The rest of the projects

Just another batch of projects from a few weeks ago that I never posted...

This is what every homeowner wants to see when she removes the cover plate of a light fixture that's been in place since 1959. How do I know it's been there since 1959? Because that's the date on the Chicago Daily Tribune in the above picture. This was in a very crispy wad, presumably insulating against drafts. Right up next to a bunch of wiring, on a fixture that got regular use. Apparently, Eisenhower was heckled at London Heathrow Airport, among other top stories. Stevens Budget Shops had a big sale, featuring some rather svelte-looking illustrated women.

This is the dining room window, with a sill and casing reinstalled. Samesies in the living room, though the paint is all touched up in there. Wall treatment till TBD.

A bit hard to see without a comparison (wait, check this, you'll have to zoom in on the picture to see the missing trim) but the dormer is now all trimmed out! Nice to get that checked off.

Admittedly we are still missing grass and the fence still isn't finished, but hey, we have lots of blackeyed susans!

Here is the pool shack, now with new and improved structural integrity! Not surprisingly, all kinds of issues were discovered during the shoring-up of our beloved lobstah shack, but it's all all ship-shape now. Er, mostly. Still needs a bit of paint. But it's not going to fall over if there's a strong breeze anymore.

Upstairs bathroom now has towel bars. Towel bars are expensive. Even my planned DIY-pipe solution was going to cost as much as a cheapish pair of bars, so I got the second-cheapest towel bars Lowe's carried. At $12 each, I have no regard for form here, but they do their job. Plus, I was even responsible and painted the door (but not the trim; let's not be rash) before installing them.

Here's me with Cara and Kristan (two of my former colleagues) at Kristan's beautiful wedding two weekends ago in Jackson, WY. Bride requests cowboy boots, I buy used boots on eBay. :D <3 br="">

Lastly, this is just too awesome not to share. Sunset over Edenvale Winery in Medford last week. Sometimes the sunsets here are just unbelievable. And you can't even see the sun sneaking through the hills in golden beams in this shot. It's really just too much.

So many updates!

I can't believe it's been two months since my last post. You'd think things had been quiet around here, but...hardly. Last week, my contractor brother-in-law and his sidekick came and knocked out a ton of projects, several of which are detailed below. In the previous two months, we (Todd) battled moles, first with bait and then with little gas bombs, which seems to be more effective and more fun.

I also discovered the cleaning magic of Barkeeper's Friend for removing hard water buildup on the shower tile (and subsequently discovered that if you use it for a long time without gloves, your hands will peel like little snakes...disgusting). We swam a bit, sulked and stayed inside for most of August because of the smoke from horrible fires near Crater Lake, became suburban-official with green grassy front, back and side yards and a fully functional sprinkler system and...sheesh, I don't remember what else. This is why I don't go two months without posting.

Anyway. Here's one of the VERY exciting projects Trevor and Eric completed last week.

This fixture was purchased two years ago on clearance as a floor model at Lowe's and was intended to be the dining room chandelier. It was originally in the neighborhood of $200, and I snagged it for $56. It made a very nice dust collector, first in the corner of the dining room for about a year, and then upstairs in the guest room, where it also collected cobwebs.

I decided it was going to be too big for the dining room, so naturally this hulking, heavy fixture should probably instead be installed somewhere trickier to get to. To be fair, I had also read that it put of a TON of light, so much so that most reviewers said you really had to use it with a dimmer switch. Our upstairs landing is like a cave with no windows, so plenty of wattage was a perfect fit.

And it is! It's totally perfect. It does take up a lot of visual space, but the ceiling is high and I think it works. Plus, lots of light. SUPER worth paying the guys to do, too.

Next, I built this bed for the guest room over the last couple of weeks. We replaced our mattress (long story), gave our former queen guest room mattress to some friends and put our four-year-old king memory foam mattress in the guest room.

Since all we had was a queen hollywood frame and I am not really a mattress-on-the-floor sort, we needed a bedframe. You don't use boxsprings with memory foam, so I wanted just a platform that was high enough to hold the mattress. I've been plotting about building an upholstered bed for a while and decided that if I really thought it wasn't going to be that hard, then I should just go for it. So I spent a couple weekends rounding up my materials and then puttered on it during the week.

As usual, it took longer than anticipated to complete, but I LOVE it. It's also extremely sturdy, being constructed from 2x10s, 2x6s and 2x4s. I upholstered it with a very large wool blanket from the Army Navy Surplus Store, which I've been wanting to visit for a long time.

It didn't exactly turn out to be a cheap project. Even though I ended up acquiring some of my materials for free, which shaved about $40 off, and used some scrap wood I already had, it was still around $120. But it's exactly what I wanted, fits the mattress perfectly and will come apart whenever we move someday so it can go with us. Plus, most importantly, I can now SEE the guest room. This gives some structure to it, so now I know what odds and ends are getting kicked out of furniture purgatory, and soon this will be a finished space.

Speaking of finished spaces, Trevor and Eric also trimmed out Todd's office window and paneling. Sorry about the terrible picture; you can barely see all their nice work.

There's the paneling trim. They used a table saw to rout out a little channel for the drywall. Such a smart solution. This is why I am not a good finish carpenter (plus lack of patience, and I don't have a table saw. Maybe there is more than one reason.)

We've been debating whether to paint the paneling white, and your vote is welcome in the comments. In the meantime, all the trim and doors are going white. We'll see if having them differently finished looks super weird. Foaming and finishing the window made a huge difference in how much road noise comes through, so that's awesome too.

And last on the list, at least for this post, is the casing around Todd's office door and the two attic access doors off the upstairs landing. This was one of those things that I kept saying "I can do that." And I could have. It wouldn't have looked as nice, and it definitely wouldn't be finished right now it we were still waiting on me and my latent ability to cut and install casing. But I coulda done it. Luckily we didn't wait for me, and now it's up and looks great. I painted it this afternoon and reminded myself for the umpteenth time how very much I despise painting and can't wait until there is nothing left to be painted.

So, things keep clipping along and looking better all the time. I have a bunch more updates to post about other stuff we checked off the list. Hopefully sooner rather than later.