a word of advice on bay window seats

Ever since I posted about building my bay window seat, it’s been a popular search term here. More specifically, people have been searching for “bay window seat dimensions.”

You can't search for bay window seat dimensions.

Unless, of course, you are building a house from scratch, and wondering how big to make your bay window so that it will be right-sized for a comfy seat.

If however you already have a bay window, and want to build a seat in it, you need to measure what you’ve got. They’re all different, every last one. And if you have an older home—the kind more likely to have a big ol’ bay window just crying out for a bay window seat—your bay window is likely to be just a little bit wonky, due to the settling of the house over time and whatnot.

You cannot look this stuff up!

That said, if anyone is building a house from scratch and does want to know the particular dimensions of my particular window seat, it's 90” wide, 22” inches deep, and the seat is 22” off the ground. Each triangly bit is 30” wide, and the middle rectangly bit is 30” wide as well. If someone would care to drop off some high-density foam that fits these dimensions so I can finally make the cushion to go on the top, I’d be most grateful.

busy day!

after spending the holiday going back and forth between running around and sick in bed, this new year is going to be all about finishing what i've started, and putting the past - including past projects - behind me.

we'd given the kiddo a challenge: finish 200 chapter books by the end of the year. he did it! his reward, was to get lights back in his room (we'd taken his lightbulbs out of the ceiling fixture, as he kept turning it on and staying up late to read), and a new ceiling fixture to boot - one we'd bought a good year ago, actually, which had languished since then in the downstairs closet.

which meant digging in that closet, which got me in the closet mood, and taking on another half-started project: the kid's closet. used to be, we could put stuff in there, and it would have effectively disappeared from his life. now, he crawls through there, and because the curtain road was grownup height, he'd make a mess anytime he wanted a proper shirt. i'd measured, and tg had cut a couple of shelves down to size, but that's as far as we got. today: done!

here's his reading corner (i do need to cover that chair, i have the fabric and all, another project to finish this year):

his bed:

homework station:

and dresser with photos of friends & family:

the downstairs closet, meanwhile, got a bit of a re-org:

and most importantly, a new set of cupboard doors (built from some of the same leftover lumber from my old work bench that i used to build my bay window seat):

it used to be a real quagmire in here. coats would fall off of hangers and the kiddo would decide to "play" in there, and it would turn into a jumbly mess and you couldn't find anything. i'm hoping this will keep some of that at bay. i want to put a lock on it too to keep the beenster from getting back there!

and speaking of, i've put a new set of hooks at his height - no more excuse for not hanging up his coat and snow pants!

this was all done with stuff that we had on hand - lumber, hinges, knobs, the works. i do want to add extra hooks and a lock though, those will need purchasing. but i think the fact that this stuff could be built without having to leave the house for any supplies at all shows that i am too much of a packrat!

so close!

but not quite! much work done today, with the usual 4-year-old interruptions. all i've left to do is cut the top pieces (already measured and marked) and screw/hinge them on. here's a preview of what it will look like (the paper on top is the template i made to cut the top to size):



and a couple of shots of the frame:





the "character" (aka random asymmetry) of this old house made it all a bit more futzy work than it needed to be. but so very glad it is almost done! next steps will be a coat of paint, shortening the curtains and making the cushion. thinking i'll get enough fabric to recover the seat by the vanity as well.

although, i have to say, the idea of buying more fabric pains me a bit... after hauling my stash out of the crafting table, and then cramming it back in the three-quarters-finished window seat to make our room somewhat livable for the meantime. can't wait for thursday, my next day off. although i'll have the kiddo underfoot. we'll see how it goes.

taking a break

thought i'd take a break since i need to replace a saw blade! so far this morning, i've dismantled the crafting table and have started getting things in place in our bedroom. here are a couple of shots of the bay window, pretending to have a window seat:





i used some of the kiddo's paper - which you can get at ikea for $5 for a 35m roll - to make a template of the shape of the window. which is, of course, more asymmetrical than it looks. then i placed it on what was the bottom shelf of the crafting table. the idea is, i'll be able to re-use some of the structure of the crafting table for the bay window.



... and here's where the blade snapped!

i think i may be diabolically clever.

or lucky.

you may remember the crafting table i built a few years ago, in our old house. since we moved here, it has lived in the kiddo's room, storing my stuff in a place difficult to get to, and unused as a cutting table for fabric (boo hoo).



another thing about this house, we have a bay window in the master bedroom. as a girl, i always dreamed about a bay window, and a window seat, and since we've been here i've dreamed of building a storage bench/window seat in our master bedroom. but i never got around to even buying the necessary lumber.



well, i've just done some measuring.

the kiddo's room needs some rearrangement, since he now has a "big boy bed" (anyone want the old convertible crib?) and too many books for the current set up. and so! i have figured out that i won't need to do much cutting at all to turn the old under-used crafting table into a bay window seat, with storage underneath in my own room where i'll actually be able to get to it!

and, i might be just able to build some shelves for the kiddo too. yippee!

my favourite year part two

here is the rest of yesterday's post that just got too long and rambly.
it started out as an intro to otto preminger's the man with the golden arm with frank sinatra, which is the inspiration for today's knitting needle roll. in addition to being great and groundbreaking etc., the awesome 1950s graphics work well for the craftiness - in this case, the golden arm is reaching for a needle of a different kind.

i cut out the arm out of paper, pinned it to my fabric, and basted around the edges to mark the pattern.


then i cut away the fabric inside the lines leaving a 1/4" allowance, turned the edges under and pinned it to the lining fabric.


i used a standard machine zigzag to sew the pieces together. fiddly work.

then, i put it all together. basic needle roll dimensions - the main black fabric is 12" x 36" the green lining is 11 1/2" x 35 1/2" and the pocket piece i cut 11 1/2" square. i hemmed one edge of the pocket piece, then placed it on top of the main piece & lining. the edges are just folded in by 1/4" twice, which holds the pocket in place as well as finishing the edges. then it's just a matter of sewing the channels an inch apart to hold the needles. download the full tutorial (pdf) here!

necessity is the mother

getting lovely new notions and being unable to find my blasted tapestry needles resulted in improved storage of stash becoming a priority. also, a little round box presented an opportunity.

first, i worked on the inside. i cut circles from a cereal box, just smaller than the inside of my box, and covered them with fabric.

putting glue all around the edge and then sticking down small sections on opposite sides is the best way to keep the fabric smooth and neat.

then, i cut strips to cover the inside sides, with little smips along one long edge to make it fit neatly around the curve at the bottom.


the insides taken care of, i moved on to the outsides. to make the box stronger, i cut strips of corrugated cardboard from another box to go around the outsides, and held them on with a bit of masking tape.

then i traced the top and bottom on the corrugated cardboard, and taped those pieces around the outside (not attaching them to the fabric-lined box). i used a serrated knife to cut the cardboard, so it wouldn't get all squashed.

once you've taped the outer corrugated pieces together, take them off the fabric-lined box, and cover them separately.

then, i cut a much bigger circle of fabric to cover the outside. i spread the glue evenly all over the carboard so it wouldn't gloop through the fabric weirdly.

notice how the circle of fabric for the outside is big enough to wrap all the way up the sides and lap over the inside - pull the fabric as snug as possible on the bias, and the natural bias stretch of the cloth will help it lie relatively flat. put glue all over the indside of the corrugated cardboard shell, and push the fabric-lined box inside. it will help the outer layer of fabric stay in place.

and voila! a neat little box, just the right size for pins, cable needles, stitch markers, and all the other little bits and bobs that are always going walking.

yahoo!!

finito! well, i haven't done any painting obviously, and i do want to drive a few more nails for stability's sake, but other than that, voila!


please ignore the dusty footprints on the sofa... the world is my stepladder.


and note the artful placement of paint cans in hopes of flattening out one of the shelves that has a bit of a wow to it.


and now, i am going to finish off my bowl of leftover mincemeat, and sleep for as long as possible.

holiday madness day three - finished! or not!

five o'clock - time to tidy up & get baby. i've got all the shelves installed on one side (yay!) but not the other (boo!) fortunately the cutting & installing of shelves is the fun part. quick and easy. here's the done bit:


and here's the day's biggest time-user: the part where i had to shape the wood to fit around the crown moulding:


this old radio is completely non-functional (bought for $5, i intend to replace its innards with innards that function) but works great as a weight.

holiday madness day three - morning update

well of course i am massively behind schedule (i blame everyone else - home depot for their stupid truck, young marmaduke for soaking himself in juice which cost me about ninety minutes yesterday) - the original plan was one day building, one day painting, one day organising. instead it's three days building, painting postponed till january, and hopefully i will get some organising done at some point...

anyway this morning at breakfast i plotted out each and every step needed to finish the bookcase; there are fourteen steps, and i've got done one through seven. now, i am off to get a gouge (and some fresh air).

holiday madness day two

okay, taking a quick break as my hands are vibrating and ears are ringing due to a combination of scroll saw and circular saw, and i need a bit of fresh air before i get back to it... but i am feeling quite pleased with myself! the project is really starting to take shape:

the tricky bit is that each piece of wood needs to be precisely measured due to the general wonkiness of the house. but i'm quite proud of the job i did cutting the boards to fit around the moulding at the top of the window:



the paint's peeling on the woodwork around the window and you can see that it's a lovely dark wood underneath... part of me wants to strip it (and all of the rest of the woodwork around the windows and doors, and the baseboards) but that would take forever. sigh.

eta: the end effect is meant to be something like all of the bookcases in those gorgeous manhattan apartments that woody allen's characters inhabit... the only pic i could find (without wasting too much time is not ideal, but it will do (from hannah and her sisters )

holiday madness day one

this week, i have taken three days off work in order to get a crapload of stuff done before the holidays. mainly, our dining room needs to be "reclaimed" which means the stuff in there needs to move to the storage room which means the storage room needs emptying/organizing which means i am building bookcases in the living room. our living room is tiny, and our house is old and slightly wonky, so in addition to being less expensive that buying nice shelves, building them means they will fit properly. for example: the idea is to have shelves on either side of the window. but the window isn't exactly centred. it is kind-of-centrish, just centrist enough for you to think it should be symmetrical and for it to look stupid if the shelves are flush to the window on one side and there is a two-inch gap on the other. and then there is the levelness issue.

anyway i started today, day one, at home depot being disappointed by their stupid delivery costs and stupid rental truck (there is only one, first-come, first served, i.e. it is possible to buy a ton of lumber and find there is no truck to get it home with). so instead i headed to my neighbourhood hardware store/lumberyard, the oddly named new canadians, where a nice guy with cool glasses helped me with an endless selection of questions (do you have storm doors? magnetic paint? can you recommend a glass-cutter?)

delivery, however free and prompt, was not instantaneous, so i spent the rest of the morning & early afternoon doing christmas baking-type stuff: cooking the mincemeat, baking a cranberry loaf and chocolate-chip cookies with homemade candied orange peel, and trying to invent a recipe for strawberry bark.

so tg wasn't exactly thrilled when he came home to find a bunch of lumber in the hall and the living room a mess (i should have taken "before" pictures... sigh), but there has been productivity!

finito!

well, the stash is tamed, the baby room is done (well, i still want to recover the world's ugliest glider), all just in time for us to move out!

let's have a look at those before pics again:





and the final glorious completed room!







i'm so proud of myself, i'm getting all misty. i've spent a lot of time in that room with the wee one, looking at his tree. sigh.

but hey, if you know anyone looking for an apartment, it is currently up for grabs - email me for info (i'm taking my sewing table with me though, dammit!)