Ambitious Much?

Ladies and germs, the garage as it exists in my imagination:

ooh, ahh. 

1.   More 2x4 shelves, like the ones I already have on the south wall (waaaay in the back there next to the door and weird rakebroom looking objects).   These shelves need to be a tiny bit deeper, as well as longer and taller, and with more space above and below, for large, bulky items.

2.  A fake-cabinet "slipcover" for the water filters and softener, to keep dust off.  Basically just an open-backed box to slide into place, with doors in front so I can access the control panels without having to move the box itself.

3.  Salvaged kitchen cabinets from somewhere?

4.  The tool bench (which is currently where #1 and 2 are in the sketch), underneath a

5.  Pegboard tool organizer!  OH YEAH.

6.  This would be the standing shelf that's in my bedroom closet right now, which I've had in the garage before, and it works great there.  As soon as I get off my a$z and hang the clothes bar and wall shelves in the closet that I've been meaning to put up, I can move the free-standing shelving unit back into the garage.

7.  The garden tool hanger rack, which is currently in the front of this same wall, where the toolbench needs to live.  This time I need to hang it higher, so I can hang extension cords underneath the shorter-handled tools.

8.  My bicycle, on one of those nifty pulley things that allow you to store your bike up out of the way, but still allows you to pull it down quickly and easily when you want it.

9.  The extension ladder deserves the same treatment.  In eight years, I've used it THREE times - and technically, *I* have only used it twice, and then I loaned it to my neighbor once, too.  But man, when you need an extension ladder, you need an extension ladder.  At the moment it's hung on the wall above my workbench, on some L-brackets.  I'd rather have it further up and out of the way.

10.  La piece de resistance:  a rolling island for the garage.  Extra work space!  Extra storage!  Easy to move around for various tasks, or out of the way for big projects!  :D  (Read: extra place to stack extraneous shit).

Hey, a girl can dream.

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Oops.

Remember the nice, clean, freshly-painted laundry room?

I don't even know what's in there. 

Yeah. Not so much.

Dirt

1.   Found a single 18" cement stepping stone in the garage when I was cleaning it last night. Put it in the corner here between the driveway and the front walk, so we can quit walking on the bare spot where we're trying to get grass to grow.

2.  Filled eroded low area here with soil and dirt culled from stacks of flowerpots in the garage that still had soil in them (which got cleaned and stacked neatly in the garage after).





It's the little things.

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Moving On

While I'm waiting for the next steps on the aquarium stand (which requires a payday and a shopping trip), I've started my next major project: cleaning and re-organizing the garage.

Yes, AGAIN.  Shut up. 

When last we met my garage, I posted this "goal" picture: 

(note the awesomeness)

And no, it never got there.  It mostly got there.  I did make my little rolling red tool cart out of the salvaged file cabinet I picked up from the office move: 

That was the last time my work tables were even visible under the mound of crap I tend to accumulate.  Case in point: 

Crap! Everywhere!  OMFG! 

Look, a floor!  The pile of sleeping bags from my camping trip will soon
be washed, rolled, and stored away where they belong, never you fear. 

And

Mid-way through: pots on the right organ-
ized; crap on the left not so much. 

Now everything's organized!  Same green boxes I scrounged
from the office,  and also used in the craft room. 

Keyword:  getting there.  

The plan is to get everything organized and purged, and then pull these shelves out, paint the walls and the shelves, put them back, build more shelves for another wall, swap the stuff on the other two walls so the water filter doesn't get sawdust in it anymore, and then...mess it all up again.  :D  J/k. 

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The Oldest Wildebeest: Part II

The aquarium stand that I mentioned in August, revived after having been started in 2006 and then forgotten for five years, has now made a bit more progress:

tr-drrrp.

The sides, top, and trim facing on the front are attached - the wood for which I bought in August last year.  (And when you consider how long it's taken me to get this far, an eight-month gap there isn't actually that bad, right? Right??)

It also now has internal shelves, cut from remnants of the same ex-computer desk that gave us the guitar rack of 2010.  I made sure they're tall enough to accommodate the one tool that in my 15+ years of keeping aquariums has proved to be endlessly useful and at times indispensable: the 5-gallon plastic bucket.

The next phase involves  wood filler that isn't solidified inside the tube (d'oh!) for the nail holes and a few cracky places where the sides and trim didn't match up in the front.  After that it's getting trim molding around the edges, doors, stain & sealant, and then feet.

And then: the aquarium itself!  :D

But first I have to finish the stand.  Anyone want to lay odds on how long it'll take me?


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Gardening: I Has It!

The other thing that happened over the weekend, after I got back from vacation, was a LOT of yardwork.  This last Sunday, the front yard got a good mowing and a fresh coat of grass seed (maybe it'll grow this time..?)

The back yard got the same treatment, along with some flower seeds in/near the shady corner garden - a mix of pink and red and white Cosmos, some native annual and perennial wildflowers, and larkspurs. Yay!

I also found some really cool stuff around the yard:

a volunteer Lemon Balm seedling in the yard!!!  Another plant
joins the ranks of survivors of the Martian Death Fungus. I
potted it up to keep it safe, and to keep it from spreading into
unwanted places, as mints are prone to doing. 

New berries/flowers on the Mulberry tree

OMG LOOK GRASS!!!

The little Chasteberry I planted last Fall, going strong! 

A white Yarrow, one of only three plants in the former Herb Garden
to have survived the Martian Death Fungus in the first place.  Until
this spring, it survived as a wee, weak sprout.  Now it's glorious! 

I heart my Mulberry tree. :) 

Unfortunately for the grass seed in the front yard, and the flower seed in the backyard, last night it stormed like you would not believe.  I knew it was going to rain, but I neglected to check the weather reports, or I'd have seen that it was going to rain frogs and plagues, and wash away not only my fresh seeds, but also about half the dirt in the part of the backyard still mostly only covered by dirt.  SIGH.

plans for the veggie beds I want to build in the backyard...

Hey, guess what? I built something.  Show you tomorrow. :)


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I can has a storm door!

Before

Aaaaaand we're back (from a week and a half long vacation, which was epic, and you can read all about it here, on my +2 Blog of Dorkitude).  The first day back involved a lot of sitting around, moaning about post-camping aches and pains, and laundry like you would not believe.

On the second day, I got to work refinishing the storm door that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It was given to my friend Mary by a friend of hers, and she gave it to me.

took it apart, scrubbed and dried all the parts

it was red!  and with a mirror-finish
shade film on one side of the glass.

how to use up old wrapping paper
(and protect your glass from spray-paint dust)

After: 

YAY!  

 It took about an hour and a half to get the frame pieces and the door hung, and it went off without a hitch.  Special thanks goes out to my awesomesauce boyfriend Kress - I could never have done it by myself, this thing was so heavy.

Finally, light in the 24' long entry hallway!!!

Next post:  some yardwork! 

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Speaking of Plant-Eating Dogs

I realize that I make it sound like Daisy's just a royal terror, but she's really not.  All the furniture- and plant-eating (and curtains, and rugs, and blankets, etc.) that she's destroyed was done in the first six months that I had her.  Fire is hot, the sky is blue, and puppies eat things.  It just is.

she looooooves being under furniture

See, Daisy was a drop-off - Kress and I live close enough to "the country" that people bring dogs out and put them out on the side of the road regularly.  :(  My neighbor's kids found her wandering around the edges of the neighborhood when she was only about 5-6 months old, and took her in.  I admire the intent, but the family, as it turns out, had never had a dog before, and hadn't the slightest idea what to do with one.  First Daisy was relegated to the backyard, and shut out there 24 hours a day with no interaction or socialization or anything - just a bowl of water on the back porch, and food once a day.  Eventually, after about three months, they decided to take her to the pound.

In case you can't tell by the pics, Daisy's a Pit Bull mix.  So yeah -  HELL NO I wasn't going to let my neighbors take a Pit Bull to the pound, with the reputation they have wth some [ignorant] people these days (that reputation is bullshit, and I won't get into the whole argument, but please see loveabull.org if you're curious).  By that point, Daisy'd been more or less abandoned just about her entire life, so she was a bit out of control, hehe.  By now, though, she's an AWESOME dog, and very well-behaved. :)

I also have two older dogs, Shelly (left) and Raven (right).

Raven was my second dog ever, and the first one I got of the pack I have now - that happened in 2004, right after my ex and I bought the house I live in now.   He was a shelter dog, and had been abused before he was left there.  He was super-skittish, silent, and practically motionless - any sudden movement, or attempt to get him to come out of whatever corner he was cowering in, would result in him shaking, ducking, whining very quietly, and trying to escape any way he could.  If you made any sudden sweeping movement with your feet or hands, he assumed he was about to be hit, and took off running.  Poor baby.  I just kills me to think about anyone hurting him - or any other animal, for that matter.  

It took him about two years to finally come out of all his old fear-behaviors, but he started becoming a BIG sweetie right away.  He has this awesome trick he does to get people to pet him where he bicycles-pedals his front paws in the air while sitting on his hind legs.  It just kills people. :)

I MEAN SERIOUSLY. 

I got Shelly about eight months later, when Raven was showing signs of separation anxiety at being left at home during the day while I was at work.  My ex and I decided he needed a friend, so back to the shelter we went, and two weeks later, after meeting-and-greeting, and getting spayed (on Shelly's part), Shelly came home with us.

And mannn, if you think Daisy was destructive?  SHIT.  Shelly was 8 months old when we brought her home in 2005...this dog ATE A COUCH.  I'm not even kidding.  There were some pretty hairy arguments over whether or not to take her back to the pound, but I'm glad she stayed.  She's a wonderful dog now, Raven's BFF, and really, really sweet with the cats.

She's a Border Collie mix, too - Border Collie and German Shepherd...hence the coloring.  Every time we pass a full-breed Shepherd in the park, I say, "Look, Shelly, that's what a real German Shepherd looks like."  It makes people laugh, and it's a great conversation-starter. :o)

The Wild Bunch,  Thanksgiving 2011.  Daisy's 2, Shelly's 7, and Raven's 9

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Meanwhile, In the Jungle (the Mighty Jungle)

...my jungle's looking less than mighty these days.  It's been a bad year for houseplants.  It happens sometimes. Some plants smother and die if they're covered with dust for too long (which is a housekeeping issue).  Some get sunburned if exposed to direct sunlight for too long.  Some get bugs, some get eaten by dogs, and all plants die of old age, eventually.

My collection, which numbered in the thirties just two years ago, is now down to nineteen individual plants, most of which are 6-8" pots (small) or just jars of cuttings gone wild.  I hadn't even counted, in a while, until yesterday as I was tidying up the house and moving some furniture around, and thought, "This spot just needs a plant," and then realized, as I looked around, that I didn't have any extra plants that could be moved!  

What.

The hell.

The Bird of Paradise in the picture above, for example, has come down with a horrible case of Scale (insects).  It's had them for years, actually - and they don't really do much damage, as long as you keep them under control (because they're damned near impossible to kill on this particular plant without resorting to using something so harsh that it would kill the plant as well, because of the way they burrow down between the plant's stalks where I can't get at them).

Every couple of months I take it out into the backyard and hose them off, which perks the plant up and knocks the dust off the leaves, too.  I give all my plants outdoor showers, periodically (or indoor showers, for the ones that fit into the kitchen sink), but I'd been putting off doing it for the Bird of Paradise all Winter, and it's really starting to show.  It's getting a bath this weekend, though. 

I really, really want a new Aralia.  That's a "Parsley" Aralia above; I used to have two of them, and a small Ming Aralia.  Aralias are a bit finicky about watering frequency, and it can be difficult for them to adjust to being moved to a new location/sunlight exposure all of a sudden, as I found out when I lost all three in the same months after I moved them all around.  :(     Because of how slowly they grow (and due in large part to the way in which they're grown), Aralias are expensive, and hard to find in local nurseries; but I think the next time I come across one, I'll pick it up.  I really miss having one around. 

I also really miss my old Clivia (that's "clive-ee-ya" with a long I, not a short I like in "ship," by the way).  This pic is a yellow-flowered variety that I used to have, in its second year;  it eventually doubled in size, and although I didn't ever get it to bloom indoors after the flowers that it came with were finished blooming (it takes lots of work to achieve this, I'm so not up for it), it was a GORGEOUS plant.  Evidently it's also really tasty to puppies. 

gee, I wonder which one I could be talking about...

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Another Post-Vacation Project Idea, Re: Guest Room Makeover

Because of the sort of cottage-y look the guest room ended up with, I'm considering maybe painting some  trompe-l'oeil "architectural" stuff in this room.  I made some mock-ups in MS Paint (hi-tech, baby!), but I can't decide which I like the best...

The first pic is unaltered.  The second is a sort of horizontal siding/clapboard cottage thing.  Which I really
love, because of the height it adds to the room;  I also feel like it makes the room seem bigger. 

The third picture is a paneled wainscoting, about picture-rail height (probably about up to my shoulder). 

I'm just not sure.  I love the wainscoting behind the bed; but I love the paneling pretty much everywhere
else. I also sort of love the wonky lines in the mock-ups, hehe...makes me wonder about freehanding this
with a laser level instead of taping or stenciling it on straight.  Hm. 

What do YOU think?

Guest Room Before & After!

Sweet Pea approves of ur makeover.

Holy cow, did Kress and I work our collective BUTT OFF yesterday!  The guest room went from a big empty space to a finished guest room in about 7 hours.  My back huuuuuuurts.  But it's done!

Not everything is as it should be, or will be in the "final," "finished" room; but the room's ready for an actual guest - who will be arriving next week.

Wanna see the room "before"?  Hope you're sitting down...

Before


Toldja!  Crammed full of music gear, a drum set, and 8-year-old carpet that was naaaaasty.  The drum set was sold, and the carpet removed - Kress suprised me last week by removing the carpet and readying the slab floor while I was at work.  Yay!

The white walls are really just primer'd white, from baseboard to ceiling fan.  Bo-ring.  One day there'll be a color in here...once I decide what that color is going to be.

a garage full of crap that was waiting to go into the room

After 

Bed and nightstand: free, from a friend.

Curtain, and the tablecloth over the wooden bookcase:  already had.

Wooden bookcase:  already had (actually, Kress' dad built that, a million years ago).

All of the bedding is new, from Kohl's - the only new pieces we bought for the room, aside from the flooring that we installed yesterday, which is the same flooring from Ikea that we used in the craft room.

Most of the artwork was already in the room;  I added the mirror, and one of the document frames.

The clock is the one from my sewing room.

While the room isn't finished, I do like the overall feel of it.  The comforter is polyester, and feels pretty gross.  It was a quick, cheap, "Oh, shit, we don't have a comforter" type thing.  It'll do for now, but I do plan on replacing it pretty much as soon as I can.

The closet doors are the blue ones that were once in the craft room, when I thought I wanted a blue closet, lol.

There's Sweet Pea on the bed again.  He and Rabi CLAIMED this bed pretty much the second it was set up and dressed - neither of them have left it since.

The more I look at this room, the more I really, really like it.  It's kind of random and homey.

Kress, hard at work on nailing the baseboards back on, after five hours of putting down the floor itself.

I'm pretty impressed with our materials estimation abilities, LOL.  We ended up with only half a box of planks left over - not much to store, and perfect for finishing out the thresholds in this room and the craft room (whenever we get around to that).

This room still has to double as a music room, which will require some creative furniture arrangement in the future;  but for now it's ready for company next week.
:)

Tiny crappy screwdriver:  not a nail set!
Whoops.  (My bad).








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