Ferns and friends

The Boston fern is a houseplant that keeps on giving.  For a few dollars this grocery store purchase has grown and been split multiple times, with clones now living among multiple friends. 
At one point during a plant thinning phase I gave this fern cutting away to friends.

They liked it, and so did their cat (Boston ferns are listed as non-toxic and cat safe by the ASPCA website) who regularly chomped on the fronds.  In order for the fern to survive my friends moved it outside to the patio.
The owner writes "fern is doing much better after the cat stopped mowing it."

Happy freestyling and gardening!

Tiny and weathered wooden table

Sometime during the winter months I found a small table and matching chair, clearly patio furniture given the greyed weathered look of them.

I only took the table because the chair, although very solid and clearly well made, was in rougher shape on the surface.  The freestyle not taken, sigh, because sometimes you know you just don't have the space, time, or tools to fix something up.  At least I got a tiny table out of it though.

After floating around in a few spots I realized that the tiny table was a good size for my thrifted silverplate planter that holds a bunch of Haworthia succulents.

 




































So now there is a happy little spot by the window where weathered wood, old silverplate, and plants co-exist in harmony and create a little stair-step effect for one corner of houseplants.

 Happy freestyling.

Slipper Chair Surgery!

One night I found a slipper chair on the loading dock amongst some other household goods waiting to be discarded. 
Sigh. 
It had one broken leg, but otherwise perfectly good, with nice nubby upholstery and really really comfortable padding on the bottom and back.  I decided to experiment to see if I could replace the leg, or legs, and get a serviceable reading chair out of this freestyle find.


The first step was to examine the broken/missing leg and see if it could be replaced.  All it had was a bolt sticking out from the corner.  I was able to remove this pretty quickly with some pliers.

I looked on the manufacturer website (Steelcase) to see if they sold replacement legs, no luck.

Without the tools to manufacture a matching replacement leg out of wood I decided it would be easiest to replace all the legs.  Of course this was an option because I had found some off of a couch being discarded....

Unfortunately when I removed the remnant bolt from its hole I learned that the existing pre-drilled holes were far too wide to match the threads on my replacement legs.  No worries, that is why there are leg installation kits.

Yes, I confess, this was not a total freestyle, I did buy some supplies.  I even contemplated buying a better drill because the (free) one that have is not very powerful, in the end it wasn't necessary but it might have changed the course of the project a bit.  Anyway, back to the legs replacement.

Let's inspect the bottom of the chair.  Zooming in one one leg you can see that the black dust cloth on the bottom covers up something braced against the leg. 




















This small piece of wood prevents the original legs from rotating after they have been properly aligned.  These and other elements of the original construction attest to the keen attention to detail, this was probably an expensive piece of office furniture in its original life.

In order to place the replacement legs in the corners I had to remove all the small bracing blocks and unscrew the legs.  Here is the base of the chair after that stage.  (Now  I have three small wooden legs in my miscellaneous supplies pile, anyone need them?)

The next step was to attach the new plates.  Drilling in the screws for the new plates is what made me wish I would buy a new power drill.  I've heard good things about the Milwaukee brand, but never tested one myself.

New plate, ready for a new (found) leg

As you can see in the photo below, the found legs are a pretty close height match for the original legs.

Unfortunately there wasn't enough clearance between the plate and the wood (or underneath the plate) for the leg attachment screw to go in all the way.  As a result the legs are not flush with the base of the chair, so there is a little bit of flexibility if the chair is wobbled side to side. 
Do I care?
No.  

Even with the gap between the leg and the chair base, the legs hold the chair up just fine, and I don't anticipate a lot of sideways stresses being applied to the legs.  Certainly not enough stress to snap the metal screw connecting the leg and the base of the chair.

Here is the final product, sitting pretty.

Eventually I made a slipcover for this chair out of a single curtain panel as documented in this post, because the dark upholstery did not match the rest of the room and I wanted to cover up the slightly unsightly legs.  Here is the final final product, ready for reading!

Happy freestyling, and don't be afraid of a little furniture surgery!

Polluter to purifier - part 2

Regular readers may remember the first polluter to air purifier post, where I converted an old wax-in-glass candle into a planter.  That particular find actually came with two discarded candles, and here is the story for the small white glass cylinder.

The finding...

The cleaning...

And after I had re-potted a spiky little aloe into the glass.
 Note: When planting succulents in containers without drainage holes you have to be very conscious about NOT overwatering them.

So there you have it, two different wax-filled glass candles, saved from the garbage dump and given new life as planters.

Happy freestyling and gardening in whatever space you have.