I Rock.

Yes, I am once again inordinately pleased with myself. With some plywood scraps, my uncle's workshop, and a few of my own tools, I converted this:

into this:

Much better! (I also moved some of the small items to the baking cupboard.)

A place for everything, and everything in its place. Now I can *find* things in this drawer!

I may or may not cover the plywood with drawer liner... it's clean looking (unlike the wood drawers at the apartment), so I'm not in a rush.

House Update: Last Weekend

Last weekend I got the closet shelves up, sort of:

Apparently I trimmed this one a bit short, so I need to add some wedges on each edge so that it doesn't shift too far to one side, and thus fall down. (I think the back, where I measured, might be a bit narrower than the front, which contributed to the measuring difficulty.)

The shelf is also up in the master bedroom, but each of the middle braces missed studs (so much for using a stud finder!), and also went in a little high (they're curved at the bend, which makes it difficult to be accurate), so I want to move them before I call it "done". That shelf I cut a smidge too long, and so had to trim one end a bit.

This clothes line in the laundry room used to go from beside the window (you can still see the hole in the wall) to above my head:

The problem with that configuration meant that the shirts on hangers brushed up against the wall (it was too close to the wall), and they got in your way when doing laundry (not a very big room). It's now a bit of a challenge to reach the hangers over the dead space (where the flat drying racks are), but it can be done, and I'm thinking of making a pole with a hook to act as an assistant:

Two other downsides to this configuration:
1. I can no longer hang long stuff (which, ironically, I never had the need, until *just* after moving the line), and
2. the ironing board is in the way.
It's not a great place for the ironing board anyway, since it will get dusty there. It's on my list of things to figure out. I did find a random hook in the entryway to the livingroom to hang my dress on to dry, but I expect I'll add a hook or something at the top of the entryway to the laundry room... it'll still get in the way when you do laundry, but it's not that often that I want to hang something long to dry.

I also "unpacked" the modified jean legs that I use to store plastic bags and rags, and hung them up on random screws in the wall of the laundry room:


This screw I installed myself:

As I put it in, I remembered why my mom had storage space for brooms, but I don't: There's some shelves in the broom closet that didn't used to be there! However, those shelves are very handy for storing cleaning products. So I need to figure out if I want to find a new place for the cleaning products, or a new place for the brooms and mops. (I think my dad's solution may have been to not have brooms and mops, or he kept them where they were used... like beside the tub, where the mop caught leaks. (I don't want to store my mop beside the tub, thanks.)

I'm contemplating putting some hooks on the side of the laundry room for the brooms and mops, but that's not really an ideal situation, since they'll be visible to people going to and from the kitchen, plus they'll make the laundry room dustier.

Today, I'm in a mood to get stuff done... however, there's so much I *want* to do, I'm being struck with indecision. Plus there's the lingering gastroenteritis, that makes me want to stick close to washrooms... :P

Update

Did I remember to post that I had biscuit-joined my shelf boards? I think I did. Then it was too hot to paint for *ages*. Recently the weather has gotten more humane. I primed on Saturday, painted the first coat on Sunday (in two stages... the can said it took four hours to be dry to the touch, 72 hours to cure), did half of the second coat last night, and the other half tonight. Sunday I can bring them home and put them up. :) (I'm looking forward to getting that project checked off! Especially since it means I can unpack some boxes!!!) As I was putting on the first coat of primer, I discovered this cute little "owl" waving hi:

(Can you see him too?) I was tempted to leave him unpainted, but didn't.

Speaking of weather, we also got some rain recently... and that has brought the mosquitoes out. They were biting my ankles (other body parts too, but they seemed fond of my ankles) tonight as I painted. :(

I like these insects much better:

This fellow was hard to photograph... it was a breezy day, and the flower was blowing around. I was trying to get a photo with his wings open, but that didn't happen.

This guy was much easier, especially as there wasn't any wind:

Plus I didn't have to try catching a "wings open" shot. ;)

I'm trying to pick a paint colour for my bedroom:

The kitchen in the apartment was a lovely grey-green, but I didn't manage to pick up paint chips while I was still living there. Since the lighting in Home Depot is a little strange, I grabbed pretty much every green there. (R: I know you said to get a copy of the chip for every wall, but I figured I'd narrow it down a bit first!)

I think I'm leaning towards the colour on the bottom of the card in the middle clump, second row, right hand side, with the colour just above it for stripes. (Can you say glutton for punishment? It could be worse... for a bit I toyed with the idea of getting around four greens, and painting tree trunks fading out in the misty distance.) I'm thinking random stripes with the two greens, plus some gold pin-striping. That should tie it in nicely with my bedroom furniture, plus be a bit more fun than everything one solid colour, and not quite so dark. (I really liked the dark colour in the kitchen, but it had lots of white cabinets to break it up.) I'm also thinking of not using wallpaper, unless the currently-papered wall is in really bad shape under the current paper. If it is, I'll buy some of that paintable wallpaper, something like this one.

House Update

Both closet doors are up! I was able to get the second one up one evening last week by adjusting the nut at the bottom. I have no idea how I was able to get it down but not back up.

Yesterday I was at a wedding shower for my step-sister-in-law-to-be, and then a friend came over for a visit-while-I-work. In the morning I made a list of things I could do while we visited. When I reached the bottom of the pad of paper, I decided I could stop adding things to the list, even if there were more things I could be doing. ;) The list I came up with:
• water plants
• make burritos (I assemble my own frozen burritos)
• weed
• wash walls
• tidy kitchen (I didn't have time on Friday to clean up after making a dish for a potluck Friday evening.)
• sort bathroom (dad still has stuff there)
• sort toyroom (brother's stuff)
• vacuum
• drawer corners (I bought replacements for the missing ones in the kitchen)
• caulk tub
• bedroom floor (I still need to use fantastic around three of the edges)
• office, sort (brother's stuff), take out carpet pieces
• alter pants
• tie up black raspberries
• put CFL bulbs in chandelier
Of course, what I *actually* did didn't quite match items on the list, but I at least got stuff done:
• water plants (yay, they won't die this week!)
• tidy kitchen (does it count if I then got it dirty again cooking dinner for the two of us?)
• swept and mopped kitchen floor (it *needed* doing... however, I didn't get the bit on the other side of the "bar", because I was also doing laundry, and that's where the laundry was piled)
• laundry
• installed toggle screws for towel bar in bathroom
• swept and mopped bedroom floor (but didn't fantastic the edges)
• swept and mopped bathroom floor
So, only two of those items were actually on the list, and one was immediately undone (I was waiting for the dishwasher to finish the previous day's dishes, I'll get to that this morning), but everything needed doing.

One day when mom was over cleaning, she said "with all the time I'm spending cleaning, you better *keep* this place clean!" Mom, I cleaned! I'm trying! ;)

My friend lives near a Home Depot, so I stopped by to pick up a few things when I dropped her off. However, it turns out it closes at 8 on Saturday, and it was 9:30 when I arrived. Dang!

The list for today is more manageable than yesterday's list, but I suspect I still won't get everything done:
• extract sewing machine (it's behind the mountain of boxes, although I have a goat trail mostly there)
• alter pants
• Home Depot
• sort bathroom (dad will be here tomorrow)
• move my stuff away from dad's stuff (dad has movers coming tomorrow to get some big items)
Wish me luck!

House Update

Not much to update today. Is it procrastinating to avoid working on house stuff by working on a shower gift? (Shower is in a week and a half.) If so, I was bad tonight.

However, this morning after my shower, I packed a paste of borax and water into the gap between the tub and shower surround:

(I'll remove the excess when I caulk, and stuff left behind inside the crack will be a mildew preventative.) Borax is a curious substance: too much water, and it completely dissolves; too little, and it forms hard rocks. There is a narrow range of "just right" to make a paste.

Public service announcement: borax is slippery. I had noticed this in an academic sort of way previously, but my brain didn't put two and two together until I was lying horizontal in the tub this morning. (Chalk up a few more moving-in bruises.)

Another house mystery: why are there four (from a quick glance, may be more hiding) shower heads in the cabinet beside the shower? One is identical to the one in use, two match each other, and the fourth is that inexpensive one traditionally found in rentals. I can see there being one (say, if my brother replaced the shower head without asking dad, and didn't want to throw out the one that had been there), but *four*? What are they doing there? Are they functional, or broken? I'm pretty sure they've all at least been used, which probably means that most are broken. (If they're broken, why weren't they thrown out? If they were kept for parts, that would only explain the one that matches the one currently in use.)

Speaking of house mysteries, I finally remembered to have a close look at the transition between the kitchen and dining room floors, where there's a height difference.

Looks like a plywood base with two layers of linoleum on top. For a better look at the two layers of linoleum, we need only look at the back stairs:

The orange stuff on the treads is what my mom put down when I was a kid (I'm pretty sure I vaguely remember the kitchen being redone), and the older stuff is on the risers.

The plywood subfloor must have been installed properly, because there's no "wear along the edges" that you get when linoleum is installed on an uneven subfloor. (We have that wear at the cabin, and the two linoleum floors in the bedrooms here were definitely *not* put on top of plywood subfloors.)

While working on the shower present, I watched another Holmes on Homes. Take-away lesson: kitchen cupboards should be installed on *top* of the flooring that covers the whole kitchen, since appliances depend on the standard height to fit under the counter top. Since I'm not planning on re-doing the cabinets (mom designed some pretty great ones), that pretty much limits my flooring options to another thin layer of linoleum. (Not that I was really thinking of other options... and the orange stuff is in remarkably good condition for being ~30 years old. It's just... orange.)

Well, time to stop procrastinating going to bed.

Towel Bar +1

Wanted a towel bar near the tub. Purchased and installed towel bar for the win.

(I didn't hit studs with the screws, so I'll want to replace them with toggle screws sometime, but the regular ones will do for now.)