The Mighty Mighty Powerwasher

 The only band that matters this week is M.O.T.O.

Hair stylists.  I love mine.  And, besides attending to the coifs of many Austinites, he is pretty handy himself.  We swap house project stories when I'm in his chair getting cut and colored.  He is currently creating his new salon and is doing a lot of the work himself.  I love a guy that can make my hair look fantastic one minute and rip out a wall the next.  When I told him (while my head was in the shampoo sink) that the outside of our house was looking a little grungy he mentioned that he owns a powerwasher and kindly offered to lend it to us.  We had been thinking of powerwashing the house exterior for awhile but just never got around to renting the machine to do it.  No more excuses.  A couple of days ago we picked up Randy's powerwasher at his salon.

Here is the Honda 6.0 HP/3000 PSI/2.5 GPH PowerWasher.

It's really easy to use.  Attach your regular old garden hose, attach the sprayer wand, add a little gasoline, fire it up just like you would a power lawn mower, and look out.  It could literally rip your face off.

Dan tackled the back and one side of the house in pretty good time...maybe a total of 4 hours.  He came in soaking wet because when washing the eaves the water pours down right on top of you.  No way around that.  But the back and side of the house, and the little patio thing in back, look sparkling and bright.  Years of grime and gunk gone.  What a difference!

Then yesterday it was my turn.  I tackled the porch, front and other side of the house.  And the limestone flower beds.  And some windows.  And some screens.  And the driveway.  I was warned that once you start powerwashing you will want to powerwash everything.  It's true.

Here are some pictures of yesterdays session.  As you can seen there is a lot of streaky dirt on our vinyl siding.  We are not huge fans of vinyl siding but that's what came with the house and for now is ok.

As you can see, our house is really white under all that dirt. 

And here you can see that powerwashing can make a huge difference...check out the color of this limestone before and after!

And the porch.

Black wrought iron swirly porch things before:

And after:  Powerwashing is kind of like sand blasting.

The old paint on all these old windows is cracking and peeling.  We are in the process of sanding and prepping them and will repaint them black eventually, but this powerwasher helped quite a lot with paint removal!  Less work for us!

Windows before:

And after. 

Here is a picture of the driveway.  It needs new blacktop stuff on it but it sure is clean now.

Here is our porch ceiling.  On our May road trip we went to New Orleans and took a little walking tour of the Garden District, and I noticed that most of the porch ceilings on the amazing old houses were painted sky blue.  Must be a Southern thing. Now that it's really clean I decided we need to paint our porch ceiling sky blue, too.  Another project to add to the list.

And here are some of those gorgeous Garden District houses with blue porch ceilings.  Major drooling.

And here is the front of our house after the powerwashing session is done.  Looks really crisp and clean.

This was not a bad way to pass a hot June day because I was soaking wet the whole time.  Powerwashing works, and is actually kind of fun to do.  Glad we finally got this done.

Cat update: This guy is doing great, and getting bigger.  And he finally picked a name.  He calls himself Otis.  

Chair Slipcover

Listening to Turbonegro "Apocolypes Dudes", possibly the best album of all time. 

I am feeling pretty lucky...because I know how to sew.  I have come to realize that a lot of people don't know how and the idea of cutting a piece of fabric and operating a sewing machine is as mind boggling as Chinese algebra.  Why is sewing so important? 

1. Sewing is a creative outlet that enables you to make something out of almost nothing.
2. You save thousands of dollars by making your own stuff like duvet covers and drapes....and even clothes.
3. The more you do it the better you get at it. And like riding a bike, you never have to relearn it.

Here is a picture of my trusty Riccar sewing machine.  It's from the early 50's.  It belonged to my step mom, Jane, who used it in college to obtain her Home Economics degree.  Do they even offer Home Ec anymore?  Part of earning that degree was to be an ace seamstress, which she was.  She bestowed this lovely yet rudimentary piece of equipment to me when I was 20 years old, and a work horse of a sewing machine it is.

Ok.  Yesterday I was looking at this chair in my living room.  This is another of my IKEA purchases that has been kicking around for around 10 years.  Nice chair, comfy, good lines, and in good shape...except for the tired and flat green fleece cover it came with.  Time to give this baby a new dress.

Here is a close up of the fabric.  Kind of matted and worn.  Nothing a slipcover can't fix.  The green cover can only be removed by unscrewing the chair legs and fooling around with zippers and even more screws.  I could have removed this cover and made a new one using the old one as a pattern but since our feline housemates adore this chair and have made it a favorite lounging spot we wanted a slipcover that is easily removeable and washable instead. 

I decided to use a washable ultra-suede type fabric because of the nice texture, amazing color choices, washer/dryer friendliness and easy sew-ablity.
First I measured the length and width of the chair and added an inch for seam allowances.
Here is a picture of my first rectangle shaped fabric cut.

Next I measured the side panels and cut them out, again adding an inch for seams.
With the right side of the fabric facing in chair, I pinned the panels to the top piece.  This took a little time, a little swearing and maneuvering of the fabric, but working through it resulted in a perfect fitting slipcover.

Really all you have to do to make a slipcover is pin all the peices together "inside out" and sew it all together.

Here is a picture of the top portion of the panels all sewn together.  Notice how the seams are facing out?   

Here is a close up of the top portion of one of the panels.

Here is a picture of the whole thing, done, inside out.  At this stage I was pretty happy with the fit of this slipcover.

I trimmed all the excess fabric from the seams with straight scissors and then used pinking shears to finish off those cuts.
There are special sewing machines called surgers that actually stitch inside seams together but I do not have one. Surgers are really cool because they finish the inside seams so they don't unravel.  Look at the inside seams of any t-shirt and you will see a finished seam made by a surger.  When lacking a surger you can use pinking shears to help stop unraveling.  Pinking shears produce a zig-zag cut.

Pinking shears, below.  Since I anticipate this slip cover to be washed a lot I don't want it to unravel in the laundry.  And luckily this ultra-suede fabic ravels very little in the first place.

Then I turned the whole thing right side out to tackle the hem.  I used one of those handy-dandy dressmaking measures and measured 3 1/2 inches around the entire hem of the slipcover, pinned in place, and sewed at 1/4 inch.

And here is the finished slip cover.  I'll miss the green but this is certainly an improvement!

And here it is with a pillow made out of a swanky vintage barkcloth I scored on ebay.

Literally moments after this little project was complete our new feline resident took it for a test drive.
I rest my case.

This cat, as mentioned in my last post, made it to the snipper clinic and is now sans gonads.  He still doesn't have a name but here are some of the names being kicked around:
--Flounder (Dan came up with this one after the guy in Animal House)
--Ronnie James Dio (May he RIP)
--Hank Von Helvete (Lisa's other favorite rock star)
--Rainbow (4 year old neighbor kid Ella's pick, and the name of one of Ronnie James Dio's bands.  This might actually fly!)