How I Hacked the K-cup Sensor on Our Keurig 2.0

We have been Keurig coffee drinkers for a couple of years now.  Our original machine, a first generation Keurig, failed within the warranty period (bad water pump, probably).  The manufacturer replaced it, quickly and without a hassle, with the newest model at the time ... the Keurig 2.0.  

When the new machine arrived, I opened the box, plugged it in, filled it with water, and tried to brew a cup of coffee ... got an error message instead.  Keurig 2.0 can only use 'genuine' Keurig coffee packs ... meaning the redesigned, proprietary cups, not the old Keurig ones that I already had in my pantry.  Grrrrr!!

I forgot about this, until yesterday.  In the back of the cupboard, I found a box of Sleepy Time tea in old-style K-cups.  This discovery prompted a bit of Internet reading ... and I figured out a simple way to defeat the Keurig's K-cup sensor so I can use my packs of tea.

I offer this VERY quick, easy tutorial, in case any of you find yourself in the same situation.

I read that the old-style cups don't work because there's an infrared sensor in the lid of the Keurig 2.0 which reads something on the label, so it only accepts the new K-cups.  What if I could fool the sensor?

Here's what I did:

I took my used K-cup from the morning's coffee, and I carefully cut it apart ... 

... leaving only the thin plastic edge that holds the label.

Insert old-style K-cup into the brewer ...

... and place your prepared new-style K-cup label on top of the old-style cup in the brewer. 

Close the brewer ... and the sensor reads the new-style label ... hack was successful!!

Tea time!!  (in the mug that I bought at St. Paul's Cathedral during my trip to England last year.)

I'm putting this out there to get my idea into cyberspace, to do what I can to help other frustrated Keurig users who may still have some old-style cups in the cupboard.  No need to throw them away, or give them to friends who still have functioning old-style brewers.  It really is THIS simple to fool the machine and enjoy a steaming cup of whatever you like.

Hey, Connie, How Did You Hang the Drapes in Your Bay Window?

The bay window in our Family Room presented a challenge when it came to hanging drapes.

I wanted stationary gathered panels at the corners of the bay, to coordinate with the way the drapes hang on the other window in the room ... traditional fabric and construction, and a more modern way to use them.  What kind of rod and hardware would accomplish this, tho?

When I was at Ikea buying my drapery rods, I found this handy little accessory.

It's rubbery with some sort of armature inside of it, it's threaded to screw onto the Hugad drapery rods, and it's made to bend around corners!

I combined the black rod with these white brackets.  I wanted the hardware to virtually disappear ... the bracket itself stayed white to match the window framework and trim, and I used black spray paint on the hook that holds the rod.

The side brackets are mounted to the face of the window frame, as far toward the wall as I could get them ...

Took this photo before I added the second screw that holds the bracket.

... and I installed one bracket in the center of the bay to hold the curved part of the rod assembly.

The bracket kit comes with a little slide-on thingie that covers the screws and helps make the bracket that much more subtle.

The rod bridges the space between the bracket and the side wall, so the drapes can be all the way against the wall into the corner of the bay.

I came up with a rather unconventional solution to the challenge of exactly how to get the drapery panels pushed all the way into the corner.  They are rod pocket drapes, and the bracket hook would act as a stop and would keep the drapes from sliding all the way into the corner.  To overcome this, I measured the distance from the hook to the wall, gathered the drapes onto a rod and marked this distance onto the gathered drapes with a pin, and cut an access hole into the back of the rod pocket.

When I put the drapes onto the rod, and the rod onto the bracket hook, I clipped the rod to the hook through this hole and the drapes hang perfectly.  If I hadn't told you what I did, you would never know that this is how I made this work.

I have another fantastic trick to show you, one that I learned in THIS post from Design du Monde ... use a zip tie, the same color as the rod, to hold stationary panels back and keep them from ungathering.  You absolutely can't see the zip tie unless you're craning your neck to see behind the drapes, and the drapes stay exactly where they're supposed to.

(Step-by-step photo tutorial to show you how I made the drapes is HERE.)

With this project complete, I can now move onto other things.  Spring is sending signals that I hope I interpret to mean that it will be here soon.  It seems like it's been a longer-than-normal winter, and I'm really ready to get outside and get my hands dirty.  I have roses to prune, mulch to lay, gardens to plan ... and I can't wait to get to it!

How to Make Custom, Professional-Looking Lined Drapes

If you can use a sewing machine to sew a relatively straight seam, and you can operate an iron, you absolutely CAN make your own custom drapes!  These instructions will show you exactly how I made the drapes for our dining room and family room, step by step.

(This is a long post, and it may be of little interest to those of you who don't sew.  My intent is that these instructions can float around on the 'Web, and may one day help someone, somewhere, who wants to make THEIR own drapes, but doesn't how to do it.)

My drapes have a rod pocket, with a two-inch header, and they hang from ceiling to floor on a curtain rod that's one-inch in diameter.  The fabric I used is Waverly's "Tucker Resist", which is 54 inches wide and has an 18-inch pattern repeat.  Lining is economy drapery lining fabric, also 54 inches wide.

Let's get started:

The 54-inch width of this fabric is more than adequate to have nice full-looking panels on each side of my windows.  Let's do some measuring and some easy math to figure out how long to cut the fabric and lining for each panel.  Using my room and measurements, and rounding up to the nearest inch, we have:

Ceiling Height:  114"
Header and Rod Pocket:  5"
Hem Allowance:  5"
Total:  124 inches

(I allow a few extra inches of fabric, just to be safe.  It's much better for the drapes to be too long, and to be cut down during the hemming process, than to find that I miscalculated and that they're too short.)

Cut the selvage edge off of the drapery fabric.

Cut the lining fabric 4 inches narrower than the drapery fabric ... you'll see why in a minute.

Beginning at the top of the panel, with right sides together, sew the drapery fabric and lining fabric together at the sides.  Stop your seam about 18" from the bottom edge of the fabric.

Press the seam allowance toward the drapery fabric.

The reason you cut the lining narrower than the drapery fabric is because the drapery fabric wraps around to the lining side by about an inch, which gives your drapes a very professional look.

Sew the top edge of the drapes, right sides together with the extra drapery fabric evenly divided on both side edges, as shown in the photos above and below.

Turn your panel right side out, and iron it so the drapery fabric wraps evenly on both side edges.

Top stitch close to the side seam, until you get to where you stopped your stitching at the bottom of the panel.

Now, let's mark and sew the header and rod pocket.  I used my quilt ruler and a pencil, marking a line on the right side of the fabric, four-and-a-half inches from the top edge (2 inches for the header + 2-1/2 inches for the rod pocket)

Fold the panel on the pencil line to the wrong side and iron it smooth.  Sew one line of stitching close to the edge of the folded part to define the bottom of the rod pocket.  Then run a second line of stitching two inches from the top edge to form the header and top edge of the rod pocket.

The piece of tattered masking tape on my sewing machine is my 2" mark.

The sides and top of the drapes are finished!  All that's left is to mark and sew the hem.

I like to mark the hem on my drapes with them hanging from the rod.  I don't want to take a chance of measuring it wrong.  As a bonus, this is the time to step back and admire all of my hard work .... you have to imagine me going oooh and aahhh, because this was the first time that I had a chance to see what the drapes looked like in place in the Family Room bay window.

Having gone to the trouble of installing the rod and hanging the drapes, I was hesitant to take them back down to work on the hem after I marked it ... so I dragged my iron, ironing board, and sewing machine downstairs, set up a folding table, and finished these drapes right where they were.

Alice was supervising.

When hemming the panels, the drapery fabric and the lining each have their own hems.  The photos and directions below explain in detail how to do this.  (sewing the side seams short like I did is part of this process.)  

Let's hem the drapery fabric first.

I used pins to mark where the fabric hit the floor at the bottom of the baseboard, folding and ironing the drapery fabric on a line 1/2" shorter than this.

Pins mark the length at the floor.

I totally forgot to photograph this next part ... bear with me and follow the diagram.  For a four-inch hem, draw a pencil line four inches from the bottom edge where you marked and ironed (this is Line 1), and another line one-inch from Line 1 (this is Line 2).  Cut off any extra fabric at Line 2.

Fold, iron, and sew the hem to the inside, along Line 1.

The lining fabric is marked, cut, and hemmed to be 2 1/2 inches shorter than the drapery fabric.  No photo here either, sorry again.  

Let's finish the sides at the bottom edge, and our drapes will be done.

At the ironing board, fold and press the drapery fabric over the lining, and pin it into place.

Stitch the overlap into place.

Begin your stitching where you left off in an earlier step.

The lining hangs free at the bottom, and is securely attached at the sides.

All finished!!

Why would I go to all this effort to make my own drapes?  Let's do the math.  I made eight drapery panels, four for the dining room and four for the family room.  Each panel is 9-1/2 feet long.  I paid $450 for Drapery Fabric (30 yards at $14.99 per yard, using a 50% off coupon at Hancock Fabrics) and $105 for Lining Fabric (30 yards at $3.49 per yard, using a 50% off coupon at Joann's), which brings the cost to few cents less than $70 for each panel.

Do you want to hang curtains in YOUR bay window, too?  Click HERE to see the nifty hardware that I used and how I did it.

I hope this tutorial has taken a bit of the mystery out of how to make drapes.  The finished product really DOES look professional, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you did it yourself.  No kidding ... you really CAN do it.

If you are new here, just happening by or visiting from DIY by Design take a minute to look around.  For a brief tour of our Dining Room, click HERE.  To see the before, during, and after of the restoration of our Family Room, click HERE.

How to Paint a Compass Rose

Let's get right to it, and I will take you step-by-step through the process of how I painted the compass rose onto this tabletop.

I came up with the pattern by just fiddling with it.  The center portion of this table is 26 inches in diameter, and the compass rose is 22 inches from point to point.  (not counting the extended part of the outline on the points.) To make the pattern, I taped together some scrap paper, folded it into quarters, and played around with my ruler and a pencil until I liked what I had.  I wanted the sections of the pattern to be long and graceful, without being skinny and hard to paint.  I did a lot of erasing before I came up with the final pattern, which looks like this:

I use graphite transfer paper to get the pattern onto the tabletop.  You can buy it at any craft store.  (The kind that I have is HERE.  I think I got it at Michael's.)  Tape the pattern into position, slide the graphite paper underneath, use the yardstick and a ballpoint pen to trace the pattern onto the table.

Alice and Maggie are helping.

With a pencil, I put a small mark in every other area of the pattern to keep from getting confused as I tape off the pattern.

Speaking of tape, I use plain old Scotch transparent tape when I paint designs onto furniture.  There are all sorts of more expensive options, but I have found that Scotch tape works the best.  I get crisp lines and the tape rarely pulls off any of the base coat of paint when I pull it off.  (For doing this on canvas, I like to use regular masking tape.  Scotch tape and the specialty paint tapes aren't sticky enough for use on canvas.)

Now it's time for LOTS of taping.  Make sure that you accurately follow the margins of the areas that will be one of your colors.  (I painted the marked areas first.) 

Some of the ends of your pieces of tape will overlap into areas that you want to paint.  No worry ... use a craft knife to carefully cut and remove the tape in these spots.

First color ... Scandinavian Pink.  Two light coats.

When the paint is dry to the touch, carefully peel the tape.

I see a little piece of tape that I missed when I was trimming the overlapped parts.  No worry, just touch it up once the tape is removed.

When the first color is completely dry (you can speed up the process with a hair dryer), tape and paint the second color ... in this case, it's Chateau Grey.

Wasn't that easy?

To finish this off, I handpainted the grey outline using ASCP Graphite.  I put some paint into a paper cup, adding a little bit of water so the paint would flow better for a smooth outline.  This part of the process was tedious and stressful.  There's no easy way to hurry it ... I just had to sit there and carefully paint fine lines.  At least I had company while I was working.

Dorothy was trying to get my attention by being completely adorable.

I painted an outline around each section of the compass, and between the Country Grey background and the Old Violet edge of the tabletop.  It took about a half an hour to do this.

Didn't I tell you that it was easy?  So easy that I was crazy enough to do two of them at the same time.

The only part of the process that required any skill or ability was the outline.  Take your time, practice on scraps if you have to.  You can do it!

Next post ... revealing the finished tables.  Tomorrow, I hope.