Reupholster a Recliner: Day 2

Here’s my first day of staple removal.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the number one gripe on upholstery tutorials is the staples. STAPLES! I am so over staples … and even after two days I’m still not done. Last night I broke down and ordered a staple removal tool. Not only does my hand hurt from using a flat head screw driver but a number of the staples were done really well (so well I have cursed at them when they stay in the chair).

Here’s the tool I purchased off of Amazon: Crain 126 Staple Remover. We have Prime so it will be here tomorrow!

So … while I sit and pick apart the cushion covers, here’s a nice array of pictures from staple removal (day 2) of this project. It is impossible to take too many pictures on a project like this, each picture captures a different angle or detail that will be helpful when putting everything back together.

A couple notes on reupholstering this specific recliner so far:

1. The legs are easy to remove (and must be removed in order to take off the upholstery).
2. There is a lot more sewing involved in this recliner than other’s I have seen (sewing seat and back cushions, and then each arm is made up of 3 pieces).

Pictures from Day 2 (more staple removal):

Reupholster a Recliner: Day 1

Last night I worked on the chair for about an hour and then did another hour this afternoon while Noah was taking his nap. Being pregnant, I can really only squat/bend for short periods of time before I get really achy so I think this is going to be a LONG project!

Somehow I still haven’t removed a piece of fabric from this chair yet … but I have removed about 200 staples! The arms appear to be sew together and then stapled on over foam. The current foam on the chair arm isn’t in terrible condition but I think I’m going to replace everything just to really give it that new feeling! One nice thing about this recliner, the arms come off completely so it makes my idea of staining the arms a darker color more realistic (don’t have to worry about getting stain on the fabric).

Here’s my first batch of pictures from this adventure!

 

And I’ve got my first upholstery injury. Needle-nose pliers and flat-head screw drivers can be really painful if you slip while using them to remove a staple!

 

Hopefully I can get another hour of work done tonight and remove the fabric from one side of the base.

 

 

Chicken fajitas

In the past few months I have gotten more enthusiastic about meal planning and trying new recipes every week. We’ve found a bunch of recipes that we’d cook again! I’m using a couple of different websites/apps to help organize my recipes and track our meals. For recipes I use Pepperplate — it’s great for storing your recipes, bringing them up for cooking, and creating a shopping list. My only complaint is that I wish it was easier to export recipes from their site. Once I cook a particular meal, we take a couple pictures and journal it using Evernote Food. This way I know the last time I cooked a particular meal and can read our comments about how the meal went.

Anyway, I thought I’d start sharing the meals that we think are “WOW — make this again!” meals. Here’s the first one from last week: sizzling chicken fajitas from Smitten Kitchen. I made the main filling exactly as the recipe stated (minus hot sauce so Noah could try it) and we had sour cream, salsa, cheese, and cilantro for garnish. I think what really made this dish work for us is my new saucepan! We finally upgraded from the cheap Target one that we’ve been using since we got married. It really helped to sear the chicken and veggies. (No, we didn’t pay $225 for the pan. Although it is totally worth that much, we only paid $50 at the Calphalon Outlet.)

Zero Waste Toddler Lunches and Snacks

Noah doesn’t quite yet have the appetite or teeth for sharing our meals just yet. This is easy to fix at home since we can just make him a separate meal, but it becomes more challenging whenever we go out. I’m not ready to shell out money for a kid’s meal (that isn’t very healthy) so we always come prepared with our own food. We all have things that are a priority and one of mine is waste reduction.

Here are a few ways that I reduce our waste every week:

1. No paper towels … seriously. I have a pack of paper towels in the garage from when we first got married (almost 5 years ago) that we use for things like grease or oil. Instead, I use microfiber cleaning clothes, hand towels, and real napkins.
2. No paper plates or utensils. If you don’t have them in the house, you don’t use them. I will buy a small pack if we are having a large party just to make the day a little less stressful but usually I use my extensive appetizer plate collection (Jake would refer to it as a plate hoarding problem) when we have a bunch of people over.
3. Water bottles and coffee mugs. We don’t buy bottled water and almost always make our own tea/coffee before leaving the house.
4. Cloth diapers.
5. Lunches.

Most of the time Jake takes his lunch to school. I found him the plainest, least ornate lunch bag at Target; he loves that he can clip it to his bag so it’s one less thing to carry. He uses Glass lock containers for leftovers and various other plastic containers we have in the house for salads and snacks.

We do something similar for Noah. I have a cute submarine lunch bag I bought at the Dolphin Store in Groton. It easy fits an ice pack, his milk, and 3-4 containers of food. Instead of plastic bags, I use LunchSkins – they are very durable and can be washed in the dishwasher! The downside is that they aren’t even remotely airtight.

Not only are we reducing the amount of trash we put out each week (normally our recycling is greater than our trash) but we are saving money!

Homemade Ice Cream

One of the items on my Christmas list was this ice cream maker:

Jake got it for me and it’s become kind of a gift to both of us! I’ve only made recipes from the included booklet but there are tons online that are very interesting.

We’ve done regular vanilla, raspberry sorbet, thin min, Mexican chocolate, and strawberry! I’m amazed how easy it is to make and it’s even cheaper than ice cream at the Commissary!

  

Easy Magnet Board

Noah enjoys playing with magnets at playgroup so magnets were on his Christmas list this year. We discovered at his grandparents’ house that he doesn’t really like sticking them to fridge….as much as shoving them under the fridge. My solution to this problem was some type of magnet board that we could mount on the wall in the dining room. Unfortunately this was a super expensive option (via Amazon) and I might as well buy him a mini-fridge!

Then I saw an idea on Pinterest to use any metal pan — like the kind they sell in automotive parts stores. Enter Advance Auto Parts, drip pan! It was only $10!!

I used Command Velcro Strips (the large kind) in each corner of the pan and no problems (it has been up for a few weeks).

It works really well and I’ve read that wet erase markers are useful too (years down the road when he starts writing). Noah also likes that he can see his reflection in the board and that it makes a cool sound when he hits the board with his wooden spoon! Most of our magnets had water damage when the pipe burst, I’m looking into getting more soon!

You know you’re a mom when …

…you get super excited about buying a new vacuum.

The vacuum I’ve been using for the past 4 years is one that Jake bought right before we got married (without consulting me on said vacuum purchase). Since I probably am the one vacuuming 99% of the time … shouldn’t I have 99% sway on the decision?

Anyway, he got a basic Hoover Windtunnel on sale for $60 — good deal. And the thing did last a while. The drywall dust finally did it in and the weekend we got back into our house it died.

My mom was visiting and she recommended that I buy the same vacuum she owns (a canister!) and turned out that line was on sale at Sears that weekend (and I got an additional 5% with my military ID)! We quickly drove over to the mall, paid for the vacuum and went downstairs to pick it up. Unfortunately they sold me a vacuum that wasn’t in stock and wouldn’t be in for several days — insert very sad Monica face. I went FIVE DAYS without a vacuum, it nearly killed me.

After using the vacuum for a couple of weeks, I LOVE IT. It only took 30 minutes to go through the first bag since the carpet is brand new, cheap, and shedding like crazy (see the picture below).

Cheapo carpet fibers are overflowing!!

But now that I’ve gotten into a routine, it is amazing. I never thought I’d like a canister vacuum….but I do.

PROS:

• Easy to maneuver (cuts corners easily)
• Since there is so bulk on the top like my old upright, it gets under furniture much better (I can vacuum completely under Noah’s crib without moving it.)
• Easy to change the attachments — I can do this one handed while holding Noah
• Pet attachment is awesome for furniture and stairs
• Canister moves easily behind me
• Telescoping wand is awesome
• Floor brush makes cleaning the kitchen and entryway easy (great for picking up all of the little crumbs from Noah’s meals)

CONS:

• Total weight is heavy but since it’s distributed between two parts, not too bad
• The hose retract is very sensitive (have to have the cord straight before hitting it)
• Bags are kind of expensive — they recommend the cloth over the paper bags and they are twice as much!

Money Money Money

Having an accountant for a father means that talking about money isn’t taboo – I have never understood why is makes people so uncomfortable. You probably feel like you have lots of money, exactly what you need, or not enough; there is no reason to be ashamed for being a member of any of those groups. Depending on your education level, family situation, job availability and many more factors you may be limited at the job choices/opportunities which are available to you. BUT something that people have 100% control over is how they choose to spend their income. Anyone can be irresponsible with money.

Jake would probably describe me as a money hoarder or bean counter; I check all of our accounts daily (using Mint) to make sure we are staying on top of our budget. This behavior probably startedwhen I was in middle school and my parents needed me to watch my grandma after school for an hour or two until my mom got home. My grandma had Alzheimer’s and moved in with us when I was 8. She attended adult day care every day and the bus dropped her off just a little bit after I got home from school. Professional nursing care was very expensive and it just made more sense for me to help her off the bus and watch her for an hour or so until my mom was home. I earned about $100 a week from this job and kept track of my earnings in my school planner. My parents would then transfer the money to by bank account and I just watched it grow…

In high school I started working as a cashier at a local health food store and my savings habits continued. I worked as a computer tech in college (our version of Geek Squad) and as a TA in the computer science department.

By the time I met Jake I had already saved a nice amount of money saved (this enabled me to pay for our wedding on my own) and with him going to the Naval Academy neither of us brought school debt into our marriage.

But now that we were adults we had to come up with a monthly budget that would work for us and for our income. When both of us were working it was a little bit easier since we had lots of wiggle room but not that we are living on one income with a child it has gotten a little more challenging to living within our budget while meeting our savings goals.

Here’s our budget (it won’t work for everyone since we all have different interests and priorities) but using Mint was a huge help in organizing and tracking our monthly spending!

I’m not putting in exact numbers, just our percentages of our take home pay every month (housing is not included since our entire housing allowance goes to military housing – and this number changes depending on where you live; $1900 in Groton vs $3300 in Cambridge). I didn’t include our mortgage payment to our CT home or rental income since we break even.

1. Retirement (28%) – We put a LOT of money into retirement every month. Jake is able to automatically have a certain percentage of his base pay go to his Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). He has been doing this since before we were married so it was really easy to continue since we are just used to not having this money…years from now we will be very happy with this decision!
2. Offerings (16%) – We give offerings at church and donate some money back to our colleges each year. During the month that we moved we used our budgeted donations to give money to a WELS operated orphanage in India. This is a budget that we will always work to have but it’s comforting knowing that in an emergency we could easily reduce it.
3. Food (12%) – This includes both groceries and eating out.
4. Cars (10%) – We have one very small car payment each month with less than 2 years left (for our CR-V). This budget also includes gas, repairs, etc.
5. Savings (6%) – I wasn’t really sure what to label this category. We put away some money every month for different goals: travel, 5 year anniversary, and spending $$ for each of us. This is how Jake can buy nice tools and I can buy nice purses! This is where we implement the idea of “paying yourself first” but what’s nice is that we can let that money build up for months at a time. Then when I see that Burberry purse I love or Jake wants to buy a fairly expensive table saw we don’t have to consult each other. We call it the “whatever I want” fund because we are not allowed to criticize each other on how the money is spent. This is another category that we could easy reduce in a money crunch.
6. Shopping (6%) – Self explanatory….basically all of those trips to Target, the thrift store, and the mall!
7. Home (6%) – This budget is for furnishing the house, paint, small tools, and project materials.
8. Noah (6%) – Noah’s budget covers his college savings, clothing, food, and toys.
9. Bills (7%) – We don’t have to pay for utilities since we are in base housing. Our only bills are our cell phone, internet, Hulu, and Netflix. When we first lived together we decided to wait until we really wanted cable TV to get it … and we never got it!
10. Slush fund (3%) – This is overflow for random expenses during the month that can’t quite it into a category.

The more important numbers to look at are what we NEED vs. what we LIKE to spend money on. We only NEED food, cars, half of shopping/home for household goods, Noah’s monthly expenses, bills, and slush fund. We WANT to save for retirement or Noah’s college education, give offerings, save for vacations (and purses and tools!), and go shopping on a regular basis. So let’s take a look at that chart…

NOTE: I started this post before the government shutdown became a real concern. The shutdown (while it shouldn’t have happened in the first place) shows that budgeting is extremely important for many Americans. On top of our regular savings each month we have an emergency fund that could last us approximately 6 months (depending on where we are living). We could use this to buy a car if one dies, repair something catastrophic on our CT house, or to live off of if Jake was not working (an unlikely scenario but you never know!).

Cloth Diapering

Following up on our baby saving post, I decided to do a little more on cloth diapering. Similar to breastfeeding, cloth diapering was something I knew I wanted to do before we even knew I was pregnant.

When did we start diapering? Noah was about 8 weeks old when we started cloth diapering.

Why did we wait so long? Once Noah was born it sat on the back burner for a few weeks since we received a TON of newborn diapers from a friend. I would recommend doing disposables at least for the first few days since dirty diapers are pretty icky at first. Once their digestive systems get used to being used things wash out a lot more easily.

What brand of cloth diapers do we use? Now we only use bumGenius Freetimes. We started with Fuzzibunz but neither of us liked how they fit him or the effort it took to resize and stuff the diaper. We love how we can just toss them in the wash and hang them up to dry!

Speaking of wash….how do we deal with all that grossness?! So it really is true that your own kid isn’t gross to you. Pee, poop, spit up, drool, it’s all adorable when it’s your baby! That doesn’t mean that we think every poop he does is adorable, but it does mean that cloth diapering is no gross than disposables — you still have to handle your child’s bodily output. Newborns are super easy because poop from breastfed babies can just be thrown in the wash! Noah was exclusively breastfed until 6 months when we started him on rice cereal and puree fruits/veggies. The transition from breast-milk to breast-milk plus food is a little challenging….it’s a hump and you need liners (we really liked these liners because they are huge and could be cut in thirds) to get over that hump. After couple weeks everything adjusted and now we can just shake Noah’s dirty diapers into the toilet and then toss it in the pail.

How do we wash our cloth diapers? I used Cotton Babies for buying my cloth diapering supplies as well as for information on cloth diapering. We use All Free & Clear (from the Commissary) to wash Noah’s diapers with a pre-wash, water plus, hot, and triple soil options. Our super fancy LG washer does have a sanitary cycle which they say is for diapers but that wash is actually too hot and can put extra wear & tear on the elastic in the diapers. I’m guessing if we were doing pre-folds we would use that cycle. Jake and I have found doing a load every night ensures that we never run out of diapers and that our house doesn’t smell like a latrine.

What do we do when we go out? We bought two small wet bags for traveling. Each one holds two diapers and we have never needed more than that (an average trip is only 1-2 diaper changes). Once we have used a wet bag we just throw it in the wash with the diapers and the cloth wipes!

What about traveling overnight? For short trips of 2-3 days we use disposables since we normally don’t have time to wash and dry the diapers (and they take up a large amount of space in our luggage compared to disposables). When I went to Baltimore for a week I did bring cloth diapers with me since I had time/access to a washing machine.

How much does cloth diapering save? Initially babies required about 12 changes a day. By 9 months Noah is down to about 7-9 changes (we always change him right before we leave the house and right before bed, regardless of when he was last changed).

Let’s say that we average 8 diapers a day and that Noah is potty trained by 2 and a half. That’s 912 days of changing diapers!!

912 days x 8 diapers a day = 7, 296 diaper changes

I actually had to look online to find out the price for disposables and it looks like $.25/diaper is a typical price.

7,296 diapers x $.25/diaper = $1,824

Almost $2k just on diapers!! So while $20/cloth diaper seems like a lot, you could buy 50 cloth diapers and still spend less than half the cost of disposables.

What’s our number one reason for cloth diapering? They are super cute…. (just kidding; it’s money)