I love freebies

Todd's aunt is moving to Hawaii, and is consequently clearing out her home in Portland. This means that there's McD family stuff headed our way. I am most excited about this amazing gen-yoo-ine antique steamer trunk. Given the age, it's in very good shape (and still has nifty little organizer inserts that I'm sure I will make use of soon). I decided to use it as my night stand, as I go about duplicating the room that the June or July BHG blatantly ripped off from my brain. If this picture looks familiar, that's because I have a white duvet and antique botanical seashell prints and blue walls and random oceanic paraphernalia littering my bedroom! I couldn't believe it when I saw that page.

They did, however, give me an idea for a black headboard, which I am still designing. If you're confused about the trunk connection, you have a good reason. While there's no trunk in that picture, there is antique stuff, and so I'm working with what I've got.

I also fixed something that's been bothering me for two years and nine months. I, having never purchased my own dust ruffle before, didn't know they came in different lengths. So I picked the wrong length, and have since had to engage in a war with getting the dust ruffle to look decent every time I rotate the mattress. It's always an ugly thing, and it's never ended well. I recently discovered that there's such a thing as iron-on hemming, so I bought some, and voila! The right length!
I also decided to take the plunge and hang a few pictures in my office. They look a little funny where they are, because the big one really should have gone over my couch, but then I wouldn't have been able to look at it. So the big one's over the computer, and the little one is over the couch. It's a little weird, but it works.

Lastly, this is kind of random, but I found this awesome piece of scrapbooking paper and I'm going to frame it. It's this sweet map of Europe. (You can just call me the queen of cheap art.) And I have some little cut dahlias in a bud vase. They're cute, and deserve a picture.

Goodbye

This requires a little background info. A few months ago, when our garage was getting downright dangerous to navigate in the dark, we decided to clean it out. We heaped all the trash into what we were then thinking of as a side driveway that was basically useless because you couldn't park a car there. This was March-ish. When it was cold, and we weren't thinking about being outside at all.

Fast-forward to July, and we have begun referring to the still trash-covered region as our "patio," because we have realized it is quite convenient to have our grill there, rather than next to the pool, which is not near the kitchen. I separated the trash into categories: recycling, which was the bulk of it; trash, like styrofoam and old carpet and crap; and things we might use again, like wood and stuff. We started getting rid of things as we had space in our trash and recycling, and threw a tarp over the pile so we wouldn't have to look at it. This is what that looked like, minus the recycling, which we hauled out to the recycle place a few weeks ago.


Not really so bad, but it all still had to go, and it was too much/dirty to put in the back of my car. So we procured Todd's parents' truck for the excursion to the dump, and proceeded to fill it to the brim with a boatload of old carpet and whatnot.


For the small fee of $16.50, I had the privilege yesterday morning of unloading it at the dump. That was, umm, smelly. And industrial. I wore gloves and felt very tough. This is our pile.


They mist in the building to keep the dust down, which is why there are water droplets on my lens.

Anyway, so I keep talking about all this old carpet. You may remember that there was green carpet in our stairwell and upstairs landing, but I thought if I was going to bother making a trip to the dump, we might as well rip the remainder of it out and dispose of it. So here's what our upstairs looks like, sans green carpet and coordinating green pad. It still has the tan-colored pad that's irritatingly glued to the floor, but that is much more flexible and stuffable into a bag than carpet is, so we'll get to that when we have time.

We've also been puttering away on the little hallway area downstairs, in between the living room and bathroom/bedrooms. Joining the long list of Things We Just Don't Really Notice Anymore In Order To Maintain Sanity was the paint in this hallway. The walls were white at some point, I think, but they'd gotten all dingy and gray and just looked plain crappy. Here's an example. You can see where we painted, to the right, and what hasn't been painted yet. Ick.

On Saturday night (wild night, I know) we worked on painting trim and rolling the walls and ceiling. Funny thing about painting, there is almost no correlation between how long it takes to paint a room and that room's size. Or maybe there's in inverse correlation. Anyway, it's taking a while, so we just keep chipping away at it. The whole thing looks a lot lighter and cleaner now. I am going to be stenciling in there, so I'll post an "after" when it's done.

Art smart

I looked around one day recently and realized that our walls are quite bare. So I've gone about remedying that in the most budget-conscious way possible: on-sale cheapo frames from Michaels and pilfered stuff from the web. I'm pretty pleased with the results, in the bathroom:


and also in the stairwell:



and I have two more that I'm going to hang soon.

What's new as of 8.5

Here's a video of what's new around our house, since May I think.

An update

We've had quite a July. After our friends left, my family came, and my dad hit the house in a blur of motion. On Friday, he tried to fix the garbage disposal, which turned out to be beyond repair but not beyond smoking up the kitchen. This made him discover that our exhaust fan had been taped shut outside the house, so he fixed that. Then we got a new garbage disposal and he installed it. He also fixed our kitchen faucet (the aerator wasn't working). Having spent enough time inside, he moved outdoors to chop down a scraggly tree, mow over the weeds in the front yard that we'd been waiting for the Round Up to kill, and break up a big pile of gravel and dry dirt with a shovel. We sat inside and watched in awe.

Saturday, everyone (Steven McD included) pitched in to clear out the cedar tree debris. About six trips out to Todd's parents' ranch to dump the stuff took care of it. Dad also pruned the ingrowth on the tree in front (it blooms pink in the spring, but I don't know what it is). It looks much better now, and it will be a lot healthier.

Also accomplished: fixed the leaky faucet in the upstairs bathroom, installed bolt to secure door knob on front door (we have one of the long ones that has a little thumb latch, and at the bottom where it meets the door, there's supposed to be a bolt), caulked around front door, hung begonia from oak tree in back in a way that DOESN'T cause it to fall off (not that that's how I did it...), mostly fixed the window in the office (that I now need to glaze before fall) and other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting.

And David and Dad built a table out of the stump from the tree we cut down. It doesn't look that great from a distance, but it looks fantastic when set for dinner. Plus it's a lot nicer than eating off a box, which is what we had been doing.

After the fam left, Rachel stayed for a few more days. We worked on pulling up the carpeting on the stairs, because there's pine underneath. Though we unfortunately found that the carpet pad was idiotically glued to the floor, it is (happily) water-and-fabric-softener soluble. So it's a pain, but definitely doable. We also painted all the paneling that will go in my office. Now it just needs to be cut and installed.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I owe you a video and some pix, but my card reader has decided to go on vacation, and I know if I save this to update later, I'll never do it. Pix to come.