If you give a mouse a cookie...

There is a cute, little children's book called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The basic plot is that a boy gives a cookie to a mouse, who then wants a glass of milk, and a straw, and a nap, and a bedtime story, and a bunch of other stuff which eventually leads to him wanting another cookie. This is why we set traps for mice instead of giving them cookies.


That said, here is what happens when Loralee wants to get the piano tuned:

First, she decides that the piano needs to be refinished, and so does the piano bench.

It doesn't make sense to bang the piano around after it's tuned, so she has to refinish it before the tuning. It looks spectacular when it's all done.

Then, since the piano is pulled away from the wall, and she has been wanting to repaint the great room anyway, she tapes everything up so she can paint. After all, we wouldn't want to move the big, heavy piano back into place, then pull it out again to paint, and then put it back again, would we? No way!

Taping the beautiful fireplace mantel was tricky!

But before Loralee can paint, she needs to replace the outlet behind the piano. ALL of the outlets in her house are loose—cords just fall right out of them. Also they are ugly. So she has to replace at least the outlet behind the piano. And all of the other outlets in the room (ten, in total).

old outlet; new outlet

It makes no sense to paint and then make holes in the walls so she decides to remove the phone jacks and the cable TV (coaxial) jacks from the walls before she paints. When the jacks are all removed she has to repair the holes they left in the walls.

The former owners of this house must have really liked TV. There were three sets of outlets just like these in the great room. There are two in the living room, two in the big basement room, and one in each bedroom. They loved them some TV!

Then, since Loralee doesn't like the light switches either, she has to replace those.

Loralee doesn't like the carpeted coving that goes up the wall, so she has to remove it before she can paint. Fortunately it comes off easily...and she found a quarter behind it! Then she must wash the walls that were covered by the coving. (You can see the coving in the phone-jack picture, above.)

Finally she can paint the room. Primer and two coats of paint do the trick. It looks awesome—so clean and fresh!

Now Loralee nails in some wooden base-boards up to replace the coving.

Looky-look!
No more phone or co-ax things in the wall, and no coving!

At last she can untape the room, uncover the fireplace, put wall plates on all the new outlets, and put the piano back where it belongs.

There's still a little bit of cleanup to do, but it looks pretty nice!

Loralee still wants to paint the doors in the great room, put up curtains, get the fancy clock repaired, and maybe refinish a few chairs. In the end, she remembers that she still wants to get the piano tuned.

Please don't set any traps to kill her.

On the Bench

And now the piano bench is finished!

It started out looking pretty terrible. After twenty-nine years of use that old vinyl just cracked apart at the seams, and the foam followed suit. And then there was the repair that extended the life of the bench by thirteen times its original lifetime—so far, but also made it two-toned. (Although you could argue that the combination of bare wood and lacquered wood did match the seat.)

 The first thing to do was remove all the staples on the underside of the seat. (Well, after I removed the seat and painted the rest of the bench.)

So the blackish-grayish stuff on the right (with the big white-ish splotch) is that nasty upholstery-pellon stuff that they put on the bottoms of couches—you know, the stuff that keeps all the change  and your cell phone from falling out the bottom. It is discolored from something (a few somethings) that spilled through the top of the bench. On the left is where I already removed lots of staples. I estimated that I removed 200 to 250 staples.

I am holding two of the staples. The one on your left broke off as I tried to pull it out; the one on the right is a whole staple. Probably 80 to 85% of the staples broke when I pulled them, leaving 1/8-inch or shorter staple stubble sticking out of the wood. :-/

This is an extreme close-up. The single arrow on the left points to some staple stubble that was too short for me to grab and pull out with the pliers. The double arrow points to two staples that need to be removed. In the end I had to pound my piano bench's remaining five-o-clock shadow (at least half of the broken staples) down into the wood.

 Removing the staples was a Big Deal! It took hours!

And here's the seat, all taken apart. The foam, permanently cracked and indented from the seams in the vinyl cover; the cover itself, split and stained; and the board which, for some unknown reason, has a groove routed out on one side. I'd guess that was probably a mistake that was easily hidden under foam and upholstery.

Once the ugly upholstery was removed I filled in the groove with wood-filler. When that was dried and sanded it was time to work on the seat for real. I had looked at some upholstery fabrics, and even ordered swatches, but Bruce reminded me of a leather skirt I'd bought at the D.I. while I was in school. It was too big for me, and I didn't really want a leather skirt, but it was a couple yards of 100% real leather for eight dollars, so I got it. And stashed it away until later, when I could forget I even had it. Anyway, I cut the bottom of the skirt off (about 25-inches) to use as a cover for my new, improved piano bench.

So here's the stuff for the bench: the skirt, the foam (which I had to piece together using hot glue), and the wooden seat.

And I always do forget before and after pictures, but here is the top of the skirt, cut apart  from the rest at the seamline (you can see the loose threads hanging off of it). There's enough left to make a teeny-tiny mini skirt. A really tiny one.

After I got the foam on and the leather stapled in place I had to cover the raw edges of the leather. Normally you would use that upholstery pellon, but I didn't have any. I used black taffeta, which I have in abundance. It's tough, it doesn't stretch, it is not at all see-thru (unlike the pellon), and it looks totally lovely:

The under-side of the seat; maybe the picture doesn't do it justice, because it really does look amazing.

And now the part you've been waiting for. (Admit it, you've been dying to see this!)

before                  and                    after

Before:

After:

This makes me very happy!

And Rachel approves, too. :-)

Just Grand!

My mom, when she heard about it, said I was nuts. My cousin Wendy said I was brave. I've heard that courage and craziness are almost the same thing. The truth is, I wasn't afraid to take my piano apart—not really—and so maybe I walk the very fine line between bravery and foolishness.

By the time I was eighteen I could not walk past a piano without playing it. I had a job as a ballet pianist, I practiced my lessons about three hours a day, and since I had only a half day of school I would stay in the band room and play the grand piano for two to three hours every school day. But when, at twenty-two, I got married, I didn't have a piano to play all the time, and I went through some major withdrawal.

So Bruce and I signed up for our very first debt, and bought ourselves a piano for Christmas that year. An Astin-Weight upright grand. We'd shopped around quite a bit, and looked at several different brands (even a Steinway—which, used, cost three times more than most new pianos. We asked ourselves, "Really, could it be that much better?" It was.). But we finally decided on the locally-made Astin-Weight, with a patented, kiln-dried sound board that would survive the dry, desert climate in Utah. That piano, all by itself, was the single most expensive purchase we made in our first twelve years of marriage, costing more than the sum-total of every car we owned over those twelve years.

Aw! Look how cute, and skinny I was! And what long hair I had!
Oh, and admire our new piano, too. ;-)

Our piano moved with us nine times in twenty-nine years—including a trip to Tennessee and back. It lived through my eight kids and their friends. After matchbox cars driven across the keys, juice spilled into it, white glue dotted (and dried) onto the pedals, the modesty panel being gouged with a nut-pick, and just being knocked into by little kids over and over again (and sometimes by grown-ups too)... It was looking a little sorry. And, after all of that, and only maybe six tunings in twenty-nine years, it desperately needed to be tuned too.

It's a hard-knock life. Literally

I almost never remember to take before and after pictures until the project is started. This time is no exception. The pinky-red stuff is wood-filler. There are too many knocks and dings in the piano to fix all of them—well, I didn't want to. But I did fill in the worst ones. Anything else that isn't black or brass is where it was chipped down to bare wood.

Unbelievable!

The bench is pretty sorry too, but at least that is from normal use. The legs were wobbly from the beginning, and after a couple of years it collapsed and broke (while I was on it!). My dad and
my brother Paul repaired it; the legs have been nice and tight
ever since, but I never did paint the bare wood they used.
The upholstery just split at the seams, and the foam cushion
cracked from oxidation over the years.

Now that we are settled into our house and, hopefully, won't be moving again, I decided my poor piano really needed to be tuned; the strings sound wobbly like a warped record. But I really wanted to refinish it too, and restore it to its...well, if not its original beauty, then at least something close to it. And I didn't see the sense in having the piano-tuner out if I was going to open it all up, sand it, and paint it. So the refinishing had to happen first. So last week I took my piano all apart.

Starting with opening the lid and removing the music desk and modesty-panel. Isn't it beautiful in there? Pianos are so cool!

I find interesting things every time I open up the piano. This time it was just a penny and a comb. But how did that even get in there!

All the keys are in this tote.

And, oh my! It is dirty in there!

I cleaned, dusted, and vacuumed out as much dirt as I could. There are spots behind the strings that just can't be reached, so there's a bit of twenty-nine-year-old dust still in there. Then I sanded down the wood filler, did a light sanding of the entire piano with a fine-grit sandpaper, and then cleaned it again. (I probably should have sanded before I cleaned it. Oh well.)

After consulting with the paint store I decided that cabinet paint was the way to go. It is adhesive, and self-leveling, so you won't see the brush-strokes. They say. After the first coat, I was a little skeptical, so I watched a tutorial to make sure I was doing it right. I was. Although the tutorial said that this paint was very thin, it actually went on like Elmer's glue: the first place the brush touched was glopped with paint that didn't want to move to any other part of the piano. The tutorial did say that it would take four to five coats to really look good, and that each coat would help to hide the brush strokes from the previous coats. They said.

Still, it looked so much better after the very first coat of paint—brush strokes and all—that I was thrilled!

I threw in the towel after four coats of paint. From across the room you might think you were seeing wood-grain through the black finish. Up close you will see that it is really brush strokes. :-/  But, despite that, it looks a thousand times better than it did before; at least I think so. It was time to wash all the keys and put the piano back together again.

Each key is shaped a little differently from its friends.
It's a good thing they are numbered. (And, notice how much
cleaner the key bed is.)

And this is just interesting. Look at the difference between the hammers that have keys under them and those that don't. Cool stuff.

 I didn't remove the piano hinges (there are two of them) because
1. I didn't want to remove a zillion little screws and have to put them back in, and  2. I was afraid that if I did remove them, they might strip the wood and it would be hard to put them back in place.
But, uh-oh! Some paint dribbled through! My fingernails and
a little Goo-Gone fixed that right up!

Well, after a week of messing with it, my piano is all back to normal again. Here's the finished project:

before                                     after

        before (sanded)                                after

Oh, piano! What nice legs you have!

The piano bench is another story—I did paint it, but I'm waiting on fabric swatches (ordered online) so I can decide what I want to reupholster it with. I'll post before and after pics later.

After a long week of piano withdrawal, Rachel is playing again. (I totally understand her pain.)

Well, foolish or not, I think my piano turned out all right. And now it is time to call a piano-tuner. Yay!

Christmas 2018!

Now that the new year is here, and on its way, I guess I should probably tell you all about our Christmas holiday before Christmas 2019 happens.

December was hectic and busy, busy, busy, but we had a great Christmas!

We must have made the "nice" list this year!

First of all, you remember that in November we had Brandon come home from his mission and Ryan leave for his. That kind of kept me too busy to help anyone with their Christmas projects until we were well into December. And by December 8 I still thought we had three weeks left, but no! We only had two weeks to finish everything up. Part of this was because I was planning to go to Ephraim to pick up Jason and Adreanna on Saturday December 22 so they could spend the holiday with us. (Yay!) And I wanted all the projects, and preferably the shopping and wrapping all to be done before then. Well, that didn't quite work out. The best laid plans, and all that.

Here's what ended up happening (timeline-wise):  Jessica and I worked on her project early on; hers was the first one to be wrapped and placed under the tree. (Kaylie had already finished her project, and Rachel was working diligently on hers by herself—up until the last possible minute.)

Proof that my kids do their own sewing projects...

I was planning on Bruce being home on Friday, the 21st, but he surprised me and got here a day early! I was working in the sewing room, when in my peripheral vision I saw someone come up next to me. It wasn't Jessica, and it didn't seem to be Michael...I looked up and it was Bruce! "You're here!" I exclaimed. And then there was lots of hugging and kissing, and I didn't really want to get back to working on my projects any more. That was a fantastic Christmas surprise!

I had planned to finish all the shopping with Bruce on Friday. So he and I did shop, but we didn't really finish. :-/ 

Late in the afternoon of the 22nd Jason and Adreanna had a family party in Santaquin, so we were still planning to drive out there and get them, just later in the day than I would have liked for six hours of traveling. Especially since we had tickets for the entire family to go see Kaylie perform in A Christmas Carol at Vernal Theater Live! (Kaylie played the part of Scrooge's old girlfriend.) But Ryan had called us Friday night; he and his mission president decided that, because of the severe anxiety Ryan was going through, it would be better if Ryan came home. He called on the 21st to let us know that. Then on Saturday morning we got another call: Ryan's flight would arrive in Salt Lake City at 4:47 p.m. that evening!

So now we had to figure out how to get Jason and Adreanna from their party in Santaquin—three hours away from us—and Ryan who would be another two hours away from Santaquin, and then back to Vernal, which is three hours from Salt Lake. Fortunately Adreanna's grandparents who live in Duchesne were able to take J and A to their house after their party. That left Bruce and me free to go pick up Ryan, and then get J and A on the way back to Vernal. Whew! Now, that sounds all simple and neatly done, but I will tell you that I was having a total freak-out, panic attack Saturday morning. But the stress went away by the time we got to Salt Lake. And we made back it to Vernal with Jason, Adreanna, and Ryan in tow, with no problems (although all of us missed A Christmas Carol).

On Sunday morning we all went to church together, and Bruce got all of our family to go sing with the ward choir. (The choir was performing a song that our family has known for years.) That was pretty cool. And we spent a nice Sunday together. I hid out in my room to wrap presents a lot, but I got to spend time with the family, too.

Monday morning I got up early and really and truly finished the Christmas shopping. On Christmas Eve Day. Kids were hiding out in corners of the house finishing up and wrapping their projects. But by dinner time I think we were all done. The gifts were wrapped, and most of them were under the tree. We had a nice dinner, played games, watched some Christmas videos, sang together, and went to bed late—but still earlier than in years past.

Then the three youngest girls let us sleep until 7:00 on Christmas morning! This would have been better if I hadn't woken up (is that how you say that?) at 5:30, but Bruce and the older kids appreciated it. Everyone got some nice things, but the homemade gifts are always the highlight. So here they are:

Lindsey wrote Michael a letter, and made him a dragon egg in a jar. She also made some Celtic knot designed chocolates, but there's no pictures of those.

Ryan made Jason a couple of walking caps. Sort of. You remember that he wasn't here for most of December... I may have helped with these a lot. But Ryan did finish them up himself.

Jessica made Adreanna a... I don't know what you call this. It's a hooded, snuggle blanket, with a foot-warming pocket.

Rachel sculpted a mermaid in clay, for Lindsey

front and back close-ups
Now we need to find/make some kind of display stand for her.

Adreanna made a pun for Brandon, and a nice painting of a Hungarian rancher. The pun is a CTR ring with a stick of butter on it. Let's see if I can explain this...
If you put together the first letters of the words for "choose the right" in Hungarian—those initials would spell the word for "butter" in Hungarian. Brandon laughed as soon as he opened it. 

Jason made a journal/sketchbook for Ryan. He stitched the pages in signatures, marbled the end-papers himself, and bound it.

Brandon made Kaylie a hooded wrap; it's reversible, with a black and white herringbone weave on the inside. She has worn it every day since she got it.

Kaylie made a library book shelf for Rachel in her woodworking class last trimester. (She literally put her blood, sweat and tears into it because she skimmed her finger with the table saw while she was making it.) She also made some chokers—Rachel's preferred style of jewelry.

And Michael made a blanket for Jessica, with the Tardis appliqued on the corner. (Jessica is a big Dr. Who fan.) 

The homemade gifts are always the highlight of our Christmases; the kids love this tradition!

Jason and Adreanna, and Bruce all got to spend the rest of the week with us, so it was a party all week. I "partied" by sleeping a lot. When I was awake (OK, I really was awake more than asleep!) we played games, watched movies, and just hung out together all week. The only thing we didn't do, which maybe we should have, was have the kids draw names for next Christmas. ;-)

Anyway, we had a wonderful Christmas! And I hope you all did too.