One shelf is up!

Hihhey! The shelf for the painted side of the room is now dry and assembled! Yay! It's white! So pretty.

I must say the assembly was not pretty. I placed the top, bottom and middle shelf on the vertical support pieces, which was freakingly difficult because I didn't have anyone to help me. A is in Shanghai for two weeks and I did not want to wait putting the shelf up.

I had the shelf lying on the floor and then tried to measure that the shelf would be straight before I screwed the cross support on the back. I lost my nerve when I made the measurements, the measuring tape just did not stay on place and my arm didn't reach anywhere and I got really mad. Also I made the mistake of starting to put the shelf together while I was hungry. I guess my blod sugar was too low because I started coursing to the shelf. Now I've eaten and the shelf is also up and not crooked so I feel lot better.

That table top that sticks out from the shelf will be A's work surface. A tends to pile stuff on horizontal surfaces so I thought to prevent that he should not have as much space for it as before. And we will get separate work areas, so his stuff wont slide onto mine.

The shelf under the work surface is for collecting the cord mess, I plan to tuck all the excess cords there and maybe also the external hard drives. I hope the shelf does not hit his knees. The bottom shelf on the right most likely needs to be moved away since I think it will be on the way of A's feet and also the computer tower needs to be placed somewhere.

But it's up, Wohoo! Next I need to move some stuff on the shelf to make room for the other side of the room so I can paint that side and the shelf there.

Bonsai news

Alana asked how the pine bonsai I planted last summer is doing. Well I must say I think it looked better last year, but it's not as sad looking as it was right after last winter.

When I dug it up from it's winter rest, I noticed something had snipped pieces from it. I don't know what had happened but I found the top of the pine cut off from it and the top was lying on the ground close to the bonsai. It was sad, nothing had eaten it, it was just cut off. Also few other branches had cut, but I could not see the pieces anywhere. So on spring the bonsai looked pretty pathetic.

When the weather got warmer the bonsai started to make new shoots and it has actually made quite many. Now the bonsai is doing OK, it's just not as leafy as it used to be. It could be better, but it will look excellent in few years, I'm sure of it. Bonsai growing requires patience and I hope I can learn that.

I did rewire the bonsai on early summer, but I did not change the soil. Sometimes birds or some other animals have dug some soil from the bonsai pot and I've had to replant the moss on top a few times, but the tree it self has not really minded about the digging.

Bonsai inspiration

We came yesterday from the cabin in the archipelago. On friday the weather was really nice and we had a walk around the island. The rocky islands are beautiful, they are so harsh but so green at the same time. I was able to find lots of bonsai inspiration.

The weather on saturday was rainy but I started to knit gloves for A and I did finish one book. Not bad minivacation at all.

Happy Midsummer!

I'm off to the Finnish archipelago to celebrate midsummer. We will do some boating, eat well, sleep in, drink beer and have a sauna.

I thought it might be exotic to some of you to see the nighless night of the north, so I prepared some pictures for you. I do live south from the arctic circle so the sun does set, but on the night time we can see the dawn from the north and it is not pitch black even in the middle of the night.

It was slightly difficult to get the true lightness with the camera, because of the different shutter times, but I tried to take as realistic pictures as I could. The pictures are not all taken on the same night, so I didn't wake up every hour to take these pictures. I took these in about a time frame of one week.

Hope you have a nice Midsummer!

(even if you don't celebrate it)

Shelf is drying

Thank you Alana for suggesting to use a roller when painting the shelf parts. The painting has been fast and smooth. But what hasn't been fast is the drying. The finishing paint feels dry after couple hours but the jar says that the paint is fully hardened after three days and before that nothing should press the paint. So I'm waiting and I've never been good at that.

As you know I still have the other shelf from the other wall to disassemble and paint, but I also bought more of that same shelf. Like I didn't have enough to paint before!

Tomatoes in the conservatory

I didn't tell you this when it happened but I killed ALL my tomato seedlings on May. Not on purpose of course. At that time I thought that the weather was very nice and it was sunny and quite warm, so I took the seedligs out on the terrace to replant them. Big mistake! All the plants died of cold. In a few hours after the replanting most of the plants droop sadly in their pots, on the next day even the rest started to droop. I wanted to be hopefull and waited for a few days for the miracle that they would perk up. But that didn't happen and I had to throw the plants away. So sad.

Instead of sowing new seeds I bought the plants. They were only couple euros per plant, makes me wonder if it's worthwile going through all the trouble of sowing the seeds, taking care of the seedlings and replanting them many times. On the other hand it's fun to watch things grow.

They were still in their small plastic pots. I had only bought four tomato plants, last year I had eight (if I remember correctly) and our conservatory was filled with tomatoes. That was a bit too much, so I thought four would be better.

I dug out four metal pots for the tomatoes, filled the bottom with LECA gravel and added soil and some fertilizer. Then planted the tomatoes.

These tomatoes should grow pretty tall and I had bit of problem how I would support the tomatoes when they grow larger. I figured I could hung ropes from the conservatory ceiling and tie the tomatoes on those ropes.

The ropes hang from a chain where I have hung lanterns on the winter time. I've had that chain there for quite some time.

I actually have no idea if that rope system was a wise thing to do or not, I guess I will see it in near future. So far it's working.

Painting and drying stand

Usually I paint either in the bathroom or outside, but the shelf painting takes up so much room that it does not fit in the bathroom. Also painting the shelf outdoors has not been an option since even though it has been mostly sunny we've got some rain showers almost daily. This meant that I had to create a painting and drying area in the office.

I also wanted to speed up the painting process so that I could be able to paint all the sides of the shelves on the same go. The furniture paint also dries up slowly so I needed a place where I can leave the shelf parts to dry without having to move them all the time.

So I created a painting and a drying stand. First I placed an A-ladder and a stool on some way from each other. Then I covered everything with plastic and also placed a sheet underneath to keep some weight on the plastic and to catch any drippings. Then I placed the vertical support piece from the shelf on the stool and the ladder where I can then slide the shelves to dry.

The painting stand I made using couple pieces of wood and four big nails. I attached the stand on the office table with bar clamps. I also covered the table with the plastic and a sheet.

Here you can see the stand in detail. Now I can flip the shelf on the nails and paint the other side and then place it to dry.