Nostalgia

Well, the trellis on the back porch has fallen the rest of the way down.  I'm over the lung infection, but my asthma's still too hardcore right now to do much of anything, hence the lack of posts lately.  Sorry about that.

In the meantime, let me tell you a bit about my very first DIY project ever.  It was a little 3-drawer wooden nightstand.  I'd had it as long as I could remember - it was my nightstand as a little kid growing up, and when I moved out of the house, it came with me.  I carried it from apartment to apartment, and finally to the duplex I lived in when I was 23.

By that point, the finish was just destroyed.  The bottom drawer was cracked and split on the back, and the middle drawer didn't slide very well anymore.  Not to mention that I was pretty sick of the color after 23 years - it was just a clear-coated natural wood, but it was sort of yellow-y wood.  I don't know what kind it was.  The poor little nightstand had really seen better days, but I just didn't have the heart to get rid of it:  not only had I had it forever, it was one of the very few connections to my past that I had left.

I knew you could refinish furniture, but I didn't know how - I didn't have an artistic or crafty bone in my body (or so I thought).  But spray paint, maybe?  Surely any idiot, including me, could spray paint something.      So I went to the hardware store.

As happens with my projects, turns out I ran into some scope creep at the store.  I saw the spray paint.  But I also saw spray-stripper.  Seeing as how the clearcoat on my nightstand was already dry, and mostly peeled-off anyway, I thought, how hard could it be to remove the rest?  Surely the spray paint will look better if I prep the surface correctly.  I'd seen it done a couple of times on HGTV, and it didn't look difficult, just messy. So I bought a can of spray-stripper, some thick gloves, a plastic scraper, some sandpaper, and some black spray paint.

The paint process went really smoothly, I glued the drawers back together, and the black nightstand looked AWESOME.   A few years later, I got tired of the black, stripped it again, and painted it green.  A few years later, I stripped it again, whitewashed the natural wood, and decoupaged some dried wildflowers on the top that I had collected myself and pressed in a phone book - and repaired the drawers again, better this time.

And then one day, the nightstand was lost forever.   I accidentally left it behind during a rushed move out of an apartment, couldn't get it back.  By that point I'd been refinishing dumpster furniture for my apartments, helping friends paint and refinish furniture for about five years, and had painted two apartments that allowed me to choose my own colors (and painted them back to white upon moving out).

I still miss that nightstand, but more than anything, I'm grateful to it for being the stepping stone to all the various things I can do now, thirteen years later.  I'd never have known I could even try, if it hadn't been for an ugly old nightstand and a can of black spray paint.

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Results Not As Expected

Mkay, so, remember in June when I tore down the old vine trellis on the back porch  and put up a smaller one?  It looked like this when I was done:

Before: 

(yes, the invisible wire thing strung between the two horizontal  rails)

Well, it's been two months, and the thing is just COVERED in fresh, green, beautiful vines!

After: 

wait...

Guess what I didn't notice in June?  The top rail was rotted through on one end!  ARGH.    It won't be a huge deal to replace it: I'll just have to cut the vines back below the level of the top of the trellis, cut through the twine holding the wire screen onto the rail, put up a new rail, and then tie it back together.

I hope.

FAIL.

Screw: "Idk what you guys are talking
about, I did my job." 

Also:

Guys, I don't think the Hibiscus is going to make it. 

Cabi-nuh-uhs.

What I really want is to paint my kitchen cabinets white, inside and out.  (No, this post isn't about bathrooms).   But I cannot has white paint right now, so for the time being, I've put the doors back up:

In 2009, when the walls were white (and then beige, and then blue, and then beige again...), I had painted the insides of the cabinets a very dim sort of grayish blue.  And I loved it!

Except that now that the walls are grey, it's too close a grey to the color inside of the cabinets, and by contrast, the insides of the cabinets don't look blue, they look dirty.   So until I get the whole set of top cabinets painted, the doors are back up, to hide the blue.  

You may have noticed the tile back-splash in the before picture, and the lack thereof in the new picture.  The tile was only painted on: 

and mis-aligned

I really did like the "tile", and I was very proud of the job I did.  People who hadn't seen it before in person would actually touch it to make sure it wasn't real.  I call that a win, hehe.   But I painted over it when I painted the walls grey.  I actually do have a new idea for the back splash, but that's going to have to wait until I paint the cabinets.  You'll see.  

And since I realize you've never seen my *entire* kitchen, just bits and pieces of it, here's the whole thing, mess and all: 

all the walls are the same grey.  the weird blue and purple tones in this
pic are just from weird lighting coming in the windows

Things that are going to be changing in the coming months:

• the upper cabinets
• the backsplash
• the light fixture
• the steins on top of the cabinets (I swear, officer, they're not mine, they're my boyfriend's)
• the pantry insides + door hardware
• the cabinet knobs and handles
• the light fixture over the sink?  maybe? 
• the total lack of a color scheme aside from the wall color and that one red dishtowel

After the whole bathroom thing happens. 

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Day Eight, A Few Days Late

Hey, man, at least it's not the 24th like last month, right?

July In Review

• Shuffled around the nightstands in the bedroom...and then forgot to post pics.  Whoops.  I'll do that soon, I promise! 
• BIG yearly housecleaning binge, yay!
• lots of yard work and mid-summer yard maintenance, including trimming the tree in the front yard
• looking for a new shade of blue for both of my  bathrooms
• was really, really sick for two weeks, and didn't get anything done.  :( 

Shortest.  Montly review.  Ever.  

Sigh. 

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"Honey, we're out of arsenic again!"

Fun with kitchen canister labels:

AFTER - chalkboard paint

I'm sad to say, my little quart can of chalkboard paint is badly dented, and doesn't seal properly, as I discovered the other day when I went to paint these canisters and discovered a can full of black peanut-butter.  Fortunately, I was able to reconstitute the paint by mixing in about a cup and a half of water  (I figured, it's not usable now, it can't hurt to try).   Some of the paint peeled and chipped when I pulled off the tape, but it's all good.  The labels are totally cute.

And I'm sure the same friends who like to write on my chalkboard when they come over will re-label the jars for me when I'm not looking.   LOL.

Before - 2009. Paper labels.  Also painted faux-tile on the backsplash.

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Silver & Gold

Did a bit of paintin' and knobbin' over the weekend.  Here's what happened in the master bathroom:

This gold mirror was really cool.  It was a bit in-your-face with the gold color, but I liked it.

So I painted the two picture frames in the room to match, and then the gold was SCREAMING AT ME.

So I painted all three of them a lighter, less obnoxious gold.

That's better.  Softer.

The two frames - both painted, and the broken one repaired.

This is the same artwork (postcards, actually) as before;  the frames were painted a deep olive green before, and the mat behind the cards was the same blue as the walls.

But wait...what's that shiny dot on the cabinet there?

CABINET KNOBS!!!

These cabinets have never had knobs before!  And these knobs, actually, have never had cabinets before, so it works.  (I harvested them from a set of modular MDF cube furniture years ago and just had them in my stuff).

* By the way, this picture is the first one I've taken that accurately reflects the color of the walls.  Yeah. It's  that blue.  Also, please ignore all the BS on the counters here - that's not intentional, it's just all over the place for no reason, lol.  

Yeah.


Those are SEXY.






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Well-Begun Is Half Done?

Got those pics I promised yesterday.  First...

A Before Tour

My master bathroom.  Which, I should probably say, I actually like.  You can tell because it's been the same for like seven years.  I just want to tweak some things here and there.

OHAI, I have a light bulb out. Whoops.  (Ugly builder light fixture, party of 1...). 

Dark brown wood cabinetry (which I refinished myself, back in aught-five).  

←  My hand poking the camera into the room through the double doors. 

Plant.  I love my plant.  It's a mixed basket of Pothos, Heart-Leaf Philodendron, and some variety of small and fuzzy Tradescantia. 

That door, by the way, is my closet door. 

Two shower rods (both alike in dignity): one with the plastic liner, and one with the white sheers hung really high.  I love that. Keeping it. 

Also keeping the towel hook, which I put there.  Love it.  The towel bar the house came with was right next to the toilet.  The hell??

Boring beige ceramic tile.  Yawn.  (Two of them are cracked, which happened recently). 

Boring brown rug.  It's really soft, though. And it's cotton, so I can throw it in the wash once a week.

Blue towels to match the walls.  (Blue, faded, blotchy, crunchy towels.  Eeyugh). 

The Toilet Cave.    

You can't really tell from this picture, but this cabinet, like the one in the guest bathroom, used to be twice as deep - a full 16", IIRC.  Once upon a time, I took them both down, sliced them in half with my jigsaw, and put them back up.  They were looming before. 

The picture frame visible in the upper left - see the nail underneath it?  There were two hung vertically there, which I actually quite like, placement-wise.  The bottom one was the one that fell off and went boom the other day. 

The window in the shower.  Light: good.  Sun all up in your face while trying to shower: not so much.  

Witness the epic collection of glass bottles I don't want.  And a random plant. (Parthenocissus randomii).  

The one glass item I will never, ever part with.  I love my little apothecary jar.  What's that?  "What apothecary jar?"  I know, right?  What is that mad clusterf* of stuff all over the vanity?  Organized much? 

The bane of my existence in this room.  WHO PUT THAT OUTLET THERE?!   It's not centered, it's the only outlet in the room, and it's too close to the bottom of the mirror to be safe from the water in the sink. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want to blow your hair dry while I was washing my face?  *ZOTT*  I'm not even kidding - thank god it's a GFI outlet; it trips ALL THE TIME.  

WHAT THE CRAP. 

But then...

Just because I couldn't sit still the other night, I rounded up this gold mirror from my closet, and some little Ikea nesting baskets from wherever the hell they normally live, and started playing.

It's no work of art, and it's not going to stay like this, but the change has definitely got me thinking.

I got new towels last night, too!  Plain, crisp, bleach-able white. I can't wait to use them for the first time. New towels! :)

I need to figure out the accessories, and get painting.  (Eventually.  I'm doing better every day, thank goodness).  

Maybe the Bathroom Fairies will leave me a new light fixture if I'm extra good. 

*  LMAO - I *just* said that the mirrored outlet was the only one in the room, and here's a PICTURE of another one.  Whoops!  I tend to forget about this one, because we don't use it.  LOL. Sorry.  The mirrored one still sucks, though. 

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Yay! Whoops.

Amazing what a difference moving a few accessories around makes.  I took a whole slew of "before" pictures of the master bathroom last night, and then moved some accessories around in there.  I'm not remotely done in there, but just doing something a little different broke up the stagnation I was feeling, and already makes the bathroom look like a whole different bathroom.  It's kind of awesome!

Did I remember to get the pics off my camera so I could show you?  NOPE.

Meanwhile, my kitchen is like PICK ME PICK ME ME ME ME ME TOWELS KNOBS PAINT OMGZORZ!!  
Sigh.

What Year Is It??

When last we met, I was like:

Two weeks, you guys!  UGH.  I'm up and around - I'm even back at work today - but "intense physical labor" right now is still like, walking eight feet from my desk to the copier, so, I'm not exactly in any shape to do anything around the house.  I washed like six dishes at home the other day and had to take a nap.  I'm not even kidding.

Until I am ready, though, I'm dreaming of bathroom paint.  Still.  I've decided to go with something like this:

by Urban Grace Interiors, via DecorPad

I have no idea what actual color that is, but it's exactly where I'm going.  A wee bit greener, a wee bit grayer, and a whole lot lighter than the color I have now.  Near as I can figure, this is pretty similar to Benjamin Moore's "Quiet Moments". 

Quiet Moments                                                                                          Smoke
                                                                              (pretty much the current color)

The "Smoke" (I have no idea what color it is, I mixed it myself, but it's about like this) is just WAY too much blue.  It's in-your-face, why-did-I-just-eat-all-those-cookies bright, sweet blue.  It's pretty, but an entire room of it for like six years is a bit much.  Lately I feel like it's oozing blue.  It's bleeding blue.  It's bleeding blue at me.  Done with it!  

It doesn't help that the walls, ceiling, trim, and doors are all the same color.  And don't get me wrong - I abosolutely LOVE it that way, and I don't plan to change it.  My master bathroom has three doors and a window, and a lot of trim - that was a LOT of white breaking up the wall color before I painted it all.  

The idea was actually based on this scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: 

screencap from leavemethewhite.com

You can see it here:    

I stood in the bathtub to take this picture. Hee. 

Along with some of the stuff about the room that I can't WAIT to change:  the artwork (dark brown wood frames, matted to match the wall color...why??),  coke-bottle-green glass accessories (*yawn*),  and some ugly faded gray candles, in this picture, for some reason.  I have no idea.   Oh, and the curtains over the doorway.  Hee.  I actually thought those were fun.  But they were basically a big dust magnet, and some wild dogs gallivanting about the house tore them, so they're gone now. 

Pinterest

Pinterest, in its infinite wonders, has finally granted me a freaking clue as to what to do with that big sheet mirror over the vanity.  One day I'd like to replace it with two smaller, framed mirrors; but for now I needed to do SOMETHING with it.  I'd thought about framing it for months, but couldn't think of a way to make that not boring.  This?  This is it.  I am so doing this.  I already have wood and parts in the garage I can use.  Squee!  

Now I just have to figure out what color to do the mirror frames.  A dark brown stain, to match the cabinetry?  Or would that be too heavy?  Black would definitely be too heavy.  White would look silly unless all the other trim in the room was white, too.  Silver?  Gold?  And do I do the picture frames in here to match the mirror frame, or is that too much matchy-matchy? 

Hm.  

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