Wins and Losses in the Kitchen This Week

In the loss category:

• about 1 1/2 cups of leftover refried beans that sat for too long in the fridge
• the liquid from canned beets (good intentions to use it) that developed mold on the surface
• some two-year old natural peanut butter that was in a container that was pushed to the back of the fridge, with some mold along the edges -- yuk!
• a container of cornmeal that had bugs. This was gross beyond belief to see those crawly things in the cornmeal. I composted this. Lesson learned -- if I'm not in a cornbread-baking period, keep the cornmeal frozen.

In the win category:

• a rhubarb and blackberry crisp that I made last Friday, and that no one liked -- so, I cooked it up in portions throughout the week by adding water and microwaving it. It turned into a pretty good rhubarb and blackberry oatmeal breakfast for me. No one else wanted to try this. So I guess, lucky me!
• the last chunk of a 2 1/2 week old watermelon. The tip of the chunk had gone soft, but the rest was delicious. I had this with my lunch today.
• 3-day old gravy from a pot roast. It's only about 1/2 cup. When I found it in the fridge on day three, I popped it into the freezer. Then tonight I added it to our vegetable beef soup.

In the part win, part loss category:

• about an inch off of a cucumber that went soft and slimy. My daughter cut off that part and used the rest.
• the fatty bits from a pot roast that I made last week. I had intended to render the fat into liquid beef fat to use in cooking. I didn't get to it, but my husband did. He did use the liquid fat in a meal he made for us, then he ate all of the cracklin' bits. I regard this part of it as maybe a loss, as he wound up with a pretty bad stomachache the next morning.

So what have been your losses and wins in the kitchen lately?

Latest Up-cycle Outdoor Furniture Project

I have surgery scheduled for 2 weeks from tomorrow. So, I'm working hard to get my many projects wrapped up well beforehand, as I won't be able to do this sort of work for several weeks afterward. And I want these things finished. 

This may be interesting to you, I was reading about anxiety concerning surgical procedures and women. Women tend to feel more like they need to get everything set in place exactly how they want before surgery, whereas men don't have that same sort of feeling. Anyway, I've been having some serious panic attacks regarding my own surgery. It's not a major surgery, but I'm very anxious nonetheless. I've been waking in the middle of the night feeling panicked for the last few nights. 

Despite this stuff, I wanted to share my latest project. This time I've managed to coerce some help with parts of it.

The thrifted chairs I redid last summer just didn't thrill me. The wood seat didn't weather very well. I knew I'd need to redo the seats. But then I had another thought. What if I put the two chairs together side by side and turned them into a bench? I've seen lots of DIY chair benches online. I think they're a great alternative to a pricey new bench for the patio.

What I'm working with:

• 2 metal frame chairs
• used primed and painted cedar fence pickets
• used screws
• wood putty
• spray paint

As mentioned, I had the chairs from last year (thrifted for $5 each). The fence pickets were from a courtyard that was walled-in 16 years ago. We saved the fence panels to reuse in future projects. The screws my husband had rescued from something or another. I had the wood putty from last year. I bought a new can of black spray paint. So this year's cost will be about $7 for the bench, or under $20 if I include the cost of last year's chairs.

My husband and I have been working on this for a couple of weeks. We don't have instructions, instead are coming up with how to do this as we go.

I took the wood seats off of the metal frames, then went out to the yard with my husband to get a few fence pickets. We cleaned up the fence pickets and gave a quick sanding in spots. But mostly left the primer and paint in tact. At this point we laid the pickets out on top of the bare chair frames to see how many we should use and what the spacing between each should be. 

We don't have very sophisticated power tools, just a drill, a sander, and a jig saw. This is where my husband's help was indispensable. We needed to cut the pickets down a few inches. I tried to use the jig saw freehand. But I'm just not strong enough to keep it steady. My husband cut the rest of the pickets to length for us. We then drilled the screw holes in the seat pickets as well as some bracing pickets to hold them all together.

I puttied the old holes (from when the pickets were attached to the fence), gave them a good sanding, and painted the edges. Once that paint was dry, I attached the seat pickets to the bracing pickets, leaving a super narrow gap between each slat.

Where we are right now. The seat is assembled. I've put a light coat of spray paint on the top of the seat (not seen in this photo). I need my husband's help with the next step, cutting 4 small notches in the back slat to fit the seat around some raised metal tubing at the rear of the chairs-turned-bench. Once we get that sorted, I'll thoroughly paint the entire picket bench seat and attach it to the chairs. There are metal screw holes where the chair pads attached to the chair frames. 

Our process is we work a little on the bench, then take a couple of days off to think through the next step or redo a part with which we're unsatisfied. So this is a slow process.

When finished, the entire bench will be painted black. I'm hoping once the seat is black, it will look cohesive. I already have a spot for the new bench. There's a patio adjacent to the front porch that I spruced up this spring. I'm planning on setting the new bench on that patio.

In case you're interested, here are some other DIY chair benches that I found online.