Mustloveerica's AMA

[mustloveerica]

Hi my name is Erica. I love crafts, home renovation DIY and furniture building. I also have many many pets.

Sooo...ask me anything!

[PirateCat]

What kinds of furniture have you made? Any pictures you want to share with us?

[chad5285]

I'd like all your pets species and names please.

[ironbaby]

Elaborate on the furniture building, please, so I can ask some follow up questions.

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 8:45:11 GMT -5 PirateCat said:

What kinds of furniture have you made? Any pictures you want to share with us?

Most recently I made this headboard out of an old door I found in our attic.

We also built two of these end tables for our living room. And I actually stained them with tea and steel wool which was a super cool science experiment.


I just love the color of the finish.

[TheEleventhHour]

Feb 19, 2016 8:47:46 GMT -5 chad5285 said:

I'd like all your pets species and names please.

+1!

[TheEleventhHour]

Also holy crap to the furniture building! That is an entirely new level of crafty. I love that headboard! What an awesome idea for an old door.

[PirateCat]

mustloveerica, those look great! Love the stain of the table.

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 8:47:46 GMT -5 chad5285 said:

I'd like all your pets species and names please.

We have 3 cats named Bellatrix (Bella), Bernadette (Bernie after Bernie Kosar), and Dave

We have 2 dogs named Bindi Lou (she's an Akita mix) and Dexter Dane (Great Dane puppy).

We have 1 Chinchilla named Priscilla.

And last we have a bearded dragon named Gandalf.

[chad5285]

I build furniture too



After I buy it from Ikea

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:08:24 GMT -5 chad5285 said:

I build furniture too



After I buy it from Ikea

So an ikea store was supposed to open in Cleveland. I got a catalog and marked all of the things I was going to buy.

And then ikea CHANGED THEIR MINDS!!!!! No Cleveland store. Hopes and dreams crushed.

[chad5285]

Do you snuggle your chinchilla 24/7 because he's so soft?

Do your cats try and eat the little pets?

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:10:39 GMT -5 @mrsjohnmarston said:

I love your pets' names! We've considered getting a bearded dragon before. What's it like having one? Does he interact with you much? What's the upkeep of his home like?

He is my husbands pet. Lizards kind of weird me out. I think it's the crickets. I do not enjoy feeding live animals to my other pets. And you have to feed the crickets too so really you have more pets than just a lizard haha. But if you're going to get a lizard bearded dragons are pretty cool. You can hold them and they are pretty chill. They get to be pretty big so finding a place to keep the tank has been problematic.

[chad5285]

I have always thought your username name was "mustloveamerica" until literally right now

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:16:05 GMT -5 chad5285 said:

I have always thought your username name was "mustloveamerica" until literally right now

I always used to try to convince boyfriends to tattoo "I love Erica" on themselves. My reasoning was "well if we ever break up you can change it to I love AMerica".

[ironbaby]

LOVE those side tables. How did you learn how to build furniture? What would you consider necessary equipment/tools? Do you have a particular book/website that you would recommend for tutorials or plans?

How much time, specifically, did the side tables take to make?

For the headboard, is it mounted to the wall and then the bed pressed up to it, or is it mounted to a frame?

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:12:33 GMT -5 chad5285 said:

Do you snuggle your chinchilla 24/7 because he's so soft?

Do your cats try and eat the little pets?

I do snuggle Priscilla! She is so soft like a bunny. But she looovvessss dust baths so she's pretty much always dirty. We got her from a breeder and not from a pet store so we were able to raise her from very early to be used to being handled by humans. If you don't get them early enough they are fearful and will bite of you try to hold them.

[peaseblossom55]

Wow I'm jealous of your crafting skills.

[peaseblossom55]

Question- favorite dessert?

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:12:33 GMT -5 chad5285 said:

Do you snuggle your chinchilla 24/7 because he's so soft?

Do your cats try and eat the little pets?

Oops I didn't answer all your questions.

Our cats are afraid of the lizard. They won't go near him. The like to chase the chinchilla so I try to lock the cats up if I'm going to let her run around. The dogs looooooooooovvveeeee all animals. They snuggle with the cats. Bindi likes to lick the chinchilla. They are super gentle and they understand that they are massive compared to the other pets.

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:18:59 GMT -5 ironbaby said:

LOVE those side tables. How did you learn how to build furniture? What would you consider necessary equipment/tools? Do you have a particular book/website that you would recommend for tutorials or plans?

How much time, specifically, did the side tables take to make?

For the headboard, is it mounted to the wall and then the bed pressed up to it, or is it mounted to a frame?

You can learn to do everything from the Internet and trial and error. I'm an engineer by profession so when we build something I usually draw it up in CAD to get all the measurements and material quantities right. Check out www.ana-white.com. There's tons of awesome furniture plans there. It's my favorite diy website. A table saw, a circular saw, a really good square and tons of high quality clamps are necessary for almost every project we've done.

Those tables took us about 8 hours to build. The angles of the Xs were really difficult to get right and we had to redo them a couple times. Then the staining was a process that took a few days because it was a science experiment. Also it's really cold here right now so we had a heater in the garage and had to keep taking breaks to warm up.

The headboard actually isn't mounted to anything. It's just up against the wall and the bed holds it in place. There's also felt pads on the back to keep it from knocking against the wall when things get rowdy ;-)

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:25:34 GMT -5 peaseblossom55 said:

Question- favorite dessert?

I have a weakness for cheesecake!

[chad5285]

What does a day at your job look like. I have a really difficult time with spacial stuff so I could never be an engineer

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:35:58 GMT -5 chad5285 said:

What does a day at your job look like. I have a really difficult time with spacial stuff so I could never be an engineer

I guess it depends on the day. I work in the construction consulting industry. I design the guts of the building (mechanical, plumbing, electrical and fire protection systems). I basically have 2 kinds of days: office and field.

For office days, I spend all day doing calculations and designing the actual systems. I work for architects and building owners and a vast majority of my job is making them happy while trying not to compromise the integrity of the building. We do a lot of retail work specifically. You know that big glass cube Apple Store in NYC, those kinds of buildings are awesome for everyone else but they are my nightmare. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to make the systems that make a building function basically invisible?

For field days, I'm out in the field. I travel all over the country to verify existing building conditions and to oversee construction of new buildings/tenants. Next week I'm going to California to make sure a new Ulta store was built according to the way we designed it.

I love being an engineer because I love puzzles. But I don't particularly love the company I work for.

[PirateCat]

What kind of an engineer are you (that sounds like I'm trying to start a fight but I'm not!)?

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:42:20 GMT -5 PirateCat said:

What kind of an engineer are you (that sounds like I'm trying to start a fight but I'm not!)?

Lol see above. I mainly do mechanical consulting for retail, offices, schools and lately we've been doing a ton of assisted living facilities.

[PirateCat]

Feb 19, 2016 9:43:12 GMT -5 mustloveerica said:

Feb 19, 2016 9:42:20 GMT -5 PirateCat said:

What kind of an engineer are you (that sounds like I'm trying to start a fight but I'm not!)?

Lol see above. I mainly do mechanical consulting for retail, offices, schools and lately we've been doing a ton of assisted living facilities.

I work with your kind! But we do 99% residential, so on a smaller scale. 

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 9:48:36 GMT -5 PirateCat said:

Feb 19, 2016 9:43:12 GMT -5 mustloveerica said:

Lol see above. I mainly do mechanical consulting for retail, offices, schools and lately we've been doing a ton of assisted living facilities.

I work with your kind! But we do 99% residential, so on a smaller scale. 

The only residential we do is apartments or college dorms.

[kleigh]

How was Mexico?

Also we have some old shutters we bought from a Habitat for Humanity ReStore shop. I want to paint them sort of a distressed white and use them as a headboard kind of like you did but they have several years of paint on them, do I sand them entirely first ? And what's the best way to distress it? I'm so not crafty but I've been trying!

[mustloveerica]

Feb 19, 2016 10:30:47 GMT -5 kleigh said:

How was Mexico?

Also we have some old shutters we bought from a Habitat for Humanity ReStore shop. I want to paint them sort of a distressed white and use them as a headboard kind of like you did but they have several years of paint on them, do I sand them entirely first ? And what's the best way to distress it? I'm so not crafty but I've been trying!

Mexico was gorgeous and relaxing and soooooo wonderful. I wish we could have stayed longer. I actually ended up getting a really bad sinus/upper respiratory infection on the last day. That's why my FF chart is so crazy this month.

As far as distressing your shutters...sanding is a punishment reserved for the last layer of hell. So when I made my tables I originally wanted to white wash them. But after I did one I didn't like how it turned out. It took me 3 weeks to get the white wash sanded off. Depending on the color of the paint I would just leave it and use it as part of your distressing. White shutters with some other color showing thru under the distressing would be awesome. Distressing is kind of a do whatever you want kind of thing. I usually hit a hammer on whatever I'm distressing, scratch it with nails, etc. just beat it up. Then I paint. Once painted you want to lightly sand for that typically distressed paint look. But the key is to sand the corners and edges only so it looks like it was naturally distressed over time.