A Completed Hovercraft

Well, it took a little over 3 weeks, but the aforementioned indoor construction site is now a bathroom again,  complete with functional, brand-new shower.  You saw the gaping hole and wall innards;  here's what the new shower looks like:

I know, I know, you know what a shower looks like.  But seriously.

More blue stuff, yay!

This is the smallest bathroom I've had since like 2003.  It's plenty big enough to move around in; but it's kind of a bitch to photograph.

They left the cute little tile fixtures, yay!  I have to say, I wasn't all that excited about the sort of pale-sand-colored wall tile at first, but the more I live with it, the more I kind of love it.

What's Next? 

The living room, which means that the garage is actually next.  When we moved in, everybody just threw things into the garage at random, so the whole space is clogged, and there's no room to set up my little workshop yet.   There are a couple of boxes of things in the living room that need to go into the garage, but there's nowhere to put them. And there are a couple of pieces of furniture in the living room that need to be repaired and/or altered, but, again, no workshop yet. 

I know what I'll be doing this entire upcoming three-day weekend. 

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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Things I Did Over the Holiday Break, Part II

I finally, FINALLY built that extra project bench in the garage I've been talking about for months!!! 

I know, I know - it doesn't look like much.  In fact, it looks like half a table humping a kitchen furniture.  Which is probably because that's kinda what it is.  I was going to strip all the wood and stain it, or paint it - and you know, I finally realized I didn't care.  It's a shop bench, dude.  It's going to get f'd up.  

Things That Have Been Cobbled Together To Make A New Thing: 

(because they're still on the garage floor, but now they're only taking up ONE spot, and serve a purpose) 

• counter-height, unfinished kitchen cabinet piece, donated*  by a friend
• two boards, both alike in dignity 2x12"x6', which have served me many a purpose over the years
• Two steel table legs, harvested from my old project bench (which you may remember) 
• Two heavy-duty plastic bed risers

* "donated" = "Come get this or I'm throwing it away."

Okay, so, don't laugh about the bed risers.  They're totally sturdy.  I've used them for years, for various purposes (okay, mostly for making things taller, but, all sorts of things!)  They make the steel legs exactly the same height as the cabinet, so the whole thing is very stable.  I did put non-slip padding in between the risers and the legs, to make sure they wouldn't wobble around if the workbench got bumped or shoved.  And finally, the big, dirty, messy table in the background? That's my WORK table.  This one is just for sitting at, working on small stuff, like putting together lamps and things.  It won't be taking a lot of abuse. 

Ah, my faithful pair of boards.  They started life in a cinder block shelf on my balcony at an apartment complex, so that I could put MOAR PLANTS out there.  One of my favorite spiders started her life in a tiny, tiny web on that shelf, and grew until her webs were three feet across and she was taking down small planes all by herself.  Zippy was so cool.  The boards are strapped together underneath with some scrap lumber, on the open end; and screwed into the cabinet frame on the other end.  Sturdy stuff. 

Okay, so, I do actually plan to spruce this thing up.  I just got tired of waiting for myself to deal with the parts before assembling the thing, and tired of waiting for its assembly in order to finish some small stuff (like lamps!!) that I have waiting in the wings, lacking only a space on which to work.  I will be sanding down the top of the boards and re-sealing them, as well as sealing the cabinet.  I may change my mind and stain both, or paint both.  I have no idea, to be honest. 

Springy-sproingy drawer dividers FTW!  This is not actually what I'll be keeping in this drawer.  I have no clue what I'll keep in it.  This was random junk I grabbed from a nearby pile just to make the picture look better.  I posted this on Facebook, and my friend says, 

"I wanna see what comes of the tent stakes and Moroccan lamps." 

Me:  "Broken glass." 

Her: "No glowy wildebeests?"  

Zippy II

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Still In Lighting Mode

Not that this is a great photograph or anything, but here's that fluorescent fixture that used to be in the kitchen, now in the garage:

Seriously NOT a great photo.  But there it is, all huge and extremely bright.  I can see what I'm working on now!!!  And it's all the more apparent that no, I never finished priming the garage, because I ran out of primer, hehe (I have a ton now, though, so it's back on my list).



In Other Lighting News...

Guess what I found at the thrift store yesterday?

On the left is another ginger jar lamp, just like the pink one I picked up (also at a thrift store) a while back.  This one's blue, and, lacking any better ideas, I'm leaving it as is for a while.  I'll update when I get a shade situation worked out. :)

On the right is a lovely and brand-new silver/nickel finish pendant fixture that I picked up for NINE DOLLARS.  I am not even kidding.  As much as I actually love the silver, I plan to disassemble this, paint it black, and hang it on my front porch.  More on that as I work on it.  :D

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Reboot? Garage!

As often happens when I'm off of working on my house stuff for a while - this time it was a dislocated shoulder and then a bunch of SCA sewing - I come back and go, "Where was I again? Oh, wait, I know: LET'S REORGANIZE THE WHOLE GARAGE!"   So I did.  Yesterday.  All in one shot, in like seven hours.  Bit of help from a friend who was kind enough to come over and pitch in, to keep me from killing myself, hehe.



So, somehow I neglected to take proper Before pics of the first stage of the garage cleanup, so I give you a comprehensive "before" via Icovia Space Planner:

This is called "inexcusable."  You'd see why if I had an actual photo;  I'm not kidding about the crap all over the floor.  There was a bike out in the middle of nowhere, and a 25' extension ladder, piles of lumber all over the place.  All of that could have simply been cleaned up (just a case of setting stuff down at random instead of putting it away properly); but the major issue in the garage was that

• The camping gear (blue and green above), which consists of my own camping gear as well as all the community gear for my women's festival that I go to nearly every spring, was in one big mountain of stuff that was in my way, and constantly falling over onto my other stuff. 
• The wall of wooden shelves (#1 and 2 at the far left on the diagram) was great, but the way it was located meant that half of all my stuff was in this wall, and the other half was elsewhere in the garage.  There were tools here, but the rest of the tools were on the east (bottom) wall.  There was garden stuff here, even though the rest of the yard tools and garden stuff was up top (west) by the water filtration stuff.  

Since the festival stuff was out of the way for the weekend (it was last weekend; I didn't make it this year), I took the opportunity to do something about both of these issues, by unloading and moving all of the wall units, and re-organizing everything: 

Here's the larger of the two shelves moved from the north to the west wall. I hung my extension ladder above it - I rarely use it.  

Several months ago I primed the walls and ceiling in the garage, except for what was behind this shelving;  yesterday, I finished the priming while I was moving stuff 

That same shelf, re-loaded with (L-R) automotive and electrical stuff, as well as my aquarium junk; paint and stain; and gardening stuff.   The large garden tools hang on the wall to the right of the shelf, so now all of my gardening stuff is togerther! Yay! 

A really poor-quality after shot of the same corner and shelf, with a bit more of that north wall showing.  That's my camping gear all stacked up neatly under the electrical breaker box.  The big hole is where the festival gear will live once it comes home tonight. 

(Yeah...I worked from breakfast to sundown on this, so I had lost the light for the "after" pics, sorry).  

A "before" shot of the northeast corner of the garage:  the other wooden shelving unit where the camping gear is in the previous picture, with piles of crap all over the place, including the "shelving" on the east wall which is made up of stacks of smaller shelves, and boards and cinder blocks.  Sigh. 

Here's the same corner, with the wooden shelves moved and the camping gear stacked against the wall in its new spot.  Again, sorry for the picture quality.  

So, this is what it looks like now.  I still have some work to do in here:  there are still two stacks of lumber where there should be one; some of which I'd like to actually build something with (for once!) to get it out of the way.  The boards old board-and-cinder block shelving  is about to become a new work bench top to replace one that I have that's falling apart (not pictured; it sits perpendicularly to the "large work bench").  And, of course, I still have some mess on the floor to clean up.  

But half the garage is done, and in one day!   

Next up for the garage is to get the rest of the mess cleaned up, which means using up some materials on other projects in the house, and I'll post about those.  Some of that includes the new work bench I mentioned a moment ago.  Now that all the walls are primed in the garage, I need to figure out what color I actually want to paint the walls;  partly because the amount of old paint I hoard have is ridiculous, and I need to start using it up soon before it all starts going rotten.  Some of it will go on the garage walls, as well as my guest bathroom and hallway, the living room ceiling, and the kitchen cabinets.  

Eventually, we end up here.  

Stay tuned! 

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Garage Re-Org Proceeding Apace

The East and West walls have been flipped, as per the sketch I posted the other day.   The garden stuff, and the festival storage stack, have been moved to the West wall where the water filter stuff is;  and the entire workshop/woodshop has been moved to the East wall, which you can see here.

I improvised the shelving with some random junk I had in the garage:  four cinderblocks (from a balcony garden in an apartment a decade ago, some long 2" planks buried in the lumber stack, and a black shelf that I'd built for books a million years ago that had just been taking up space and collecting random @%^# in a corner of the garage.

The walls and ceiling have also been primed.  Yay!  All of this took me six full hours last weekend, but it's done.  Next step, please.

Although, I did discover a bit of a problem: the tape on the sheetrock on the ceiling in another corner of the garage was wet.  Not dripping - and I found no evidence of a drip anywhere underneath the spot - but it was wet enough that it diluted the paint around the tape.  And it hasn't rained heavily in like two weeks, so for it to still be wet, there had to have been standing water in the attic.

I have a roof leak.  

fuck. 

I guess it's not so bad when you think about it - the house is nearly nine years old at this point.  Stuff was bound to start happening eventually.

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Ambitious Much?

Ladies and germs, the garage as it exists in my imagination:

ooh, ahh. 

1.   More 2x4 shelves, like the ones I already have on the south wall (waaaay in the back there next to the door and weird rakebroom looking objects).   These shelves need to be a tiny bit deeper, as well as longer and taller, and with more space above and below, for large, bulky items.

2.  A fake-cabinet "slipcover" for the water filters and softener, to keep dust off.  Basically just an open-backed box to slide into place, with doors in front so I can access the control panels without having to move the box itself.

3.  Salvaged kitchen cabinets from somewhere?

4.  The tool bench (which is currently where #1 and 2 are in the sketch), underneath a

5.  Pegboard tool organizer!  OH YEAH.

6.  This would be the standing shelf that's in my bedroom closet right now, which I've had in the garage before, and it works great there.  As soon as I get off my a$z and hang the clothes bar and wall shelves in the closet that I've been meaning to put up, I can move the free-standing shelving unit back into the garage.

7.  The garden tool hanger rack, which is currently in the front of this same wall, where the toolbench needs to live.  This time I need to hang it higher, so I can hang extension cords underneath the shorter-handled tools.

8.  My bicycle, on one of those nifty pulley things that allow you to store your bike up out of the way, but still allows you to pull it down quickly and easily when you want it.

9.  The extension ladder deserves the same treatment.  In eight years, I've used it THREE times - and technically, *I* have only used it twice, and then I loaned it to my neighbor once, too.  But man, when you need an extension ladder, you need an extension ladder.  At the moment it's hung on the wall above my workbench, on some L-brackets.  I'd rather have it further up and out of the way.

10.  La piece de resistance:  a rolling island for the garage.  Extra work space!  Extra storage!  Easy to move around for various tasks, or out of the way for big projects!  :D  (Read: extra place to stack extraneous shit).

Hey, a girl can dream.

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Moving On

While I'm waiting for the next steps on the aquarium stand (which requires a payday and a shopping trip), I've started my next major project: cleaning and re-organizing the garage.

Yes, AGAIN.  Shut up. 

When last we met my garage, I posted this "goal" picture: 

(note the awesomeness)

And no, it never got there.  It mostly got there.  I did make my little rolling red tool cart out of the salvaged file cabinet I picked up from the office move: 

That was the last time my work tables were even visible under the mound of crap I tend to accumulate.  Case in point: 

Crap! Everywhere!  OMFG! 

Look, a floor!  The pile of sleeping bags from my camping trip will soon
be washed, rolled, and stored away where they belong, never you fear. 

And

Mid-way through: pots on the right organ-
ized; crap on the left not so much. 

Now everything's organized!  Same green boxes I scrounged
from the office,  and also used in the craft room. 

Keyword:  getting there.  

The plan is to get everything organized and purged, and then pull these shelves out, paint the walls and the shelves, put them back, build more shelves for another wall, swap the stuff on the other two walls so the water filter doesn't get sawdust in it anymore, and then...mess it all up again.  :D  J/k. 

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Last Post of 2010!

After the All Most-Of-It-Encompassing List of yesterday, I thought today I'd revisit my very favorite projects of 2010:


Living Room Paint Job
July

• love, love, love the color, and the way it sets off the dark wood tones and bright teals/turquoises
  

Meditation Corner
August

• pretty, soft, comfy, peaceful, dedicated space

Laundry Room Reno
September

• so tired and afterthought-y before! So fresh and pretty now!

before

after

Tool Cart
November

• damned useful!

 
Guitar Rack
December

• damned useful! 
• also displays attractive instruments instead of big banged-up cases, and brings a bit more of my "other" passion into the look of my house - how could there not be music here?  <3 

See you all on the flip-side!


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Before & After: Demo Sunday

You remember this guy, right?  The old computer desk? 

WHAM!!!

Now it's a pile of plywood.  Plus a pretty large section of front trim facing, which I haven't taken apart yet because I don't know if I want to save it or not - it's screwed together really well, and the screw heads are ALL stripped out, so I may just break it apart and throw it away to save my aching hands the extra hassle.

tools of destruction

I am now short one computer desk, but I have gained:

• a bunch of large, nice pieces of plywood to use for other things
• two sets of drawer sliders (one from the drawer and one from the keyboard tray)
• six small nail-in furniture feet
• 4 push-in shelf supports
• 8  2" screws and 6 tiny ones from the drawer sliders
• a ton of floorspace in the garage that is no longer taken up by a computer desk!
• a ton more floorspace, since while I was out there I broke down an enormous pile of cardboard boxes and stuffed it all into the recycling bin, which I'd been meaning to get around to doing for months
• an asthma attack from all the dust I kicked up  :( 

I have to say, I'm loving my little red tool cart - it was SO nice just having everything right in front of me, instead of having to walk across the entire room to go get a screwdriver or a pair of pliers.  I do still have some things hung on the wall on the other side of the room from my work area;  I keep saying I'm going to move that tool rack to the work area, but I haven't done it.  I'll go move it as soon as I can breathe again. 

As for plans for things to do with all this wood...who knows?  The possibilities are endless.  The first project is going to be turning that drawer into a medicine cabinet for the master bathroom:  I have hardware to hang it on the wall, small bits I can use for shelves, a small piece of plywood from the desk that would make a perfect door, a box of knobs to choose from, several small magnetic door catches I might use, and I think I may even still have a small set of hinges lying around somewhere.  To the Parts Cave!

Um...tomorrow. 


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Workshop Wildebeest: Red Tool Cart!

Before:

office file cart from work

Inspiration:

After:

aw   yeah!

• Office cart 
• Primer/leftover paint/clear-coat sealant
• Ikea's RATIONELL VARIERA cutlery tray 
• Tools! 

 My new red tool cart lives in my recently-cleaned and -reorganized garage/workshop (which I don't have pictures of, since I'm not finished re-organizing it).  

adjustment to the plan I posted the other day

Real Life has paint stains and crates of things I haven't sorted yet

Ta-da!  Yay!  The carboard box on the main work table, by the way, is my old "toolbox."  It even says so on the side.  I definitely needed the upgrade, wouldn't you say? Heh. 

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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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Weekend Plans: Garage/Workshop Cleanup!

I'm hoping to spend some of the weekend cleaning up my garage, which is a task that's been looming for several weeks now.  Every time I go out there to get something or put something away, I want to run back into the house without looking at anything.  Ugh.

This is my garage.  If you only look at the "furniture"  (shelving, work tables, etc.), it looks pretty spacious and organized; but, all the black fluffy stuff I drew on the picture represents JUNK all over the floor.  Yeah.  It's that dirty in there.   And most of it is old furniture, discarded projects, bits and pieces that I could throw out or sell on Craigslist that I never get around to doing. 

Like this thing, which started life as the skeleton of an aquarium cabinet I started to build four years ago but I never got around to finishing - I just piled stuff on top of it and inside of it.  Oops. 

And the kitchen rack thing I scavenged from work the other week, which is still disassembled and piled on the floor, instead of put together and being useful.  (But at least I did something with the top).


This is what I want the garage to look like:

See the awesomness?

It could look like this, if it wore Old Spice if I'd clean up, throw things out, sell some other things, prime and paint that little rolling cart and make a tool chest out of it (if I ever find the key or a way to pry the top drawer open), and re-organized some stuff in the garage into a more logical and useful arrangement.


I have some shopping to get done tomorrow afternoon, and then a Halloween party to go to, and a wedding to go to on Sunday.   So I may not get anything done over the weekend besides that.  But I'm hoping I have the get-up-and-go to clean up the garage tomorrow morning.  As messy as it is, it's only about two hours' work if I get started early.

Wish me luck.   And stay tuned for the inevitable "I didn't do anything this weekend but take a nap" post, LOL.  :B

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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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Free Stuff!

This is the little rolling desk-cabinet that I'm swiping from work, probably tomorrow: 

Orange-y oak-like finish over MDF, nothing terribly fancy.  But with a coat of primer and a coat of paint, it'll either (a) go into my sewing room, painted white, or (b) become a rolling tool cart in my shop, painted BRIGHT RED like those metal tool cabinets that are so popular.  I'm hoping for sewing room.  I'd know by now, if I'd remembered to measure my sewing table when I got home last night, but nooooo. 

This is the shelf-y thing in the break room.  MORE wire shelves, I know - this one is much tougher than the rinky-dink ones in my sewing room;  it'll probably go into the garage/shop, too, for extra storage.  At least, the metal part will.  The top is a section of butcher-block that someone cut to fit the wire rack;  I'm thinking that the top would make a fantastic low-slung side table with a couple of junk legs I have lying around and maybe some nifty trim or an awesome paint job. 

We shall see. 

 (It helps that Monday was Bulk Trash Day, so I emptied out like half a garage full of junk I'd acquired thinking I'd use it for something but then never did.  Space to work, yay!)

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