Another small refurbishment

We've got a couple of the chairs that came with our dining room table (we purchased from a classified ad 20+ years ago in Boca Raton).  Several of them eventually fell apart, but this one stayed sturdy.

Unfortunately, the pinkish seat cover had gotten stained over the years.

I had a piece of "bland" looking fabric that I thought would blend in with the new carpet in one of the spare bedrooms.  So, I disassembled the chair and rough-cut the cloth to size.  There were 2 other fabrics buried beneath the pink!  This is an old chair!  I looked it up on Ebay and they're actually pretty $$! 

I got to work with the staple gun.  Just pulled the edges tight and stapled around the edges.

I trimmed all the excess cloth.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.

All done!!

Refurbishment for next year

I've had these little wire flower pot stands on the deck for maybe 20 years.....

The plastic-y coating was all crumbly.   I thought I might be able to salvage them - get them to last another 20!

But it peeled off pretty easy with a utility knife.

After I got all the green stripped off, I took them out in the grass to apply a "rust converter" to stabilize the rust and prime them for paint.

Primed and ready for paint the next day.

Just so I don't make a great big over-spray patch on the grass, I put some paper down.

I had a spray can of paint in the cabinet (actually, we've probably got 30 various cans in various colors....) so that's what I used.   The color read "Wrought Iron Black".  Perfect!  (I have no idea what the original project for the can was - it was dusty!)

All done!  Ready for next spring!

Ginger!!

I'm a big ginger fan...I've acquired a taste for it over the years from our Island visits and various Indian foods....

Who would have thought that you can order fabulous ginger tea from Amazon at a discount??    Since I drink several cups per day, I opted for a couple of 100 packages.  Caffeine free and tasty with no sugar!

Nice evening treat -ginger tea and a few pieces of Reed's Ginger Chews from the SDA store in Fletcher.  We'd had these in the Bahamas and BVI, so I was thrilled to find them (fairly) locally!  Vegan  and all natural - 3 ingredients - Sugar, Ginger, Tapioca Starch. 

Quick trip to New Orleans

Check the sailing blog for an update.

Hardwood finally finished!!

The hardwood installer came back and finished the hallway hardwood!

Here's the before photo - with the old carpet in the hallway:

And here's the lovely finished hallway!!!

This is the "before" shot -  looking down the hallway from the living room - the hardwood stopped about 4" shy of the carpeted hallway due to the threshold.

In order to finish it properly, they had to remove some of the existing flooring and add back in the proper lengths, all the way flush with the perpendicular hallway. 

The flooring is exactly the same - natural oak - and within a few months, the new boards will have "yellowed" and will eventually match perfectly.  I'm very pleased with my new hallway!!

Kites

Forgot to post this pretty picture of kites flying at Nags Head....they sure do make some crazy complicated kites these days!!

Trip to Nags Head

We flew to Manteo to meet up with Sharon and Buddy for a long weekend! 

They picked us up at the Dare County Airport - our big beach house was one row from the beach in Nags Head.

We went for a drive  stopped at Kill Devil Hills for a bit of walking up Jockey's Ridge!  We were surprised that there was standing water - must have been left over from Hurricane Matthew.

 Saw some folks taking hang-gliding lessons.  Looks like fun but a lot of work, hiking back up the hill to do it again!

Nice walk thru some shallow ponds and up the big dunes!

Beautiful views - looking towards the ocean.  Doesn't look very high does it?  Hard to get the perspective with my little camera.

And looking the other way toward the sound.

Fun to watch a family - the kids had hiked up the dune, faithfully carrying their discs/boogie boards....the all tried to slide down the hill - but got nowhere!  It just wasn't steep enough - or their discs weren't slick enough, I don't know.

And they did what any young kid would do - they tossed the discs aside and rolled all the way down the dune!  They looked like they were having a blast....I got dizzy looking at them!

One night, we played cards....good fun!  (Pretzels were our betting "chips")!

We went to the annual BrewTag "Flying Keg Contest".  For a $25 entry fee, any group could build an "aircraft" that would propel itself and a "pony" keg.  Longest flying craft wins.....each craft was individually lifted onto the scaffold.  The builders were at the top, each tethered to the structure, obeying good OSHA rules!

And each aircraft was pushed/thrown off the top.  This one did pretty good!  It flew about 55 feet and was winning for a while.

Several didn't do so well....note the keg cylinder in the center of the craft.

 This one was a bit sad...they tossed it, but got NO lift..so it just tumbled.

And ended up bent at the bottom - note that it lost it's keg....

 And here is the actual winner - a simple design - it flew 67 feet!  Good, clean fun!

 Off to the beach....a front had come thru and the sea was a bit angry.

We walked out on Jeannette's Pier to see if they were catching anything....

They weren't catching much fish...but this fellow caught a brown pelican!!

They gently hauled the bird out - calmed him/her.  Untangled the line from it's neck!

And gently tossed it back to the sea.

Good as new, a bit shocked!!

Sharon and Jeannine had gone to a local yarn shop.  Sharon brought back 6 skeins of yarn - beautiful stuff!  She coerced us to help her roll it into balls.  I guess we're just nice that way :-)

Here's the beautiful result.  I won't detail the messy knots that we struggled with at times!!

Here is what she is making - a beautiful scarf!

And before you knew it, time to pack up and fly home!!

Another window update

Now for the living room....same setup as the dining room.  

Again, too much white....so I rescued the valance from one of the guest rooms to give this room a little color.

 

Master Bath Finished

We're finally finished with the master bath update!!

Grout applied to the new border - just regular white unsanded grout to match the original.

Many sequences later of sponging off the excess grout!

Let me remind you of what it looked like "before" 

And here's the "after"!!

And another view "before":

And the "after" shot from that direction: