SQUEE!

So, I've had this gift card to World Market in my wallet for over a year, right?  I'd used most of it when I got it for (my birthday? Christmas? Spinach Festival Day?), but it had fifteen dollars left on it; and I never could get around to spending it.

I know.  ME.  Not spending money at World Market.  Stand back.

Anyway, I had a great lunch with a friend yesterday, and afterward we went to World Market, and I spent the last of my gift card on two very, very important things:

That is a cute little set of melamine measuring cups, because my very last measuring cup was eaten by my Kitchenaid mixer a few weeks ago, and I've been doing everything with Pyrex 2-cup cups since.  

And below it is one of my very favorite things in the history of ever:  a wooden cooking spoon made from Olive wood.  I used to have several olive wood pieces, but my dog Shelly managed to get ahold of  my very last one (which was also my favorite one) and basically ate it two weeks ago.  Now I have the beginnings of a new collection.  Yay!! 

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Guest Bath Chandelier - Finished!

I posted here and here about a pair of antique, homemade chandeliers that I was given by a dear friend. I've finished the lily chandelier, which was made by my friend's metal-worker great-grandfather in the 60s.  Here is the before:

It's a four-light candelabra chandelier, originally gold-leafed.  It's 54 years old, and was encrusted with dust and cigarette smoke.  The gold leaf was peeling, and the metal was rusting underneath. The wiring was all good, thankfully, though I did replace the main wire leading up from the center of the fixture to the ceiling mount.  I also scrubbed and sanded the fixture to remove the gold leaf and rust and dirt, bent some of the metal bits back into shape, spray-painted the bulb holders white, and primed, then sprayed the entire fixture in a pale, shiny gold.

My guest bath, meanwhile, had this three-light fixture in it:

Which was pretty, but not fabulous.  I wanted fabulous.  

Here is the after:

Yay!!  I love this SO MUCH!!


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Laura's Home For Wayward Furniture

Wow, I should totally just name this blog that. 

This armoire was given to me by a friend whom I helped move houses last weekend, as she no longer had a space for it.

Neat!   Tall.  Free.  Like.


Idk if you remember the craigslist dresser I refinished and put into my closet when I re-did it in 2012;  I had pulled it out and put it on this wall instead after a while, freeing up some floor space in the closet, and wall space on which to hang a scarf organizer last July.   I've moved it to the opposite side of the bathroom door in the bedroom (you can see the floorplan in the first closet link).  Show you when it doesn't have a pile of junk on top.  ;)

Anyway, this armoire is MUCH better on this wall than the dresser (and pile of blankets next to it in a plastic tub) was.

It needs a wee bit of work.   There's water damage on the top and on both sides, all  of which are thin plywood, and will need to be entirely replaced, one day.

It will also need to be refinished, due to some regular wear-n-tear (regular if you're a family of wampas (and no offense to Moving Friend, it was like this when she got it from Craigslist).

And also some places where the finish has just flat out peeled off.

The design up top is painted on, below the finish layers.  I guess this was supposed to be kind of art-deco-looking?

I can't tell where this thing came from or exactly how old it is.  It's solid oak and oak plywood, with iron locks. There's no maker's mark anywhere, inside or out.  Hm.

Until I get a chance to really put some work into this thing, though, it still makes a great blanket-holder.

You can see the line around the middle where it needs a shelf.

It could use an upper shelf, too.

The least I could do was slap some knobs on it for now, because, I shit you not, I cut my finger on a peeling piece of old, dried varnish at one point when I pried the door open by the edge.  O_O

That'll do, for the time being.  (And yes, they're level.  The picture is a really weird angle).


I'm hoping that I can find some keys for these keyholes, and maybe a keyhole cover for the door on the right in this pic (the lock is in there, but the cover is missing).
So pretty.




So what's the plan?  I have no idea.  Right now the plan is to keep blankets in it until I finish the other nine-million projects I've been doing lately and THEN worry about  

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One of my "lines" (you know, those things you always say that your friends rib you about - like me painting things blue) is "Hm.  I could put a plant there."  That happened like six hours after I set up this armoire, lol.  So I did this:

P.S. - Don't even think I've forgotten about all those light fixtures I started in January.




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Beware the "Good Spot." Yeah, you know exactly what I mean.

Once upon a time, my TV hung on the wall of my living room. Eventually I re-arranged the furniture and I took it down.  I left the bars on the back of the TVso they wouldn't get lost, and I taped the bolts to the bracket itself, to make sure they stayed with it, and I put it carefully away.

C D E D B D bracket? 

Eventually, I wanted to hang the TV again, and one day, while out in the garage working on something else, I came across the bracket, and, thinking, "I'm going to need this soon," I took it out of the box it had been stored in and put it in A Good Spot, where I could just grab it when I was ready.

Perhaps it goes without saying that I never saw it again.

After having searched every inch of my garage and my house at least three times over, I finally gave up and bought a new bracket at Ikea the last time I happened to be there.  I thought I got a flat one, but once I got home I realized I had accidentally bought a swing-arm bracket instead, and since Ikea's 45 minutes away from my house in good traffic (which is less and less probable these days), I wasn't about to go back just to exchange a single item, so I went ahead and put it up.  Yay, TV!

LOL  NOPE

The next day, I noticed the tv wasn't level.  Dang it, I was just sure I had - never mind, I'll fix it. I took it down, leveled it correctly this time, put it back up.   The next day it wasn't level...again.   The next day it was worse.  And then one day, the tv fell off the wall.

It fell OFF.

It fell. The fuck. Off. 

TaterSalad.com

The day I went to take it down before that had a chance to happen, I touched the TV, and it fell off the wall into my hands.  Better that, than just falling off without me there to catch it, right?  It's not a very expensive tv, but it's the only one I have!

(And yes, I used all the hardware that came with it the first time. The second time, I used good, sturdy drywall anchors that I knew would work because they're the kind I always use.  The thing fell out of the wall because either the swing-arm or the whole thing was so unbalanced that the weight of the TV on the arm was too much for the wall bracket, even though the packaging said that the bracket was rated for a tv far heavier than mine.  Booo, Ikea, BOO).  

So the other day, I'm telling this story to my friend, Kress, and he says, "That bracket - is it black?  And about yea big?  Masking tape on it?"

Apparently, at some point the bracket, so carefully removed and put in A Good Spot had gotten knocked or placed into a random box, which ended up moving out with Kress last summer.  He didn't know what it was, but he thought it might be mine, so he saved it, and had had it in his truck for weeks just waiting to ask me about it, hehe.

YAY !!!!

This whole wall is very much a work-in-progress, by the way; although I really love the way it's coming together.  And by "together" I mean "slapdash and homemade and full of plants."  Hee.  The plants are very carefully situated so that they won't drip or fall on any of the electronics. They're also brand-new, which is why most some are kind of sparse:  They're rooted cuttings, freshly planted.  They'll be nice and fluffy in no time.  The cord-spaghetti behind the TV is going to be dealt with very soon.  And the mirror over the fireplace is going to be replaced with a really, really cool painting.  As soon as I paint it. 

All is well.

YATTA!!!*

IT'S FINISHED!!!

All in all, this took: 

• 6 cut-off wheels on the Dremel (cutting the hole in the stainless steel sink for the filter tap. I kept breaking them)
• about $30 in parts, most of which were returned to the store once I realized I didn't need them (options!) - when it was all said and done it ended up costing me about $12 for all of this
• 4 trips to Home Depot (fail, fail, fail and fail), and
• 1 trip to Lowe's during which I received not one but TWO outstanding customer servicings, and which solved all of my problems because they actually have employees who know what they're doing and are willing to help.  SUCK IT HOME DEPOT. 
• 10 days, all told, from start to finish (time, money). 

Turns out, all the stuff the people at HD were telling me was basically bullshit.  Or rather, generalized "advice" based on (a) not understanding what the real problem was (not just based on my description, but a series of detailed photos I took of the plumbing), and (b) not actually giving a shit.  The guy I ran into at Lowe's (David) had been a plumber and a steel pipe-fitter all his life, and saw the problem in the photos right away: the people who built my house jimmied the plumbing together with cheats and hacks, just like they did every other thing in my house (budget house = everything's half-assed and incorrectly done).  I'M SO SURPRISED.   Not.  Anyhow, David assembled all the correct parts from the shelves, showed me how it was supposed to go together, and then showed me what the original installers had done that was wrong, how to get it all apart, and how to re-do it the correct way.

After a week and a half of futzing with patches and fixes, following David's advice I got the entire thing gutted and then re-plumbed in just two hours.  I put my tools away, I cleaned up the kitchen, ran all the dishes that have been building up since the 15th through the dishwasher (living single perk: it was only two loads), and SAT THE HELL DOWN.

Soooo shinyyyyy....  *_*

And holy cow, this thing is 11" deep.  My old fiberglass one was 9.5", and I thought it was too deep for comfort (it was, while I was doing 100% of my dishes by hand).  But the extra inch and a half means I can wash large pots and cutting boards that don't fit into the dishwasher without splashing water all over the kitchen.  Yay!

So, my BFF thinks I'm insane for doing all this myself, especially given the headache it's been.  But I haven't just replaced my sink:  I've learned how to replace a sink.  I've disassembled and reassembled everything under and on top of this sink twice each, including the disposal and water filtration system.  I learned new cutting techniques, new chemical processes, a new system of sizes and methods.  And best of all, now I know that if I ever need  to do this again, for myself or to help someone else, I CAN.  That alone is worth every frustrating moment.

~ fin ~

[This post brought to you by Aerosmith, and much dancing-around-the-kitchen.]



* Japanese for, essentially, "Hooray, I did it!" 

The Rougher Side of Searz

Well, either I was right about the sink replacement being a catastrofuck, or it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, or maybe just a case of accidentally calling something into being.

I've been to the hardware store twice this week - found the parts I needed the second time (hallelujah).  The second time I had to wait a couple of days until I had the money for more parts.  Turns out I needed to replace the P-trap, except that I couldn't - I couldn't find the exact one I had, and the ones the store had weren't the right size or type.  #Q$^&!#$^%@#!

Finally I figured out I could just remove my P-trap (and if you've never had the pleasure of smelling the water that sits in there, I highly recommend it.  It's a heady combination of bong water and poop, with very slight but delectable rotten-potato overtones) and alter it just a tiny bit so that everything lines up correctly.  This involved sawing it in half and inserting a small coupler in between the two ends to extend it (translation: I had to touch the inside. Ewwwww).

The fun part - yes, more fun than the bongpoopwater - was that I don't have the strength in my hands/arms to get the connector in place, and so I have to wait yet again until I can find someone willing to help push a couple of pieces together.

Meanwhile, my kitchen has looked like this all week:

Also, washing dishes in the bathroom sink and the backyard?  Not as fun as it sounds.  

Update soon.  I hope. Please.  I WANT TO USE MY NEW SINK DAMMIT. 

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A Kitchen CatastroF$@k (Part 1)

No, no, no - it's not that bad.   I just wanted to say "catastrofuck" (Jon Stewart's word).

So this happened: 

Hint:  not supposed to be in pieces.
Note: this happened during a cooking-intensive dinner party. AWESOME.

This bitty little clip, which is snapped in half, 

held the whole thing together.  

I looked online, but couldn't find a replacement clippy thing for this 10-yo faucet.  Fortunately, I actually had a replacement faucet and  sink in my garage - I was only waiting to buy a new disposal so that I could install everything together.

Unfortunately, the new faucet didn't fit the old sink; so the entire sink had to be replaced.

OBSTACLE

GROSS!!!  

GROSSSS. 

Finally, I manage to get the disposal off the sink:
AZIZ, LIGHT!!! 

All disassembled and ready for the install, hooray!  

I should note that this is only my second plumbing job, aside from replacing toilet flappers (anybody can do that);  and I'm pleased to report that the whole thing went really smoothly, and was far easier and quicker a job than I was anticipating.  From start to finish, everything you see in this blog post took about an hour and a half.

Dear Craigslist...

Now to install the new sink.... (continued in Part 2)



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Throwback Thursday!

Last week you guys got to see what my house looked like when I moved in in 2004.  This week I have one more old photo for you:

This was my very first apartment, in 1999.  Not the first I'd ever lived in, to be sure; but the first one I kept all to myself, without sharing with roomates or boyfriends or anybody at all, just me.

They told me I could paint, and so I did - two walls in the living room, and the entire bedroom.  I had begun gardening two years before in the old duplex I used to share with a group of friends; my "garden" in this apartment consisted of a dozen or so potted plants that I'd salvaged when I moved away from the duplex.

And yes, I had inflatable furniture, LOL.  I had almost no furniture (only a nightstand and a rocking chair) at this point in my life, and few posessions, and even less money; so the most expedient option when I got this place was a boxed set of three living room pieces  and a 99-c Barbie air pump, LOL.  The bookshelf in the picture I got for free from a department store that was throwing it away.

I even had a cat, for a while.  I left my sliding glass door open to the breeze most afternoons when I got home from work (I didn't drive back then, so my apartment was literally across the street from my office).  One day, a young black cat waltzed in like he owned the place.  He didn't stay inside with me, but he came over to hang out every day for a few months, until one day he passed my place by and didn't come inside.  Oh, well.

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I love living on my own.  I love it now, and I loved it in 1999, even though I only lived at this apartment for six months before moving in with a guy I was dating (sigh).  Is it scary sometimes?  Yes.  But I love it, I really do.

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