My husband and I have lived in our house here in South Central PA for almost 13 years now. Due to his health (and for other reasons), we've tried in the past to sell our house and relocate back to the Chicago area. I lived there all of my life, and Jim lived there most of his, with a short stint in Maine. Our first attempt to sell started in July of 2009, and stopped in April of 2016. Yes, really! There are a few things that I think will help with our sale, and the first I will show is how I am going to fix the panes in our outdoor lanterns.
When we bought the house, the lanterns had plastic panes in them. They were discolored yellow, and looked pretty bad. We went to Ace Hardware and bought two new plastic fluorescent light panels - the kind you see on overhead fluorescent lights. Jim cut them up and we replaced them. They are now looking just as bad as the original ones, and since he wanted to use double-stick tape, they are now flopping everywhere. I still have the hardware we used to keep the original panels in straight, so I am going to attempt to do this "right" for once and for all.
Some time back, I had seen a book of Victorian Stencils published by Dover Publications in our library. I checked it out, and reviewed the patterns inside for suitability. This is the one that I think will work best:
And see how well this fits! Just inside the yellowed part!
When we bought the house, the lanterns had plastic panes in them. They were discolored yellow, and looked pretty bad. We went to Ace Hardware and bought two new plastic fluorescent light panels - the kind you see on overhead fluorescent lights. Jim cut them up and we replaced them. They are now looking just as bad as the original ones, and since he wanted to use double-stick tape, they are now flopping everywhere. I still have the hardware we used to keep the original panels in straight, so I am going to attempt to do this "right" for once and for all.
Some time back, I had seen a book of Victorian Stencils published by Dover Publications in our library. I checked it out, and reviewed the patterns inside for suitability. This is the one that I think will work best:
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| Pretty Stencil! |
I chose this design because I like it, and because I think it will readily resize to the dimensions I need. The darker areas will be clear, and the white areas will be the etched area.
I use Irfanview to handle pictures and other patterns to resize and adjust. It's a great program and it's free! I managed to get the size I need for my smaller lanterns with little fuss. So, all I need is one print of this (and one as a layout template) and I am ready to go!
Originally, the way I had thought I would handle this was to print this onto contact paper. Reviews of doing this successfully online showed that the ink may run. Ruining my printer is also an issue, so instead I will print onto cardstock and cut out the dark areas, then trace those onto contact paper and cut them out.
Here's a picture of the original panes in the lantern. A plus is that the yellowed area shows the dimensions required!
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| Nasty Old Panes! |
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| Pretty! |
More on this tomorrow.....I have to finish my apple butter and get myself some lunch before I go to work tonight. I have a total of 9 small panes and 10 large ones to make. I might make extra just in case for future use.
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