What's Going On

NO  DISASSEMBLE

Remember the Ikea FORHOJA kitchen cart that I was using as a sideboard type thing before  I built the apothecary unit?

This is it, all disassembled. It's already been sanded down fully, and given a first coat of stain. Judging by how the staining is going, it may need 25 coats. We'll see.

What else am I doing right now?

• Crocheting a blue shawl
• Crocheting a multi-colored sweater
• Painting the legs of a little nightstand-table I have sitting around in my bedroom (finished)
• Sewing 5 cushion covers for a friend's couch
• Working on a painting I'm making for a friend for Giftmas

What's Next After That? 

• Refinishing my bedroom nightstand
• Refinishing an old wooden plant stand
• Crocheting a rug for my roommate, as soon as we find the right yarn
• Crocheting some slippers, maybe 
• Sewing a skirt or top for myself out of the leftover fabric from a dress I made recently 

What's New? 

I finally bought myself a new sander!  My old one was a work horse, but it was too big, heavy, and high-powered for me to wield safely anymore - it shook me and hurt me so much my hands and arms would be unusable for days after, every time I used it.  I got myself a little $23 Porter & Cable in-line palm sander, and it's GREAT!  Much more easily controlled, and it does as much work as my big one ever did - surprising, for such a little, lightweight thing.  Yay!  

More news on the FORHOJA as it develops.  Meanwhile, here's a crocheted scarf I just finished yesterday: 

ooh, ahh

Whew!

I know, it's been a hot minute since I posted here, but that's because I haven't been working on any projects around the house.  I've been painting, sketching along with the Inktober drawing challenge, and crocheting all the things. I'm also prepping for a Halloween party, which I haven't thrown since 2014!

I started a fish tank, too. Right now, it's devoid of actual fish - I let it sit a couple of weeks to cycle, got a couple of plants (the leafy little Anubias nana and the Marimo moss ball (actually a beneficial algae) above), and have been contemplating getting a bunch more plants and a Betta but not actually doing it. Aside from a bit of mold on the wood (need some snails to eat it) it's coming along beautifully for, you know, not having any fish in it. Because it's a fish tank.  Let's be real: it's a box of water with a log in it. But it'll grow.

I do have several furniture projects planned:

• Refinishing the once-and-forever art table, which I've been "working on" refinishing for over a year now
• Refinishing my nightstand, an antique plant stand/hall table 
• Refinishing a little wooden chowki table that's seen better days
• Frosting the glass on the doors of my Ikea HEMNES pantry cabinet, and painting the rest of the unit. 
• Staining my Ikea FORHOJA kitchen cart, something I've been thinking about for three years and hadn't decided on until recently
• Possibly building a big honking sideboard for the living room from scratch. Sort of. 

Lots of projects to keep me in the garage this winter! 

But this month, I'm mostly focused on the Halloween party: 

• Buy all the spooky things
• Make all the other things spooky
• Don't have a heart attack over established friends base meeting new friends from work at the party
• Spray-paint the dog* 
• Finish crocheting the little pseudo-Victorian boot spats I'm making for my costume, block them, and sew buttons on 

* not really, but Daisy is getting a body paint costume, as soon as I order some dog-safe paint

I'm working on a painting right now, slowly, and I have no idea when I'll be finished.  But here's the last one I made, finished three weeks ago: 

I also painted this little papier-maché skull for Halloween.  It's not shaped much like an actual human skull, but I tried to get it as realistic-looking as I could anyway.  I'm kind of proud of poor Yoric here. As a friend said to me this morning, it's hard to paint dimension and shape onto something that has none.  Rewarding, when you get it right, but hard.  

Anyway, I'm off to Halloween all the things.  See you again soon! 

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. 

Help I Moved Into A Giant To-Do List

I've been working my butt off around the house, though I feel like I have nothing to show for it - which is the problem with maintenance and upkeep tasks - they're not flashy, or pretty, or fun.  But things have been accomplished, all the same (I can tell by my aching muscles, the cuts and bruises all over my body, and the spray paint on my legs).

Since last we spoke, I've: 

• replaced most of the outlet and switchplate covers in the house with new ones (old ones were yellowed, dirty, and encrusted with paint)
• hung blinds in my bedroom (white, 2" faux-wood "plantation shutter"-esque) 
• gutted and mostly-organized the garage (everything had been just thrown in there in a hurry and I couldn't get to anything to use it)
• purchased and assembled the following items from IKEA: 
• FORHOJA kitchen cart (squee!)
• HELMER metal file cabinet (I have one serving as a "leg" on my 8'-long sewing table, I wanted another one for the other end, for even more small-items storage) 
•  DALFRED swirly-stool, used as a plant stand in my bedroom window (I've always wanted one of these, and for once, by the time I got to Ikea, they still had it!!)
• pillows, comforter, sheets, bathroom rugs, towels (not "assembled" so much as washed and put into use, and OMG is my bed comfy.  It's been like sleeping in a hotel bed!) 
• spray-painted all the iron decorative things I had hanging on my front porch at the old house.  Not sure what I'll do with them, but at least they've been freshened up
• spray-painted all the decorative push-in garden edging and placed it around the border in the front yard (no plants yet, but I'm working on that).
•  gutted this little shelfy-nook in the living room wall, which had about a million plastic clips which were caulked (?) to the wall and had been painted over a few times;  I removed them with pliers (!!) and then scraped the holes flat and patched them, and primed over them. Here's a before picture: 

 

Aw, there's the old flooring. I do not miss it.

• This isn't a me-thing, but we got Google Fiber installed on Saturday!  We had had our AT&T U-Verse transferred from the old house, but it would NOT. WORK.  Seriously, we didn't have tv, and only barely had internet and spotty wifi, since October 1.  THANK YOU GOOGLE OMG.  
• Installed a towel rack in the master bathroom; and a towel rack, toilet roll holder, and vanity towel ring in the small bathroom. 
• "Repaired" loose sink faucets in the master bath (they just weren't screwed together all the way)

Next Up: 

New blinds for Sylvan's room
Prime and paint everything, ever
Hang a pot rack in the kitchen
Put up new covers for the exhaust fans in both bathrooms (one missing, one broken)
Repair a leaky, running toilet - first the flapper, and if that doesn't work, the whole fill tube and float
Start looking at fabrics to reupholster the couch and wingback chair in the living room

Also, I need to take a good hard look at the way I'm scheduling myself.  I am not happy.  I am, in fact, staggeringly unhappy, frustrated, sad, and angry all the time.  I've been busting my butt on this house, and even though the stress from the sale of the old house is over, I don't feel better at all.  I'm not allowing myself time to rest, or to do things I enjoy that lift my spirits and make me feel good.  I haven't ridden my bike in over a week, because I keep having to do something else that's more pressing than cleaning my bike and getting it souped up and ready to ride - which I need to do.  Bike makes brain run smoothly.  And I literally can't even remember when I last played my guitar, or painted a picture, or did anything, really except either get a house ready to sell or fix up a fixer-upper house.  I gave myself a little manicure one day after work last week and I felt SO guilty and angry with myself for not getting anything done for a whole two hours.  That's a bunch of self-induced, unhealthy stress that I can really do without.

Even at my busiest, I used to always allow myself the entirety of Wednesday evenings for a "spa night" - it's when I would do my nails, my toes, take a hot bath, dye my hair if I needed to, and generally just sit around and pamper myself all evening.  I also used to have a "noise night" on Thursdays, when Sylvan goes out for a coffee and writing date with a friend of hers.  Noise Night was for guitar practice, or for throwing on the radio at top volume and painting until I couldn't hold a brush anymore.  I miss doing those things.

If scheduling time to chill is what it takes to get me to freaking chill, then that's what's going to happen.  I am officially putting myself on my to-do list.
So there.

NEXT!

Okay, so, the costumery-blitz leading up to last weekend is FINALLY OVER, and it's time to PUT YOUR FOOT ON IT AND STAND!!!

Oh, no, wait - that's 13th Warrior.  Which is like my favorite movie ever.  But I digress. 

It is seriously time to get crackin' on the housey stuff again.  BFF Sylvan is moving in in just 39 DAYS.   I have a loooooot to get done in that time.  

In the last couple of months I've been cleaning and clearing space almost nonstop, in between working on like a bajillion sewing commissions for the SCA and prepping (and cleaning up after) the Halloween party.  (I swear, the people at the Goodwill donation site must know me by name by now).  The next step is to start actually preparing rooms.  To wit: 

• paint the guest bath
• move all the stuff from my sewing room into my bedroom
• demo the sewing closet, and turn it back into a "regular" closet
• paint the sewing new bedroom and closet, and then bring all of my bedroom things into it'
• organize and arrange the master bedroom new giant craft room (hereafter known as The Room of Requirement)
• build my master closet into a new awesome craft supply storage room

And and and and and.  I mean, SO much to do.   I was going to start last night, except that at the SCA event over the weekend, I managed to pull a partial dislocation on BOTH of my shoulders, so I've kinda been sitting around with noodle arms for a few days.  

But last night, I did manage to do this: 

Yes, it's a terrible, terrible phone pic. Because it's not done.  

But you'll get to see the finished result, and a whole bunch more, very soon.  I promise. :) 

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Seven DIY New Year's Resolutions

1.   Fix the light in the kitchen. 

2.   Purchase a new garbage disposal. 

3.   Build a deck! 

4.   Re-upholster the couch & wing chair

5.   Paint the living room ceiling (only one left!)  

6.   Re-do the entire master bathroom! 

7.   Make! More! Art!  And music.  :)  

Music Room Loading [-------------80%---]

Little known fact:  putting guitars everywhere does not make a room into a "music room".  :D

Okay, so, this was a computer/office area at one time, at the north end of the looooong living room:

If you've been reading this blog long, you know that this was the latest in a medium-length line of computer desks that have been in front of this window.  I don't have internet at home anymore, therefore, I wasn't actually using my computer for anything...so this little table, salvaged from work by a friend and given to me, was basically just there to keep my laptop and some other crap off the floor.

The same friend once sold me a Casio keyboard, which I'd always planned to actually learn to use - but for that, I needed a table or stand of some kind, and before long, I got two ideas...

CraftyNest.com 

This was the first:  

The second was to designate the space at the north end of my living room as a music space - with the keyboard, my guitars, my violin, music stand, books, etc. all set up.  I LOVE seeing musical instruments displayed; and I thought if everything was out in the open, I might use them more often.

 

Meanwhile, ever the fan of combination projects that end up taking me weeks to do when mere minutes will suffice, I realized I really needed a new work table in the garage.  This thing was NOT cutting it anymore. 

Dirty?  Fine.  But the legs weren't holding the thing up anymore, because the screws were all stripped out, and the thing was bowing in the middle with the legs being so far apart.  The top was sound, but...ugh. 

Nothing a little elbow grease and spray paint couldn't fix, though. The legs from the "computer desk", the top from the old work table, and some cleaning in the "music room", and you have this! 

◄  the Ikea KAUSTBY dining room chair that I upholstered last year

◄  That's Ember, my Ibanez. She's the one I play most often, so she's out in the open, the most easily reached. 

The Gretch barely shows there in the shadows in the corner; but that's where the next part of this room comes in: that white folding settee (yes, the one I keep moving around all over the house, which never quite works, ever) needs to GO.  I'm just not sure what exactly to do with it yet. 

Anyway, once it's out of the way, more room for the Gretch and the music stand.  And for people to be able to walk up to the kitchen bar.  It reduces traffic flow in the actual kitchen at parties.  Plus, I like being able to reach over and get a glass of water without walking all the way around, hehe.  Because I'm lazy.  

This. 

And finally, here's that little brown  black  silver  turquoise black lamp I keep spray painting.  I think I actually like it now. It looks grown-up.  

So: tada!  And it turns out I was right:  with my instruments out in the open like this, I DO grab them and sit down to practice more often!  Couple more things to do in this room: 

• replace/update light fixture (I have a new one, I just have to work on it and hang it)
• find a way (and a place) to hang up my violin where it's easy to reach and out of the way of the cats
• move that damned folding settee somewhere. 
• paint the living room ceiling to match the rest of the house - it's the only one left to do! 

Whew!  

Okay, back to work...

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Technical Difficulties

Whoops!  Having some camera/phone/computer issues.  Will post living room, paint, and other stuff as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, I sometimes make pictorial to-do lists.  And sometimes, I post them on Facebook, because the way people guess what each line is supposed to mean cracks me the hell UP.  Here's today's:

1



2




3







4









5

Guesses so far: 

1. make a bear head
2. turn a cupcake into a ziggurat and a shirt
3. Set hair on fire and enjoy it
4. stub toe until it throbs with pain;   or  injure toes with decorative spikes
5. This was the one that got the most attention: 

• ride a flaming wave into Hell, collect insurance
• teach a brachiosaur to fire-walk
• ride a brachiosaur on a raft
• cooking money
• watch a tiny space person riding a three-legged dinosaur on a viking ship
• set a cartoon moose on fire for money

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Success!

As I promised myself, I've hit the ground running after my cruise (after I slept for two days).  SCA's Gulf Wars is in March, and a large percentage of my free time between now and then is going to be devoted to working on my costumes and campsite elements for that event;  but I do have a few things planned around the house.  In fact, last night, after finishing a costume project I've been working on for some months, I hit my craft room like a tornado and cleaned it the heck UP.   I even moved my project board to a new place on the wall (where it'll be more useful), and hung up some new artwork, and a clock.

In the next couple of months, you can expect to see:

• the progress in the craft room, and some more changes to it
• changes to the headboard in the bedroom, as well as the art wall
• a new gallery wall in the hallway next to the living room
• more painted ceilings
• new wall color in the guest bath
• yardwork - can I get the garden going again this year, finally? 
• general house maintenance, including some effort going into saving energy and money on my electric bill, because holy crap. 0_0  

Slowly, but surely.  Incidentally, if you're interested in the SCA costume/reenactment stuff, there's a link to that blog at the top right of this page; or you can visit it here to see what I've been sewing. 

More Cleaning Binge

I've been on a bit of a cleaning kick lately, and with things suddenly breaking around the house, I have also developed a newfound comittment to home maintenance and preventative maintenance, LOL.  So, because it's me, I've made some lists:


Done  (last weekend, and the weekend before):

• BIG kitchen cleaning (countertops scrubbed and bleached, canisters and appliances wiped and/or dusted, fridge cleaned out and cleaned)
• BIG vacuuming (includes moving furniture not normally moved for spot-vacuuming, and vacuuming a/c registers and return vents)
• BIG whole-house dusting with my handy-dandy new Swiffer 360 Extender (which is the absolute BOMB, and I'd never have tried it if Kress' mom hadn't bought one for us for no reason) - cabinet and door frames, baseboards, ceilings and corners, art and picture frames, knick-knacks, ceiling fans, light fixtures
• BIG bathroom cleaning  - counters, cabinet doors, cabinet interior (organization), tub and shower walls and fixtures, light fixture, doors and baseboards
• BIG laundry - curtains, rugs, comforters, and bed pillows

Yet To Do: 

• bleach and re-seal tile grout in all tiled areas of the house (2 bathrooms, kitchen and dining room, fireplace hearth, front entry)
• replace burnt-out light bulbs
• clean and repaint the baseboards in the dining room (chewed by puppies a year ago and never fixed)
• replace all the floor T-moldings in between the rooms and around the fireplace - most of them pop loose several times a year, and some are broken.  All of them need to be replaced with a better solution.
• Wash & scrub all the exterior windows, and clean the insides
• Clean all the blinds - if I take them down and hose them off on the back patio, I can spray-paint the last one in the living room while I'm at it.  
• Prime&  re-paint all the baseboards and doors in the house, starting with the guest bathroom (they're all yellowed with age;  since I painted the guest bath white and gray last Fall, it shows the worst in there)
• Repair or replace the shower/tub diverter in the master bath tub faucet.  Or replace the entire faucet. Whatever. 
• New garbage disposal! 
• Gutters for the back of the house!  

Omg, there's so much more I don't even want to keep typing.  UGH. 

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Upcoming Updates + Floor Fail

I haven't been around a in few weeks, as I've been busting my butt getting some costuming projects for people finished on time, all of which turned out to be more complicated and time-consuming than I'd originally planned.  Yay, scope creep!

Now that all that's finished, though, I have several small projects around the house lined up, and some painting to do - I'll be posting about those things in the next couple of weeks.  I LOVE "detoxing" from sewing projects by painting things in my house. Coming soon:

• A side table
• some more ceilings
• some gardening/yardwork
• accessories + cleanup
• Guest bathroom and bedroom

Meanwhile, I'm afraid I'm not at all pleased with the new flooring in the craft room.  The flooring in the rest of the house is a product from Lumber Liquidators - not Pergo brand, but one of the off-brands produced in the Pergo factory (same stuff, just without the Pergo label).  

The color is "Bolivian Teak" (now discontinued), and the floor was installed by my ex-husband and I in 2005.  The floor has lasted really well these past seven years.  The only problem I've had with the floors is that the T-moldings between rooms pops up when the weather changes drastically, mostly because they were originally installed incorrectly (hey, it was my first floor).  Aside from that, there's *one* wear spot developing under the computer desk where the chair slides around - it's only just appeared the past couple of months, and it took seven years for the first sign of wear to appear!  

The Ikea "TUNDRA"  flooring that Kress and I put into the craft room three months ago, however, has already begun deteriorating.  Boards are popping apart and leaving cracks in the flooring.  Edges and corners are chipping and peeling.  Granted, this floor gets a lot more wear than the floors in the rest of the house, from office chairs rolling around, ironing boards, and five cats who eat and poop in here (sometimes on the floor, argh) - but three months?  Really??   I am seriously unimpressed.  And I'm pretty disheartened at the idea of having to replace this floor in the next year once it gets so bad that I can't stand it anymore.  Damn it, Ikea!  

More soon. 

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Spring Cleaning?

I keep seeing these pop up on blogs this week, so I thought I'd do my own slightly-snarkier and personalized version.  Not to give YOU advice, just to mutter to myself "out loud" (as it were) and in public.

1.  Wash the dog.   I have three 50lb dogs.  YOU wash them if you want them clean.

Actually, Raven's on my to-do list for the back half of this month:  he's a hair farm, and I'm *done* trying to keep this dog clipped myself.  He's up for his shots, so as soon as he's got them all up-to-date, he's going to the store for a professional cut, I don't care how much I have to pay for it.  I'm sick of pulling burrs and dreadlocks out of this dog's fur.

2.  Clean the windows.  I DO actually "do windows", and usually I do it this time of year.  I didn't last year, though...or the year before.  Whoops.  They're a bit manky.  Someone gave me a really nifty car washing brush tool once that hooks up with the end of a garden hose - you can put soap or liquid wax into it if you want to, and the handle extends to like six feet.  Really nifty tool.  Do I wash my car, like, ever?  Nope.  But it's awesome on windows!

3.  Cobweb patrol!  Yeah, I admit it:  my house is crawling with cobs.

*ba-dump-CSH!* 

And I DO run the long-handled duster around the ceiling and doorways more than once a year, but MAN that crap builds up, with all the hairy animals that bring dust and other junk in from the backyard all day long.

4.  Deal with built-up piles of clutter.  Also something I actually do more than once a year - otherwise I'd live in a dumpster.  But I did just recently tidy up and re-organize the laundry room that I spent all that time and effort to sort-of re-model two years ago. (Yeesh, has it been that long?)

I'm also in the middle of cleaning up and re-organizing the garage, and dealing with half-finished projects out there.  The next step (a new wall o' shelves) is going to be a doozy, though. Stay tuned.

not my actual house,
thank goodness

5.  Wipe up built-up fingerprints on wall switches, hallway corners, and around doorknobs.

Yeah, it's probably time to do that, actually.  Just because most of my walls are painted gray doesn't mean that manky crap doesn't show.  Bleh.








Also on my Spring Cleaning list:

• take down all the draperies in the house and run them all through the washer.  I do this about twice a year, actually, for my allergies.  I don't use curtains I can't put into the washing machine for exactly this reason. 
• fireplace cleanup - already done, actually. 
• Bleach and re-seal the grout in the tiled areas of the house.  I used to do this every Spring, but I haven't in about three years.  It needs it, though.  

And some maintenance items that need to be dealt with soon, or else: 

• the deadbolt on the nifty new storm door I installed a few weeks ago is suddenly not working, for some reason.  I needed to take the cylinder out and take it to the hardware store to have it re-keyed anyway;  I'll have them look at it while I'm there.  
• Another door issue: the "temporary" gate I put up over a hallway door to keep the dogs out of "Catland" (where the food, water, and litterboxes live) has now been in place for nearly FOUR YEARS.  And it's falling apart, of course, because it was never meant to last this long or put up with the abuse it's gotten over the years.  It's time to get off my ass and put the real solution that I've always meant to get around to, into place.  
• Two years ago, I scrubbed, patched, and re-painted all of the baseboard trim in the entire house...except for the dining room.  Sigh.  
• Oh, and the guest bathroom, too, and the paint on the trim in there is yellowed and chipped.  It needs to be re-done, especially since I re-painted the room not long ago, which just made the old trim look even worse than it did. 

And the garden...oh, don't even get me started. 

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Folding Sofa, Lightly Used, Needs New Cushions

You know what else I want in the living room?  This:

This is World Market's "Studio Day Sofa" (actually a photo of the slipcover they sell for it in "Mallard", which I guess is a color now, and not a duck.  Looks teal to me).

I have one, actually - or rather, I have the frame.  Long ago, back when I was newly divorced and possessed of a house with no furniture in it, I picked one of these up as a floor-model markdown for cheap.  While it was fantastic for one person to sit on, it didn't make even adequate main seating.  More than one person could sit on it if it was folded out (both arms lay down flat), but if one person got up, the other person was dumped onto the floor as the whole thing seesaw'd up into the air on the vacant end, since the feet are so close to the middle when folded out.  Whoops.

That said, I think it would make a fantastic auxiliary piece for extra seating, or for an out-of-the-way little reading nook type of thing.  It would be a great replacement for that dumb little Ikea mini-couch thing I picked up for free intending to spruce up but never did.  It's smallish (62"x33"), low enough to feel divan-esque (only 25" high at the back), and awesomely versatile.

The problem is that the cushion that came with this thing was thin enough that I could feel the wooden frame through it. I replaced it with a thicker, firmer cushion that I made from an old couch cushion, but when I retired the sofa to the garage for storage, I got rid of the cushion I'd made (one of my dogs had been sleeping on it while I was at work, and it was, erm, a bit funky).

Once I've got a new seat cushion for it (Ikea has a thin mattress I think I can work with, for only about sixty dollars), and some nifty throw pillows, I plan to put this thing into action again in place of the mini-couch.

Also World Market.  Also in "Mallard."  I have several of
these in different colors, including this one.  Looks teal to me.  

right?  

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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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The Oldest Wildebeest: Part II

The aquarium stand that I mentioned in August, revived after having been started in 2006 and then forgotten for five years, has now made a bit more progress:

tr-drrrp.

The sides, top, and trim facing on the front are attached - the wood for which I bought in August last year.  (And when you consider how long it's taken me to get this far, an eight-month gap there isn't actually that bad, right? Right??)

It also now has internal shelves, cut from remnants of the same ex-computer desk that gave us the guitar rack of 2010.  I made sure they're tall enough to accommodate the one tool that in my 15+ years of keeping aquariums has proved to be endlessly useful and at times indispensable: the 5-gallon plastic bucket.

The next phase involves  wood filler that isn't solidified inside the tube (d'oh!) for the nail holes and a few cracky places where the sides and trim didn't match up in the front.  After that it's getting trim molding around the edges, doors, stain & sealant, and then feet.

And then: the aquarium itself!  :D

But first I have to finish the stand.  Anyone want to lay odds on how long it'll take me?


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Gardening: I Has It!

The other thing that happened over the weekend, after I got back from vacation, was a LOT of yardwork.  This last Sunday, the front yard got a good mowing and a fresh coat of grass seed (maybe it'll grow this time..?)

The back yard got the same treatment, along with some flower seeds in/near the shady corner garden - a mix of pink and red and white Cosmos, some native annual and perennial wildflowers, and larkspurs. Yay!

I also found some really cool stuff around the yard:

a volunteer Lemon Balm seedling in the yard!!!  Another plant
joins the ranks of survivors of the Martian Death Fungus. I
potted it up to keep it safe, and to keep it from spreading into
unwanted places, as mints are prone to doing. 

New berries/flowers on the Mulberry tree

OMG LOOK GRASS!!!

The little Chasteberry I planted last Fall, going strong! 

A white Yarrow, one of only three plants in the former Herb Garden
to have survived the Martian Death Fungus in the first place.  Until
this spring, it survived as a wee, weak sprout.  Now it's glorious! 

I heart my Mulberry tree. :) 

Unfortunately for the grass seed in the front yard, and the flower seed in the backyard, last night it stormed like you would not believe.  I knew it was going to rain, but I neglected to check the weather reports, or I'd have seen that it was going to rain frogs and plagues, and wash away not only my fresh seeds, but also about half the dirt in the part of the backyard still mostly only covered by dirt.  SIGH.

plans for the veggie beds I want to build in the backyard...

Hey, guess what? I built something.  Show you tomorrow. :)


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Plans of Many Things

So, to give my brains a rest from obsessing about getting ready for our trip in two weeks 9 days, I'm thinking about what I might want to do with the house after we get back.  Because I'm seriously not going to work on SCA stuff for a while.  I want to play with my house!

The storm door is first, obviously.  It'll be a quick project.  I'm contemplating doing a nifty frosted design on the glass with some frosting spray, since the glass isn't tinted.  Haven't decided yet.

The backyard also needs some serious work.  I'd planned to build a pergola over the back patio in like, September, and it never got done.  And there's a garden bed that was empty in the Fall, now full of weeds, that I wanted to have planted by now.

I'm also thinking of painting the fireplace wall in the living room because, well, let's face it - not enough things in my house are blue, LOL.  Riiiight.  But look:

oh, and that tree is dead now, too. 

This is the fireplace wall now.  It's the same color as the rest of the walls in the living room, hallways, dining room, and kitchen (all connected).

the miracle of Photoshop

This is what it would look like blue, and trimmed in the same white paint that I used to make a fake "crown molding" around the top of the room.

I kinda like the way it sets off the tiles, and the wood on the mantel.

Of course, it would also throw into obvious relief the fact that the blue ceilings are totally the WRONG BLUE.

Maybe I should do it all at once. Hm.

OOH!  Or what if the tiles were turquoise??






Is my vacation over yet...


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+3 Vacuum Cleaner of Awesome

Introducing: Da Bomb

Seriously, this little blue thing for the WIN.  Got a new vacuum this week.  A canister, for the first time - I dunno where this thing's been all my life, but I'm pretty much never going back.  I can't even describe the filth that happens to my floors with eight four-legged animals running around the house;  this thing made sweeping twice, vacuuming twice, then mopping into...just vacuuming.  Once.  0_0



Other things going on in the Land of Me: 

• MAJOR preparations for Gulf Wars, a big honkin' SCA event in two weeks, that I'm actually pretty prepared for, except for the part where I'm going to be spending the next twelve days sewing like a woman possessed. 
• I got the HOA approval to hang the storm door (seriously, guys? a month?), so, next spare ten minutes I get that's not taken up by sewing is going to get devoted to spray-priming and -painting the door and mounting hardware to match the trim on the house, and getting it hung in place.  Can't wait!
• I'm also in the process of putting the flooring - and everything else! - into the guest room all in one fell swoop.  Gulf Wars is out of state, and so Kress' mom is coming to house-sit and dog-sit, so we're sprucing up the guest room for her.  We got an entirely new set of bedding and linens for the room from Kohl's recently;  and I've been gathering furniture from Craigslist and friends.  I can't wait to show you! 

More updates as soon as I can!

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OMG LOOK A POST

I haven't died.  That's a relief to some of you, not so much to others.

GUESS WHAT.

ooh, ahh.

The last time I decided to tweak the master bedroom (remember that?) I sort of got halfway through - took a bunch of stuff down/apart...and then never got around to putting it all back together.  Sigh.


<-- this is what the window situation has been in the room for, oh, I dunno, the better part of a year now?


And yes, the blinds really ARE that dirty.  They're eight years old!  Why do you think I started spray-painting the ones in the living room last year?

The other day I found a huge pile of nifty sort of taupe-y crinkle-charmeuse panels at the thrift store for like $2 each.  Whee!



That's a little better.  Bear with me, it's a work in progress.  (There's a second layer that's going up behind these curtains, now that I know I like them; and at some point I plan to change the blinds).


I still miss having all the red in the room before (the sari that used to hang over the bed was the wrong shade, which is what prompted the removal of dang near everything in the room except the big stuff and the stuff on the walls last year).

That's better - little touch of magenta (one of the sheer Ikea panels that used to be on the windows).


Next stop:  EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT THE ROOM.  Okay, not really.  But the nightstand situation, while convenient, is dumb and boring.  And I miss the curtains around the bed - I keep meaning to put up posts and rails like the old bed had, but I keep not getting around to it (story of my life this year).

And while I love the little lamp I made, (a) I want it in the living room, and (b) I have a really, really cool idea for a pendant for the bedroom...


tbc...

Before & After: Craft Room Whoopass

I opened up a HUGE can of whoopass on my craft room over the long holiday weekend!  I'm tired, and sore, and at this particular moment I pretty much never want to paint anything ever again - but the room is 99% finished, and I'm SO excited about that!  Check it out:

Before:

 Loooong sewing table. Stained plywood top (ok, but the finish was wearing off), on black wire shelves for legs (wobbly, ugly, cramped legroom).

Gray walls.  Soft and relaxing, but boring.

Green painted concrete floor. (Hey, the paint was free, and at the time it was better than bare concrete).

3 of 4 wood plank shelves, fabric s l o w l y  being moved from bins on the floor underneath to "neatly" "folded" stacks, pending storage box decision.

Closet packed to bursting, half-assed, mis-matched carboard and paper boxes, and big plastic bins.


The bottom shelf was supposed to be an extra work surface for me to roll my chair up to. Do YOU see any place to work??

<-- 8yo carpet




After:
After a loooong four-day weekend of taking shelves down and re-painting them, painting the walls, sorting and organizing until I thought I'd die from it, and making some furniture changes:

I painted the top 2/3 of the walls a fresh, crisp white.

The wooden shelves were painted a cool, charcoal gray - kinda reminds me of the color of those old, metal, Steelcase desks.

The closet, formerly a weird, too-light blue, got the same treatment:  white walls (top and bottom), and "Steelcase" gray on the shelves.

I like the gray "frame" around the closet opening.






<-- the carpet's been removed in here, as well. Finally.

The sewing table top also got painted gray;  the shelf  "legs" were replaced by Ikea's CURRY legs, in silver.

While the dimensions of the top haven't changed, the table itself is about 3" shorter than it was - which I was REALLY worried about doing, but it actually turned out to be exactly what this table needed. No more shoulder strain!

A LOT of art went into this room, much of it my own.  These four are actually the very first "real paintings" I ever did.

The black bulletin board that used to sit behind the sewing machine on the right is now hanging vertically at the end of the desk. Less looming, and more space for art! :)

<-- Ikea's HELMER  file cabinet.  SO cute, and SO incredibly perfect for all of my sewing things.  No more shelves full of random boxes of loose stuff! :D

ALL of the shelves and fabric boxes are now in place! The boxes still need labels.

There's a gray "frame" around the window, too - since the walls were already gray, I just taped off everything I wanted to refrain from painting. The inside of the window casing is still gray, too, and I really like the effect.

Look, a ceiling fan!!!  Belive it or not, this is nearly my favorite part of the room.  This room is ridiculously hot in the summers.  Now I don't have to wheel in a big ugly box fan to keep me cool in here.

Note the gray border around the top of the walls.  There's a nifty ceiling thing that hasn't happened in this room quite yet, so I left space. :)







That's a lot of change, for a LOT of work - but really, not so much.  Really, all that happened in this room was:

• painting
• changing the table legs
• installing a ceiling fan
• bringing in that little Ikea file cabinet

But it took four days to do.  Four days of nearly non-stop work - Saturday and Monday were like 14-hour days.  I'm actually looking forward to going back to work this week, so I can sit still, hehe. 

There are a couple more things in this room to show you, which will happen in their own post - like curtains, plants, and other "soft" things, to break up all this gray-and-white, which, in these pictures, seems a bit stark. The fabric boxes still need labels, and I have a nifty idea about that to experiment with.  Over the course of the next few weeks I'll be finishing up the ceiling, too.  

The next big thing, though, will be putting real flooring down in this room, and its neighbor.  If things go the way I'd like them to, that'll happen this next weekend.  Woohoo! 

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