Felted Sweater Trees and a FREE Mantel

I thought I'd try my own take on the sweater tree craze that is going around the web. I had some felted sweaters laying around that needed to be used before the moths had their Thanksgiving meal in them. These turned out better than expected and went together in about an hour. The cones cost $5 for 5 and the sweaters I already had as well as the glitter glue.

The design added such sweet texture to the trees

simple star designs were added

It is hard to see but I brushed glitter over the entire criss-cross design

and added just dots on the small tree

I left some plain because simple is beautiful

Here you get a glimpse of the beautiful lines of this mantel. My neighbor was putting this out for free! It was a little rough and it wasn't deep enough but free can be modified.

When we bought our house the owner's son had carpeted the entire first floor in a beautiful white Berber. However......after having to clean the foyer carpet every 3 months, I was not in love with it. They had also put faux wood grain linoleum over the real wood steps. HUH? When I started to peel it up to refinish the steps, I figured might as well pull up a corner of the carpet and see what was lurking there. Gorgeous hardwoods! I don't understand people. Of course when we pulled up the entire carpet it became apparent why he had to carpet. He must have used a sprayer to paint the wood work and walls and did not protect the floors. We had a company refinish the floors because my visions of doing them myself quickly evaporated once I had sanded the steps. My knees and arms wouldn't have made it. They did an amazing job.

There also was a wall here that covered the fireplace. I knew there had to be a fireplace here because we have one in every single room, except here. So when the carpet came up, the hearth was exposed and I was ecstatic. I knew there was a fireplace! However, the excitement was short lived when we tore down the wall. The mantle was missing. The owner's son had taken the original mantle. Boo.

It has been sitting mantel-less for about 6 years. Not from lack of searching, maybe lack of funds and time. So when this mantle became available, I jumped at it and decided to make it work. 

I am so glad I did. We made it deeper by taking the sides off and adding a 1x6 and then we added a 1x3 to the top . It still needs some finessing but it is good for the holidays. I am just glad to have it ready for Christmas decorating. 

It is so deep that I am going to have fun loading it up with greens and boughs of holly....

Fa, La, La, La, Lovely

Always being renewed,

Please see the link party page to see where I link arms with those blissfully beautiful bloggers that host every week. So gracious they are along with these other sweet ladies!      

 

 

Appliance Repair Interruptus

Last week I had planned on doing a little early Christmas decorating on my new to me FREE fix-er-upper mantel (more on that tomorrow) when our dishwasher decided to break. The door  wouldn't open at all. So I had to pry it open with a screwdriver and found that the latch was broken.

Crap.

This is not a good thing when you have 5 people living in your house and only one of them knows how to load the dishwasher (and that would be my main man! just kidding, I know, I just choose not to. just kidding, or am I?) My husband did say while I was standing at the sink up to my elbows in suds "SEE! The dishwasher isn't broken!"

So I of course called Mr. Appliance and got the ball rolling on ordering a part. They would let me know when it comes in. Well, 5 calls later, no part was ordered and I am tired of washing dishes. Since I had been looking at the broken part for a week, I kinda got the feeling I could probably fix it myself. So I asked the kind lady for the part number and informed her that she no longer needed to schedule the repair, to which she replied "Are you sure you want to do that?" "Can yo get it fixed today?" "No." "Then yes, I am sure I want to do that."

She gave me the part number and I headed to the Appliance Repair Parts store. They were very helpful and I was out of there in 10 minutes, albeit with a lot of strange stares from the men behind the counter when I said to Tess "Now let's go fix that thing!" They probably thought I'd be back in 30 minutes.

Guess what I did fix it and I am so happy that I am going to show you how I did it. (If I hadn't fixed it, I was fully prepared to include the photo of the repair man fixing it...although I am sure he would say "what's a blog?" )

First things first:

DISCONNECT THE POWER BY TURNING IT OFF THE AT THE ELECTRIC BOX.

A little jolt will do that to you when you are so excited to get started....

Old handle

New handle assembly. 

Apparently they don't just make the black latch separately because then they couldn't charge you $30!

Unscrew all of the inside screws on the door to get to the latch. 

Mark which way the front is in each of the wire boxes. Do this so you will remember which way they attach to the  new latch assembly

Use a flathead screw driver and wiggle this off. You have one on each side of the assembly. I did

YouTube a video on this because I was having trouble getting these off. Once I saw that he used a flathead it went very quickly.

Reconnect to the new assembly. Place back in between door panels and re-screw all eleven screws!

New handle in place. Turn the electric back on, cross fingers and toes and press the "Start" button......

Yes! Saved us $75 for the service call.

Moral of the story? Don't be scared to try and fix something yourself. Look it over, study it and see if you can figure it out. And don't let someone discourage you by questioning whether you can. 

What's the worst that can happen? 

OK, besides maybe electrocuting yourself.....

The worst that can happen if you can't fix it, is you wind up calling the repair man. 

But I say, give it a go sister!

You just might amaze yourself.

Always being renewed,

Please see the link party page to see where I link arms with those blissfully beautiful bloggers that host every week. So gracious they are along with these other sweet ladies!