I Just Needed A Freaking Sweater Jeez

Your dresser's face when you keep saying
you'll refinish it but you don't

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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Heehee. Like I said.

Insurance Adjustor:  "Yep.  I'd say that door is pretty well shot."  

Heh.  Yeah, I kinda knew that.  The whole door needs to be replaced, though thankfully the tracks are fine.   I should get an estimate sometime this week;  then I can start shopping around for overhead door companies - and probably also paints, just in case whomever replaces my door can't match the color exactly.

I had a dream about it, the morning the guy came out to scope out the damage.  In my dream, the guy was fantastic - a tall, flamboyant, lovely gay man, built like a wrestler and bedecked in all sorts of crystal jewelry, and pink Elton John sunglasses.  Except he got to work right away, instead of providing an estimate:  he started building a new door from all the scrap lumber in my garage, and messed up all my tools, and accidentally let my cats out and they got lost, and he built this GORGEOUS door but the HOA hated it and I got fined, and so on.  GACK.  Stress dreams are so annoying.

Is it silly that I'm excited about getting a new garage door that will look and function exactly like the old one?  Hehe.


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@~!#%$%^@E%&@$%^%@#$%&*& !!!!!

So that happened.  

At least I got all my landscaping done. 

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Fail.

This past week, I've been focusing my attention on knocking out some little things that I've had looming on my to-do list for a long time.  Simple, quick, easy, small projects - like swapping out cabinet knobs, spray-painting some doorknobs, cleaning up the weird clutter that keeps accumulating on my fireplace hearth for some reason, getting some "landing strip" areas of the house re-organized and cleaned up;  stuff like that.  The desk lamp that I posted about the other day was one of them, too.

I also tried a few ideas that I've had that didn't work out.  I thought I'd share them with you, because some of them are funny:

This lady painted some chairs with Rit dye!  I can do that!

KaraPaslayDesigns.blogspot.com

I tried it on the big green wing chair that I brought home a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't have Rit dye, but I had a ton of India Ink lying around from my calligraphy studies.  I've actually used it on fabric before, so I knew that it would stay put, not run or fade, nor rub off on my clothes when I sat in the chair.  I decided to try it in a tiny area on the back of the seat cushion where it wouldn't show, and I'm really glad I did.

Apparently the stain-treating chemicals in the chair are really good at their job.  The ink didn't soak in, it just dried on the surface of the chair, into this gross, crusty mess that blackened my fingers the second I touched it to see how it was coming.  FAIL.

*

Several months ago, Kress' mom left us some of those plug-in air fresheners with the oil bottle that you pop in, that fill up the house with this nasty, cloying, putridly-sweet, disgusting fucking smell that gives me migraines and makes me sick to my stomach.  She loves them, and it was sweet of her to buy them for us, but, um, EW NO.   I saw this on Pinterest:

Essentially, you take the air freshener apart and refill the bulb with your own blend of essential oils.  Not one to waste anything, I tried it.  And I really should have tried it with gloves on, by the way, because after scrubbing my hands with soap, dish soap, vinegar, orange cleaner, and finally BLEACH, the residual smell on my hands is STILL making me sick as I sit here typing this.  *barf*

Needless to say, it didn't work.  Maybe it works with some other types of air fresheners,  but on the kind that I had, the wicks broke while I wast trying to get them back into the bulbs, so the whole thing was just a waste of time, effort, and expensive essential oils.  FAIL.

*

Here's another one from Pinterest, although I originally got the idea from a friend who did this and had great luck with it:

That's right, bubble wrap window insulation.  My bedroom gets HOT in the Summers, y'all, and not in that fun way.  The idea here is that the air in the bubble wrap insulates the windows and keeps some of the heat from coming through, without blocking light.  It's not terribly attractive, but behind curtains?  No big deal.  The cool part is (wa waaaa get it) that it works - I've seen it in action, and I know it works.

I, however, didn't have any bubble wrap, and that crap's expensive.  What I did have was leftover foam underlayment from back when I put new flooring into the craft room and guest room.   It's light and clear, and should do the same job, right?  I never got to find out, unfortunately:  when I went to put it up on my bedroom windows I realized something I'd forgotten.  There are big, red manufacturer's logos stamped all over the damned things.  The foam itself wouldn't have shown behind the white sheers in the bedroom, but the logo sure would have.  FAIL.

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Tomorrow's another day, though, and I have lots more small things to catch up on. For the moment, I'm going to go saw my hands off now, because the bleach (or the devil air freshener oils!) is making my hands peel and burn.

In the meantime, everyone have a safe, happy Memorial Day...and remember to stop and say "thank you."

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Nailed It: Adventures In Surface Tension

One of the blogs I read is Pintester (dot com), by Sonja Foust, who is rapidly becoming my hero.  ine.     I ADORE her posts, her videos, and her series of "Cocknails" where she drinks and fucks up manicures.  She's hilarious, and my kinda gal.

So the other night, sitting in my living room with a glass of rum in one hand and no nail polish on either hand, I thought, "Hey!  WWSD?"  So I set about testing out this whole marbled fingernail polish thing.

The first attempt came out better than the second, which we'll get to in a minute.  The first time, I didn't feel like messing around with glasses of water and what-not, so I just drooled some random nail polish on my fingernails and scootched it around with a toothpick.  It's messy, and it didn't come out at all looking like I know what I'm doing, but it wasn't that bad - I think if I practice this, I can get the hang of it:

Pinky and pointer are done with blue and pale lavender.
My thumb and Driving Finger are also mixed with pink, which came out looking like vomit. 

The next night, I thought, "I got this".  About 3/4 of the way through another glass of rum, I might add.  This time I got down with the water marbling.  Afterwards, I consoled myself by paging through pages and pages of "nail fails" on Pinterest, laughing at both those poor bastards, and also at myself.

Because, I mean, SERIOUSLY:

colors are Blush and Bashful  white and Fuck Me Red

That is disgusting.  After the first few minutes of staring amazedly into my glass of water and watching the effects of the water on the nail polish and vice versa, and playing with the way the colors interact with each other, I threw all my supplies out and started again - this time I put it on my nails, and the result, well, look at the picture.

Nail polish in water looks, at first, like it dissolves, but actually, it spreads out into a very thin skin on top of the water.  The idea is to dip your finger into this skin, and it adheres to your nail (and everything else that goes into the water, by the way.  The how-tos on Pinterest all say to protect the skin with Vaseline;  I didn't have any of that, and I can report that Neosporin kinda works, but not really).

Let it sit a second longer than necessary, and the entire nail polish skin on top of the water's surface comes off at once and wraps itself around ALL of your fingers, your glass, your coffee table, pants, you name it.  And it's slimy.   My index finger is the only one that looks marbled at all; and all of them have teeny bubbles and cracks and wrinkles in the finish; and all of them just look like I put stickers over my fingernails. Oh, and?  This crap got UNDER my fingernails as well.  What a gross feeling.

This "manicure" is still *on me* as I write this, so, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get rid of this hideosity and paint my nails BLACK in protest.

Don't try this shit at home, kids.

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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. 

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.

Ways In Which My House Is Pissing Me Off

A couple of years ago when the dishwasher quit, I didn't mind so much.  I prefer to do the dishes by hand anyway, and have basically been using my dishwasher as a giant drying rack.  (And fantasizing about removing it entirely and putting in an extra cabinet the dishwasher hole).

When when my new puppy chewed up what was left of the baseboards in the dining room - why the dining room, anyway? Shelly did the same thing! - I just gave them a new coat of paint to minimize the visual effect, and left it for some magical Someday when I can afford to replace them (preferably a Someday when I'm replacing the dining room and kitchen floor anyway and can do it all at the same time).

• But then the diverter in the shower in the master bath started sticking, and now my water pressure's all screwed up in there because the diverter valve won't close all the way.  
• And there's a cracked tile in the kitchen all of a sudden. 
• And the brand-new, piece-of-shit Ikea flooring in the craft room?  Is peeling and chipping.  After three months!  AUGH!  
• And the garbage disposal seals are shot and it's leaking water  - and corrosion, for apparently it's been f*d up for a while and I didn't notice - down through the motor and out the bottom of the unit
• And there are *three* cracked tiles in the master bathroom that just appeared in the past three days.  
• And I'm pretty sure the thermostat on the hot water heater is on the fritz - it's scalding people at random, even when the knob in the shower is set to cold!  The fu..?

WHAT IS GOING ON, HOUSE?!  All of a sudden!  All the last month!   And I really can't afford to do anything about any of it, right now.  This is how people end up living in totally trashed out houses.  :( 

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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.

Fail! Score! And Week Ahead...

The good news is, my A/C isn't broken.  The FAIL! news is that it shut down this weekend because the filters were so clogged that it quit and froze over!  I cannot believe I let that happen.  I have the washable filters, so I didn't even have to replace anything, just take them down, hose them off on the back porch, and dry them in the sun.  Fail, fail, fail!  Thankfully, everything's up and running again; and I'm going to flush the condenser drain this week for good measure, too.  Jeez.

I found some awesome fabric yesterday on clearance! And I'm not going to tell you about it!  :D  Actually, I'm going to move all the costume crap over to its own blog this week, and keep this one to house-y stuff and garden-y stuff.  I'll link the new blog once it's up.

Coming up this week:

1. gardening! 
2. shelves! 
3. living room artwork!
4. curtains! 

Stay tuned...

for Racu  :)

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Kitchen Pantry Before & ...just before, actually.

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP

Pantry organization:  I do not has it. 

• time to cull the mate-less plasticware
• all that food USED TO BE in some kind of order that made sense! 
• found an interesting pic in a BHG circular last week that gave me an idea...

More to come.


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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:)


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Rolling Tool Cart, Here We Come...?

News on the file cart/tool cart:  I emailed the used furniture company where my workplace got the file cart;  if I bring it by over the weekend they may have a key that fits the lock.  If not, there's a locksmith down the street that can make a key for it (the hardware store down the street from my house can do the same thing, and probably cheaper).

Here's hoping.

WAIT!!!!

Omg, it was IN MY PURSE the whole time!

>:O

I suddenly remembered that there was a hole in one of the pockets, and thought that maybe the key slipped through and was actually *inside* my purse - so I took everything out of it, and there it was, tangled up in the little blanket-thingie I use to clean my glasses (though apparently not very often).


I put it *on my key ring* so I wouldn't lose track of it again.  D'oh!

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Furniture Refinish FAIL!

Remember this?

One-third of the solution for this?

Mmm...maybe not.  Too short!  I'd thought it was the right height, but I guess I measured wrong.  I have no idea what happened there.

Not that it's a huge deal.  My backup plan was to paint it red and use it in my workshop as a little rolling tool-cart, like a slightly-less-cool-but-just-as-cute version of these things:

And I got all set up to prime it last night, too, until I realized that the top drawer of the thing is locked...and that I've lost the key for it.  AUGH!!!!  I remember, when I was moving it out of my office, that I locked it and then put the key "in a safe place" so that I wouldn't lose it.  Now I just have to remember where that might be.  

*facepalm*


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Hallo-week 3: Watch Your Step

Visitors and guests walked through my front door, about which I posted yesterday, to this:

 Bloody footprints tracked all over the house from front to back, and all through the living room and kitchen.  Don't worry, it's just acrylic craft paint in water - it should clean right up.  I hope.

Creepy?  Hell yes.  But, as it turns out, a little too creepy for some people.  In my enthusiasm for the holiday, I forgot that some people are genuinely *freaked out* by the sight of blood, especially lots of it, and this little Halloween trick ended up looking a bit too real for some of my friends.  (To whom I sincerely apologize.  :(

The scene in the refrigerator went over a little better than the floors did - most people thought it was cute and inventive.  The packages of "meat" (plastic food storage containers wrapped in painted paper) and hospital bags of candy "blood"...although the "blood" dripped on the shelves in the fridge? Not so much.

Not that you'd know it from some of the pictures of my sewing room that I've posted in the past, but I am a bit of a neat-freak (to those of you who just guffawed at that, I say :P   ).   The "blood" on the floors even creeped ME out all night long, not because it was "blood" (I'm okay with blood, even the real stuff), but because it wasn't CLEAN!  HORROR!   And apparently I wasn't the only one.

On the plus side, the stuff did clean up nearly as easily as I thought it would:  it wasn't easy enough to just mop, I did end up on my hands and knees sponging off the floors, but it wasn't a huge undertaking.  Although, on the tile in the kitchen and entryway I discovered that I hadn't been as careful with the footprints as I thought, and some of my grout is stained and now will have to be bleached and re-sealed.  ARGH.

So, nifty, spooky, creepy Halloween idea?  Yes.  Doing this ever again?  Hell no.  


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Craigslist Lingo Primer

Orig. posted on my private online journal today (public version avail. here), and was encouraged by friends to post it here.  Hope you enjoyed it :)



1.  Grammar/spelling optional.
2.  Understanding of actual furniture history/style trends optional.  Gross misunderstanding of same preferred.


Quaint:  Small.  Old, or so ugly and/or beat-up as to look that way.

Great (also Beautiful, Fantastic, Awesome, etc.):  FUGLY.

Pet-free/smoke free home:  I'm better than you. 

Vintage:  old and beat-up;  usually acquired via either pity hand-me-down or dumpster diving.

Detailed description of how YOU! might use the item: item is a piece of crap and requires a sales pitch.

Unique:  WTF.  (also often indicates item is handcrafted (see below) or "art"). 

Disclosure of how much seller originally paid for item:  failure to understand concept behind Craigslist and/or target market motivation.

Elegant:  nursing home/gynecologist's office salvage.

Funky:  see "unique"

Second item included for free:  oh please god get this nasty crap out of my house.

In great/good/excellent condition:   + "...for it's age/abuse endured."

Shabby Chic:  fucked up white paint job

OBO (or best offer):  see "second item included"
LISTING TITLE IN  ALL CAPS:  maybe someone will buy it this time.

Item is a hospital bed or other hospital equipment:  someone died in it recently.

Handcrafted:  1.  built incorrectly by an amateur carpenter   2.  see "great"

Emphasis on color of item (e.g. "BLUE!!! chair"):  this is the only thing the item has going for it.

Must sell soon/now/etc.:   1.  seller is moving out of state and is completely disorganized/unprepared     2.  see "second item"

Antique:  1.  Mass-produced cheap crap from the 60s    2. purchased at World Market 2 years ago

Rant against a seller disguised as item listing:   troll

Only, reduced price, etc.: seller is asking twice what the item is actually worth and doesn't understand why it hasn't sold yet.

Still/new in box:  2oz of cardboard and plastic is worth three times the value of the actual item being sold.

~*~!!!!!{{{{OMG}}}}*** etc.:  seller has not has his/her meds today.






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Pushing Furniture + Time Travel + Unmentionables

I'm writing this last night (woo, time travel).  That piece of information will come in handy in a minute, I promise.

I got all of the shelves moved tonight! I emptied and removed two from the sewing room, and brought in two others from the garage that I'd painted black to coordinate, then loaded them up:

 "organization"

Um...yeah, I know this looks like ass.  It's not an "after" photo so much as a "during" photo - miles to go.  I need to go through the boxes and throw at least half the stuff in them away, and get nice storage containers that match and coordinate with the room.  But at least my sewing table no longer looks like this:

no, it's not always like this.  only tonight while I was moving furniture around

One of the shelves I removed from the sewing room became a "dresser" for my closet (after shoving the stupid step-shelf out to the garage).  Shelving unit + baskets =  dresser, right?

WRONG. 

I mean, the shelf works great in there, but the baskets I had are totally the wrong size for it, so now I have to get more/different storage-container-type things (baskets? trays? take off and nuke the site from orbit?)

Also - this is where the time travel things comes in - it's 9pm, I haven't eaten since 1:00, and I just spent three hours pushing shelves around my house, and I'm freakin' tired.  So tired, in fact, that I took a scadzillion photos of my closet all of which ended up containing (a) a tube of deodorant, (b) a pair of boots so dusty that they look twenty years old, and (c) open baskets full of panties.

Oops.  :)

So instead of posting those pictures, you get this:

Is that a curtain bracket  that has no mate and is too big for the type of curtain rods I like to hang?  No!  It's a BELT RACK!

I'll post "real" pictures of the closet once I figure out the basket-y business in there, whenever that happens.  At least I have the shelf in there - that stupid step shelf has been driving me NUTS.

 Ikea from a million years ago

See?  NUTS!  I mean, it's cool and everything, but it fits nowhere and holds nothing and goes with none of my stuff, ever.   I just can't let it go, though. What can I say, I like it. But it's in the garage now, where it can at least keep some things off the floor no matter how weird a shape it is.

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Some Days It Just Doesn't Pay To Chew Through the Restraints

I had all these grand designs last night concerning my laundry room - I was going to clean it up! I was going to paint it!  I was going to take down and re-hang the shelves!  I was going to fill holes, and move dusters and clothes-drying rods, and ---

...and then I started assembling my materials, and realized I had no roller covers!  UGH.  The whole project, the whole room, centers around a new coat of paint on the walls and shelves.  I couldn't even begin.  No problem, I thought, I'll just start on the craft room, and do what I can right now.  I managed to spray-paint a shelf black as I'd planned, but I used up my last two cans of black spray paint and couldn't finish the second one.  And again - everything else centered around painting with roller covers I don't have.  (And contact paper I don't have, and stencil tape I don't have, and...).

So, guess what I'm doing on the way home tonight?  LOL.

I don't know if I'll have time to do the entire laundry room.  First, I have to replace a ballast in the light fixture in my kitchen light.  It's been out forever, and I've never gotten around to fixing it (and you'd think I would, as handy as I am, and considering that I brought *lamps* into the kitchen to cook by, but noooo).  So:

• kitchen light ballast
• dinner
• laundry room! 

Here's hoping tonight's plans go better than last night's!  :)

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