The To-Do Barrel

Since finishing the shelfy nook in the living room, I haven't done much around the house.  Truth be told, I have SO much to do that I'm not even sure what to do next.  My to-do list feels less like a list than it does a giant barrel full of tasks that I have to jump into in order to pick one.  And there are sharks in it. And piranhas. And bears. There are definitely bears in there, you guys.

However, the weather's been absolutely amazing, and Spring seems to be springing several weeks early this year.  So over the weekend I turned my back on my barrel of tasks and turned the unused garden beds in the front yard into actual gardens.  Wanna see? Click here. 

But what's next inside the house?  I basically just need to pick a room:

The Back Room
The 2-car garage this house was built with was turned into an enclosed room and a 1-car garage many, many years ago. The resulting room was home to children, roommates, couch-surfing friends, and, eventually, a semi-feral cat with no respect for the litter box, and just mounds and mounds of trash, full of mice and bugs and mold. BLEH. This room is currently the worst part about this house - but hey, fixer-upper, right?

This room needs cleaning, flooring replacement, repairs to the closet doors, repairs to the room door and trim, replacement of an electrical outlet and all the face plates on outlets and switches, repairs to the walls, prime & paint on all the walls, the ceiling, and the trim molding.  Fun! 

This room is high on the priority list because next week is Bulk Trash Pickup - I can get the last bits of junk out of here, and get the carpet out of the house.  Since it's going to be emptied anyway, I might as well get to renovating it. 



The Master Bathroom
This room is also high on the list, because we use it so often. There's a big walk-in shower with a bench and several sprays, which makes it the preferred human-washing space (and I also use it to wash the dogs).

It needs repairs to the grout and tile in the shower enclosure, repairs to the walls, prime and paint on all the walls, trim molding, doors, and ceiling, and the pendant lights over the vanity need to be seated correctly (they're loose at the ceiling).  Also, there are two walk-in closets in the bathroom, and neither one has a door.


The Craft Room
A.ka. master bedroom, turned into a joint craft space like we did in the old house.  Everything in here works pretty well, except the wall color, which is crime-scene red. It needs primer and paint, and the baseboards need to be finished the way I did in the living room (caulking in the nail holes, joints, and seam against the wall, and then painted), as well as paint on the trim molding and windowsills, new blinds, and curtains for the sliding glass doors that open out onto the back patio.


The Kitchen
I pretty much have carte-blanche to fix things and decorate/paint however I want in this house, but the kitchen cabinets are one of the few things my land-friend specifically asked me to do.  The cabinets themselves need to be stripped and painted, one cabinet door needs to be repaired, and they all need handles and/or knobs. 

Popcorn needs to be scraped off of the soffit above the upper cabinets, the walls and ceiling need to be painted, and all the baseboard molding needs to be finished out.  There's a ceiling fan in the breakfast nook that doesn't work - that'll need to be repaired or replaced, as well.  The light fixture in the room is a fluorescent fixture with a wooden frame and plastic "stained glass" decorative cover (1984, y'all. I actually kind of love it)  - the cover needs to be cleaned thoroughly, and 3 of the 4 fluorescent tubes are out and need to be replaced. The pendant light over the sink is loose at the ceiling, and needs to be seated properly.


And All the Rest
Specific rooms aside, pretty much all the rest of the baseboard trim in the house needs to be finished out, all the doors and door trim molding painted, kids' stickers removed from some doors and walls (my mother would have killed me for that!), and all the ceilings either dusted or just repainted.  Most of the electrical outlets in the house have paint on them, except for the few I've scraped clean while painting other rooms. 

*    *    *

Because of the timing with Bulk Day, I'll probably tackle the back room first - it makes sense to get started while it's empty, and get it done and out of the way.  I really don't want to. I like pretending that room doesn't exist.  On the upside, I do have a three-day weekend coming up, so I should have plenty of time to at least make a big dent in that room, if not finish it entirely. I'll let you all know how it goes. 

Speaking of Rugs...

So, I totally missed Bulk Item pickup last week.  Totally forgot about it.  I managed to throw my old kitchen sink out to the curb before the trucks started passing through, but that's about it.

But then, on the way home from work that day, I passed a pile that hadn't been there before, and on top of it was this:

DON'T JUDGE ME.  I know this whole picture looks like grandma's house.  The chair and the chaise are soon to be reupholstered in fabric FAR less grannyrific.  Just hang in there.

Look at the RUG.  That's a free, 9x11" area rug.  It's a cheap rug.  It's a thin rug.  But overall it's in great shape.  I don't know why someone chucked it to the curb, except that maybe they just got a new one, but it's perfect for my big living room, and looks fantastic.  (The Surya rug that I won last year is now in my guest room; and I'll be talking about that more later this week).  It needed some serious vacuuming, and I used the shampoo-er/steamer on this rug, too, and now it's fantastic-looking.

It's also a bit more wine-colored than it looks in the picture, which is kinda BRIGHT RED.

But anyway - yay!

So, more on the guest room, and about some more free furniture later this week!


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New Life For That POS Footstool

You know the one.  Just a quick refresher:

It took way more than a coat of paint and a new top (see previous post) , but, well, here's the after:

Tada!   Blurry photo, sorry.  I'm not using the damn phone camera anymore, I apologize for all the crappy pics.

It's repaired.  It's black.  It has a bigger (and structurally sound) top.

And it's covered in music!  :D  (Can you guess which room it's going into?)

This is all sheet music from my musical exploits in the SCA.  So, it's Medieval stuff, mostly canonical, with a couple of popular love songs of the day (various days);  and where there are visible lyrics, they're in Italian and French.  Because: nerd.  

Plain ol' decoupage, nothing fancy.  Homemade medium (craft glue +  water, sealed with polyurethane).

via

And la piece de resistance?  Well,  I was thinking something like this, but for storage of music books and small musical instruments, instead of plants.


What ended up happening was more of a "fishtank on a table with junk in it."

...yeah.

It just needs some cool decoration.  And a more organized method of music storage than "just dump it all in there for now."

Update soon. :)














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Stuff N Thing, Part Troix

Before:  

*DRUMROLLLLLLL*

After:  

Coffee table.


The story is, and you got some of it a while back, that my existing coffee table, though lovely, and dear to my heart, was just too large for the current living room arrangement, and the furniture therein.  I plan to keep it, though I don't know yet what I'll do with it - probably just store it until someday when my living room expands again, or something.

Meanwhile, between an old trunk which became a shelf, (and then another shelf), a bulk-trash-day side table find, and a whole bunch of spray paint, a new, smaller coffee table was born.

the new table receives a cat scan

The dog loves it.  Her favorite spot in the house was under the coffee table, and I was worried that the new one would be too short for her to get beneath, but it works great for her.  Hee.

Truth:  it IS a bit small for the couch, LOL.  But honestly, functionally, it's *exactly* the right size.  And it's pretty.  And it looks awesome with the wing chair and the little gold side table between it and the couch.  Even though it makes the couch look enormous, I really love my new wee coffee table.  (And to be honest, the couch doesn't look so large without a bunch of old blankets draped over it.  Hopefully there's slipcover news in the near future).

I really  should think up a tag/label for "furniture that's been cobbled together from parts cannibalized from parts of other stuff."  But shorter.

Aside:  No shit, a friend of an ex, years ago, was the WORST at mis-using words.  One night while the boys were gaming, I overheard him describing a pirate ship that had been "galvanized" from parts of other ships, and I just could NOT keep from bursting out laughing.  I was dying laughing, and yes, I had to explain why - and then I had to explain what "galvanized" and "cannibalized" meant, and he didn't believe me,  and he was SO MAD.  Shitforbrains. 

"Let's Re-do That Footstool Tonight!" I said.

I actually got quite a number of little, piddly things done last night.  I re-aligned the strikeplate for the deadbolt on my back door, which was making it really hard (and frustrating!) to lock the door.  I cleaned up the kitchen, and re-organized a couple of the cabinets to make a new place to put my pots and pans (well, pot and pan. I'm not a huge cook).  I tightened the bolts on all my dining room chairs, since a couple of them had legs that were getting loose.  I took my liquid-sander to the pieces of that little side table I told you about the other day.

Then I decided to tackle that little footstool - the one I picked up at the same time as that side table.  I got the thing entirely torn down before I remembered that

1. I no longer have a staple gun, because my other one was such a piece of shit that I threw it away the last time I used it, promising myself I'd get a new one soon.  *crickets* 
2. My spray paint stock is woefully depleted - I'm down to like two drops of a turquoise that's way too bright, a couple of silvers, and a really gross, poopy brown color that I don't even remember buying

Yeah, there's no refinishing the wood on this thing.  And I can't finish the project without spray paint and a new staple gun, but at least it's torn down and ready to re-boot.  In the meantime, let's talk about what a galloping piece of shit this footstool turned out to be: 

Clockwise from top left: 

1. First of all, the sides are laminate.  Crappy laminate.  Peeling, cracking laminate.  Sigh.  
2. And the laminate isn't even the same *color* as the stained wooden legs.  What?!?
3. It's not even MDF underneath.  It's pressboard.  UGH. 
4. The piece de résistance: one of the legs once split, and was "repaired" really, really badly.  Basically someone just squirted glue all over it and hoped for the best.  The leg was stuck to the frame, and some of the scrim cloth from the bottom of the upholstered top was glued to the wood.  This glue job will hold, but it'll never hold weight.  There goes the idea of this being my new piano stool. 

Then there's the seat itself.  First of all, under the wood was a bunch of crap and leaves and shit.  Spiderwebs, dead bugs...this thing must've been in a garage or storeroom for a looooong time.  

The scrim covering the bottom of the seat was glued in place all the way around - I had to rip the thing to shreds to get it off, and to get at the staples underneath. 

Speaking of staples...was this really necessary?!  Every corner was like this.  Most of the staples aren't even IN the fabric.  

HAHA FUCKERS. 

Was it the busted leg, or this nastiness, that made the previous owner chuck this damned thing?  This is GROSS.  The foam and fabric aren't just dirty - this is MOLD.  EWWWW FUCKING EW.  Into the garbage with both pieces.  

But wait! 

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! What the crap!?  This is three pieces of...scrap!...glued to a thin piece of luan to form the base board of the seat.  The largest piece has a hold milled out of it - it looks like a piece left over from building an Ikea piece the wrong way.  The other bit is a drawer front, I'm pretty sure.  The dark strip along the end - I have no idea WHAT that thing is, but the wood-tone on it is a strip of corrugated plastic with a laminate wood-grain backing.  Seriously, what the hell.  

So, I have three options: 

1. Replace the foam and fabric, paint the frame and legs, and make a new footstool out of this. 
2. Paint the frame and legs, create a new top for it with no upholstery, and maybe use it as a very small table somewhere, probably out on the back porch.
3. Chuck all the pieces and call it an exercise in whatever the reverse of "don't judge a book by its cover" is. 

LOL.  Wow. 

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Table Time

This is my living room coffee table:

This is my living room coffee table on drugs:

I adore it, don't get me wrong.  In fact, though it was covered in nicks and scratches, I spent about two hours the other day scrubbing the top, running a thin sheen of stain over it to cover up the marks, and then oiling it to a nice, slick shine again.  This table's not going anywhere.

But it IS too large for the seating area in my living room right now.  I'm not sure what I'll do with it next, but it's got to come out.  I'm ready for something new.

If you've been following long, you might remember the trunk table that I turned into a small shelving unit for my printer and computer supplies.  I kept the doors that I removed from the top, thinking I might use them for something one day.

So I had an idea the other day.  I took apart that two-tiered side table I found last bulk day...

That was easy.  The legs unscrew, too, so this thing will be really easy to refinish, when I get to that stage.  First the top, though.  I had thought about a round top, like this:

Pinterest, via Helt Enkelt

But then I thought, what about those door pieces from the old trunk table?

Not sure.  Two of them will make a top exactly the right size to be useful but not [as] prone to clutter, without being too large for the base.  (All three is definitely right out).  The original top is too small.  I don't have a sheet of plywood large enough to cut out a circle...but maybe if I put the three trunk doors together and then cut a circle...Hm.  Just not sure yet. 

I'll be at an SCA event tomorrow; I'll work on this some more Sunday.  Ta! 

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Stuff!

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a while. Blah blah sick blah blah blah bipolar blah blah crashburnsisboombah.  Anyway.

I did something REALLY cool on the 5th, though.  A friend of mine had her bachelorette party at a place called Painting With A Twist, which is one of those studio art classes places.  We noshed on veggies and cheese and cookies, drank wine and punch, and all painted a cute little picture of fireflies in a jar along with the instructor.

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN YOU GUYS.

At the end of the class, we all took a big class photo of us holding our paintings, and then there was a raffle in which the winner (randomly drawn name) got to pick a finished piece of a showcase wall of paintings done by the instructor.  Guess who won!  ME!

Instructor's piece on the left (Austin Skyline and town lake, Van Gogh-ish-ly;  my firefly painting on the right.  Hee! 

Also, I have an update for you on those bulk day pieces from the other week...um, sort of.  Actual photos of them instead of pictures from the internet that are kinda close.

the footstool thing

Trio of 2x4' sheet mirrors!  SO EXCITED. 

Grubby little side table
(see also: put away your extension
cords damnit;  flat bike tire) 

☼  
The little side table, I'm thinking, is going to become TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME.  You know, once I get a spare five minutes to freaking work on it, which I haven't had lately.

☼
The mirrors are going into the master bath as I mentioned in the previous entry;  but that's going to be the end of a cascading set of projects:

• fix up a light fixture and install it in the guest bath
• move old guest bath fixture to master bath
• repaint the room
• hang the mirrors

☼
I have NO clue what I'm going to do with the footstool.  I mean, aside from refinish the wood and replace the upholstery.  I mean, what'll it be FOR?  It's tall enough to be a piano stool, I think.  I dunno yet.

☼
The secret project in this entry is what the footstool is propped on/in in above:  it's a counter-height kitchen cabinet, about 24" square, with drawer and door, and single shelf inside.  It's going to be the end piece of my new garage worktable, once I get off my !#@% and build the goddamned thing.

Stay tuned!


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HOLY CURB-CHECK, BATMAN!

Last night I swung by the home of a friend of mine to borrow some cash for dog food, because I completely fail at life and am increasingly broke all the time.  I managed to get there far too early (one of the few times "good" traffic wasn't actually working in my favor), and so, seeing that some people in the neighborhood had their bulk items out on the curb for pickup, I decided to take a spin around the area to see what I could see.

Holy. Crap. Did I score big.  I picked up a hideous little 70s double-decker nightstand/side table, kinda like this one:

(images via google search.)

It's not exactly this style; but the overall construction is the same.  And the construction is sound; it's just the finish that's peeling and chipped and...is that a burn mark?

o_0

I have a very cool idea for this thing.






I also found a cute little footstool that needs kind of a lot of help, but it'll be worth it:

  (no actual furniture was photographed
during the making of this post)

Basically exactly like this, except for, again, a peeling and cracked lacquer finish, wobbly legs and frame (just needs all the bolts tightened), and the fact that the top cushion needs to be completely stripped and replaced, as it's damp and moldy and EW.  May need to clean up the wood inside, too, or replace it.











Last but not least, and this is the part that blows me away:  I stopped to scope out a big comfy-looking chair at one point, and I very nearly got it.  It was pushing the edge of my willingness to repair and clean upholstered furniture, especially since I STILL haven't covered the big, white, free couch (although I did buy a new blanket to cover it with, so it looks intentional now).  It wasn't bad, and overall it was in great shape, structurally speaking, but with enough dirt, and minor dings and rips (I'm assuming that a herd of small wrestlers, or possibly ninjas, live at this house), that was I waffling over lifting it into the truck by myself, which was going to be no easy feat, lemmetellya.  Sumbitch was heavy.

I stood, hands on hips, weighing the merits of this chair, and trying to imagine, realistically, how long it would sit in my garage before I did anything about it, when I spied something I'd missed.  While I'd seen the enormous and dilapidated headboard standing next to the chair, I hadn't seen what was propped up behind it, out of sight of the road:

Three huge mirrors.  Three.  2x4', every one of them without a single chip or scratch.  WHO THROWS AWAY GIANT AWESOME MIRRORS?!  Jesus, people!  Yeah.  Screw the chair.  The mirrors went into my truck along with the footstool and side table, and away I went.  I saw my friend, I went home and fed my animals and put the evening's booty in the garage, and have been wondering what to DO with those mirrors ever since.

And then it hit me.

(yes, I measured)

I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED A PAIR OF TALL MIRRORS FOR MY MASTER BATH VANITY!!!! 

I'm also pretty sure the third mirror of the trio is going to go into my sewing room, to replace the wimpy 12x45" door mirror I've been using to aid in my costumery.  Pish.  

ERMAHGERD MERERRS.  

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This Is a DUMB Chair.

I didn't even think this fabric pattern, and those like it, was cool when it was new and supposedly "hip" and "contemporary."  Gag-nacious.

The cats started fighting over it the second it was in the house. 

But, it was free!  Tomorrow's bulk pickup in my neighborhood, and I scored this hideous thing a few blocks over.  The fabric is narsty-looking, but it's clean, and comfortable, and in great shape, aside from a bit of cat damage on the front corners.

And it's a fabulous shape.  That's why I grabbed it.  It's just a little club chair, and while I haven't yet decided if it'll remain in the bedroom, where I stashed it for now, or if it'll eventually live in the living room, but one thing's for sure:  this is SO getting reupholstered. As soon as possible.

Yay!

This is what I see when I look at this chair:

overstock.com

Or something more like this:

countryliving.com 

To be continued...

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