Snap Judgments

In the last few days, Todd and I decided it was time to finish my office. I think it's really weird that this is how most things get done around here -- one of us just decides to rip down wallpaper, paint, whatever. The bathroom was the same way: "Wanna redo the bathroom?" "OK." Commence demolition.

Anyway. You may notice from the photo below that the last papered wall in my office (sporting a jaunty gold and brown pattern) is now gone. Todd and I each took a side of the door, and since it was only (only!) two layers, it didn't take too long.
My office was back together for all of a day and a half, before we went to Home Depot for a gallon of navy blue paint (last night). I also brought along the gallon of pink primer we had left over from the living room, in hopes that they could tint it purple or something so I could use it (they did). FYI, dark colors require a tinted primer, or it's at least recommended. Because I did a somewhat mediocre job removing all the wallpaper paste, I figure the primer helps the paint adhere a little better.
and angle number two...

I actually kind of liked the purple. It reminded me of a color that I wanted to paint my room as a child (but was not allowed to). I think it's possible that I'm working out these childhood color-deprivation issues all over my house (blue bedroom, red living room, plans for a yellow kitchen...)

Then, first coat of blue paint. This is Behr...navy blue. I actually don't know if I looked at the name of the color (a first) because we marched in to the store, plucked a few blues from the chips, compared for about 30 seconds, and decided on a color. No taping to the wall, no testing at home, and hopefully it'll be ok. So far, looks fine.

I have to say, I'm a lot happier with the coverage from this blue than I was with the blue in our room (which is more in the royal family than navy). Maybe it's the purple primer (rather than the gray we used in the bedroom), but one coat looked good (despite some streakiness, which is to be expected) and the second looks like that might be all it needs. Nighttime and light bulbs are deceptive, though, so I'm not holding my breath. I will say that it's a whole lot less of a pain to paint when you're not taping everything and trying to avoid trim and whatnot. I ripped off the baseboard last fall, so it'll get repainted separate from the wall.

This whole setup with the blue paint is a departure from the original plan. I was going to install hair-rail height tongue-in-groove pine paneling around the room, painted white. Well, sadly, I bought it too far in advance, let it sit in the garage and warp for nine months, and when I finally went to put it up, it was all bendy and weird. Then I thought I'd do white wainscoting, because it's less campy, but it was kind of expensive. So I had unpainted, unwallpapered plaster walls for a year, until I was inspired. Chair rail is cheap (.50/ft) and classic (a drawback with the paneling, which would have been questionable and rather permanent). WIN!

So, navy paint under the chair rail, the wall with the door outside will be painted white and possibly have a sailboat painted on it (in a very simple, monochromatic way, not like a mural), and BAM! Office complete!!

I'll put up some additional pix when it's all done. ALSO. Pictures of the garden are coming. I can't believe it's been three weeks since we got everything planted!

"Yardening"

As usual, this weekend held lots of yard work for us. Saturday, we put our raised beds in place and picked up the dirt to fill them with from Biomass (which is where you take all your wood clippings and other organic waste, and pay to drop it off, and they make dirt and compost and mulch out of it, and then you pay them to get it back). The bed in the foreground is ours, and the one behind it is Steve and Betsy's. We lined the bottoms of both with dry leaves, in hopes of keeping some of the moisture contained (and adding to the quality of the soil, as the leaves break down over time). Yesterday, in between brief torrential downpours, I planted our little basil plants and some onion sets, leftovers from the neighbors (thanks, guys!), in our bed.There's a nice closeup of the basil. It's from Trader Joe's, which I visited with Cat on Friday in Bend. It smells amazing, and I'm really excited to harvest and eat it.

Our neighbors' garden, in case you are interested, looks like this:

Personally, I don't think lettuce and sugar snap peas have any business looking that good (is it trying to get eaten? Because that's what I want to do to it), but maybe I'm just jealous they got started sooner than we did.

In other yard-related news, we were chatting with Tom, who mentioned that he has a friend who can hook us up with some lovely mulch, like this:which is verrry exciting, because it involves one of our favorite words: FREE. Also, because we have a lot of things we are planning on mulching. I sprayed weeds this weekend in the yard and all our flowerbeds out front, in hopes that they will die soon and we can mulch over them.

Let's see, what else...I'm really proud of my ghetto water catchment system. That would be an old garbage can positioned under a gutter that has no downspout.

You can make fun of me if you want, and I'll understand, but bear in mind that I watered all the plants in my yard this weekend without turning on the hose. I would like to put in real catchment barrels (ideally that look nicer than old trash cans) at the downspouts around the house, and in my green dream world, dig a hole and put in a water-storage cistern to stash all that rainwater for irrigating in the summer. I suppose in the interim, my "system" will work fine.

Water stains and other small wars

I finally got fed up enough with my office ceiling to paint it. It's one of those things that I notice all the time and it annoys me, but I HATE painting ceilings, especially after my experience in the dining room in January. Anyway, my office had some pretty gnarly water stains on the ceiling (which we think came into being pre-1995, when the roof got redone. You can see water stains on the shake shingles in the attic), which I semi-successfully painted over.

I say "semi" because apparently, painting over water stains is no picnic. I would have known this if I hadn't decided beforehand that people who whine about painting over water stains just don't apply the paint thick enough, and bothered to do a quick search about it. After the paint started refusing to stick to the plaster, I did just that. THEN I applied another coat of paint, extra-thick. Results:

Not bad! Definitely an improvement, especially after I....

That's right...bleach. In the course of my Googling, I ran across some savvy mom who recommended wiping water stains with straight bleach. I would NOT recommend doing this on any wall that's not white to begin with. But we had some water stains on the ceiling of our bedroom, which happens to be directly beneath the upstairs bathroom. This is the other ceiling-painting project I've been avoiding and stewing about. It's only a relatively small area, but I figured matching the paint color would be impossible, so I'd have to do the whole ceiling.

The bleach was worth a shot, and it WORKED!! I put on my protective eyewear, grabbed a glove, and took my cup of bleach and sponge into the bedroom. A few wipes later, and the stains were gone. The ceiling's slightly whiter than the surrounding areas, but I can live with that.

I also "fixed" our vacuum cleaner, which had developed an odd habit of working for 7 minutes, then slowly turning off, by removing the world's biggest clump of dusty crap that had lodged inside it.

One more thing....

Last Sunday, we brought back enough mulch to finish covering this bed in our side driveway. Minus those prickly juniper bushes and plus a little mulch, and it's looking a lot better.

Aaaand...we're back!

So, since the ottoman-building adventure, it's officially become spring here, and some days are seeming downright summery. I have lots of pictures to share, so let's get to it.

This is a not-very-gorgeous shot of our camellia in front blooming (a month and a half ago). I was really excited, after babying it all last summer, to get a reward.

In late Feb or early March, I did a little work inside, namely installing quarter-round in the "hallway" area outside the bathroom downstairs. It still needs to be puttied and touched up, but we're liking how it looks. We will eventually put this in all around the downstairs (it's sitting in the garage now, waiting for a second coat of paint before its date with the nail gun).

I also painted and installed the vent covers for the living room. I was dreading this job, because I knew it would take at least four coats of paint to get the color right. Plus, hanging vent covers is one of those irritating little jobs that always takes longer than anticipated. But it was finally getting to my vain side, since it's probably the first thing people noticed when they walked in. So, action required. Crown molding is still not done, yet, but that's because the store's been out of our size every time we've checked.

Next, we can move outside, where we have been exceedingly busy. When people ask what we're doing on the weekend, we say, "yardwork," and we mean it. It occurred to me that it's not normal to spend all weekend doing yardwork, but that is because most people's yards don't need to be brought back from the dead. Since February, this is what we've done.

1. Ripped up the grass and built (or at least mostly built) a rock wall on the northwest side of the pool, to match the one more in the back yard. Also planted two varieties of Halls Honeysuckle, which is a flowering vine that will attract bees and hummingbirds and grow like crazy into the fence. In the foreground is the star jasmine that just barely made it through the winter and is looking a little worse for the wear.

2. Relocated shrubby honeysuckles that we planted last year in the rock wall on the other side of the steps (just to the right of the jasmine is the gate and stairs to the pool, and the wall is on the other side of that). They're now free to grow as big and bushy as they'd like, next to the driveway in the back:

3. Todd's dad came and tilled the "back 40" so it can return to its former glory as a garden. We are gardening with our neighbors, Tom and Judy (whose raised beds you see in the picture -- they're from that cedar tree we cut down last summer), and Todd's parents.

4. Our giant, stunning tulips are blooming! Clearly, the color boggled the little brain of my camera, since it doesn't come through anywhere near as lovely as it should, but still...

Once they're done, I'm going to relocate them to a more concentrated spot (or maybe just plant more) since they're kind of randomly spread out.

5. Last weekend, Jim Hutchins, a McD family friend, came with a sidekick and whacked the yard into shape. Jim expertly pruned shrubs, dug stumps and executed all other manner of landscaping expertise. Here's the oak tree that was in dire need of some pruning and removal of all those suckers...it looks a lot better.

6. Jim also yanked out those awful junipers that I've been hating since we moved in and they jabbed me with their prickly branches the first time. We are in the process of mulching the bed in the middle of the circle drive, and don't have plans of planting it this year. Someday, though, it will make a lovely spot to fill with flowers.

Decisions are still being made about what to do with the lawn at this point. We probably won't be installing a sprinkler system this summer, so it's likely we will just spray the weeds to kill them, hopefully have a little grass left in our yard when the weeds are dead, re-seed, and water the old-fashioned way.

I am really excited for plans that I have for planting black-eyed susans all over the place. For a while, I was bummed because I couldn't think of a sunny place for them, but I've come up with several spots that should do the trick. I'm going to smear our whole yard with them. For reference, here's what they look like:

Just looking at the picture makes me happy. Anyway, that's all for now. More to come soonish.

Yikes, two months....

Dear blog readers (if there are any of you left...) I am terribly sorry for the long silence. We have been quite busy with work and other stuff, and I just haven't felt like making the time to write. That said, (to quote Liz Lemon) things are happening! I will be back sometime in the next few days with pictures and more info and maybe even a video, but I thought I'd just mention that. We've done things inside and outside, and it's turning out that still delaying the kitchen remodel has been sort of a blessing, because I keep tweaking my plans. So in addition to being beyond thankful for it when it does happen, it will also be completely perfect.

Anyway, more to come.

The Reveal.

Well, dear readers, I am overjoyed to present you with pictures of my ottoman. Yesterday evening, after a grueling 4.5 hours upholstering and batting(ing?), I, with the invaluable help of my sidekick Todd, affixed the final screws on the hinges and flipped it over to have a look:

I am pretty much beside myself with how great it came out. (For those just joining us on this post, I built the frame, cut and stained the legs, cut the foam, etc.) I sat and stared at it for a while last night, basking in the satisfaction of a project carefully planned and methodically completed. If you haven't seen some of my previous projects (pre-house) you're not aware of my tendency to rush through things and end up with a product that's more, shall we say, abstract, than actually functional.

Knowing that, I worked really hard to go slow and be careful, and it totally paid off. I think this is my best, most-purchased-looking piece yet! All told, materials were a little more than $70 (I had to buy a coupler to hook up the staple gun to the air compressor) and I estimate my time spent to be in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 hours. So while $400 still seems excessive to me (especially now that I proved my theory of "hey...I could build that") it does make sense, I guess.

Now, if only I could build something to clean the kitchen (for the third time in the course of this project)...

Here are a few more pictures:

Also, I love staple guns. What a brilliant invention.

Eat your heart out, BHG!

I got irritated this afternoon, coming home with some extra toilet cleaner and light bulbs, with the state of disarray our 2'x3' hall closet was in. I am among what I believe is a significant portion of women who have almost the same reaction to a magazine-caliber organized closet as they would to someone offering them a week in Aruba. I'm 95% sure I'd take the closet over the trip. Sadly, this is what my little closet looked like:

I love the efficiency of this closet: putting an outlet in it was one of the few bright things the builders of our house did. It's also fairly centrally located, providing a nice space to stash bathroom cleaning supplies, a dust cloth (just to the right is the living room) and a broom. I had added hooks a while ago, just to get some stuff off the floor, but there was (and still is) a LOT of underutilized space.

After observing this, I did what any reasonable person would do. I got out the jigsaw and went to take stock of my building supplies in the garage. After coming up with some leftover casing (trim) and a piece of plywood, I measured, cut, painted and installed. An hour and fifteen minutes later, BAM!

Closet 2.0. I made a third shelf, but I haven't decided whether to install it yet or not. Probably yes, but we'll see.

Freeing myself from the tyrannical prices of corporate, mass-produced furniture

My latest project has been constructing an ottoman for my office, since I spend a fair amount of time working on the couch. The ones I like tend to be in the hundreds of dollars, like this one from the Pottery Barn ($399)...

which is so not in my budget right now, so I carefully studied the construction of some upholstered benches and ottomans at TJ Maxx, did a little research online, and concluded that I could build my own. I wanted something that had longer legs, rather than bun feet, to avoid taking up tons of visual space with a big upholstered block. I also wanted storage space, because I am constantly tripping over my cell charger, almost sitting on the laptop and pushing piles of magazines and documents around the floor. The PB ottoman above isn't a storage ottoman, so mine's even better!

I had to flip the picture around because the box is upside down on the table right now. First, I built a frame that's 30"x24"x5". This is a rather large ottoman, by the way. Somewhat larger than what I'd envisioned, but anyway... I used a piece of 1/2" plywood that was kicking around the garage as the box top and some cabinet hinges to make the top lift nicely. The kitchen was a disaster of epic proportions when I finally went about cleaning up last weekend. Almost every surface was covered in a fine layer of sawdust from all the cutting, trimming and sanding.

The legs were a real pain. As I was inspecting the only legs at Home Depot had (square with a bolt sticking out one end, for $3 each, plus hardware to attach them) it hit me--"Why can't I make my own!?" Duh. So I bought a three-foot-long piece of 2"x2" poplar and some screws and called my neighbor to offer him the opportunity to cut his fingers off working on my project, in exchange for a brownie. He agreed (he likes brownies) and shaved a bit off each leg (thankfully no fingers were lost or otherwise damaged during this part of the project). This is what one of the pieces of wood looked like, pre-cut. I tested some stain on it, hence the color at the top.

I then sanded, cleaned with mineral spirits, stained and applied two coats of polyurethane (sanding with a 00 steel wool between coats) to the legs. I am really pleased with how they came out.

Foam is pretty expensive and I was worried I was going to have to shell out $35+shipping for a custom-made cushion, but I got a tip about a guy in Medford who replaces couch cushions, and he gave me some used but good-condition cushions, which also had batting attached, so that took a good chunk out of my costs.

Lastly, I had to find the perfect upholstery. I spent hours searching for nautical fabric and found very little that wasn't cheesy or mind-bogglingly expensive before I came across this

on eBay, which was PERFECT. This is the one part of the project where I did bite the bullet and cough up the $40 (with shipping) for 4 1/4 yards (not a terrible price).

So, all in all, here's my list of materials and prices...

wood and hinges for frame: $12

wood and special screws for legs: $6

stain for legs: $6.50

cheap throwaway brushes for stain/poly: $1.25

fabric: $40

steel wool: $1.59

screws, polyurethane, foam, batting, plywood for top, mineral spirits, old rags: free, mostly leftover from other projects.

=67.34...which is a little more than I was expecting

but I'm going to love it when it's done (and Todd will love not stumbling over wires and having the kitchen smell like chemicals).

I also painted that cute little table black, and am formulating plans of copying the design and making some things like it. Jigsaws are great tools.

For the record, I am eagerly anticipating the day when I get to re-upholster the pink wing chair (pictured in the left corner). I have several pieces of navy blue and white corduroy, so the chair will be mostly navy with a white back, and possibly white wings. I learned my lesson about white furniture in our apartment...it's just not a good thing for someone as neurotic as me.

OOH....one more thing...I saw one of these canisters at TJ Maxx (yes, I do spend a lot of time there; it's among the only decent stores in this town) before Christmas, and neglected to follow my motto ("If in doubt, buy and return") and of course it was gone the next time I checked.

Well, they got another shipment and I snapped one up immediately. I think it's maybe for holding umbrellas, but it makes a nice plant stand too. I still have to paint the little platform I made for the top.

Wallpaper down!

Todd worked on removing the bulk of the rest of the wallpaper in the kitchen last weekend, and it looks SOOOO much better without those dark walls (and having only one kind of wallpaper is a definite improvement too). Seeing these little changes makes me really excited for when we redo the kitchen (still postponed indefinitely, sigh....) because I think it's going to turn out gorgeous.

In case you'd like to compare to what it looked like before, here's that...

Now the "only" problem is those hateful stripey red curtains. I honestly don't know what is wrong with me, buying curtains to quasi-match wallpaper I had plans of removing. BOY do I wish I'd bought blue ones.

Salvaging is saving, in a manner of speaking

Never one to pass up the opportunity for free stuff, I insisted we stop at a house we passed on the way back from the gym that looked vacant and had two mountains of stuff out front. (Transcript: Me: Look at all that stuff! Todd: That looks like a huge pile of trash. Me: FREE trash! Pull over!)

From the piles, I snagged a curtain rod and a nifty little table (with a broken leg, which someone had taped to the body for future repair). I wanted to go back for the shutters, but couldn't think of where to put them.Though it's a rather unworkable color of pistachio, I have a can of spray paint and I know how to use it. I glued the leg back on with my construction-grade adhesive, and it's currently drying in the kitchen. I'm pretty jazzed about it. Has a lot of character, with the cool metal feet and musical instrument-looking midsection. Also, you know, FREE.

We kicked off the new year on the right food, house-wise. I suggested painting the dining room ceiling, which you may remember from earlier posts was looking especially crappy due to the freshly painted trim. I'd also gotten dining room curtains that I was eager to put up, but that first required painting the curtain rod and finials, so we just went for it.

As usual, this turned out to be a much bigger pain than I anticipated. There were a few spots where the grayish paint was flaking off, and it was nearly a 1/16" thick, if not more, so I thought we'd just sand it down to match. Wrong. In addition to making a mess, I'm pretty sure it looked worse after than before (for those keeping track, that's the opposite of the desired effect). I then decided to spackle it, which kind of worked, except that the infernal gray paint was texturized, to the textures didn't match.

At this point, I was irritated, so I just painted the ceiling (using glossy paint, another mistake). As the ceiling dried, I could see another coat would be in order, and opted for flat paint this time, which helped a lot in hiding the texture issues. I only took one picture of the whole mess...and it looks a lot better in person. The funny section around the light fixture is the old color, then the bright white was the first coat. The final color is slightly creamier. It really helps brighten the dining room, though. and that's what the curtains look like. I'm going to dye them navy blue; you can see the tester swatch almost in the middle of the picture hanging from the top of the cabinet. Todd and I are both big fans of the curtains. It's great to not feel like you're being watched whenever you're in the kitchen or dining room.

Last few things to do in the dining room:
1. Put up crown molding
2. Re-upholster dining room chairs
3. Replace horrific light fixture