A HYLLIS Makeover of My Own

After seeing this post from Skreytum Hus (via Apartment Therapy), I suddenly had the solution to all of my "entertainment center" problems!  Sylvan and I wanted a wall-o-shelving around our tv, and had seen many an idea online, but hadn't decided on anything, until we saw what Soffia had done.  What a fantastic idea!

I started with three of Ikea's galvanized steel HYLLIS shelving units - only $14.99 each.  I assembled them before I did anything else, to get a feel for how much space on the wall they'd take up, and exactly what I wanted to do with them.  It was simple enough: remove the bottom row of shelves, leaving the units about 35" high.

It took me three days of searching high and low for two missing hacksaws (the hell??) before I remembered I have a Dremel.  Fail.

I left the shelves fully assembled to do this. I thought about taking them apart to cut the legs off, but I was leery of messing up the measurements.  This way let me "measure" by wrapping a piece of blue painters' tape around each leg, just below what would become the new bottom shelf, and then just cutting off below the tape. Easy.

One.


I'm here to tell you, there's a reason those little round cutoff wheels come in packs of a million.  #%&@#$!@$

Wear your safety glasses, kids.

Three!

Now to paint them!  Oh, no...wait...no metal primer in stock.

I set about working on the top for the unit instead.  It's simple enough - some 4" pine bed slats I wasn't using anymore, pieced to create a 74x13" tabletop that will span all three HYLLIS units when placed side by side, and glu---

Aaaand I'm out of wood glue.  THE HELL??

And so...to be continued, LOL.








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"Scorpio Manor" Lives!

Heehee. That's what all of our friends are calling it (because we're both Scorpios).  :)

Sylvan's all moved in, and we're slowing working our way through mountains of boxes, unpacking and putting things away, rearranging furniture, and getting her settled in.   Her cats and my cats and dogs are getting along astonishingly well!  I've *never* seen a pet merge go as smoothly as this is going, and thank goodness for it. The giant craft room - aka The Room of Requirement - is coming along nicely, but it's not done enough for photos just yet.  I have a big project in the works for the living room, and I'll show you some of that tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are a couple of bits and pieces from the kitchen:

Ikea's BYGEL rail system up, where a wooden shelf used to be.

An old wooden Ikea dish drainer, disassembled and made into a plate rack to display some very old, blue glass Ikea plates.

I love a good, messy, decorated fridge.  ^_^

My old Ikea FIRA chest made over into a coffee station.  It stores k-cups, tea, cider, and cocoa; as well as spoons, filters, and other little Keurig bits.  A tray on top, painted to match, holds sugar and a couple of decorative creamer pitchers (one from Ikea, one an antique Mikasa which I adore).

The dry goods jars are currently labeled "Existential Angst", "Despair," "Rage", and "Rice."  Because...rice.

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Guest Bath No More

Now it's BFF's bathroom!  And it's white no longer:

Here's the before...

That's Olympic "Turquoise Mist", if anybody's wondering.

BONUS FEATURES:

This idea came from Pinterest (really, what doesn't anymore?)  A trash bag tied over the toilet tank - no paint to clean off the porcelain, and the bag doubles as a handy-dandy receptacle for all your painting trash at the end of the job.

Know what I discovered today?  If you flush the toilet while the bag's on the tank, POKE A HOLE IN THE BAG.  It did this crazy thing where it tried to swallow itself because of the air being sucked out of the bag by the retreating water, LOL.  0_0

I like to rock out with my caulk out.











Now the bathroom just needs BFF's stuff!  She moves in in a week and a half! :D


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Another "New" Bathroom Light Fixture

Because seriously, ew:

That's the light fixture that's been in my master bath since 2004.  Came with the house. I *hate* these, and somehow in ten years I've never replaced it. 

In March, I replaced the guest bath fixture with an Italian tole chandlier that I fixed up.  Over this past weekend, I finally got around to putting the one that came out of the guest bath into the master: 

It's a bit dwarfed* by the gigantic sheet mirror that has also been there since the house was built;  but I intend to replace that thing, too, eventually.  For now, I really love the 3-light fixture in here.  I've been using my six-lamp fixture with only three bulbs in it, so there's no change in the amount of light, though this new fixture does change the angle a bit.  I'm perfectly happy with it, though.  It's warm and soft.  Not great for putting on makeup, but I do that at my vanity cabinet, since I can stand directly in front of it instead of having to lean over a counter because of my crappy eyesight, hehe. 

And of course, because the simplicity of the "plug and play" aspect of changing light fixtures is often just too good to be true, it took me two hours to get this thing in place, because the old six-lamp fixture was screwed directly into the wall - not mounted on a bracket.  Luckily, I had a bracket, threaded rod, and a large assortment of nuts and washers and screws to choose from, in order to get this thing mounted correctly and securely.  

* "Dwarf" is one of those words I can never type correctly on the first try.  I touch-type (without looking at the keyboard) at nearly 100wpm, and yet every time, it comes out "drawf."  Sigh. 

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The Tacky Cat Statue Gets A Starry Makeover

So, I've had this silly ceramic cat since I was like 17.   She guards my house. Hee.  She's been many colors - last year she underwent some serious structural repairs, and went pink and gold:

Today I gave her a new makeover:

It doesn't show well in the picture, but all the stars and highlights are silver, not white, so she's all shimmery and sparkly.  I had every intention of painting the entire cat blue and starry, but then the nighttime-forest thing happened at the bottom, and the clouds, and she became an entire night scene. 

The highlights along her angles would NOT come out with a brush, or a pen (that got painted over like three times, actually), so I ended up just rubbing silver paint onto the edges with my fingers.  When in doubt:  fingerpainting!  LOL.