New House: First Project

Well, the move is finished and we're busy settling in.  After a few weeks of scurrying around unpacking and figuring out what to do with all of our stuff, everything is  mostly coming together.  We love the place so far: the floor plan is open and comfortable, there's plenty of storage, and there's a nice, big backyard for the dogs to play in.

The First Order of Business

So what's the first thing I did to the house?  I did what you've seen me do a thousand times on this blog: I painted something BLUE.

BEFORE

The walls of my bedroom were painted a dingy butter-yellow with a steel-blue accent wall. The paint job on the walls was old - filled with chips, smudges, dirty areas around light switches, and tons of nail holes. Plus, I despise yellow.  Thankfully, the landpeople said that since they weren't repainting the place before we moved in, that we could paint anything we wanted.  Woohoo!

How old-school-cool is it that there are sinks in the master bedroom?  I'm kind of loving it. 

AFTER

I love this color!!  It's Sherwin Williams' Silvermist, which is a soft, muted, dusky, greenish blue. Truth be told I was hoping to find something paler and grayer than this, but I opted for the right tone rather than the right depth, hoping it would work, and I LOVE the way it turned out.  My bedroom's been white for the last four years (by choice), and as much as I loved it, I'm really digging having color on my walls again.

CAT

I tell you what, as much as I love painting, it's no fun painting walls that go all the way up to the roofline.  I don't have a ladder that tall!  For the trim on the tallest wall, I stood at the very top of my 6' ladder with a 5' extension pole with a 2" foam brush taped to the end of it.  It took forever and it was SCARY.  Thankfully, I did not fall and die.

What's Next? 

1. Paint-wise, the bathroom and craft room are next - both are also painted in the yellow/blue color scheme that my bedroom was, the paint job equally old and battered.  The craft room will be painted with the left over Silvermist;  I'm not sure what color the bathroom will end up.    

2.  Sylvan and I have been hanging a lot of art, but we lack adequate wall space because of all of the large, tall furniture we have in the living room.  Solution?  Gallery wall! More on that very soon.  

3.  The landscaping at this place was seriously neglected for a very long time.  Technically, my first project in the house was a 6-hour landscaping bender in which I mowed the entire property (which is huge) and pruned back twelve bushes and a small tree which were all so overgrown that they were swallowing the back patio.  Next is the front "garden" under the windows, which is badly overgrown and full of weeds and anthills.  It's got a lovely little stone border, though, that's currently hidden under a battalion of dead Daylilies and "Monkey Grass" - once the dead plants are removed and the stones are washed off, it should be quite lovely.  

It's That Time Again

It's been a year since we moved into our little duplex, and now it's time to move back out.  For the second year in a row, the place where we live is being sold, so out we go. 

The new place is a single-unit house (yay!!) a little bit north of where we live now. The house is much larger than the duplex we're leaving (yay!!), with two bathrooms instead of one (yay!!) and three bedrooms, which means we get our craft room back (yay!!) 

The move isn't until May 4th, so for the time being we're packing and cleaning and packing and cleaning.  Moving has catharsis built-in: after all the stress of looking for a place, filling out applications, and figuring out the money for the deposits and first rent, at the end of the day there's good, hard work to burn off all that stress.  Yes, I'm one of those crazy people who enjoys the physical aspect of moving.  The best part, of course, is setting up house after it's all over. 

No, actually, I think the best part is sitting around with your tired, dusty friends at the end of moving day with pizza and cold beers, laughing about all the work.  Yes. 

So the garage is full of boxes already packed; and the house is torn apart and upside down.  There's a mountain of cleaning I want to do now that it would make no sense for me to do until the duplex is empty.  Somehow in the midst of it all I need to lay down fresh sod in the backyard (it's delivered, I just have to find time to do it before it dies), wash two dogs at least once each, and figure out where all the boxes are going to go once the garage is full. 

Obviously, there won't be much in the way of projects here for a little while longer,  but I'll have pics of the new place to share in a few weeks. 

Onward!  Work now, collapse on the floor later. 

CAT TAX

FÖRHÖJA Cart For Art: Another Ikea Hack

The new MOPPE sideboard that I built replaced this Ikea FÖRHÖJA"kitchen cart," previously used as a kitchen island and more recently as a storage piece in the living room.  It was home to a 10g fishtank (recently updated to a 20g), a potted Benjamina Ficus, four Ikea SNALIS plastic storage bins filled with aquarium supplies and other random items, and a cat scratcher nobody was using anymore.

I loved my FÖRHÖJA, I just wanted to change the color and repurpose it.

So I Did! 

Meet my new art cart/table!  Many, many coats of stain and sanding sessions went into this. People, there were problems with staining this thing.  All told I went through four different stains, who knows how many coats of each, and sanded it all down and started over THREE TIMES.  The end result of all that abuse is a cart that's a bit rustic looking, which I did not want, but it's FINE the way it IS because it's DONE.  HMPH!

Anyway. I actually do love it now that it's finished. :)

This thing has 30+ pieces.  That was a lot of staining and sanding and staining.

So! Much! Storage! 

So many drawers!  Baskets! Stuff!!

I added a two-prong hook to the front for aprons and towels; and a hanging Ikea basket (BYGEL, spray painted gold) to the side to hold large tools and bottles and brushes.


I got the water hyacinth baskets on Amazon, and lemmetellya, they're my favorite thing about this whole piece.  I looooove the way these things smell. 

The MOPPE drawer boxes on top are the ones I made in August.

I also added a 6" board to the top, on a pair of long tension hinges, so that I could extend the table top for a larger work surface, and also have some storage space behind/under the unit for large canvases and boards...but it doesn't work!

Turns out the long hinges aren't strong enough to hold up the extension when you put any weight on it (I think they're made more for holding trunk/chest lids open); so eventually I'll need to get a better holdy-uppy solution so I can use the extension.














As much trouble as the stain and the hinges have been, I LOVE it now that it's finally done!  It's taller than my old art table, which is fantastic - I'm 5'9, I have a tall easel, and I like BIG canvases.  It also takes up significantly less floor space than my old table, which opens up the "art room" behind the couch.  The extra floor space also helps with getting Shelly in and out of the back door - she's weird about her walking clearance, and won't go through anything too narrow, and won't step over, like, a SHOE that's in her path. Weird dog. (She's really old). 

More space in a tiny duplex is always welcome! 

Now I have a great new space to do more stuff like this:

Volcanic Seascape, November 2018, after a USGS photo of Hawaii's coastline back in July when Kileauea erupted

[Funko Pop] Bob Ross, patron saint of aspiring artists ❤

P.S. I Made A Thing

Here's a little blue shawl I made recently, for three reasons: 

1. This yarn is my favorite color, and it's SO SOFT OMG
2. My office is cccccooollllddd
3. I've been working on a sweater for two months and needed to crochet something else for a while to clear my brain

There's no pattern, I just made it up as I went. (If you know crochet, it's made entirely of two stitches: HDC and Tr).     

I'm also working on a pair of slippers, but only because I wanted to know if I could figure it out on my own. I probably won't wear them, or post them here.  They're just an exercise in using up old yarn. 

   

My Own Personal Tiny Nature Channel

Just, you know, go ahead and read this whole post in Sir David Attenborough's voice.  For fun. 

This is my aquarium: 

It's a 10-gallon* freshwater planted tank which holds five live plants, two sections of driftwood,  one tiny baby ramshorn snail who I assume hitched a ride on a plant as an egg, and two Blue Velvet/Blue Rili shrimp named Fancy and Pants.  (Guy at the fish shop: "Y'all move out the way so I can sell this nice lady some fancy pants shrimps!" and LO, they were named). 

However, now that I have the MOPPothecary unit done and set up, the small tank looked tiny - and I finally had room to expand into a bigger tank! Hooray!

This is my aquarium on drugs No, wait, THIS is my aquarium: 

Here's the same cast, this time on a 20-gallon stage instead of a 10.  It looks so empty!  It IS a lot of tank for two 1" shrimp, but, after I get some more plants, more shrimp, and some tiny silvery fishes, it'll be teeming with life.

I made the background for it myself - it's a screenshot of the sacred forest from the Miyazaki film Princess Mononoke.  I adjusted the pic for size and shape on Blockposter.com, printed the pdf they gave me, taped it together, and taped it to the back of the tank.  The tree-i-ness of it blends with the driftwood roots and gives the tank kind of an underwater-forest look.  

Here are Fancy (left) and Pants).  Near as I can tell, Fancy is a girl and Pants is a boy.  Of course, I could be wrong about that, I'm not shrimp junk expert.  I'd be perfectly happy being the owner of a billion little blue shrimps, but I'm also perfectly happy just having two, so, whatever they feel like doing or not doing, that's just fine with me. 

* I can't type the word "gallon" without first typing "gallong" to save my life. It's not the only word it happens to.  People named Kevin(g), you have my apologies. 

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

MOPPE Sideboard, Finished

Folks, we have a finished apothecary/card-catalog sideboard, made with Ikea MOPPE chests:

At the end of the last post, I'd just finished assembling this thing.  In case you're curious, it went a little something like this.  Ignore the measurements on the paper; things got adjusted a bit when I realized the actual measurements of the MOPPEs are not exactly what Ikea's website say they are.  But this is the general idea of how the thing went together.  Essentially, I just made a house for the MOPPEs to live in - top, bottom, sides, and dividers in between each column of MOPPEs. Everything was glued together and/or joined with glue and dowels. 

 I decided not to put feet on this thing, as it was already 38" high, and that's tall enough for me.  I keep a fishtank on top of this thing, and there's only so high I can reach to clean the tank, you know? 

After all the glue was dry, I sanded and stained the entire thing, then clear-coated it with Polycrylic to protect the wood.  Most of this thing only has a single clear coat; the top got three coats, to be on the safe side - again, because I keep a fishtank on top of it. All the drawers are very different, because of the wood that Ikea uses in the MOPPEs. I think it's kind of neat. 

Adventures in engineering:  how the heck did I get this from the detached garage into the house, over a rocky pebble driveway? I used a pair of 5' shelf boards I had laying around.  I slid the unit onto one, and laid the second in front.  Slid the unit onto the second one, moved the first one to the front, and so on.  It took a minute, but it worked beautifully, and even allowed me to ramp the unit up over the front step and the threshhold without incident.  Whew! 

54 drawers got stained, sanded,  and clearcoated. 54 knobs (3/4" screw buttons) were glued in place, and then 54 label holders, labels, and 108 of the tiniest screws I'd ever seen. 

Lastly, 54 papers  were inserted, and the drawers went into the unit:

And it's done!  That was both a ridiculous amount of work (look at the size of this thing! (Cut the chatter, Red 2), and hardly any work at all.  All this really entailed was building a frame to house a bunch of pre-made boxes, which were all glued in place.  I had the shelf boards that I used for the top, bottom, sides, and dividers cut to length and width at the hardware store; I only did a little adjusting on my saw at home to make sure things fit perfectly.  

So, what happens to the Ikea FORHOJA cart that used to occupy this space?  

More on that soon. 

The Greatest Ikea Hack of All Time (For Me, Anyway)

How do you take a cheap Ikea organizer unit and turn it into a huge, expensive, pain in the butt?  Like this:

Okay, wait.  First, let me show you my inspiration and supplies:

This is a photo I found on Pinterest that made me gasp and clutch my pearls.  I slowly craned my neck around behind me like the girl in the Exorcist and glared at my MOPPE art table organizer unit.  My roommate dropped her pen and asked, "What is wrong with you??"


That apothecary cabinet.  The first thought I had as soon as I let go of those pearls was, I could MAKE THAT.








Here are the two Ikea MOPPEs I fixed up for my art table back in August. 

I adore it.  But what if I had another one...that was HUGE...and could hold all the little household bits and pieces?  I remember thinking, while staining these things, "A whole bunch of these could be kinda cool."









Here's the Ikea MOPPE by itself, as it comes from the store - unstained and fully assembled.

Very potential.  Such ideas.  Wow.











I spent about a week planning and sketching, and making supply lists.  When I was ready, I walked through Ikea pushing this thing around:

I swear there were PLENTY more left on the shelf. 

The first thing I did was set about staining 9 boxes and 54 drawers:

This is only about a third of them. 

As soon as  the boxes were stained and dry, I started assembling the unit: I set out three boxes on my bottom board, dowelled and glued them all together, and then set in the remaining six boxes the same way.  

All the clamps I own. 

Before adding the top board, I glued in six 1/4" square sticks behind the boxes.  I know the boxes are glued in securely; but just on the off chance that repeated use of the drawers knocks them loose (it won't), these sticks might add a little extra security against the boxes being pushed out of place (won't need it).  There's so much open space behind them; I really wish I could have made this thing double-sided. Right now it's going to be used against a wall, but one day it might make a nifty room divider or something.  Maybe I can go back and add more boxes in the future.  For now, when this is done, the back will be covered by a sheet of Luan.

Surprisingly not front-heavy. 

While I was waiting for all the glue to dry, I stained a billion more drawers.  I also cut out papers for the drawer bottoms (thanks, Past Me, for making templates in August that I could use later!), and labels to go into the labels holders waiting to go onto this piece.

Fiskars paper cutter FTW. 

As much as I want to show you a picture of a finished project - it's not done yet!  I can't WAIT to see this thing finished!  I'm hoping it will be by the end of the week.  I'll post updates along the way.



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Ikea HEMNES Pantry Cabinet: Part II

BEFORE

Hi.

This is my Ikea  HEMNES cabinet-turned-pantry.  You may remember it from such posts as this one from October.

I'd gone back and forth with the idea of painting it for months before I frosted the glass in October;  but once that was done, I was sure, and I was just waiting for a chance to get to it.

Enter Thanksgiving weekend.  I don't celebrate it, myself, but I had five days off of work, and my roommate was out of town for one of those days, so I prepped and painted this thing in about eight hours.

Here's the whole thing after painting.  *drooool*  I LOVE IT.

There was barely any finish on this thing to begin with, so all it took was deglossing and then sanding very lightly to get a good surface for the paint.

The paint itself is a 50/50 mixture of plain black semi-gloss latex and black latex chalkboard paint.  I guess that makes it quarter-gloss?  I don't know.  But the texture and sheen are really nice.  I love a piece of furniture that feels good.

For the first few hours I worked on this, I was listening to Hamilton, which is one of my favorite things in the world. Every time I look at this picture in particular, I get Wait For It stuck in my head all over again.

I almost painted the inside of this unit a pale muted blue.  I'll be honest with you, the reason I didn't was that I didn't want to go to the store to get blue paint.  There are days when you just don't want to put a bra on, you know?

The knobs and drawer pulls I used on this unit are Ikea's FAGLAVIK, which, sadly, was discontinued about three years ago.  They're so smooth and soft and pretty.  They had a brushed nickel version, a chrome, and a brushed brass - these guys.  I looooove them .

I mean, that's just sexy.

















I love this cabinet.  I love the color.  I love that it didn't become a big black hole like I was worried it would.  I love the way the glass and the black look together.

But wait til you guys see my other Thanksgiving weekend project.  I'm almost done with it, and I'm crazy excited to show it to you!




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Obligatory Halloween Post

Ya'll, I really thought I posted this weeks ago.  Whoops.

I didn't go all out for Halloween this year - I threw my first Halloween party in five years! - but I did go, like, maybe 50% out.  Here's some spooky stuff:

Every flat surface in the house was littered with plastic spiders, bugs, snakes, vampire teeth, and dead rose petals.

I only got to do one dead bouquet this year, but I kind of loved it.

1.  There were also googly eyes on everything

2. Hammers are scary. What?

Funny story about the "formaldehyde" these eyeballs are soaking in:  I didn't have any food coloring, but I remembered that the ammonia test kit for my aquarium turns water greenish yellow (as long as there's no ammonia).  So I did that.  But apparently the tester drops were detecting the living hell out of something in these painted foam eyeballs, because it just kept getting greener and greener and GREENER.  So I bought food coloring.

ALL THE GOOGLY EYES

The mother of all creepy-crawlies: this  aquarium full of spiders.  I covered the wall behind it and nearby furniture with spiders, too.  Escapees.  Mwahaha.

Frank here doesn't make a great disco ball, but he tried.

Where did I even GET a glitter skull? Why do I have this?

Family photo wall, from top left:   Edith from Crimson Peak, some random internet witch, Sweeney Todd from the film version of the musical with Johnny Depp, Rupert Giles from one of the Buffy Halloween episiodes, and Igor from Young Frankenstein.

Other frames around the house were filled with spooky old Victorian homes (including the one from Practical Magic), and creepy graveyard angel statues.

"Bleeding" white taper candles made by dripping red wax all over them. I only burned myself like six times.

Booze & candy bar, with a ouija board drawn on a chalkboard I made for the kitchen, and paper bats flying around and up to the ceiling.

I re-painted the chalkboard labels on these canisters and added some more to the new canisters so they'd all match.  They're labeled with spell ingredients from Macbeth.

Danger noodle ftw.

It me!  I was a witch.  My friend Laurie insisted on getting a photo of me from above for some reason, which is why this looks like a selfie.  I think she liked the hat. It is a pretty cool hat.









← that's a tattoo on my shoulder, not a visible bra strap

Every witch needs her black cat, right?  I have two.  This one is Rabi.





















Stay spooky, friends.  KTHXBAI.