Painting the Nursery

Though we are still hoping to sell the house Tricia and I decided to paint the nursery so we can be sure the baby has a warm, comfortable nursery.

First, I started emptying the room and removing the various pieces and parts that needed to go before painting. And that's when I got my first surprise.

Bees! About two years ago bees had gotten into the house through an unblocked hole and we never figured out how they got in... Well now we know.

After vacuuming out the bees, I continued cleaning and everything seemed back on track, until ADD kicked in. I found that two small cracks on the wall seemed to be coming up around the edge. I decided to keep chipping and peeling until I got to solid plaster. It seemed to make sense until I found that I had chipped off about square feet of plaster in two different sections of the wall.

Still, the Internet came to the rescue. After reading about fixing plaster walls and a trip to Ace Hardware, I was able to purchase plaster and a texture spray to fix my mess. I cleaned up the cracks that caused the issue and spent the first evening filling and smoothing the plaster.

Early Saturday morning I was able to add the texture to match the old sections of the wall. Tricia had picked out the colors of the room. She decided to have a two-color design with a lighter color on top and a darker color below, separated by a chair rail. Since the top color was supposed was above the drying texture I was able to start painting.

At the same time, I had also retrieved an old bookshelf I'd had for years. It was partially painted and so the day before I sanded and primed it. I decided to use the same paint as the room, painting the outside the darker color and the inside the lighter color. Painting was painstaking, but kept me busier than watching the paint on the wall dry.

After some pretty repetitive paint cycles I was able to paint both the top and bottom colors on the wall and the entire bookshelf. Once I had the paint finished, I put up the chair rail and filled and painted it.

It was a long, long weekend, but the nursery is now beautiful and ready for our baby.

Refinishing Tricia's Rocking Horse, Part III

This weekend, I put two coats of polyurethane, giving the horse a bright, shiny exterior and a long lifetime of heavy use. Once the polyurethane dried, I added the new ears and screwed the base back onto the rocker.

A closeup of the horse's head with new ears.

The horse with reassembled with new ears.

While I was working on reassembling the horse, Tricia started trimming and arranging the new yarn for the mane.

Tricia arranging the yarn for the new mane.

Soon after I finished reassembling the horse, Tricia finished creating the mane. It was a challenge getting the mane to fit into the groove, it was a very tight fit. I ended up using a nail punch to cram the mane down into the groove.

The horse with it's new mane.

Tricia and Cameron with the horse.

Finally, just a bit later, the mane was ready to go. We used a coat hanger to pull it through a hole in the back of the horse and fastened in place with a dowel I nailed in.

The finished product.

Refinishing Tricia's Rocking Horse, Part II

After finishing up stripping and sanding Tricia's old rocking horse, I started staining it.  Tricia and I chose a dark cherry stain to complement the baby furniture we have picked out.

The top and rocker right after staining.

Closeup of the rocker body.

Closeup of the top of the rocking horse.

Refinishing Tricia's Rocking Horse

This weekend Trish and I decided to start refinishing her childhood rocking horse.  It had been used by all of her siblings as well and was showing a lot of wear and tear and was covered with stickers.

The first step was removing all of the stickers that had been stuck to the horse over the years.


Next the horse's mane got a trim. The yarn was very discolored, obviously it had been very loved and possibly tasty.


To tighten the head down I had to remove the the top from the rocker.


Once everything was taken apart and cleaned off, it was time to remove the stain. The stripping process had to be done in a number of small steps as the parts on the horse are relatively small. I put a new batch of stripper on and removed the old every 10-15 minutes.


By the end of the day 2/3 of the horse was stripped. I'm hoping to finish it on my day off Friday.


You can find the rest of the pictures on our SmugMug Album.

We're Expecting!

Cameron at Work

We had someone come to look at the house mid-afternoon today. So without much warning, Cameron and I had to evacuate.

Since I still had work to do we went to the office. And holed up in one of the conference rooms in back.

At first Cameron was excited to be in a new place with new smells.

He made himself pretty comfortable.

But pretty soon he discovered the 9-5 life wasn't for him.

San Francisco - Memorial Day Weekend 2011

To honor Grandma Klco, the Klco family decided to go on a family trip to San Francisco and the Bay area. We met up in the Cleveland airport and flew over together.

On the first day of our vacation in the Bay Area, we checked into our hotel in Sausalito, a small town south of San Francisco and spent the afternoon walking around town. After a wonderful dinner, we went to the Golden Gate park to take pictures of the bridge.

The next morning, we got to Muir Woods before the park even opened, which is the best way to visit the park. Admission was free and we were one of only a handful of groups wandering among the majestic redwoods. It is hard to describe both in words and film the true size of these mammoth trees.

The entrance to Muir Woods




Standing inside a redwood

After we walked a couple trails through the woods and retrieved some supposedly missing film, we headed to catch a boat to Fisherman's Wharf. Once we got off the boat, we got to ride one of San Francisco's many streetcars.

Most of Fisherman's Wharf is roughly akin to a larger Mackinac City, but the Musée Mécanique should not be missed. Easily the one of best, and definitely the cheapest attraction in San Francisco.

On our third day of vacation, we started the day early to head out to Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma, after sampling several wines and wandering their beautiful vineyard, we had lunch at Gott's Roadside, a restaurant featured on Diners, Drive ins and Dives.

We really didn't have a plan for what winery to visit in Napa so a fairly aimless drive and some quick Google Map-ing later we ended up at Paraduxx winery and spent a relaxing mid-afternoon sampling their blended wines.

On the drive back some of us were fairly sleepy...

On our final day of vacation, we went into San Francisco. We started at the SFMOMA, before splitting up and heading up to meet with friends. We met Sean, Vince and Ashley downtown and then went up to the Castro to get subs at Ike's Place. After we got our sandwiches, we went up to a park in the Mission district and spent a relaxing afternoon catching up before heading back to catch our flight.

You can find all of our photos on SmugMug:

• Sausalito - Day 1
• Muir Woods & Fisherman's Wharf - Day 2
• Wine Country - Day 3
• San Francisco - Day 4