Leather cleaning and maintenance

 When we purchased our Heywood Wakefield chairs from Rejuvenation a few years back, I made sure to ask them our to care for our almost 100 year old chairs that still had the original leather.  Boot care of course!  All you do is squirt some in, rub it in with a soft rag, wait for it to dry and buff it up a bit. 
Amazingly easy and the results are pretty awesome-the guy at Rejuv recommended treating the leather with Cadillac Boot Care (it's the same stuff they use when they get vintage/antique leather goods) once every 6-12 months.  He said that using it more often might make the leather too soft. 
Of course laziness has gotten the best of me and I have only treated the leather once (now twice) since we got them and Steve noticed that they leather was getting super brittle.  It is much much better since we used the boot care-I just need to remember to keep up the maintenance.  They sell the boot care for I believe under $10 at Rejuvenation.

Ben enjoying a delicious cupcake at his friend, August's birthday party this past weekend-color match & all

It's almost Spring!

You wouldn't have guessed it was almost spring in Portland this morning.  While snow is rare in P-town, it's basically unheard of in March.  (and I know that people who live in real snow country wouldn't even call this snow but you would be surprised by how many schools were either closed, delayed or had their buses on snow routes this morning) We woke up to snow this morning and while it now has melted, it was quite the surprise. 

there are a few signs of spring at our house...

Steve even tackled a quick project on Sunday when it wasn't raining.  He used some of the leftover stone from our front walkway project to "extend" the driveway.  We were finding that we needed to step into the dirt about half the time we took Ben out of his car seat and it was tracking lots of mud into the house.  We were also stepping on plants each time we did so. 

this pillow is a little plain if you ask me

And I tackled a little spring spruce up project myself-some lighter, more spring-ish pillows for our living room.  I was getting tired of the dark red pillows that we had.  This fabric took a lot of searching to find being that grey and yellow are the "in" colors (I LOVE them together but they just don't go with our house decor) but I ended up finding it at The Whole Nine Yards on E Burnside.  The best thing about the fabric is that it is totally washable!  Yea for that. 

Bathroom Cabinet Reveal

Isn't she pretty?  We just love her more than we ever could have believed and can't believe we waited two years to get her in.  Oh well, waiting makes the heart grow fonder, right?

And here she is all filled up (so nice to finally have some toiletries, towels & extra T.P. live in the bathroom).

I spoke to our carpenter Alan about what he recommended for paint.  We have previously used Miller paints (a local paint company) acro pure paint for our doors and trim.  The color (a nice creamy white) that we have used throughout the house is Polar White.  While we like that the acro line is low VOC, I keep hearing things about low VOC paints not holding up long term.  I have also noticed that our kitchen cabinets have not held up as well as I would have hoped after 5 years.  So while I like low VOC, I think that I like long term durability better.
Alan recommended going to Miller or Sherwin Williams and asking about their latex paint line that has similar properties (hardness, durability) as oil paint.  When I went into Miller, they recommended either their Evolution (the best) or acrinamel (also good).  And when I heard that the Evolution was 20% off, making it less than a dollar more than the acrinamel for a gallon, I was sold.  I got the 20% off after signing up to be a member (FREE!)-basically they will keep track of all of your paints and also send you coupons AND you get 10% off each time you come in.  The gallon came in just shy of $40 (a lot, but worth it if it lasts a long time and doesn't chip) and I had a coupon for $10 off of $50 (I linked it for you and it doesn't expire until the end of the month). So I got $10 worth of paint supplies for free!

just after Ben told me something along the lines of "more paper mama"

They recommended a thin coat of primer along with 2-3 thin coats (it dries more slowly than typical latex so drips might form quite a while after you are done with the coat) of the Evolution.  I put on 3 coats. It is a nice thick paint so you have to be careful not to slop it on.

we've just started potty training-several successes so far!

I am so glad that spring is in the air-it inspired Steve to get the yard ready for spring, got us out on a hike and got me in the purging and organizing mood!

Now we just need to put on hardware but first we are hoping to find stoppers for the hinges so that the hardware won't dent up our door trim since the doors knock into the door trim  when they are opened all of the way.

We just got this print of R&R market in the mail (used to be in our neighborhood but now Fire on the Mountain (awesome little pub) is at this location).  It was a photo that I had a friend snap a couple months before the sign was taken down and that my sister-in-law and I photo-shopped together.  I had a living social deal to print it on canvas.  I can't wait to hang it in the bathroom but first we need an exhaust fan!

Plaster Skim Coating Recap

Well, I posted just last week about our first adventures in plastering and wanted to share about the couple things we learned...and I think there would be tons more to learn had we wanted a smooth coat or had been plastering a large area. 
1. try to avoid using old plaster.  We did use old (2 years but never opened) plaster but felt we sot of got around it by sifting the plaster to remove any little clumps (we couldn't see any but plaster has a way of changing over time with even just moisture in the air).
2. Be prepared for it to look like crap at first pass SO I would recommend doing a very small area to start so that you have plenty of time to go back over the plaster and work with it for a little longer.

can't really even see the cracks in the picture but there are a bunch of them-probably around a couple millimeters wide.

3. Don't use too much water.  It takes longer to try and will form cracks.  Steve did in one area on the second coat and the next morning we found cracks right there.  Steve plans to chip that part out and put on a new coat but I suppose you could probably just patch it with spackle.  We'll see how that goes. 

The cabinet is in

Well, I proved to not follow through with sharing photos of our new cabinet on Thursday, but here is proof that it is in!  and we are thrilled.  What a relief to have it in after 2 years of an ugly open gap in our bathroom. 

Here is a picture of what our bathroom niche looked like just last week (with no plans to change it anytime in the near future)

Alan stacked the three cabinets boxes to make one big cabinet (I helped hold the top two up while he slid in the bottom)...a rather precarious thing but we did this to avoid needing to remove any door trim or tile

shelves with veneered edge

inside of cabinet

and here are a couple snippets of what is there now.  Not really sure how to photograph something this tall in such a tiny bathroom-I will play around when it is done.

And Alan also made the trim and door for our laundry chute which I absolutely love. 

I am over half way done staining and painting and hope to be finished tomorrow (will then let it cure and harden up for a couple days before loading the cabinet and installing the chute door & trim).  My fingers are covered in white paint as proof.

Ben enjoying the sprinkle of snow we got March 1st