Beds

The prompt was to describe all of the beds I've slept in, and so -- 

My childhood bed faced my sister’s, and was positioned underneath a huge wall-hung wooden bookshelf. I worried about earthquakes in that bed, and laughed after my father left the room the night he spanked me through a thick pink woolen blanket with satin trim. When I had a bad chest cold my parents would dose me with neosinephrine drops, which they’d administer by laying me on the bed in their room, draping my head backward over the edge, nostrils to the ceiling. They’d take me back to my room and lift my bed into an angle by propping it onto a typewriter case. I loved the cozy well in the center of the bed that I carved out over the years, roughly circular, then oval as I grew taller.

I visited my sister once at her apartment when I was 4 and she was 18. She shared an apartment with a stewardess, and they lined the walls of their living room with white butcher paper so that they could draw on the walls. Her bed must have been slept in by hundreds of people. At night we needed to perch on the sides of the bed or face rolling into a hole in the center. To this day sleeping in other peoples’ beds creeps me out.

My mom would not let me take my bedding to college with me, but I did get new sheets. When I moved out of the dorm, I saved my money and bought a queen sized futon. Mom said that I was to buy an extra long twin (unspoken: harder to negotiate “the deed” in). I let her know that since I was paying for it, it would be my choice.

I wanted a different bed eventually. My sister had a cast iron bed, a double, that came in 4 pieces that fit like a jigsaw puzzle on the corners. She wrapped it in cardboard and twine and sent it to me via Greyhound bus. I bought my first real mattress, and I slept in that bed for the next 20 years, until we realized that we wanted more real estate and the mattress was kaput. It felt like sleeping on a lightly padded chain link fence, and wires were shredding our pillows. Guess it wasn't high priority!

We had a different, puffy bed for a while, graduating to a queen size.

Then a friend told us about her bed, advertised on our local NPR station. “It’s like sleeping on angel butts,” she said. So we bought one. Horrific. We felt old and our bodies hurt. After several adjustments and many restful nights sleep on our Ikea sofabed, we kept the frame and bought a new mattress at Ikea. It’s still in use.

For various reasons, including keeping cats separated, I sleep on the cast iron bed with one cat and my husband sleeps on the un angel-butted bed with the other two cats.

So ends the story of the beds.

Adventures in Powdercoating, Part 2

The tables and chair came out looking great and I am so happy.

First, I heard that the tables were done and I could come pick up and then choose the color for my chair.  So I did that (I was working from home).

Witness the beauty of the table. It was rusty and sad before, and it was free because my sister left it behind when she moved to the Midwest. Now it is beautiful.

Then I had to pick out a color for the chair. What I really wanted was a blue-violet. But my choices were limited. They'd just painted a firetruck, so there was red. I knew there was yellow because they were working on coating some bollards for the roads agencies. There was teal (barf) and a translucent blue that I was too chicken to take, and then there was this blue. A very 1975 elementary school blue. I like it.

They told me that I could pick it up in a few hours and it looks effing amazing. It is smooth and bright and beautiful. I still have to make a new seat for it, but I put it right back out onto the porch and put my Buy Nothing Project giveaways on it. Makes me so happy.

Here are a few photos of the progress and the result:

What can I paint next? This level of transformation is addictive!

Adventures in Powdercoating

I have a favorite chair that is super beat. I *think* I bought it at a garage sale when I lived in my first apartment. I thought it was SO COOL. I still do, but it looks really funky.

So I asked mrguy how to use a sander, and I had this unrealistic picture of myself sanding this chair down to the metal (which I thought was wrought iron) and clear coating it. Then I actually tried doing this. Boy was it challenging! I kept replacing the sandpaper and stopping to rest my hand, and after a solid 35 minutes I was ready to stop. I realized that I needed help.

I decided to look for sandblasting and powdercoating services, found one, and they do furniture as well as their big industrial jobs. On Friday I took some time off work, brought my chair and two other pieces. One little table I must have gotten from the flea market. I remember having glass cut and ground for it at one point, but most recently I had some bright blue plastic cut to order. Swingin! The *tall* table was left behind by my sister when she moved to Minneapolis. I had red plastic cut to order for it. 

When I realized that I could get more items sandblasted and painted under the minimum order, I brought those two tables along with the chair. I will paint those two their original black when they're done, and the chair? Who knows? I've asked them to give me a call so I can come in and choose a color.

To the left of my items is an order that's ahead of me in line -- some radiators. They are going to be gorgeous! And V., the customer service person, showed me some electric blue clear coat that had been added over chrome on part of a car fender. These people have me fantasizing about what else they can do.

There's more to the story. V told me that her bosses are 29, and she worked with them when they were 17 years old, at the metal painting service. Later, these kids went off and started a metal fabrication business, but always used the services of the painting service they used to work for. A few years ago they heard that the painting service was closing, so they bought it. They brought the whole crew over, and they run the two businesses. They called up V, who had worked with them back in the day and asked her if she would come back and work with them, so the whole gang is back together.

I can't wait to go back!

You love your Grandma? You love Asian art? You love waffles?

I sent an email with that subject line to oldest and youngest nephews, who were on their way to being the new owners of antique lacquer panels with semi-precious stone inlay. Their payment? Some labor, as well as removal of frozen items from the domicile.

First the labor. Their task, should they love the grandma and waffles, was to remove the solid oak desk from the office. I have lived in terror of this moment from the time the desk entered the office, because my pop had said that it could only leave in halves. Youngest neph brought his Sawzall. 
 
But the local garbage folks' "bulky item pickup" rules consider two halves of a once whole desk to be *two* bulky items, so mrguy vetoed that plan. And given that mrguy's other name is pack-man, he and two nephs were able to get the desk into the patio without a hitch.

Then came Operation Empty The Office. Out went some cool weird furniture and some future landfill.

Then came Operation Empty Freezer. Despite the removal of 28 frozen bananas (and the 8 or so my brother-in-law also found), the chest freezer was really full. Cream puffs, frozen waffles, meat, milk, butter, lots of plums from the tree (so happy). And yes, 5 more frozen bananas. I knew someone would forget a cooler, and a styrofoam cooler appeared on the free table at work this week. Kismet. I filled it with meat.

The vegetarian nephew got the cream puffs. The non-vegetarian got all of the meat and the ancestral bait (two kinds). The estranged nephew gets bupkis (no art, no bait, no love) and his brother gets the admonition that none of what he's taking can go to his brother. Sadly the vegetarian is undeserving of having to pass on this message, but that's how it is.

While I was cleaning out the fridge, Coco came to visit. I'm sure that I've said this before but I'm not sure I could have gotten through this final stretch at mom's house without the affection of sweet Cocodee, who appears in the middle of the house at the most random times. If you're her parents, doing a Google search on your cat's name, I apologize for monopolizing her time during this spring and summer.

The boys got their art and sent another neph, his wife and our grand-nephews, who arrived a few hours later. That neph walked away with a chest of drawers, some Indian wool rugs, the pop's old fishing kit with real tin cups and stuff, and on a later date mrguy will deliver the jade panels that didn't fit in the truck.

I emptied the toy drawer of its mix of late 60's (mine) and early 80's (the nephs') toys. 

And that was almost the end of it. The garage is filled with garbage bags, the garage cabinets are empty, most of the furniture is out of the house, and our entire mr and mrs guy garage is filled with the things from the house that the greater guy family cares about.

Wow.