An update of sorts....
The other day I managed to get the jungle net and canopy frane up and working, mostly all by myself. I had gotten the canopy frame for free on Freecycle, a newsgroup of people giving away stuff for free in your local area. It is a 10 X 20 foot frame with 6 legs and is all white powder coated metal so it should hold up a lot better than those gazeebos I had a few years back. There was no instructions with the box of poles but there was a small photo and rough dimentions. I somehow managed to figure it out. So I got the roof of the canopy frame together all by my self and then by some miracle, moved the jungle net too. It is about as heavy an unruley as a corpse. I then ziptied it to the canopy frame with a little hanging over on the north side and a lot hanging over the south side. I plan to attach it to the studio roof later. So then it came time to hoist the roof of the canopy up in the air. This was not something I could do on my own. I had get the neighbors to come over and help. It really did feel like a barn raising (yes I have done that). The shade it provides is excellent and now I have a small area of my back yard with radar and satalite deflecting jungle net! Granted it would look a lot better if those poles weren't white. Ah well. BTW, this required me mowing the back yard. Something that hadn't been done since..............last year. Some of the grass-like plant life was 4 feet tall! After mowing part of a stripe, I had to empty the grass catcher. There is now a hay bale in my back yard.
So then onto the cabinet. After finally drawing up the plans for the small and weirdly shaped cabinet for the bathroom, I realized that the cabinet doors I had wouldn't work, and none of the wood I had was big enough. Once again, I popped over to the neighbor's and guess what, they gave me cabinet doors and hindges. They offered me wood too, but very little of it would have worked and I would have had to get a peice of plywood anyways. I should mention that there are NO square corners in my house and the cabinet will be kind of trapazoidal in shape. (It's a Trap!, seriously!). So yesterday I had managed to cut the front peice, side, shelf and top. I started to cut the hole for the cabinet doors and ran into a small problem. I couldn't get the electric jig saw (my favorite saw) into the corners because of the size of the hole verses the size of the board and the saw being in the way of itself. I may have figured out something to get it to get into those corners. Otherwise, I will just do it with the Dremmel. I am still debating if I should paint it white to attempt to match the other cabinets in there, or to paint it purple, like the walls, since the white paint may not look right with one of those cabinets butted up against it. I could even go grey to match the trim. For the top of the cabinet, I will be doing a mosaic (I think) with the tiny Italian glass tiles Tabitha gave me awhile back. Again, there are a lot of choices, but I need to decide which color of paint first. I might just go for a standard tiling pattern, or maybe something fun. Too soon to tell since that will be done last.
In other news, my garden is hanging in there, literally for some plants. I planted two upside down tomatoe pots, but they plants hanging down aren't looking as good as the ones out the top. I found out that parsely blooms and grows in thick giant stalks if you let it go to long. Next year, I will plant a different breed of peas. The ones I've been growing don't have a very good pod for eating. It's almost time for me to check on the carrots. Today I am going to plant some spagetti squash seeds and see if I can keep critters from eating the plants.
So then onto the cabinet. After finally drawing up the plans for the small and weirdly shaped cabinet for the bathroom, I realized that the cabinet doors I had wouldn't work, and none of the wood I had was big enough. Once again, I popped over to the neighbor's and guess what, they gave me cabinet doors and hindges. They offered me wood too, but very little of it would have worked and I would have had to get a peice of plywood anyways. I should mention that there are NO square corners in my house and the cabinet will be kind of trapazoidal in shape. (It's a Trap!, seriously!). So yesterday I had managed to cut the front peice, side, shelf and top. I started to cut the hole for the cabinet doors and ran into a small problem. I couldn't get the electric jig saw (my favorite saw) into the corners because of the size of the hole verses the size of the board and the saw being in the way of itself. I may have figured out something to get it to get into those corners. Otherwise, I will just do it with the Dremmel. I am still debating if I should paint it white to attempt to match the other cabinets in there, or to paint it purple, like the walls, since the white paint may not look right with one of those cabinets butted up against it. I could even go grey to match the trim. For the top of the cabinet, I will be doing a mosaic (I think) with the tiny Italian glass tiles Tabitha gave me awhile back. Again, there are a lot of choices, but I need to decide which color of paint first. I might just go for a standard tiling pattern, or maybe something fun. Too soon to tell since that will be done last.
In other news, my garden is hanging in there, literally for some plants. I planted two upside down tomatoe pots, but they plants hanging down aren't looking as good as the ones out the top. I found out that parsely blooms and grows in thick giant stalks if you let it go to long. Next year, I will plant a different breed of peas. The ones I've been growing don't have a very good pod for eating. It's almost time for me to check on the carrots. Today I am going to plant some spagetti squash seeds and see if I can keep critters from eating the plants.