They All Rolled Over and One Fell Out

Seven years is a pretty good run for a bed.  Especially a wooden bed that you built yourself, when you'd never built more than a simple shelf before.  Sadly, my long-beloved bed finally gave up the ghost a few weeks ago, and I've been sleeping at an angle ever since, due to the way in which it sort of half-collapsed.
Oops.

I'd been looking for the perfect metal bed as a replacement, and I really wanted the SVELVIK from Ikea.  However, (as with 90% of the things I lust after at Ikea), I waited too long and the SVELVIK had been discontinued by the time I showed up ready to buy one.
Oops.

Target, and the internet to the rescue!   It isn't exactly the SVELVIK, but it'll do nicely - and does.  This went together easily and relatively quickly.  It's nice and solid, and I like the finish on it.  Best of all, it's inexpensive - and it was even 30% off last week when I ordered it.

I've been playing with the bay box window in the bedroom, too:  more plants, fewer laundry baskets on the windowsill.

Bonus:
Ikea's RASKOG cart being a bicycle  workshop cart (with GLIS organizer box in the top).  It's not terribly organized yet;  I just have small things on top, medium-large things in the middle, and BIG things in the bottom (mostly the tarp I put down when I clean the bikes indoors).

Sorry about the weird photo filter. My phone did that and I couldn't be arsed to take a new pic at 6:30am.  :D

Bücher

Some of you will be horrified by this confession, but, when we moved in, we didn't organize the books. We just threw them onto any old shelf willy-nilly, just wherever they would fit.  CHAOS.  The house was still under construction, schedules were weird, the Shelfy Nook was still a hole in the wall.  You know how it is when you move into a place - no matter how well-laid your organizational plans, priorities shift on the fly. Plus, if you're doing any DIY in the process, there's always a good deal of Scope Creep to handle. 

Last weekend, once the Shelfy Nook was complete, the house underwent a weird transformation: suddenly the floors were covered in books, as if there had been some horrible library explosion.  It was terribly confusing for the one cat and one dog who absolutely abhor any environmental disruption, and a playground for everybody else.  My roommate is the resident bibliophile (I prefer e-readers, myself; though I do adore really old books), and she quickly took charge of the sorting and categorizing, handing armloads to me to shelve when she was done.

We are now officially surrounded by books - organized books. Whew! That only took three months.  See:

The aforementioned Shelfy Nook, on the west side of the living room.

A bookcase by the windows in the living room, on the east side. 

To the south, behind the primary seating area, is just about my favorite piece of furniture - also filled with books.  Here is where we put the nifty old stuff, and small collections/series.

On the north side of the room is the shelving unit that houses all the DVDs...and there are books there, too.  We're surrounded! (Which is okay by me). 

Two narrow shelves in the "dining room" (don't eat bikes, kids).  You'll see these again, soon - this room is one of the next items on my to-do list.

Yet another cabinet full of books, this one in the breakfast nook, full of cookbooks (Roommate Sylvan is also a fabulous vegan cook and pastry chef, and has even written a couple of cookbooks of her own). 

This is another room on my to-do list, by the way.  So much to do!

















Not shown: yet another shelf full of books in Sylvan's room, a couple of boxes of music books and costuming books in the craft room, and the few selections I keep in my room because I like looking at them (a boxed complete works of Jane Austen, and a set of tiny Yale Library Shakespeare study books bound in fabric, which I adore).


Everybody have a great weekend! 

On the Enumeration of Unhatched Poultry, and Other Such Nonsense

Ah, October 1st, that exciting day.  We were all packed and ready to go - in fact, we finished early and had time to sit around talking about how we'd planned to decorate our new space.  A moving truck was going to show up n the morning of the 1st, whisk away our things, and by that evening we'd be happily neck-deep in unpacking and beginning to make our new home beautiful.

What actually happened was this:

• The moving company underestimated somehow, and sent us a truck that was too small.  The actual movers were fabulous to work with - they even called to see about getting a second truck to help out, but none were available.
• When we got to the house at noon on the 1st, the floor tilers were still at it, and we couldn't go INTO the house - at all.  The movers packed our things into the garage, and a few pieces of furniture were left out in the driveway.  We camped out in the driveway and waited.  Turns out, the tilers would be there late into the night, and there was no way we were getting inside the house - except for the master bedroom, which was not being done that day, and which has a sliding glass door that opens into the backyard.  A couple of friends came over, and we all carried everything from the driveway around to the backyard and into the master bedroom; after that we went to their house for dinner and a shower, and then back to the old place to sleep on air mattresses for the night. Thankfully, by the next night, the bedrooms were finished and we could begin to sleep there.
• It would be nearly two weeks before the rest of the floors would be finished.  The work crew was actually great - they did an awesome job, and were really friendly and fast. It took a while to get the job done because the crew was on loan from a construction job - the foreman is a cousin of my landlady's - so their availability was sporadic, is all.  Still, until there was a floor in the kitchen or laundry room, the stove was unhooked - we couldn't cook.  Also, there was a problem with the gas shutoff valve on the clothes dryer - we couldn't do laundry until a plumber could come out and replace the valve so that we wouldn't all, you know, die in a fiery explosion. 

However, as of Sunday morning, the entire floor in the entire house was finished, hooray! We've spent the last few days beginning to arrange the house - and finally, after two weeks, now that our stuff is beginning to fill up the place, it's finally starting to feel like home. the only problem is...where the hell is our stuff??

Here's the thing: although we labeled our boxes according to which room they were to go in, we completely omitted labeling the boxes with what was inside them - I mean, why bother, right? We were going to be unpacked in a day or two, and all the boxes, so helpfully labeled by room, would be deposited by the movers right where they go - we were only going to have to open them and empty them.  Tada! 

So, for the last couple of days I've continually kept markers and pens clipped to my shirt, knowing that anything I open (a) could be anything, and (b) probably isn't the thing I'm looking for, but (c) needs to be LABELED so that the next time I go looking for something, it won't take me as long to find it. I'm pretty sure I've opened every box in the house at least six times each. (Btw, cardboard cuts suck). At the moment my biggest Mystery!Box peeve is that while I've located and sorted all of my SCA garb, I'm missing one single box - which just happens to contain literally everything I need for an event I'm going to in two days. 
*sad trombone*

It's all been an extremely difficult and painful lesson in staying strong while being flexible.  It's [forcibly] expanded the limits of my ability to deal with stress, uncertainty, anger, frustration, panic, and despair.  It's expanded my physical limits, too.  The whole time this was all happening, I was also putting in about 20 hours a week working on the old house - painting, cleaning, landscaping, repairing things, climbing up and down ladders, replacing bits of the laminate floor - as well as moving everything I own around the new house at least four times each.  I almost wish I'd had one of those fitness tracker armbands through all of this - I'd love to know exactly how many squats I've done in the past two weeks.  (Interestingly, although maybe only to me, I hadn't ridden my bike since September 14th - and I ride nearly every day.  I was worried that 4+ weeks off the bike would have ruined the fitness level I'd previously built up; but when I got back in the saddle a few days ago I felt like I was actually in better shape than when I'd last ridden - probably because of all the squats!)

But the real moral of the story, kids, is LABEL YOUR BOXES.  Even if you think you don't need to, even if you're literally only putting them into your car and driving them three blocks away.  LABELS. 

"New" Furniture For the Craft Room

Playing the sliding-tiles game with furniture in my house again:  

Problem: 

• a giant armoire full of towels and sheets in my bedroom, which was in my way, and was also inaccessible to my roommate when I was asleep in there
• a mostly-empty hall closet
• some slapdash shelves on a corner wall in my craft room, full of boxes of fabric and supplies, and  surrounded by piles of same on the floor

Solution: 

1. I removed the shelves in the craft room and put them up in the hall closet, and moved all the linens into the hall closet where they're accessible to everyone
2. I moved the armoire to that corner of the craft room, and re-organized the boxes and supplies into it

(I don't have pics of the hall closet - there's so little light in that hallway that I can't get a decent one.  It's basically just shelves in a closet, though). 

And then...

A friend and I swapped dressers over the weekend - my small one for her large one (she wanted to use two smaller dressers in her daughter's room instead of one huge one).  And so this came home with me on Saturday: 

Ikea HEMNES

Most of my fabric stash had been stored in sixteen of those white plastic Ikea (SNALIS, discontinued) boxes (like the two on top of this dresser in the pic), stacked in/on top of that long, low, black shelving unit under the window in the pic (it'll be re-homed soon).  The contents of all but those two boxes fit neatly into the four main drawers in this dresser, and I got all of my small scraps into the smaller drawers at the top.  

So, what do I do with fourteen 5-gal plastic boxes?  I'm not sure yet.  They'll probably end up holding craft supplies in the closet in this room, or full of small tools and things in the garage.  



Cross-posted from my SCA sewing blog, clothofstars.blogspot.com

HYLLIS Console Unit: Ikea Hack Finished!

Here's the finished Hyllis console unit:

Since the last post, where I cut off a third of each shelving unit, I have: 

• inserted the removed shelves into the top half of the shortened units
• primed and painted the whole thing 
• drilled new holes in the upright, side posts so that I could bolt the three units together at the insides
• assembled, glued, trimmed, planed, filled, sanded, and stained the wooden top (I made a board, lol)
• drilled holes in the top so that I could attach the wooden top
• loaded the whole thing with electronics, books, and DVDs 

[Whoops!  I had a bit here about the tv that I haven't actually done yet; which is what you get for writing a blog post before you do something, and then not proofreading before you post!  I still need to swap out my tv for Sylvan's larger one.  Mine will go into the craft room for background movies while we work.]

The next step will be to get some shelving up onto the wall above the Hyllis unit, like this: 

Made with Olioboard

More soon.

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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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Two Rooms (Both Alike In Dignity)

As much as I change my home - paint colors, furniture arrangement, the furniture itself, art and display - certain things never change.  My bedroom has been my bedroom for a decade.  My craft room has been my craft room for nearly as long.  I've mentioned that I was planning to swap the two spaces...it's begun.

I began with the closets: 

1.   First, I emptied my bedroom closet:

Ikea's STOLMEN post as closet rod:  great for a long wall;

although the rod is just a tad too wide for hangers to slide

comfortably. 

2.  Next, I started filling it, in order to clear out the closet in the sewing room.  I managed to get the ENTIRE contents of my sewing room closet into the bedroom closet, as well as the ENTIRE fabric wall, and, well, pretty much everything but my current sewing-in-progress and furniture.  Holy cow, this is a big closet!

Once the STOLMEN "rod" was down, I moved in the shelves

that once held fabric in my soon-to-be-ex-sewing-room.
(This closet is simply packed full;  actual organization
to occur at a later date). 

3.   That left me with an empty sewing room closet full of shelves that needed to be removed:

4.  Which was then fitted with a regular closet rod and wall brackets, and all of my clothing (which, despite this closet being the same length as my big now-ex-bedroom-closet, fits my clothes better somehow. It's a TARDIS.

*  I would like to thank, personally, both the inventor of the wheel, and my friend Debi for the use of her convertible dolly/cart, without which this job would have taken daaaays, and much back-breaking and expletive-flinging. 

And yes, that green box IS full of actual rocks. 

So now, both rooms are a shambles.  I can't sew until this job is done, but at least I have a space in which to sleep.  I admit, this project is so huge that it's been prohibitively daunting, but I feel good about it now that I've started.  Moving closets was a HUGE first step, and a necessary one.  You guys have seen my craft room - it was organized, but it was full.  Now there's room to move, and to slide things around in order to work on the room itself.

And I am somewhat pleased to report that during this process, I only walked into the wrong closet four times.

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Spice, Spice, Baby*

BEHOLD (sounds better than "before", doesn't it?)

• one dirty-ass kitchen "backsplash" (it's just a wall) (so, I tried to "erase" the oil spatters on the paint with chalk the way I saw on Pinterest?  Now I have an oily, chalky mess. Thanks, Pinterest! FFFF)  
• one 3' length of steel L-shaped bracket thing, the proper name for which escapes me
• screws
• screwdriver
• level
• messy cabinets

VOILA!  

One practically-invisible mini-shelf on the backsplash for all of  my spices (don't worry, I have more - I just put out the ones I use all the time, the rest are in a basket in the cabinet with my extras).  You can't even see the steel bracket.  Which is good. Because it's ugly. But it's invisible, so, whatever.

SO

PRETTY


and it mostly hides the chalk/oil mess.

This is where I had the spices before, on three lousy Susans.  It was cramped, I could barely reach the top...

...and...

...the adjacent cabinet was a goddamned mess.

I have a trick back, and when it goes out (with no warning whatsoever, or any discernable cause, no less), I can NOT reach my lower cabinets, or lift even the lightest item.

Therefore, I have ALL of my regular-use kitchen stuff in my upper cabinets, or in my pantry on the higher shelves.  This cabinet houses my mixing bowls, Pyrex bakeware, and my small collection of pots and pans.

Before the spice rack, everything you see in the picture above was also crammed into this cabinet.  Now both cabinets, and the spice rack, are easier and nicer to use.

Rory helped.






















* I apologize. 



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Bonus: Hall Closet

This is nothing much, but I love my hall closet, and I'm happy to see it each and every time I open the door:

It's teeny:  only 6x2".

Coats on the far right.

A hanging shoe organizer given to me by a friend, into which I've organized my re-usable shopping bags (Austin has a no-plastic policy; this is all we use here).

Hats and purses on S-hooks across the rest of the rod.

Vacuum (and Shark floor steamer, which you can't see in this picture, but which is AWESOME and I highly recommend it if you have tile).

And a bin of larger bags and backpacks on the floor under the shoe bag organizer.

Up top on the shelf is Halloween stuff, and games.

This is one of two closets in the house which both still have the original carpet, wall color, and wire shelving that came with the house.



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Annual Sewing Room Refit

Do I really do this every December/January?  I do, don't I?  Weird.

Anyway, the gray and white that I did last year was boring the heck out of me.  This is a creative space.  Grayscale?  Really?  I have no idea.

Before (last year)

Beige linen curtain (love), fabric boxes on wall shelves,
white above, grey below with grey trim. 

Closet shelves.  Grey and white and grey and white. 

What has turned out to be an awesome fabric storage idea, 

What's happening now... 

Fabric bins moved into the newly-pink closet

Doors back on.  The curtain was always a pain in the rear;
I ended up taking it down, and then the closet was
just this great big gaping hole.  

Last week and over the weekend I did a LOT of painting, refinishing, spray-painting, and re-arranging.  I'm not quite done yet; but by way of a preview, the whole room is going in somewhat this direction:

made using Olioboard

Update soon!


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SUCCESS!!!

It took two trips to Lowe's, two trips to Home Depot, and lots of blood and cussing, but I finally got the water line hooked up, and the new dishwasher up and running!

That is a working dishwasher, my friends!  See the little red lights?  That means it's WASHING MY DISHES FOR ME.  I was in ANOTHER ROOM while the dishes were being washed!  It's almost like living like normal people, LOL.

Clean counters!  Clean, empty sink!

The brass part I needed to hook up the water?  I ended up buying three different versions, trying to find something to replace the coupling I couldn't get off the old machine.   On my last visit, a very nice man named Terry actually took the old part from me (still attached to the mounting plate, which I removed and brought with me), and managed to get it apart!  I had tried everything, but I thought it was stuck permanently - turns out I just wasn't strong enough.  Yay, Terry!

And that clean, empty counter space above the WORKING DISHWASHER?   No more Ikea dishrack and stacks of dishes!  My kitchen is finally returned to the way it should be.

Daisy was a bit concerned about the weird sounds it was making.  It's quiet, as dishwashers go; but she's only three, and in her life has never heard one working.  O_O






By the way, something else visible in these photos?

I finally put on the rest of the Ikea cabinet handles that I got in ...um...oh, I guess I never mentioned it, at least, not that I can find.  Look, new cabinet handles!  They're $7 a pair at Ikea, but I got these in the as-is section for half that.  Yay!

I actually need four more (have I mentioned I suck at math?), so, next time I'm there, the set will be completed.

I still have the smoky glass knobs on the upper cabinets;  the gold handles actually look really great with them, with the white uppers and wood lower cabinets.  Yay!


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Master Bedroom Vanity Cabinet

Drumroll, please!

*drdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdr*

Okay, okay, wait.  

Before: 

White and very dirty $9 thrift store medicine cabinet about which I
posted on Monday.  

Vanity table with round dresser mirror and jewelry on
the wall - which I loved, but the various jewelry boxes
(more on two other surfaces in the room!) were a bit
ridiculous.  Too much walking around to find stuff.  

*drdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdr*

After:

Yay!  Plain ol' black paint - in fact, it's the same off-black that I used on the table beneath the cabinet, so they match perfectly. It took more than paint, though.  I scrubbed the entire cabinet inside and out, did some very minor repairs to small stains and water damage spots, primed the entire thing, and gave it three coats of the off-black paint. 

But wait - there's more! 

Yes, I'm a total nail polish junkie.  

Necklaces hung on rings on a tension rod at the top, a whole row of nail polish bottles (I can see them all now!!), and...well, to be honest, a bunch of other random stuff crammed in just for the photo, because I'm nowhere near decided on what will end up going where, and it'll take me weeks to get the new system to where it's comfortable to use. :)

Same with the arrangement on the table top - it's going to take work.  I'd like to have everything for my morning routine all here in the same space, but, we'll see how it goes.  :) 

This was just for fun, and because I had a tiny bit of black chalkboard paint that was getting too thick to work with, and I wanted to use up as much as I could before trashing the rest.  The face makes me giggle every time I see it, so, I guess this is working, morning-cheer-wise.  ^_^

I'm also a total lip gloss junkie.  

*

So, I have no idea what I'll do with the round mirror that was here before.  And I have plans for the dresser in the room as well; but that's going to have to wait a week or two while I turn my attention to the 12th century side-laced pendant-sleeved gown that I haven't even started working on, that I need to wear on the 7th.  OOPS.  

Back soon! 

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Bob: Repairs & Updates

This is Bob:

Before & After

They're both Bob, actually.  Bob 1 and Bob 2.  You know how you have to have a name or something for a project when you're planning it out, or making lists of projects?


The shelf on the left got to be Bob the first time I fixed it up.  My father built it when I was like a year old (his name wasn't Bob), and eventually it got pretty rickety, and the style was weird - strange peaks jutting out from the top, and an angled crossbar from top to bottom across the back.  I took it apart and rebuilt it, and fixed up the stain job, back in...2006? 2005?  I don't remember.


A couple of years later I thought it would be pretty cool if I had a pair of them, so I built another one: Bob 2.


Bob 2 was getting a bit wobbledy recently, too (an accident last time I moved it stripped out some of the nails/screws on the bottom), so last night I took them both out to the garage, cleaned them up, painted just the front edges black, and then painted some fake gold "campaign furniture" hardware on the front at the joints.   I really love the way they came out!

After-After

It's subtle, but it's that little touch that these shelves really needed.

And this very small makeover was exactly what I needed this week,.  Kress is moving into his own place this week, and you know how moving can be.

Especially if you're as OCD about packing and stacking as I am, and you're not in charge of the packing and stacking, and are basically sitting still while moving is happening all around you, hehe.
                         ZOMG CHAOS.  

So anyway: shelf makeover! Ta-da!




That's Joe, my Gretsch 5125, in the corner.  I'm fostering it for a friend.  I'm going to have to get myself a practice amp so I can keep playing it after Kress moves all his PA stuff out.  








P.S. - I painted that desk lamp again, too.  Turns out I hated the way I did it the other week, after the first day.  This is boring, but at least it goes with my stuff.