"New" furniture and thoughts about gardening

I started this blog thinking I'd be documenting all sorts of renovation events that would take place in my big old weird building as we turned int into a groovy loft and workshop. Well, resources (and the recession) being what they are, we haven't done much at all other than that lovely attic insulation last winter and some furniture rearranging. But since this is all about making a living space out of a commercial building, I will digress.

Step one is furnishing the living space. So we have this cottage that we rent out. It's purple on the outside and cute, about 90 or so years old, and it's a few blocks away from our home. Last  month, some rather unsavory tenants (as in, left approximately 3,500 pounds worth of items for the dump, the carpets had to be steam cleaned three times and could have probably used three more, and of course they still owe rent) moved out. Most of what they left was useless and gross, but I did salvage a rather crappy looking (and smelling) couch with the idea of reupholstering it. Since we'd borrowed my mother's steam cleaner for carpets and upholstery anyway, I cleaned it three times until the water ran clear, and then threw my old slipcover over it. The ugly loveseat that used to have the slipcover will get the steam treatment before Mom needs her cleaner back. Then we hit Freecycle and found a groovy chair to go with the "new" couch and a lovely white wingback I picked up at our Goodwill as-is shop (where the stuff too banged up or weird for their main thrift store is sold) for $5. We rolled out a carpet remnant we'd been storing for six or more years, dragged over some plants from the other side of the room, and voila! A new living room. The loveseat got relocated to the tv area off to the side and my wingback doesn't get pulled over there when kids want to play video games any more.

How do I know it's working as a room? People actually sit there! Usually everyone hangs out at the dining table or in the kitchen. It makes me wonder if I'm just conforming to some outmoded form dependency: "We have to have a living room. My mother always had one!" But no, it's nice to have a sit around and sip cocktails or read a good book area, and when you've finally got it arranged right it shows. I like my "room" (of course it has no walls and is just an arrangement in the middle of the roller rink that is my loft). The part I'm most pleased with, though, is the price tag. By being patient, not needing to change anything until the right options present themselves (right meaning free, of course), and basically playing what my husband calls The Watching Game, I got a new room basically for free. We also picked  up some desks for the kids on freecycle, and some bookcases for my husband's office/work room. His National Geographics will finally have a home! So the inside is shaping up, for pennies.


Next up, the kitchen. It will be tweaked a bit in the next few weeks, as we repair and haul up a big old base cabinet from the basement and reorganize the shelves we have in there. I'll do some before and after pics of that process. We're thinking about keeping the walls as empty as possible, with no upper cabinets, and just doing nice base cabinets and counters.

As for the gardening part of the post, fall is almost here and I still haven't done anything with the parking strips out there between the sidewalk and the street. This article gave me some inspiration, though. The dirt is compacted, the plants are all weeds, it's full of cigarette butts, litter, and the occasional grocery cart from the downtown supermarket three blocks away, and folks walk on it all the time. And I think there's a gopher. I'd like some fruit trees, and even other edibles, but I doubt berries or tomatoes would survive. Fruit trees could be good though. It might be time to look at fall plantings. I'd also like to see the space covered in mulch, so it would look tidy, but somehow I don't see the budget supporting any of this this year. Maybe in the spring we can get to work on it.