Attic cleanout + a fun little project

Last weekend I saw a little tray in a store and momentarily thought about buying it, before realizing I could make sometime similar (better) with some scrap material I had at home. So I kept my $20 and made for the garage.

During Attic Purge 2016, an activity that will hopefully never happen again, I found a few mahogany 1x2s that I'd bought four years ago for a project I ended up not using them on. Perfect. I'd been planning on digging into my scrap pile of assorted pine and fir, but this was way better.

Tangentially, here is a list of a few other things I found during Attic Purge 2016. Feel free to judge me, because some of this stuff is ridiculous:

• the remaining broken wax chunks of a peach candle I bought from Pier 1 in junior high, in a plastic ziplock bag
• a bag of receipts from 2007 and an envelope of coupons from about the same timeframe
• an entire unused huge box of crayons and three packages of markers (including bold colors, which I never liked)
• 4 boxes of staples, 2 hole punches and many packages of push pins, labels, manila folders, printer paper and other various office supplies. Like, enough to supply a small office, not just a handful of things for two people to use.
• college graduation tassels and an empty (hmmm...) diploma case
• a thumb drive that was approximately as big as my index finger
• the laptop lock that came with my IBM ThinkPad tank of a laptop from freshman year of college
• college notebooks and papers, including handwritten (!) exegesis of all of 1 and 2 Samuel and quite a bit of Spanish homework
• a jar of wine corks. Cheap wine, like Barefoot and $2 Chuck, from when we were first married. 
• an empty olive can. I think I liked the label. 9 years ago.
• the address stamp from our first place in Pasadena: 726 Lincoln Ave. 
• like 6 sets of sheets for a queen bed. We don't have a queen bed anymore. 
• a box of tupperware containers without lids

Now we have a way emptier attic neatly organized into clear giant tupperware containers, a pile of garbage in our garage to slowly get rid of, and a LOT of stuff we are donating. The attic got so ridiculous because when we moved to Bend five and a half years ago, it happened really fast, so we kind of ended up throwing a bunch of stuff in boxes and forgetting about it upstairs until now. Consequently, it was this odd little time capsule representing our college years to about 2008 or 2009. (Which, gag me, was 7 or 8 years ago.)

Anyway, back to the point. In the course of this project, I found the mahogany. And I made a tray out of that and some scrap tile from our slate countertops.

This little critter was surprisingly tricky to photograph. I mitered the corners, then glued the whole thing together and clamped it within an inch of its life using my sweet corner ratchet clamp. I "finished" it with some mineral oil, so it's not exactly designed for a life of hard use, but it sure came out pretty and I think it should be solid and sturdy. At least, I hope so; I gave it to a friend as a little gift.

I'm already working on the next one, using some 4"x12" carrara marble tile I picked up at Home Depot. I'm going to make a new little tray for our olive oil and salt and pepper in the kitchen. I'm going to stain the wood dark for contrast with the marble and then spray lacquer the whole thing, since the marble will look gross if oil penetrates the surface. Just waiting for a nice day to be able to stain outside, since Minwax smells horrible.

Hopefully Builder's Bargain is still selling those pieces of mahogany. The figuring is really beautiful; they're almost iridescent. And the whole bundle, 8 feet of that plus some mahogany dowels, was only $3. That's less than half of than Home Depot is charging PER FOOT.

I kind of thought about selling the trays on Etsy... thoughts?

What's New, Round I

So this is a motley assortment of very ugly photos, but I need to start somewhere because we've been doing SO much since we moved back about seven weeks ago. And it's dark outside now, so I can't take anything out there right now.

Sunday afternoon, I decided to tackle this mess (clarification: that's the CLOSET, not the booze):

 It's a closet in our dining room that somehow became an ideal dumping ground for paint supplies when we moved in four and a half years ago. From the ground up, that's an old rug in a trash bag, second shelf is mostly old paint and also an old towel, more paint, painting stuff (rollers, including three used (??) ones, miscellaneous crap, then the top shelf had a roasting pan, a set of dishes (boxed from when we moved from Pasadena five years ago), our wallpaper steamer and...a lot of dust.

I found three open containers of spackle: small, medium and large size. Two open and rock-hard tubes of silicon caulk. SIX paint rollers. Why?

Cleaning this closet also revealed uncapped wires in a box in the ceiling. I don't know if they're live or not, but have no reason to believe they aren't. So that's cool.

Anyway, I threw away all the stuff and got it into much better shape. Unfortunately, the following image doesn't really showcase all my work that well. You'll have to trust me; 1.5 garbage bags and half a roll of paper towels later, it's much better.

After years of driving me nuts, I finally replaced the retro 60s-era hardware on the built-ins in our hallway. Martha, ya done good (they're from her line at Home Depot). These were about $4 each, so it's not turning out to be a particularly cheap project at six in the hallway and another six in our bedroom for the built-in dresser, but it makes me happy every day to walk by non-ugly, non-retro hardware.

In the way of other updates, we had a garage sale, probably a month ago, and ditched a bunch of furniture and excess junk. And we went to the dump. Oh, the glorious dump, where you can throw away an entire full-size pickup truck load of trash for $21. I love the dump. So there's been a lot of paring down, and it has felt fantastic.

We've also done some painting, some replacing of hideous light fixtures and old outlets and some gardening. I redid my headboard (tufted, it's fab), hung curtains and plotted the kitchen remodel. The downstairs bedroom floor was refinished. The upstairs floor was refinished, too, and the bathroom is complete except for baseboard and a door covering the attic access. Todd's office upstairs is in the crosshairs for demolition and new drywall and insulation. Half the beds are mulched and the driveways got sealcoated by likely a fly-by-night operation, but that's a story for another post.

Clearly, there are a lot of overdue blog posts. But we're not going anywhere for a while, and I'm going to write them all. We're home. We finally have some traction here and stuff's getting done. It feels great.

Please, step into my office

Well, it's almost finished! Here's what I did this weekend...

Turns out two coats of blue was mostly enough. There are a few spots that could stand to have a third coat, but since so much of the paint is covered by furniture anyway, I decided it would be ok. I'm also going to be doing a little shuffling when the chair rail goes up, so if I decide that it really needs another coat of Midnight Dream (the paint color), I can do it then.
After painting and reattaching the baseboard (in above and below pics -- quarter round will be installed at some point)...
I swept and scrubbed the floors to clean up any stray wallpaper bits and glue. Fun fact: a little WD-40 will remove dried Kilz2 primer from a wood floor. Painted the door wall white -- it too could probably do with another coat, which I might do this afternoon.
I think the blue looks really sharp. It's very crisp and dark and gives the room a nice weight.
Weight is good, since it gets so much light. Having the walls be almost completely white (if I'd done white wainscot instead of painting) would have been too much, for me anyway. I particularly love the contrast of the blue with the stripes of the curtains and patterning of the wallpaper.
And the three shadowboxes that I made a few years ago for our previous home in Pasadena finally got to come out of storage. They're on the left, and are a PERFECT fit in this room. The top has four shells, the middle is a piece of coral, and the bottom is a sand dollar.
One more...ahhh..love it!!
Ok, enough inside. This morning, I was delighted to discover one of my white pumpkins has sprouted! (Crappy pic...)
This is one of the pots next to our front porch. This flower is called mimulus (aka monkey flower) and I saw it in Boothbay Harbor a few years ago. I took a picture, but thought I'd never be able to identify it and buy some. The Grange had them a few weeks ago, and I was SO excited. The color is unbelievable, and they're just right for the part-sun location in front.
Around back again, two of my dahlia tubers have sprouted. One's picture below...
And my sunflower seeds have also sprouted. I'll give them another week or two in the bed, then transplant to the fence behind the pool and other places they can reach their full FOURTEEN FOOT height.
This is the honeysuckle I brought with from California. I transplanted it last year next to a dead tree so that it'll grow up it and look like a honeysuckle tree eventually (and attract hoards of hummingbirds right outside my office door!). It's doing quite well.
Lastly, I got a great deal on these hanging baskets, which have little red petunia starts and blue salvia starts in them. More to come on those, eventually.

Satan's henchmen

While cleaning up the trash heap in our side driveway last night, I ran across not one but TWO evil black widows. Todd said they were approximately standard size, but with bodies the size of a green pea, they seemed rather monstrous to me. Anyway, one met his (her?) end by a swift whack with a paint stirrer and the other one I may have treated to death by bbq lighter. PS they smell bad when burning.



All together now, EWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The past month

I've been procrastinating on catching up, because I have a feeling it's going to take a long time. In the past month since I last posted, I spent several days in LA with Cat, then my mom came to visit and we worked on a project (pix to follow). It's just been a hectic few weeks.

In order to get ready for my mom (and the impending string of guests this summer...if you want in, you better get your name on the list soon!!), I dealt with the rest of the upstairs. Got the bathroom as cute and clean as possible, stashed and trashed the rest of the clutter in the upstairs bedroom, added a few chairs that are serving as nightstands for the time being, vacuumed everything....sorry this is out of order.



There was plenty to be attacked outside too. We spent the better part of the Saturday after I got back from California and before Mom flew in cleaning up the circular drive. Here's the outside video, pool patio included at the request of Cat and Michelle.



Circular drive cleaning included bagging boatloads of leaves, digging up a flowerbed to rid it of the ubiquitous grape hyacinths that infest our yard, sweeping, then hosing down everything. I should have taken a before shot to show you how disastrous it was, but I didn't. Upon finishing, this is what it looked like. I continue to be amazed at how much work things are. This stupid little flowerbed (not pictured) that's maybe 4 feet deep and 10 feet wide (it's right below the window all the way to the right) took 4 hours to dig through, break up, de-bulb, and smooth out. It's nuts! No wonder people only play the let's-buy-a-fixer-upper game once. After that, you learn your lesson!

The pool is coming along slowly, if at all. The water is still cloudy, but a much more swimmable-looking aqua color rather than underwater forest green. But that was the last major improvement, and it happened a few weeks ago. There hasn't been much notable progress since then. I confess, I am getting rather impatient. We've had a lot of gorgeous hot days, and that pools seems to taunt me about it.

For a number of reasons, but mostly because of a very busy upcoming summer between traveling and guests, Todd and I are feeling very satisfied waiting until fall to start the kitchen remodel.

What's new as of 4.19

We had a busy weekend. Mowed the lawn for the first time (the benefit of letting the grass grow so long is that when you mow, it actually looks like you have a real lawn and not a bunch of patches of grass) and cleaned out the garage. I didn't take a before picture, but it was really getting out of hand. There was a three-foot-wide walkway through the rubble, and the walkway was starting to get covered. This made navigating the garage at night a peril-wrought journey, and that's not counting other dangers, like spiders.

We emptied out the contents, which we discovered was mostly trash (boxes, styrofoam, other assorted packaging materials) and put it back together, and now we have an enviably organized garage. Without doors. You can't win 'em all.

The bathroom upstairs is also looking a lot better, after a few rounds of bleach-based cleaner and the removal of those curtains. I don't know what it is about removing curtains from houses, but it really makes a difference. I remember when my parents first bought the house I grew up in, and we pulled down the Carter-era burlap-sack-resembling curtains in the living room. Dust streamed down from above our heads, illuminated by the afternoon sun. And the room was transformed without the curtains. I'm going to put a few rugs down on the floor, and I'm thinking about pulling up the carpet on the window ledge and planking over it (so it looks kind of farmhouse-y). The wallpaper isn't horrible, and there's no reason to start fooling with it because we're probably years away from redoing that bathroom.

I'm hoping to make some real headway on the guest room this week. De-clutter, maybe get a chair for the corner and get the bed made up. It'd be really awesome to walk in there and have it look like a peaceful bedroom. Having a whole house to decorate is an awful lot of fun. Unlike our tiny house in Pasadena, this isn't done in a week. I love it.

Moving outside

The past week or so, we've been chipping away at finishing the rock wall. A few more stones here, a shovel of dirt there...

I got rid of the rest of the leaves and rubble yesterday, so it was finally ready for a picture just after sundown (hence the blur). We also planted honeysuckle bushes on Sunday (rather an appropriate Easter activity). You can see those in the bed. The plan is to put dahlias in front of those, then calibrochoa (aka million bells) to hang down over the wall. Sadly, everything will be annuals (the honeysuckle is deciduous, so it'll lose its leaves for the winter) but we'll have some nice summer color. Landscaping is hard work.

I also am chipping away at the leaves that are everywhere. I cleaned out and carted a few wheelbarrow loads to the back 40 yesterday. The raspberries were almost buried in leaves, and I doubt that's really all that good for their growth. I am very excited about HAVING raspberries, though. Hopefully they will be easy to get berries from. The berries are in this picture, just left of center. And yes, the backyard does still look pretty awful, but it's improving. Slowly. And we're going to mow the lawn this weekend, which I'm sure the neighbors will appreciate.

Vehicular landscaping

Today was a stunningly beautiful 70-degree blue-sky spring day, and we had outside work to do. Around noon, Trevor showed up with a one-ton dump truck, and we moved the trash heaps (the old bathroom, discarded doors, etc.) into the truck and sent it to the dump. Finally, we are starting to look less like the Bumpuses. Or have I spoken too soon....

In light of this image, I believe I have. In case you can't tell, that is the Q, with our trusty 420-pound rope tied to the hitch, and the other end tied around the trunk of that there magnolia tree. It was looped over a branch that was most expediently removed using four wheel drive. You can't really tell from the picture, but the limb I took out was about eight inches in diameter, and it made a reeeeal nice SNAP when it gave. YEEHAW!

In other backwoods news, we have concluded that instead of spending large chunks of money at the pool store to buy glorified bleach, we would just buy regular bleach, 18 gallons of it, and dump that in the pool. I don't know if it was technically "working" but it sure did kick up a LOT of goopy old leaves and algae (see accompanying closeup) so I guess we'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

What's new as of 3.8

Wow, we had a busy weekend. Here's the recap of what was accomplished last week...



Saturday was a beautiful spring day, and so Todd and his dad started on the gargantuan task of cleaning the pool. I spent the morning zipping around cleaning and picking stuff up. There always is stuff that needs to be put away. Scattered tools, boxes, just stuff. The great part is that it always has a home. There's a drawer, a cabinet, a closet...everything fits somewhere.

In the afternoon, we went to Bimart for plants. While the yard isn't ready (and probably won't be this season) for beds, I am something of an expert in potted gardening, after having about six square feet of garden space and a million potted plants in Pasadena. Pansies are great for this time of year, because they aren't bothered by a little frost overnight.

I also moved the rest of the greenhouse downstairs to my office, which I think Todd was relieved about. Now that he'll be using his office more, I think he'll want the desk space that was being used by four geraniums and a bougainvillea.

Sunday, it snowed. We took a tumble from a springy 65 to a windy 35, and unfortunately, the pool required another round of cleaning. Summer dreams don't come so easily when it is hailing. The contents of the neighboring oak tree had settled at the bottom of the pool, and every way we tried to get the leaves out kind of didn't work. The deep end is at least 12 feet deep, so not much reaches down there. We finally ended up saran-wrapping the pool vacuum hose to the shop vac, and trying to vacuum the leaves off the bottom of the pool. It was very hick, and I wish I had a video, but unfortunately we don't have one that shows the whole process. I left halfway through because I got so cold, and I'm not sure how it turned out.

Yesterday we also started the rather large project of priming and painting the whole upstairs. If you've watched the videos, you know it's covered in old, weird wallpaper, on top of fiberboard, which is like sawdust mixed with glue and pressed into wallboard. It wouldn't do well with the amount of moisture required to remove wallpaper (as in, it would probably crumble, leaving us with whatever lies in our cobwebby, semi-insulated attic) so we decided the least work-intensive way of remedying the issue was to paint.

Here's before:

And partway done:

Though it does look better already, we had to use an oil-based primer to avoid exposing the walls to said moisture, and it smells TERRIBLE. It took 20 minutes of being outside to get rid of the taste of permanent markers in my mouth. In general, I am a big fan of certain toxic smells: I could sniff boat exhaust all day, and nail salons give me the warm-and-fuzzies. This stuff is in a league all its own.

Extra! Extra! Heat Dish Allows Jo To Work Without Gloves!

I'd first like to apologize. This post (and probably many others) is going to have a really bad layout. I just started using my new desktop (thanks, Todd!) and everything looks pretty messed up on my new monitor. Between us, I think it's blogger's fault that it shows up differently on different monitor sizes and browsers, but whatever. It is what it is.

Anyway, we're on to the next project (kind of, I still haven't painted in the bathroom or put the light fixture up) which is my office! Over the weekend, we cleared things out and fell in love with the floor again. Yesterday, the cable guy came and, after much ado about not much of anything, hooked up our cable tv (yay, we get the CW again!! Luckily, Gossip Girl has been on vacation the past few weeks, so I didn't miss anything) and our internet. We now surf the web at 4.8 mbps. Buckle your seatbelt. AND it doesn't cut out randomly. If Charter will treat us like paying customers instead of criminals, maybe everything will be great. Keep your fingers crossed. (For those whom we haven't whined incessantly to, we had Qwest dsl, and it was slower than traffic on the 405 on Friday at 4 and about as reliable as Dan and Serena's relationship (seriously, why can't they just pull it together...)). And no, I'm not sure that's the proper way to end that sentence.

This is my newest addition to the office furniture. It's all "weathered" and "vintage," which we all know are nice words for "it really needs to be sanded and painted, but who has the time when you can call it 'weathered'." I nabbed it at Collectors Market this afternoon. Cute, huh? I needed something else for the lamp to sit on, other than a box. I don't really go in for the "cardboard can be furniture" design approach.

I also ordered the wallpaper for the office. This is a good time for me to discuss my plans for the office. Here are the main components:
-tongue-in-groove pine paneling painted white to a chair-rail height (which is 38.4 inches for our house)
-Wallpaper above the paneling. It's blue and white maps and navigational charts. Very nautical. Todd may have relegated me to one room, but it will feel like you're sailing when you're in it. I'm giving it the treatment.
-Three- or four-inch crown molding
-Built-in bookcases along the wall with the door. They'll be floor to ceiling, painted white, and also feature crown molding. I'm toying with the idea of having marble countertops on them, but we'll see how things go. I'd like to build said bookcases myself, but I kind of have to figure out how first. Trevor will more than likely help.

OOOH. I also got this today, which I have been longing for since the first time I walked past one at Costco. There is nothing more wonderful in the world. You may think I'm kidding, but that would simply mean you don't have one, or you've never walked past one at Costco. The office has many wonderful attributes, but maintaining a temperature habitable to humans (whose blood is thin from living in Southern California) is not one of them. Three cheers for the heat dish!!

I have bit hopes for the office, and maybe even bigger hopes for the yard beyond. I was working on the couch today (as in writing while sitting on the couch) and I looked out at the pool shack and the junk heap, and saw so much potential. Todd doesn't know it yet, but I'm planning on making the pool shack look like a lobster shack in Maine. Coat or two of white paint, a few lobster traps and buoys, maybe a lantern or two...it's gonna be great.

There's also great potential for beautiful raised flowerbeds. I'm thinking probably dahlias, because they'll get a lot of afternoon sun there. I can't wait to start working on the yard, but we have to get all the junk from the bathroom out first. We're thinking about burying some of the biodegradable stuff somewhere in the back 40 (which is what I've started calling the southeasterly quadrant of our lot). It just seems like a lot of wood to throw away, and I have my doubts about whether it'd really be good to roast marshmallows in the firepit over whatever fumes presumably lead-based paint gives off.

Lastly, I've been on this intensive hunt for baskets for under the vanity. Online, Michaels, Pier 1, Ross, TJ Maxx, Fred's, Bimart, I mean, there aren't that many places to check around here. Annoyingly enough, I found exactly what I was looking for at good old Target last night. I finally cleared out those boxes of bathroom stuff that were hanging out in Todd's parents' guest bathroom for months, then in our hallway for weeks. Ahh, it's good to be settling in.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

This morning I thought I'd put some of my clothes away and get the blue room organized, since my current method of getting dressed involves fishing through the gigantic pile of clothes on the floor and employing my sense of smell.  I'll say no more on that... other than it's one of the less convenient ways I've stored clothes over the years.  Anyway, with the green dresser painted and situated, I carted a few loads of clothes and clutter over to our house from Todd's parents', and started putting things away, naively thinking I'd be done by lunch.  

I then ran smack into what I'll call the "Sweater Phenomenon," also acceptably referred to as the "snowball effect," which seems to plague everything I try to do some days.  ("Sweater" comes from that Weezer song "If You Want to Destroy My Sweater" -- it's funny, you should check it out.)  The Sweater Phenomenon occurs when you want to accomplish one thing, for our purposes, putting away clothes.  In order to put away the clothes, you have to find the hangers, sort the clothes, and open the overhead built-in cabinets to store the summer clothes.  Since they're pretty high up, you go find the step ladder.  Upon opening said cabinets, you discover at least 30 years of dirt and cobwebs and other grot, the composition of which you are not interested in, but greatly relieved that you don't have to touch.  You go fetch the shop vac, and vacuum up the cobwebs.  Then, you go find the Fantastik, and a sponge, and a bucket of warm water, and wipe out the cabinets.  After all this, they still look dirty, so you stand on the step ladder and agonize for 10 minutes about whether to paint them, or just do it later, which is risky because it may never get done.  While standing and agonizing, you look out the window, which is still quite filthy because you still haven't razored the outside of the glass.  In order to do that, you have to trim back the bushes so you can get to the window.  Also, it's supposed to rain this afternoon, so forget outdoor jobs.  And so on.  Then, after you nearly fall off the step ladder, you decide to go have M&M's (and a salad) for lunch, and whine about the Sweater Phenomenon.

Maybe this afternoon will be better.  I'm not exactly optimistic, though.  This house is like one giant sweater.

Drywall!

Before we get into house progress, last night was the first night we had dinner that we cooked here! Since we still don't have a stove (no gas yet) I crock-potted a chicken (a whole one, which I've never done before...it was interesting...) with some potatoes and carrots and stuff. Other than being something of a small milestone (eating dinner other than takeout, frozen buffalo chicken strips, and toaster-oven fare of toasted cheese and...umm...toast) it turned out pretty good.

I spent part of yesterday trying round two of washing the windows.  A few weeks ago, I tried warm soapy water, which was a failure.  Yesterday, I tried a combination of baking soda and white vinegar, to remove what I believe are lime or calcium or something deposits.  No luck.  So after being green didn't work, I tried chemicals.  CLR has never failed me in the past, and I'm pretty sure you could dissolve your finger off with it, but it didn't budge the white junk on the windows.  Annoyed, I complained to Kate and Trevor while we were eating lunch.  Trevor took one look at it and stated that I'd have to razor it off.  Yippee.  I tried it later, and it worked like a charm, of course.  Now I have a few hundred square feet of glass to scrape with a razor.  At least some day the windows will be transparent, and not merely translucent.

Yesterday was also a big turning point in the appearance of the bathroom. Here's a little video detailing that:  
We helped Trevor (a little) with the drywall.  Hanging it was insanely hard; I would never want to meet a drywaller in a dark alley.  Between the drywall and the backerboard in the shower, it's starting to look bathroom-y.  Or at least somewhat less like a shack where the commode consists of a hole in the ground and a few leaves if you're lucky.

We're supposed to give the drywall screws another coat of hot mud, put backerboard around the window sill, and waterproof the living daylights out of everything before Trevor comes back on Tuesday.  And then, we tile!  A week or so from now, we might (maybe, possibly, hopefully) have a finished bathroom, and consequently, we will be able to move in!!