Brighter Fusion Blog

This is the bike rack I built on the front porch.  It’s a 4 x 4 nailed horizontally between two of the porch supports, with a 2 x 4 screwed onto it at an angle.  There are rubber-coated hooks on the 2 x 4 to hold the bike frame.

It’s primitive, but it’s nice because the bike is out of people’s way on the porch, it’s protected from mild wet weather, it’s not visible from the street, it’s easy to lock to the rack, and it’s easier to do maintenance on the bike when it’s raised.

As a bike repair stand, it would be better to have the bike facing the other way, so I could get to the chain.  I put it this way because when I take it down to ride it, I’m already on the left-hand side of the bike, which is where I want to be.

See the huge pic here. 

Check it out:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Thread-organizer-box-for-skinny-spools—-Sulky-G/

I bought three Lux clocks separately on eBay, and they’ve been hanging around the house for about a year, so it’s a relief to have them finished.

I put the best parts into two clocks — one for me, and one for my sister. The third is a hideous monstrosity which I’ll probably give away…or I might do something worthwhile with it after a while.

You can find these clocks refinished on eBay for a lot, or in found condition for pretty cheap. If you’re looking, see if you can find one nearby to you, because these are monsters to pack for shipping. You can pop the wood tips off, but you really don’t want to do that if you can help it.

Enough ado. Here’s the finished product:

My sister’s has been finished for several weeks. It’s very similar to this one, except there is only one face plate (glossy lavender), the hands retain their original brass plating, and there is a fun, squiggly second hand, painted dark red (OSHA red).

I was thinking of making this tone-on-tone in red-orange on dark red, but I can’t find a red-orange spray paint (except for fluorescent). I want that 60s color of electric red, as seen in Star Trek TOS. I can get a can of latex custom made to match any color sample (such as a vintage enamel pan) and then use a Preval sprayer, but that’s a lot of expense and work and it doesn’t have the same reproducability that commercial spray paint has. OSHA red seemed pretty nice for the dark red.

So, forget the red. Instead it’s aqua blue with an off-white center accent, ala the Chevy Bel Air from the 50s (only not as green an aqua, and no chrome):

After the jump, more pics and details about the project.

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Buy my Drexel head-of-the-table dining room armchair on eBay now for …. $290! OMG!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230203173644

Sure it’s nice, but jeez!

Plus it’s not teak. It’s walnut. The Declaration stuff was all walnut (that I’ve ever seen or heard of).

I’ve seen my coffee table go for $600 too. Unreal.

It stresses me out to think how much this stuff is worth today. So I pretty much don’t think about it. Most of the stuff is in the garage with sharp implements leaning against it. It’s wrapped in bubble wrap and saran wrap, and I really hope the plastic doesn’t stick to the finish and ruin it. The house is too small and full of stuff to put the tall buffet, dining table, and coffee table inside. The short buffet I’m using as a dresser, and the six chairs are scattered around the house.

The upside to freezing-ass cold weather is lots of time at home to finish up stalled projects.

I’ve been keeping this half-finished globe lamp hanging around for months. I bought the globe from my favorite junk store in Longmont for around $5. It was a bargain because the lens inside which was supposed to focus light on a point of the globe was dangling around in the wrong place. Happy find for me!

I could have easily epoxied it to work the way it was supposed to, but I actually have a second globe which is an exact twin to this one that I inherited from Grandpa (with the aforementioned furniture), and it works as intended.

So I felt easier about destroying this one as a functional visual aid. One probably shouldn’t study it too closely anyway. It’s from 1980.

It gives off a lovely, relaxing orange glow, like a fireplace — a super nice mood lamp!

I finished the wiring, but I still need to make an insert for the hole on the bottom and the ornament for the pull chain. It’s going to be a moon, because I’m just that nerdy. In fact, I’ve been searching for a realistic moon Christmas ornament to use, but they’re all man-in-the-moon or crescent moon motifs (or man-in-the-crescent-moon).

I could easily make a 2-D one by printing out a moon photo, but that would suck. So, I finally bought a big wooden bead and I’ll have to paint it gray and hand paint some craters on it.

Let’s hope we don’t live to see the moon hovering over the South Pole like this one will!

Hi all.

This is a project I completed several weeks ago, but didn’t get around to posting.

I was extremely fortunate to inherit some nice walnut Danish modern furniture from my grandfather’s estate when he died. These originally belonged to his second wife, Lillie, and she took excellent care of them.

In addition to the chairs, I have a dining table, large square coffee table, and two-piece china hutch. All pieces are from the same line — “Declaration” by Drexel. They are dated from 1959 through 1963.

Classic and gorgeous!!

The chairs have had this whitish upholstery, with accents of peach and mint green, since I acquired them, and I expect since the early 90s.

I removed the pastel fabric, and found what appears to the original early 1960s fabric, a harvest scene on velvet, in PRISTINE condition:

Over which I put my new, retro-style, fuzzy polka dot fabric (which I affectionately call “hideous orange”). Notice the same color palette in the new (left) and the original (right):

And Sandy sez, “What’s so hideous about being orange anyway?”

I really like the new fabric — it’s amazingly soft to the touch, and I feel that it suits the style and color of the wood much better than the peach/mint stuff did.

If anybody wants to see huge, detailed pics (including of the original velvet upholstery) you can do so here:

http://www.brighterfusion.com/blog_images/walnut_chairs/

This is the result of last night’s waste of time. I didn’t bother with any stinking knit gauge measurements, so my “hat” turned out very tiny and a bit too spherical to even work for a newborn. It does make a nice cozy for my faux river rock bud vase, tho.

It wasn’t exactly in need of a cozy, but hey…

My wise and noble friend has wisely advised me to get off my ass, stop staying up all night knitting “hats” and get started living my life already.

Chakra-colored weekly log sheet to track bp, pulse, temperature, mood, etc. on b.i.d. basis.

Download it if you have a use for it.

Check out this nice flower that I purchsed along with the fingerless gloves from jmillen on Etsy.

It’s another nice use for old wool clothing, even stuff that has holes in it, doesn’t fit, or has been “ruined” by being put through the wash!

The ivory scarflette is something I just knitted, but I didn’t like how it was turning out, so I stopped it early.  I might use it for a purse strap on something later.

I’ve surrendered to using the iron in a limited capacity to help me sew.

Much of what I like to wear is soft, stretchy and slinky, which makes it very hard to sew.  Especially difficult is a seam on the edge of the fabric, just folded over itself.

I found this stuff “heat n bond lite” and it works great to solve that problem.  The time spent ironing is well worth it.

Here is a pic of the hem I made on some workout pants that I made capri length.  It’s as perfect as I could hope for.

It even still looks nice after going through the wash (so far).