Plaster & Disaster

Did you all see about Sage’s amazingly polished completed bench on Monday and think to yourself, “Hey, I thought this was Plaster & Disaster?” Seriously, it looks amazing!

I was sitting here late Monday evening trying to figure out what I could possibly do for my post this week that would look halfway decent in comparisson, when Brad called.

“Are you home?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. I’m giving Amanda a ride home, and she hasn’t met you and reads the blog. We’re going to stop by, OK?”

No, not OK! “Um, I’m not going to outright say ‘no,'” I said. “But the house is trashed, there are dishes everywhere, I’m in my PJs, and I just took a shower so I look ridiculous.”

“So, ‘yes.'”

I quickly evaluated my life and decided that my self-worth isn’t entirely caught up in my physical appearance and the appearance of my house. “Sure.”

“Great,” he said. “We’ll be there in 10.”

As I hung up the phone, I quickly re-evaluated my life and decided that my self-worth was pretty much enteirly caught up in ~~my physical appearance and~~ the appearance of my house. I mean, I have this blog, after all. This was a disaster!

At the same time, I thought to myself, “this might just be the blog post I’m looking for!” So, like a real blogger, I took a few quick photos and got to work.

Here is what we were working with:

[insert long excuse filled paragraph here about how we’ve both been working a lot and it was just Brad’s birthday weekend so we didn’t have time to clean, blah, blah…]

As someone who has not-infrequently found myself in the position of cleaning very quickly for company, I do have a few pointers:

Prioritize. I quickly decided that in terms of making either myself or my house look presentable, my house was clearly the priority.
Make sure there isn’t anything gross. Clutter is one thing, but dirty dishes are another. The first thing I did was quickly empty and load the dishwasher, wipe the counters, and rinse out the sink. A clean kitchen goes a long way!
Make piles. Mail in a pile by the door is a perfectly respectable thing to have around. Mail strewn all over the kitchen table and floor, on the other hand….
Choose a dump space. Since I didn’t think she’d be going into my dressing room, that’s where I stashed things like wrapping paper to save, papers to sort, etc. – things which would take a little extra time to put away properly.

By the time they arrived, things were looking much better. Even passable?

Obviously these are still bad cell phone pictures taken at night, but I didn’t feel horribly ashamed to have her in the house. And the house was looking even better after she left – I convinced her to take the lamp I made out of a chemistry set with her! It had been sitting in the corner of the living room for months as I hadn’t found the right home for it yet. I’m glad to have it off to a place where it might actually get some use!

So, over the course of about 20 minutes I got motivated to clean my house, met someone new, and got content for a blog post, all at once. Not too bad for a Monday night!

How about you – have you had to clean quickly for someone coming over? Do you try or just accept that it will be messy? What tricks do you have?

This summer we built a 12′ bench along the outer wall of the dining room:

Then I screwed up the courage to sew a custom cushion for said bench:

That definitely helped it feel a lot more finished, but my plan all along was to finish the frame with a single 12′ piece of wood across the front of the bench — I just needed to wait until the fall when we would have the station wagon my stepdad leaves with us from September – May so I could actually transport a 12′ long board.

Recently I did just that, picking up a 12″x 12′ length of pine from Home Depot for about $25. I used my circular saw to trim the board to the exact length of the bench, and then applied wood stain (Minwax English Chestnut). After the stain dried, I brought the board upstairs to put in place, where I quickly discovered it was about 1/8″ too long. No bueno.

Rather than haul the whole thing back downstairs again, I used the our dining chairs as sawhorses and made the cut in the dining room:

Then I used my amazing nail gun (thank you Naomi!!!!!) to nail the board along the front of the bench frame. With it in place, the bench legs were looking a little wimpy (sorry, I forgot to snap a photo at that stage because I was busy squinting and trying to figure out what to do). So I used some spare boards to build out some simple new legs around the existing ones, nailing them in place. Here are some awful photos of that process:

And the bench was officially finished!

Except I didn’t like the dark stain. I actually did this a few weeks ago and have been living with it to see if it grew on me, but the more I thought about my plans for the dining room and wanting to have the table and chairs be the stars (I’ve got plans for those, more to come soon!), the more I knew that the eye-catching dark bench was not right. So I painted it white.

NOW the bench is officially finished. I like the white so much better — it’s Chantilly Lace, the same as the walls, and it just blends in so much more and will let other bold and colorful elements shine. Right now it maybe looks a little boring, but once we finish furnishing the space I think it will be just right. I do wish the front could be solid all the way to the ground, but I didn’t want to close off our AC floor vent and the heat register running along the whole wall.

All told this whole project cost me $175 — $75 for the wood and screws, and $100 for the cushion materials. For a 12′ bench, that’s not too bad!

Also, in case you’re wondering if I have stayed true to my cabinet painting schedule, I have indeed! I won’t do a full reveal yet because I still have a few steps left (which I plan to finish by November 6, as promised), but here’s a sneak peak of how things are looking: