crap.

So back to the drawing board.

Coming up on part 2: spray paint! :-)

The last warm rays of summer

Camping trip to Mt. Kosciuzko National Park.

 We drove from Sydney to Thredbo after work on a Friday night a couple of weeks ago with some new friends... 6 hours later (around midnight) arrived at our first campsite on Thredbo Diggings.

It was so late and we were so tired that we quickly setup camp and simply went to bed.

The next morning everything was covered in dew (I LOVE dew everywhere!).

And then there were the spider webs everywhere too.

And this is my dashing mountain man:

After breakfast on Saturday we moved to Geehi Flats to camp over night, where we found hundreds of wild kangaroos. They were chilling on the grass until M scared them off and they started jumping in every direction.

Kangaroos are magical....

So you get an idea of the size of these:

This is my trusty and gorgeous tent, the MSR fling:

Our typical setup:

And you can't go to Kosciuzko National Park or Thredbo without climbing to the top! Most tourists (ahem if you are short on time) take the ski lift almost to the top and then it is a relatively easy walk (about 60-80 minutes) to the highest peak in all of Australia! A glorious 2228 metres :)

The trail looks mostly like this.

I'm sorry there aren't more photos of our vegetarian Russian friends or of all the yummy food we had. It was such a lovely weekend, we laughed, ate, drank and made new friends. I want to go camping again!!

Olive and Rosemary Biscuits

I have a new-found obsession with the Gilt Taste website. Have you been there? It is an online retailer of all things delicious, nutritious and luscious.  I am religious about checking their recipe section several times a week, which explains techniques for many classic and simple yet comforting, tasty dishes.

My latest adventure involved buttery biscuits with olives and rosemary:

Tip: check if your baking powder has an expiration date!

You shape this crumbly mess into a sort of dough and get out the cookie cutters, or glass...

And voila! They are buttery and crumby, which I love, but I expected them to rise even more in the oven. Boooo.... Also if you are going to add olives, make sure you cut down the salt as the olive brine is quite salty as is. 

What kind of biscuit are you?

Reminiscing

In May 2010, M and I went on a road trip and covered the entire north coast of Spain. Here's a map with the route, camp sites and attractions we visited. Though note we did not always follow it exactly.

I am home alone this weekend and was feeling a bit nostalgic about spending relaxing time together with M. We're both quite busy Monday to Friday, and often the weekends fill up as well. Looking at these photos makes me happy...

Playa de Las Catedrales (Cathedrals Beach)

Playa el Silencio (Silence Beach) - the beach itself is below us, you cannot see it... It was indeed awful quiet and beautiful

Drinking the local cider in Oviedo (by M)

Can't remember the name of this beach, nor it's location... Pretty!

The town of San Vicente de la Barquera, in low tide

A cemetery we visited during our travels... near Comillas, Spain. Probably my favorite leg of the trip, beatiful!!!

Having a snooze in Santander

The Guggenheim Art Museum in Bilbao (by M)

We planned this trip together with a Spanish couple friends of ours, but she accidentally broke her leg while skiing so M and I went by ourselves.

The gritty film photos were taken with My Stafetta Duo medium format camera. The sharp photos were taken with M's 5D II.

I want a holiday!!!

Hello... again...

Hi! Looks like I'm back from my mandatory annual leave of absence from this blog, it has been so flattering and sweet to have some of you ask me about the status of my life (aka. the blog), some people I didn't even know they knew about this space!

Holler Dawid, Melisa, Parisa, Dan and Joan for always bringing it up :)

I need to redesign the layout again, there's a lot of hating coming from my side (which is perhaps why I avoid this url?)... more on that later I suppose...

This is a little of what we've been up to this weekend:

Cooking! Always.. you know it... M made an amazing GRILLED whole eye fillet roast, grilled asparagus and a roasted garlic and red onion jam (he made everything!!! WHAT?)

We also got up extra early and went to the beach in the morning...

... and surprisingly watching a whole lot of nerdy videos :)

How was your weekend?

Son Kol

This will be the last post on our trip to Kyrgyzstan (for a little while anyway...)

M was interested in getting in touch with his nomad roots and asked his father to takes us on a trip to the heart of rural Kyrgyzstan. Son Kol is an alpine lake located over three thousand meters above sea level.

We got on the road straight after Issyk Kul, when M's dad and his wife picked us up. On our way we stopped by the home of relatives, who were far too nice and welcoming and served us a lovely lunch. I wanted to post a few pictures of what their house looked like.

the kitchen

the living room, it is typical to hang rugs on the walls for decoration (that's M's dad)

blankets stacked in the bedroom, in case guests decide to stay over night, a comfy impromptu bed on the floor can be prepared 

lunch! salad, lamb stew with potatoes and home made noodles, bread, biscuits, tea and jam

Muscat wine from Moldova! Civilization! Finally something I don't have to drink in shots! 

my nemesis: the letrine
(my eyes sting just by looking at this photo, the memory is still too fresh)

So, on our way....

After a looooong, windy, narrow and terrifying high mountain road, we arrived at this:

Which got me extremely optimistic and excited. The sun came out and the steppe is actually very beautiful. Farmers move to the mountains during the summer months in order for the cattle to graze freely.

life forms!

This was the first family we met. This woman and her son, between the two of them they look after  20 cows, 10 horses, 400 sheep and 2 dogs. All they have is each other.

our first serving of kumys, fermented mare's milk

the making of a photo

the end result (photo by M)

the cow was looking at me!

please note the vastness of this place

Then it was back in the car...

Then a storm came in... then I wasn't such a happy trooper anymore. We could not find the road to Son Kol, where we wanted to spend the night. By road I do not mean the modern (by comparison) trail depicted above, the road we were looking for was simply defined by tire marks on the grass leading to the lake.

We stopped for help at a yurt that sold gasoline, and while we were filling up, two very drunk men started harrassing us over how much to pay, and whether we were good muslims and who knows what else. The fact that I could not understand a word, and that everyone became very apprehensive and there was a lot of yelling, made me feel.... well, scared. I started to realize I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.

It was getting dark and it was raining. We left the drunkards but had to find a place to spend the night so we stopped at the next yurt. The farmers here sometimes pitch more than one yurt to accomodate travelers for a pittance. We found a family whose yurts were all filled (all two fo them) but they said they would let us crash in theirs.

People from all over the world come to this very remote place, but they did tell me I was the first Venezuelan they ever met and that I was pretty, unlike the German women :-)

They fed us a dinner of ramen noodles, potatoes and lamb. And of course, tea, bread and jam was not missing.

It was dark, wet, cold and light years away from a civilized toilet or shower, and I was overwhelmed with nerves.

inside the yurt

The photo above is the living room, dining room, bedroom and kitchen. The table was moved after dinner, and several layers of very thick bankets were laid on the floor. They made a bed for us, and another for themselves and their little girl. Then they warned us there could be mice walking around and night. We could not all fit in the yurt, so M's dad setup a comfy bed in the car for him and his wife to sleep.

morning sun coming through

the stove (dried manure i burned for fire). photo by M

home

overcast morning

$#%^**^%$%$#*&*

good moooooooornin'!

sheep sleep together in a kennel overnight, but are free to graze during the day

M and a taigan puppy

A what puppy?

Taigan, is the local breed of hound dog.

taigans (photo by M)

Eventually it was time for breakfast! We brought the melon with us, but i don't know where the tomatoes and cucumbers came from. It was so refreshing to eat veggies!

The bread, jams, cream and butter were all home made.

photo by M

our host family (photo by M)

Eventually, we did make it to the lake, but it was so cold, windy and gray that I did not bother take a photo. 

After we left our new friends we had lunch at the yurt of some "other" relatives. How are we related to this people? Don't ask me, but we are! I thought I should show you a different yurt.

In this particular community, only the women and children were left behind to pack everything up and move the cattle off the mountain when the summer is over. The men left a couple of weeks earlier to prepare the stables and what not, where the animals will live for the better part of winter.

the fish came from Son Kol lake

photo by M

these gals had not bothered to build a shed and dig a hole in the ground, so guess where I had to go? (ps. lake in the distance!)

Even though I was quite cranky for some of the time, Son Kol was quite a humbling experience.

15-day old baby donkey (photo by M)

M did take so many beautiful photos, not all of them are shown here. Please visit his flickr page for a wonder....