Last Post of 2010!

After the All Most-Of-It-Encompassing List of yesterday, I thought today I'd revisit my very favorite projects of 2010:


Living Room Paint Job
July

• love, love, love the color, and the way it sets off the dark wood tones and bright teals/turquoises
  

Meditation Corner
August

• pretty, soft, comfy, peaceful, dedicated space

Laundry Room Reno
September

• so tired and afterthought-y before! So fresh and pretty now!

before

after

Tool Cart
November

• damned useful!

 
Guitar Rack
December

• damned useful! 
• also displays attractive instruments instead of big banged-up cases, and brings a bit more of my "other" passion into the look of my house - how could there not be music here?  <3 

See you all on the flip-side!


.

Everybody Else Was Doing It

...so I'll jump off a bridge, too.  I suppose it's only fitting that since I started my blog in May 2010, I should do my first yearly recap as a last "first" for this year.  Right?  Right.

Construction/Woodworking Projects

• wooden pot rack/shelf for the kitchen
• inserted a board in the larger window in my living room, painted to match the walls, to give the illusion of two tall, narrow windows instead of one big square one
• built a wooden guitar rack
• built a small table for use as a computer desk in a side room;  moved later to living room to use as the main computer desk (to replace the larger, broken one that I broke down and harvested for lumber)
• built a small, baithak-style low meditation area for my living room out of used pallets
• repaired kitchen fluorescent light fixture by wiring in a new ballast (new electrical skillz FTW!)
• built-in shelving in laundry room
• cutting boards made from butcher-block countertop salvaged from workplace move

Furniture

• black Ikea KAUSTBY ladder-back dining chair, for computer desk
• Ikea EKTORP sofa, no slipcover
• refinished and re-purposed a small 2-d dresser
• purchased a new, smaller, round dining table on Craigslist
• re-purposed an old console table, from "aquarium stand" to "entertainment center
• SOLD on Craigslist this year:  an old entertainment center console/cabinet,  an antique
• antique, probably Victorian-era plant stand side table (gift from friend who was getting rid of stuff)
• small round Ikea FORNSBRO side table (same friend)
• Ikea UNG DRILL frame, which is not furniture, but it's big, and I've wanted it for like three years, so I'm listing it.  SO THERE. 
• re-painted some shelving to coordinate with my craft room
• steel rack salvaged from work move (haven't done anything with it yet)
• small rolling file cart salvaged from work move; painted and re-purposed as a tool cart in the garage
• Repaired, cleaned up, and painted a wicker chair for the living room

Fabric

• Teal seat cushion for computer desk chair from Ikea SARITA curtain panel
• quilt made from Indian sari edges given to me by a friend, hung on the wall in first the bedroom, then the living room
• brown linen-weave slipcover for Ikea couch, made from Ikea RITVA curtain panels
• new curtains for the living room windows:  Ikea's LILL (mosquito netting; first step in an ongoing process)
• large ironing board re-covered in Ikea's PRESSA ironing board cover (which had to be cut down and re-shaped to fit)
• small ironing board re-covered (pre-blog, but this year)
• dumbass green-white damask-print balloon shade for my craft room window, which I'm already sick of looking at
• new shower curtain for guest bath (which turns out to be WAY TOO DARK OMG, but I haven't done anything about that yet)
• new covers for the cushions on the wicker chair in the living room

Painting

• living room, dining, kitchen, and small hallway:  Behr's "Woodsmoke" (soft, warm dove-grey)
• bedroom:  light, muted aqua-blue, a color I mixed myself
• laundry room - leftover bedroom paint (walls and built-in shelving)
• buncha artwork, only about half finished, in a single crazy spurt in November

Crafts & Other Projects

• chalkboard made for kitchen pantry door with masonite + chalkboard paint (pre-blog, but this year)
• painted a large bulletin board for my sewing room so that it looks like a chalkboard, but is still a bulletin board. 
• blog/home featured on Of Peacocks & Paisleys!  :D
• art wall in the bedroom
• started re-vamping my bedroom closet and then...just...didn't. 
• covered several small cardboard boxes with wrapping paper to coordinate with my craft room, until such time as I can afford to buy nice storage boxes
• Cleaned out and re-organized garage, and finally purged years of pack-rattiness that was verging on "hoarding"
• Replaced dishes!  I'm not really including small things I bought this year, but this makes a HUGE difference in the way my kitchen presents, because I have open cabinets.  I just went back the other day and got the rest of the set, too. Yay!  Next stop:  serving pieces!

Outdoors

• de-gardened the entire backyard in the Fall (starting from scratch in 2011...stay tuned)
• removed about a third of the front garden, also in the Fall, to make it look neater and to make it easier to take care of

Found this picture while going back through my blog entries - this was me after five straight HOURS of remo-ing the entire laundry room all at once.  Totally cracked me up.  This is about how I feel most of the time by the time I'm done with something, lol:

.

Well, FOOT.

...as my mother used to say (in an effort, I'm sure, to avoid using another four-letter word beginning with F in front of the kids). 

As I mentioned, Santa brought me a gift card to World Market last weekend.  Yay!  And tonight I exchanged that nifty little slab of plastic for three dark bamboo shades for my living room windows.  Just think: soft grey walls, billowy white mosquito-net curtains, large, bright windows - and these, filtering the light behind the sheers.

Really, that's just gorgeous.

Warm and natural.  Touchable.  Deep and dark, to bring that quality up off the floors onto the walls - but not so dark as to feel looming.  Light-filtering, just enough to open up the house by day but keep it safe from prying eyes at night...


EEENGHT!!!   <--- buzzer sound


They are perfect, in nearly every respect, and I really do love them to itty tiny pieces.  But privacy?  Hell no.  I clomped around outside in the mud and the cold, and alas, could see just about every single detail of the inside of my house through them.  I knew they wouldn't be opaque, but I was hoping for better than nearly transparent!  I'm sure it's just because the slats in the shades are spaced fairly loosely - I'd bet money that a more tightly-woven shade would offer more privacy. 

My first thought was to just take them back and go back to my sad, sorry, beat-up, old, dingy, metal mini-blinds (yuck).   Any other alternative seemed like too much work.  I mean, I could:

• put up some sort of low-profile light-blocking shade behind the bamboo shades that I can lower at night
• install a double-rod over the windows so I can have my billowy white sheers, but also a light-blocking drape I can pull closed at night (I just can't deal with heavy curtains. They can look lovely, but every time I've tried them in my own space, they just seem too heavy, and I feel trapped).  
• affix some sort of light-blocking cloth or paper to the back of each shade, which is time-consuming, probably a messy process, and completely defeats the purpose of letting light IN during the DAY.  

I'm just not sure.  What do you think?   It's not like I don't have time to decide.  I put the shades in my truck so I could take them back today...which means they'll be in there for at least a week or two before I actually get around to it.  0:)


.

Arch, Arch, Baby

Vanilla Ice??  I know, I'm sorry.  Lacking in the creative title department this afternoon, it seems.  (Probably need more coffee).

hallway between living room/bedroom

My house is full of these arches - well, in the common areas, anyway.  I've painted them different colors, I've painted faux molding around them,  I've painted bricks around them...

kitchen/living room pass-thru, 2006

I've painted the insides of them a different color than the walls.  I've hand-drawn little botanical border motifs inside them with a *Sharpie*   (which looked awesome, but took about forty-eight coats of primer to get it to stop soaking through once I decided to cover it up).   I've hung things in front of/behind them:

entry hall into living room

Matching pair in a white/green living room a few years ago...

late Winter 2007

For about five minutes in early 2007, the arches and  the dark "wood" floors inspired me to try go pseudo-Spanish in there.  It didn't last long.  Seriously, it was like a month before I scrapped the whole idea as a "nice place to visit, but wouldn't want to live there" - but that period was when I built my "salvaged wooden beam" fireplace mantel, which I really, really love. 

back when a hollow box was a truly daunting project

So, all of this to say that I'm thinking about doing something with my arches.  I don't know if I'll paint the insides of them again or not.  Nothing's really grabbing me about that lately, even though it's been on my mind a lot.

However, a year ago or so, I cut out a paper template traced from the doorways, sized it to one of the windows in the living room, and taped it up there behind the blinds, to see if I could mimic the look of an arched window to match the doors.  I wasn't expecting much, but I loved the way it looked, and had always planned to go back and try it on all the living room windows, and then take a more permanent stab at it if I liked it.

I may go ahead with another paper mock-up this week.  Especially since it's entirely possible that I'll be getting new blinds in there soon.  Santa brought me a gift card to my very favorite store! :o)


.

.

Dog Collar Safety Strap Success!

One more post about the guitar rack, and then I swear I'll stop. 

When last we met, it needed a retention strap in case of random acts of CAT:

And a hanging file doodad on the back for books and sheet music:

*drumroll* 

The dog collars work great!  They're stapled to the back of the stand so that you don't have to mess with getting them into position every time you put something into the stand. 

The file box on the back is okay for now - it's meant to hang on a wall, so it's open in the back, which means I can't keep anything but books in it (no smaller items that might fall through), so I'll keep an eye out for something better.  For now, though, it works.  Plus it was free, because I got it from work!  (Yes, I asked if I could have one of the extras that nobody wanted, I didn't steal it, lol). 

Notice anything different about the guitars in the picture?  That's right:  that gorgeous blonde on the end there is new - I got it last night!  My holiday gift to myself, hehe.  :D

And now that the stand is up and running, I put the case to my classical back in the bedroom. :)

.

One List To Rule Them All + Painting Stuff

I keep a running list in a gmail draft of ideas and planned projects. Everything is broken down by room, type of project, and cost.  Painting is almost always in the "free" column, since I have a metric ape-load of paint at home leftover from other projects, and that people have given to me.

I've just finished a woodworking project;  as often happens after one of those, I feel like doing something new, but something that's the complete opposite of woodworking.  For me? That means painting.  So I'm going through my list today, looking for something to do.



A Few Items From My Painting List:

The ceiling of my bedroom, which is currently "The Wrong Blue" by Behr, I think.

My dining room table and chairs.  They don't need to be really painted...but I'd like to distress the table a bit, and then adjust the finish on the chairs to match. 

The walls in the spare room, which is currently being used for storage and a drum set, but which will soon be transformed to a music room that can double as a guest room when we need it. 

I don't have any pictures of it, so here's a picture of my dog Shelly.

 My front door.  Some of you who know me in real life just laughed.  Stop that.  I know I paint this thing like every two years, but I'm not talking about changing the color, LOL.  There's just a little stenciled detail I've been meaning to do on the black that haven't gotten around to just yet.  :)

I'm also thinking about painting the inside of it.  And maybe the back door.

There's a floor-stamping idea I've waffling about for a year, mostly because I had no idea how it would hold up.  But between the durability of the paint I've accidentally spilled on the floors and not cleaned up for several months (shhh) and how hard I had to work to get the bloody footprints off the floors at Halloween, I'm convinced, and ready to jump in.  Just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I still haven't started working on the mirror that I got from Goodwill for $7 in October.  It's still sitting in my craft room, reflecting messy shelves.

I don't have a picture of this, either.  Here, have a cat.









.

Wildebeests: Guitar Rack (Part II)

Before: 

+

After:

 

Much better, yes?  

 

This is what the black pipe insulation was for.   If it looks like the pegs are spaced differently, it's because they are:  we have two different types of guitars that need to go into this rack, with different body widths.

Of course, they're not 100% secure like this:  the weight of the guitars + the angle at which they lean makes this a very stable setup, but in order for this to be cat-proof we need...

 Dog collars.  No, seriously:  3/4 black nylon dog collars with plastic click-locks, affixed to the back of the top of the rack, which will wrap snugly (and softly) around the neck of each guitar.  Just in case.

I'm also going to hang a plastic file folder container off the back of this unit, to store music, books, and bits and pieces like tuners and pencils and cables.   

Yay!  

After the rack was done, Kress and I had one more project:  putting a strap on my guitar, which is the acoustic in the first "after" picture.  That doesn't sound like a big deal, until you consider two things:  

1. I had to drill two holes in the guitar, in order to install "buttons" (pegs) that a strap attaches to, and 
2. my guitar is thirty-seven years old.   

I just about had a freaking heart attack, but with Kress' steady hands and calm reassurance, we got the holes drilled without incident, and I didn't die from fright.  Plus now I can play standing up.  :o)


.

Wildebeests: Guitar Rack (Part I)

Remember the old desk I broke down the other day?

Yesterday the largest piece - the desktop - got cut into pieces...

...which got put together into one of these:

It's a guitar rack - or will be when it's done. :)

Obviously the first order of business was the stain - namely, that each piece was already stained on one side. 
I used Liquid Sander on those bits (I love that stuff), making three passes to make sure the clear-coat was dissolved and that I'd be able to re-stain without sanding (which: YAY!)  I stained the whole piece over again in the original color, blending the old in with the new into one seamless coat;  then gave it a second coat in a lighter, orange-maple-y color to warm up the wood tone a bit (the deep walnut-y brown I used was a bit...flat). 

There were still a couple of places that need touching up (because I got glue on the wood and hadn't realized it, argh!), and the whole thing needed a light sanding and a final clear-coat.   But while the first couple of layers cured, the next step was to stain all the other parts to match:

These pegs will be wrapped in this foam pipe insulation (it looks gray here, but it's black) and attached across the top cross-bar of the stand.  The guitars' necks will rest between them just like in the picture I linked to above.  Only the flat end of each peg will be visible, so I didn't have to do much staining.  You can see what the maple stain looks like on bare wood here, though. 

Same deal with the longer bars that will be inserted into the bottom "box" part of the unit, on which the bodies of the guitars will rest.

Tonight, pegs and bars get installed, as well as other parts of the stand that need to be cushioned with foam to prevent damage to the guitars' finish and strings; I'll also attach feet to the bottom of the unit to keep it from scratching the floors in the house.


I'm done with the power tools portion of this event, but I managed to use nearly every single one that I own:

• Jigsaw:  to cut out the curved/angled side pieces
• Table saw: to rip the cross-braces across the bottom and back out of what was left of the desktop
• Sander:  ...I bet you can guess this one, lol.
• Dremel:  most of the desk had been nailed together with a nail gun, so that the nails didn't show on the outside, but when I pulled the wood apart, I had lots of them sticking out everywhere.  I removed as many as I could; but some I couldn't pull out, so I just cut them off at the surface of the wood as close as I could get with wire snips.  I used the Dremel to grind down any remaining nail stubs so they wouldn't be in the way, and so that they wouldn't snag and scratch anyone reaching into/through the finished stand.
• Compound mitre saw: to cut the dowels for the pegs and lower bars to length
• Drill:  to screw the pieces together

...that's everything but the router.

Finished piece tomorrow!  :) 

.

And the food!

First of all, I apologize for my absence lately.  Work has been crazy, and I've had tons of holiday baking and cooking to do this year, since I'm sending boxes of goodies to family this year - so in my spare time, I really haven't gotten up to much in the way of house-y stuff to share with you all.

coconut bonbons, baby!

ok, so I hadn't dipped anything in a while...

homemade pillow mints!

peach and blackberry jam-filled cookies

"dog proofing" the counters while the candy sets up LOL

Ta-da!  There was also "praline brittle" (a softer brittle than usual with pecans instead of peanuts or whatever), but I don't have any pictures of that, and it's gone already, LOL.

Actual projects will happening later in the week/weekend;  plus probably some discussion about why I love my living room so much and still hate it at the same time, some woodworking, and maybe even some outdoor stuff.



P.S. - Louise the blue Betta fish died.  Just up and died, for no reason that I've been able to determine.  :(  But the white fish (whose name is now officially "Squishy") is doing really well.  She says hi. ;)

.

Before & After: Demo Sunday

You remember this guy, right?  The old computer desk? 

WHAM!!!

Now it's a pile of plywood.  Plus a pretty large section of front trim facing, which I haven't taken apart yet because I don't know if I want to save it or not - it's screwed together really well, and the screw heads are ALL stripped out, so I may just break it apart and throw it away to save my aching hands the extra hassle.

tools of destruction

I am now short one computer desk, but I have gained:

• a bunch of large, nice pieces of plywood to use for other things
• two sets of drawer sliders (one from the drawer and one from the keyboard tray)
• six small nail-in furniture feet
• 4 push-in shelf supports
• 8  2" screws and 6 tiny ones from the drawer sliders
• a ton of floorspace in the garage that is no longer taken up by a computer desk!
• a ton more floorspace, since while I was out there I broke down an enormous pile of cardboard boxes and stuffed it all into the recycling bin, which I'd been meaning to get around to doing for months
• an asthma attack from all the dust I kicked up  :( 

I have to say, I'm loving my little red tool cart - it was SO nice just having everything right in front of me, instead of having to walk across the entire room to go get a screwdriver or a pair of pliers.  I do still have some things hung on the wall on the other side of the room from my work area;  I keep saying I'm going to move that tool rack to the work area, but I haven't done it.  I'll go move it as soon as I can breathe again. 

As for plans for things to do with all this wood...who knows?  The possibilities are endless.  The first project is going to be turning that drawer into a medicine cabinet for the master bathroom:  I have hardware to hang it on the wall, small bits I can use for shelves, a small piece of plywood from the desk that would make a perfect door, a box of knobs to choose from, several small magnetic door catches I might use, and I think I may even still have a small set of hinges lying around somewhere.  To the Parts Cave!

Um...tomorrow. 


.

It's Spaghetti Time!

Is there a blog award for stupidest entry title?  Heh.

Sorry I've been scarce this week;  it's been a bit crazy at work, and I've completely exhausted by the time I get home, so I haven't done much blogging...or, really, anything else besides watching The Tudors, which I'm totally into right now (I'm late to that party, I know).  But I DID sort out the Gordian Knot of a cable situation under the computer desk:

cord spaghetti:  worse than it looks in the picture!

Rather than just cutting the whole thing apart (which is what I wanted to do), I unplugged everything and then hooked it all back up in an order that made sense,  tied all the cords together and up off the floor,  and then hung a simple white curtain behind the desk (taped to it with masking tape, actually, tee-hee).

...which is TOTALLY OBVIOUS in this picture; but really, in person, you hardly notice that there's a sheet there since the white blends in with the sheer white curtains  (which, in this picture, are NOT being done any favors by those cheap, old, yellow mini-blinds, but that's an issue for another day...and it only looks like this at night (see first picture), so, I'll only have people over to my house during the day for a while, I guess).

Here's a shot of the entire "room", a.k.a. the north end of my football field of a living room.  To the left is the kitchen, and to the right is the back of the couch and the wicker chair I posted about the other day.  Last week? Week before?  Yeesh. This time of year messes with my head.  

Anyway, I also moved that set of four paintings from the corner where the blue one is to make room to stand all those guitars [neatly] on end (instead of stacked on the floor like they were before), and also to provide more of a divider between the two "rooms" than that big plant provided on its own. 





Purple = things that will each be getting their own post soon, as soon as I get my butt out from in front of the TV.  

.

Weekend List

I did manage to get a curtain up behind the computer desk to conceal the computer cords, but it needs some adjustment, and the cords themselves still need wrangling, so I don't have "after" pictures yet.  I'll do that tonight, though.

I also did a bit of de-cluttering around the living room and dining room, moved some art around and added a new piece, and re-arranged some of the musical instrument storage. 

So that's what's up next in here for this week - stay tuned.  Hope you're having a better Monday than I am! ;)

.

Fish II

I stopped and got some aquarium plants on the way home from work yesterday, as promised.  Got them home, opened the packages, cleaned up the plants, and rinsed them off, then hit the internet to learn more about each kind -  I went plant shopping with a list in mind, of plants I'd used before and was familiar with, but only found one of the plants on that list;  the rest were new to me.

And, as it turned out, the rest of them?  Are rooted cuttings of land plants packed and labeled as "aqua plants" - they can be grown in water but won't do well in it, and can't really be grown under water at all.  Bad pet store, no-no!  Caveat emptor, though, right?  Yeesh.  

Some plants are better than none, at any rate - certainly better than a floating sprig of plastic foliage.  I did end up putting one of each of the land plants into each tank;  I figure, they'll look nice for now, and when they start to die off in a couple of weeks I can pull them out and replace them with new ones. 

So here's what the tanks look like now: 

small, yes, but the fluffy ones will grow FAST

"Louise" hiding in the upper left corner

black rocks to set off the bright greens

see my stove?  LOL

WHAT.

Even though I used some of the non-aquatic plants in the tanks, I still had a whole bunch of tiny plants that needed a home.  I don't have a container I can use to set up a proper terrarium right now, so for the time being I set up a vase with some of the black aquarium gravel for them, until I can throw together something nicer:

$1.99 Ikea "VASEN" vase

You know, it occurs to me that since I took down my last aquarium a few months ago, I'd been waffling over whether I should get a betta, or start another terrarium.  And then Life goes and hands me TWO bettas AND a ton of plants with which to start a terrarium!  Weird. :)

.