Well the rain has stopped and it is officially HOT here. Especially because our AC kicked the bucket last week. Thankfully only the downstairs AC died completely so we've still had the upstairs one doing its darndest to keep us from melting but it's still been mighty toasty here, especially with the heat index getting up to or above 100 degrees multiple days this past week! But we got lots of bids for the replacement and we have a guy coming out to do that on Wednesday. Only 3 more days to go! Haha.
These past couple weeks of June I feel like everything I do involves lots of sweating. The kids started swim lessons which were a steal of a deal through the city and they have been loving. But it's every evening from Mon-Thurs and I definitely almost passed out trying to get Emery changed in the concrete box cooker of a family dressing room one of the nights last week.
The kids have had a great time with swim lessons! And I love that there are 2 teachers for their class of 5 kids. Not bad ratios at all!
I've also been busy working and literally sweating over the Murphy bed. Holly came to visit us last weekend which was wonderful and I was determined to have the Murphy bed done in time for her to come... however, I had misjudged how much contact cement I would need so I ran out 3/4 of the way done with the veneer. And of course, there was NO water based contact cement available to buy locally so that set me back a couple days because I had to order off Amazon and wait for it to arrive. So, long story short, it wasn't done by the time she got here. But we had the mattress for it set up for her and she tells us that it was super comfy so that worked out.
I was soo nervous to work with the veneer having never done it before! I watched a ton of youtube videos and psyched myself up. Then, the day I was planning on doing it, it was POURING rain! So the humidity in the garage was ridiculously high which I was sure would ruin the contact cement and make it not adhere properly. But I was determined to proceed because I was trying to finish in time for Holly. Soooo I looked up all the ways to dehumidify a space. I set up fans and set bowls of baking soda and buckets of charcoal all over the garage and bought a humidity monitor. And despite my best efforts, I never did get the humidity down below 67% or so, but I forged ahead anyway. And you know, it wasn't as hard as I feared! I only really messed up one piece as you can see below but I managed to fix it with a tiny strip of veneer and I feel like it turned out ok.
I'm actually really surprised that I was able to cut and adhere such a tiny strip of veneer. I had to cut it twice because the first time I accidentally cut it with the grain running the wrong direction. But second time was the charm.
It was really nice having Holly visit us. Emery got lots of practice with her "h"s trying to say Holly's name. We went to a cool new park in downtown Dallas, ate BBQ from a food truck, celebrated Eric's birthday and had family dinner and just generally got to hang out. The kids had a blast having Holly around to play with and I loved being able to spend the evenings just chatting with her. I wish she lived closer to us. And I realized after she left that we didn't take any pictures together while she was here! Bummer!
After Holly left, it was back to work on the Murphy bed in the evenings. I don't think I've ever sweated more in my life than I do in our garage in this summer heat sanding, staining, filling, sanding, staining, etc all in a respirator. But after many set-backs including a big one on Friday where I was just sure I had totally ruined the doors, the bed is ALMOST done. The doors just need to be sealed and the handles attached and then the whole thing can get installed. Halllelujah.
So I was kicking myself so much on Friday because I followed the directions on the wood filler that I used which had told me to stain the wood first, then do the filler then sand and stain the filler. Clearly this was WRONG! I was literally crying Friday night sure I had not only thrown away hours and hours of hard work but that it would be irredeemable because I was worried if I tried to sand it down and do it over, I would sand through the veneer! It was definitely a rough evening and I was more than a little frustrated/devastated. I may have thrown the staining rag... twice. BUT thankfully we had a game night with some friends that evening that was a lot of fun and proved to be a great distraction.
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