Musings of a Fanatical Soaper: Spring Home Improvement

This time of year is a time to clean and freshen up the home, and I love doing it as much as everyone. I have a whole slew of projects lined up, and we took the long Easter weekend to work together as a family to get things done. We're very excited about getting a new (to us) stand-up freezer, which necessitated my husband getting out in the garage and doing some major cleaning up and cleaning out. How exciting that was! I found some of my favorite stuffed animals, like this little fella.

Roadkill, the studly armadillo
(complete with CZ stud in his ear)

I found the gorgeous orange, green and yellow floral silk scarf that my parents gave me for my birthday four years ago. I had given it up for totally lost, thinking it'd been thrown away in our move almost 4 years ago. I was saddened by the prospect, because it's a beautiful scarf, and I'd wanted it to wear with this one white linen dress I have.

While Peter was kicking box-butt in the garage (more boxes emptied and crushed!!! Woohoo!!!), I was in the dinette working on a long-anticipated project. Our dinette is... utilitarian. The vertical blinds are original to the house, I'd swear it, and a few of the slats are missing. Eventually, those are coming down and a curtain and box valence are going up - hopefully before the Summer heat arrives.

Our dinette set was part of the package deal the hubster got with my cat and me. I bought it in 1995, used, right before moving into my first apartment. It's a lovely square, solid ash table with pull-out leaves, and the top has a laminate inset. The chairs are also solid ash, and they came with nice, neutral, light tan seat cushions that had started looking quite the worse for wear after 17 years of life, cats, people and young children. I'd decided to recover those chairs in a stripe print to coordinate with the tropical flower/flip flop/cocktail material I'd chosen for my curtains.

This became a major family project. Peter unscrewed the seats from the chairs. He and our older daughter pulled the seemingly millions of staples out of the existing upholstery, and I measured, marked and cut out the new upholstery. While I had the cushions off, I decided it would be a great opportunity to take some Murphy's Oil Soap to the wood. Oh my gosh! Once the seventeen years of accumulated grime came off, the wood gleamed warmly and looked so pretty! Then I saw the newly cleaned chairs next to the table. Suffice it to say, I spent about an hour Saturday giving every inch of my table the same thorough cleaning. On Sunday morning, I would just stop and admire how the morning sun came in through the back door, warming the clean, glowing wood, now completely clean.

The girls and I returned home from our Easter trip to my parents' home today, and my newly refurbished and clean dinette set greeted us with its vibrant, cheery appearance. And now... The before and after pics!