the ambitious procrastinator: Danger

Stair Update: Rinse and Repeat

11:37 AM

The holidays have come and gone, so now it's time to get back to work. I'm heading into the last week of my winter break, so I'm enjoying the last bit on mental freedom before I have to resume juggling work, school, and house projects. The good news is that I've made some good progress on the upper half of the stairs. Things always seem to go a little quicker the second time around. And since I forgot to take some pictures of the skirting process last time, I made some effort to better document that this time through. The key word in that last sentence was some, I still missed a step or two, but I'll do my best to paint a lovely word picture to make up for my lack of actual pictures. Ok, here we go. I started by laying my 1/2" plywood along the stairs like so. I used two small nails just to keep it in place.

Then using a straight edge, I used a level, I continued the lines from the treads and risers onto my skirt.

Easy peasy so far. You might notice that some of my steps don't quite reach the skirt, don't worry too much about that. Once all your steps are marked you need to cut those little triangles out.

Now for the word painting. After you cut all the triangles out your skirt will actually fit into the voids above the steps, although not perfectly. There will be gaps in some spots and none in others. As disappointing as this may sound, you will need to re-trace and cut your stair notches. To do that I used my trusty level again, but this time I laid it on its side so that I would be marking my skirt about an inch above my steps. Once you've re-traced your treads and risers and cut along the new lines your skirt should fit like a glove. The last steps for cutting your skirt is to rip some of the height off, and cut the top and bottom ends off. I marked the height of my skirts at 3" above the old tread so they would all be consistent. At the top of the stairs I cut the riser so it would sit flush with the exsisting floor, and at the bottom of the stairs I cut it perpendicular to the floor about an inch and a half in front of the bottom riser. Hopefully that description helps, but if your still confused just leave me a comment with your question below.

This is an almost finished skirt. You can see I still have to cut the top (flush with the flooring) and bottom (perpendicular to the floor) bits off, but the height has been cut.

Moving on to the risers. Since one side of the staircase is open I was excited to skip the measuring part. I took the railing down to make things a little easier, and to add an element of danger! Dunt dunt dunnnnn.

Then I placed my riser material in its future home...

And marked my cut line from the back. My plan for this ugliness is to make a skirt but for under the stairs (like this). I figure I will need to install the skirt and risers before I start to trace my steps and cut this other skirt, so that's where I'm at for now.

I'm hoping for some decent weather (not freezing or windy) so I can finish painting these pieces this weekend. Also, we ordered the treads last week and they should be here by Monday evening. I've got a little more figuring out to do with these new treads (some of which will require some help from my dad), but I'm hopeful I don't 1) ruin them and 2) it doesn't take forever.

Nikki Kelly

Danger

Pickle, pickle. Who's got the pickle?

5:28 PM

I think I might be coming down with this whole canning bug. Ali and I recently went to a canning class hosted by one of our Instafriends. You know, where your friends with someone online but have yet to meet IRL. Infact, here is Valarie giving us the low down on the process of canning. She covered her personal history with canning, necessary adjustments for our altitude, and the danger of botulism.

We were really impressed with how prepared for this class Val was. I mean, just look at this spread. Whoosits and whatsits galore!

After lesson on the basics of canning we transitioned into the more exciting hands on part of the day, actually canning food! We broke into different groups to make the tasks go a little quicker like chopping veggies, cleaning jars, and mixing up pickling spices. These jars have pickling spices in them and are waiting for some cucumbers.

These green beans are waiting to be turned into delicious Dilly Beans! They're actually my first pickled item that I've eaten and enjoyed. In fact, I just finished my jar this weekend and now I need to make some more, ASAP!

When Matt heard that I was going to a pickling class he insisted that I pickle him some peppers. I asked Val what kind of peppers would be good and said she had a good recipie for pickled jalapeños. I was really glad that Val had some gloves, because I forgot to bring some and didn't want to burn my fingers off. Because, you know....hot!

Once you get your spices and veggies in their respective cans its time to ladle in the hot vinegar mixture.

Once the cans were filled and the tops lightly screwed on they go into a big old pot of boiling water to process for a very specific amount of time. The time is dictated by the recipie and we added 5 minutes to compensate for our elevation. This was the perfect opportunity to break out these adorable grapefruit mojitos that I had brought along. I got the recipe here and paired that with all the cocktails-in-mason-jars idea I see all over Pinterest! Adorbs.

Here's the results of our pickled adventure. I really wish I had taken an extra jar of dilly beans.

I think Ali and I are going to spend a day pickling in the near future and I'm pretty sure we'll be making those dilly beans. We also started a new Pinterest board for other recipies we want to try out soon, you can follow it here. Or if you have any interesting pickling recipies, tag me on your pin or leave a comment below so I can check it out!

Nikki Kelly

Art

Welcome to the Jungle

3:48 PM

Well, I didn't finish the projects that I had hoped to before jetting off to Seattle last week, but I did finish them up right when I got back! Lets take a look at the easier of the two projects for baby Ellie first, framing this old embroidery scene. Actually, even before I picked up a frame I gave it a bath. I'll spare you the pictues of dirty water, but I ended up cleaning it four times! It must have lived in a home with chain smokers because it was pretty gross. To clean it I removed the fabric from the board it was stretched onto, it was just held on with regular old scotch tape. Then since I was a little worried about how sturdy the stitches might be I filled up a bucket with hot water and some Woolite and just washed it by hand. After the third go of hand washing and still having water that was far from clear I decided to let it soak over night. The water still wasn't super clean, but it's going to be hanging on the wall, and I had decided enough was enough. After it dried I gave it a quick ironing and re-taped it onto a fresh new piece of cardboard stuff. I could finally put it in a frame!

The scene is roughly 18" x 24", so it needed a fairly large frame but not quite poster frame. I headed off to my favorite place for cheap but nice looking frames, IKEA! I picked up this RIBBA frame for $20. Once I had it home I laid the mat over the scene and didn't really like the size of the opening. It cut out some of the tree, the monkeys hand, and a fish or two. Even though the elephant was what sold me, someone had put some long hours into this scene and it all deserved to be seen.

Luckily, I have a mat cutting thingy. I decided to make the mat the same thickness all the way around instead of thicker on the sides like it was. Also, it was just easier than trying to measure how much bigger I would need the opening to be and keeping it centered.

Once I had my mat cut I taped the scene in place. Oh, and since this little embroidery scene had some 3-D elements to it I didn't want to smoosh it behind the glass that came with the frame, so I just put the glass behind everything. That way if Sarah ever wants to put something else in this frame the glass right where it needs to be.

Umm, and here is a quick PSA regarding the glass in picture frames. It is sharp. I know that you've probably heard it a million times (I have!) but look at what happened to my sad little thumb! I barely knocked it on the edge of the glass but I guess that's all it takes, so frame pictures at your own risk!

Ok! Duh dunt duh dunnnn! So much better! The monkey had two hands, that lonely fish now has some friends, and that jaguar is eyeballing a tastey little bird snack. Everyone is happy.

Especially this purple elephant! She prefers flowers that smell like Woolite over ashtray any day of the week.

And Mr. Lion enjoys the extra bounce and pep in his mane.

Well since this post has turned out to be a little long than expected I'll wait another day or two to show you the topper I finished for the desk. It turned out pretty nicely, I think once its got a changing pad in it and diaper stuff it will look more intentional and less like a giant wood box on a desk, but whateves.

Nikki Kelly