Busy work

I give you Exhibit A. I warped no fewer than five screws, trying to install the bamboo shade in the living room. They included the cheapest screws EVER and I ended up using some small ones I had left over from door knob installations. (I'm not sure what that says about my door-knob-installing skills, that I had leftover pieces...) Anyway, the shade is up! And the sheet, while quite a statement, has been retired.

The shade didn't go up without a fight, though. It is 71.5 inches, as is the space it went into. That's great, except the brackets on either side stuck out about a quarter inch each, so I had to use a variety of tools, including a saw, a box cutter, and something Trevor referred to as "tin snips" to hack the blind down so it fit. I prayed the whole time I wouldn't slice a finger off and have to drive myself to the emergency room. This whole process of measuring, drilling, hanging and hacking took a few hours, which was a few hours more than my time estimate of 20 minutes. If only I could get paid to underestimate things...

We'll also be putting curtains up. Print is yet to be decided, though I am thinking along the lines of either chintz or a formalish vine-y flowery print, the classification of which I am not familiar with.

In other news, our front door is now working. The knob had a rather unexpected design that the instructions failed to explain (once again, Kwikset gets a 0 out of 10 on instructions) but we got it worked out.

Other little things accomplished (none of which were exciting) were putting pads on the dining room table and chair legs so they don't scratch the floor to bits, and on the baskets in the bathroom, so they don't scratch the vanity to bits. I also made a pot of soup and cleaned the bathroom. Impressively domestic, huh?