#they got the results months ago I just procrastinated sharing a bunch

[arlo-venn]

Without further ado, this funny looking little debbil creature’s breed mix is, in this order:

- American Pit Bull Terrier

- Border Collie (!!!)

- Golden Retriever

- Pomeranian (lol!)

- American Eskimo Dog

- Boxer

- and some “super mutt”

Her behavior really reflects the first two the most— her training style is pretty similar to Arlo’s and she is definitely prone to bored border collie syndrome.

[tessmontyart]

2017 year review

I am late yet again with this! 😅  2017 was ... a pretty crap year. BUT I made the most of my situation by travelling around Australia doing the most conventions I’ve ever done, growing my following and earning a nice friendly profit! More under the cut ~ (warning, starts off very mopey)

So continuing on from 2016, I was a what they call a ‘job seeker’ .. which means earning a small amount of money to cover rent and bills while applying for 20 jobs a month, only getting a handful of interviews and being rejected by every single one :))) This was extremely frustrating because each interview required a lot of anxiety just to hype myself up to go, and then hearing the same ‘sorry there were better candidates’ or -nothing at all- resulted in even more anxiety and breakdowns, and the whole thing was just a repetitive cycle that made me less and less confident each time.

(I’ve decided to use kittens to convey emotion in this post lol)

In April I was called back to (what’s left of) P55 Studios for some concept work, but it was only a 1 month contract and it took them 6 months to finally pay me for the work I did. It was fun, but man ..I hope they pick up their game soon ... it’s sad to see the state they’re in now.

I was then basically punished for ‘not finding a fulltime job quickly enough’ - the job centre shoved me into a warehouse sorting old clothes 9-5 with next to no breaks, alongside a bunch of ex criminals who were extremely unpleasant and rude to me. The dust made it hard to breathe, most of the clothes had gross stains on them as well as spiders hiding in them. After having another breakdown and being taken to hospital and a psychologist because I freaked some people out, I decided it would be best to go back to being a student and trying to learn more things for my resume, because a University Degree is apparently worth nothing in this world :/

AFTER THAT DECISION, THINGS REALLY PICKED UP! 😅

I did a 6 month IT and Web Technologies course, which was really good! I learnt quite a lot of things including HTML, and I was able to finally make a professional online portfolio with my own domain name ^_^ (tessmontyart.com)

While that was all going on, I was also managing my Etsy store and tabling at conventions, both of which are becoming quite successful which makes me happy! Other than that I’ve just been drawing and drawing and drawing. I’m pretty sure I’ve drawn the most in 2017 than any other year, and I can see my art slowly but surely improving, which is something I’ve been longing for!

I tabled at the most conventions in 2017 too. I did Melbourne Supanova, Central Coast Comicon, Sydney Supanova, Nexus Con, SMASH, Adelaide Supanova as well as 2 local markets. I had a lot of fun with those and am planning to go to even more in 2018! 

Other highlights include:

⭐️ I made my first ever vinyl sticker sets!

⭐️  I made my first ever enamel pins!

⭐️  I made these adorable Nifflers in mini Jars!

⭐️ among a whole load of new products!!

⭐️  I hit 600 followers on Instagram and Facebook! 

⭐️  I successfully completed another Inktober! I failed 2016s because I was in New York and didn’t have time (a fair excuse! I wanna go back)

⭐️  During that inktober I created a new OC, a robo catgirl! I definitely want to draw her more in 2018 :) 

⭐️ I had a go at Livestreaming for the first time! It is such a good way to get stuff done o_o knowing people are watching so you don’t procrastinate lol ..

⭐️ I also started making time-lapse videos, which have become quite popular!

(below is just a screenshot!)

⭐️ I started Fanart Fridays (which I gotta get back into again!)

⭐️ I road tripped all the way from Sydney to Melbourne and back for the first time :D (thats 545.3 miles!)

⭐️ I also roadtripped all the way from Sydney to ADELAIDE and back for the first time xD;; (that’s 854.3 miles @_@ )

⭐️ I got to meet @katiecrooked for the 2nd time and actually hang out for a few days rather than 1 hour ;w; You are amazing and I’m so lucky to have such a great friend!

⭐️ I also got to meet up with the Japanese exchange student I hosted way back in 2011! My Japanese is much worse now but her english has improved so much, I’m so proud TwT

⭐️  I went to CHOCOLATE HIGH TEA

⭐️ Tried a raindrop cake for the first time :0

⭐️ Lights released the most amazing album in the world ‘Skin & Earth’ *_* 

⭐️ Owl City is finally releasing more music! (The cover of “Waving Through A Window” and sneak peaks of the new Cinematic album made me so happy!)

⭐️ The year Hatsune Miku turned 10!

⭐️ I got this cute bag for my birthday and so did my new friends resulting in this adorable pic:

(I’m the one on the right covered in owls. yes I photoshopped my fat out lol)

⭐️ I became obsessed with washi tape

⭐️ Became obsessed with Mystic Messenger

⭐️ Became obsessed with Night In The Woods (and made these cute polymer clay brooches)

⭐️ Annd also got into Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid and Houseki no Kuni ^_^

⭐️ The year Charlie got this ridiculous hat 

⭐️The year Prisoner Zero finally became available on Netflix (the 2D animated series I worked on in 2015/2016)

⭐️ and the year Doctor Who regenerated into a lady!

⭐️ It was another year of cute dates and sweet things with a sweet partner 💖

⭐️ I also got to try Teppanyaki for the first time!

⭐️ I made these cute gingerbread cookies! (my first time making gingerbread)

⭐️ And I made these cute christmas ornaments for my friend of her 2 doggies ^_^

On a sadder note ...

2017 was the year I met my partner’s grandma for the first and last time. She had a birthday party at the start of the year (my first visit to a place called Scone) and she passed away later in the year :( I had to go to my 2nd ever funeral ... it was at a really lovely country town I have never been to called Canowindra. Rest in Peace ♥️

What’s coming in 2018?

I am crossing my fingers for an animation job I applied for a while ago - one of the ladies who used to work at P55 is now working at a bigger animation company and planning to open up another studio near where I live. I wont find out for a while, cause new workplaces take a while to set up, but that would be really amazing if I were to work with her and the old animation gang again. 

Whether anything happens with that or not, I’ll be studying certificate IV of the IT course (like a continuation), and I plan to do even more conventions. Hopefully I can get into Oz Comic Con (they have a selective application process) which is 3 extra conventions if they don’t clash with anything else! (Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne). 

There’s also other conventions I hadn’t heard of until it was too late to apply that I’m keen to apply for like Animaga in Melbourne, as well as Madman Anime Fest in Brisbane and Melbourne. I also want to make a lot more non-fandom things for market stalls, as well as a comic and zines!

Hopefully I’ll hit 1k followers on fb/ig? :D that will make me feel important lol

I’m also hoping to go on a holiday this year. I seemed to go on some sort of holiday (either domestic or overseas) every year up until now xD; Sounds greedy but I really miss the feel of holidays you know??

Anyway, I could type forever so I’ll stop here. Not sure why I share this much of my life on the internets but its become a tradition!  PLEASE BE KIND 2018, I’M BEGGING YOU 😱

[2016] [2015] [2014] [2013] [2012]

[chocolatewangs]

Let me just start by saying that if you don’t know my mom, I’m sorry. She is the best mom I could have asked for. She’s supportive of me and my weird ass sister even though we don’t always make the best decisions. She’ll tell us if we’re being dipshits, but she’ll still stand behind us. She’s got one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. She’s caring, thoughtful, and loves her family and friends with her entire being. Even if she can also be one of the most stubborn people I know at the same time. I love her so much and I know she knows that. She’s become my best friend the older I’ve gotten. And being across the country from each other SUCKS, but we still talk almost everyday, whether it’s call or text. Shes just awesome.

About two months ago she called me on the 3rd of July and got stubborn when she found out I was with friends and wouldn’t tell me what was up with her even though I KNEW she had something to tell me. The next morning I called and she told me the tumor she’d been having some issues with a known tumor that was in her brain. She went in the next week and they scheduled her a biopsy. Everything was looking great, honestly, doctors didn’t think it was cancerous and we’d just plan for her to get it out after my wedding and all would be swell. Well the results kept taking longer and longer to come in and I kinda figured they saw something. Two weeks ago she called my sister and I at the same time and had my aunt tell us the results. Brain cancer.

I pretty much stopped functioning like a human being for a good hour but took notes and told some of my family. It’s been a tough few weeks with finishing up wedding planning but we’re a strong bunch and we have so much support behind us. We’re gonna kick this thing straight in the ass. The wedding is going to be so much fun for everyone and I’m excited to have her up here for a week!!! I’ll be going down the following Tuesday after the wedding for a few weeks to help with recovery from getting it out. And as stressful as all this has been she’s been my rock more than she knows with helping me plan last minute things cause I’m the worst procrastinator on the planet. I just wanted to share this post to tell you how much I love my mom and I hope that if you haven’t met her, you can. Cause if you didn’t catch my drift this entire post and you read this far. She is fucking AMAZING.

LOVE YOU MOMMY AND I WILL SEE YOU IN ABOUT TWO WEEKS.

***also pls try not to bombard her. You can message me if need be and I can relay. Thanks pals

[kintsugi-sheep]

2020.12.13: The Beginning and Writing

Alright, so what went on this week?

I feel like I'm getting better at writing more frequently. The frequency being the issue first, the editing and grammar being the secondary issue. My diction's a little smaller than I'd like it to be, so I'll be sure to catch up on some reading by the time my vacation comes around.

I've noticed a lot of the prompts that I pull from Reddit tend to be written in the first person. I understand the function, as it allows a reader to become fully immersed in exactly what a character is thinking and feeling in any given moment, but I find that it more often than not covers up my poor grammatical skills.

Also, trying to get these all done in one run-through, without going back to edit or reformat between posting sites, is pretty cringe-inducing. There's nothing like writing an actually decent story, only to realize that the site you posted it to reformatted the entire thing so that all of the text is in one big block.

When I get to coding, I should be sure to look for any issue like this on the site.

I also learned how transparent it is when you slack off. One day this past week I wasn't feeling my writing and I can tell the people that did read it weren't feeling it either. I have to stay focused, not so much motivated. Sitting around waiting for motivation has done nothing but cause me trouble and shape me into a procrastinator.

That being said, I do have to keep my desire to leave at the forefront of my mind.

It's a strange feeling I get when I think about my family. Maybe I listened to too much Bush-era American rock music, but I'm tired of my hometown.

For a number of reasons.

But, when it comes to my family, I just get the sinking feeling that they're fine with everything around them being less than ideal. That they'll complain about something someone else needs to do for them rather than take the time to look inward. They aren't so unreasonable as to thrust all of their issues onto strangers or things like that. You could compare their grievances to things like, "This person who's job it is to do this things isn't doing this thing specifically how I want it to be done."

Whereas I'm trying to shift my response to be, "Can I do this thing? No? Screw it then."

As such, I'm actively no longer complaining.

No asking if someone else can turn the music down because I have work in the morning. No explaining why breeding the dog is a terrible, terrible idea. No asking why every room in the house smells like weed. Just me, focusing on getting out so I don't have to concern myself with these issues.

Because of all the people here, I'm the only one who seems to have an issue with any of this.

I've spent the last three years rooming with a friend in a shared apartment and did nothing but goof off because I had my friend around.

And this is the result of that goofing off. Back in my childhood home, typing away at a computer at night following a day of working. My job may be better than it was when I was at my lowest point in 2015-16, but I can't let my contentment with my job lead me to more complacency with my future.

I need to work harder.

I get this sinking feeling in my stomach whenever I think about what I should be doing. In the context of this, so many things cross my mind.

"It's getting late. Aren't you going to write 750 words today?"

"That last writing prompt bombed pretty hard, so why not take a day off?"

"It's Sunday. Are you going to post another one of those blogs on the internet?"

"No one's going to read it, you know?"

"You quit before and you'll quit again. How long do you think you can keep this up?"

"Your writing is terrible. Third-person, first-person, blog, it's all trash that's going to be ignored."

"Is this title/phrase/sentence just you trying to be baity? Do you think that's going to give you clicks?"

"Who do you really think is going to read this? You post in the dead of night and work all day, idiot."

"No one likes social media. Do something else."

"Magic the Gathering has better stories than you do."

"Critical Role has better stories than you do."

"The SCP Foundation has better stories than you do."

"All of your favorite mangaka have better stories than you do."

"You ever think that now that they're remaking Shaman King, that niche thing that you thought only you still cared about and had an opinion on will suddenly become mainstream, gain all the acclaim it deserves, and your take on the story will be drowned out by a plethora of actually competent reviewers who actually chose to go to school for things like English and Literature and Journalism?"

"I know that going to school again would damn you in the future, but don't you think it'd at least be a little better than trying to become known through scratch?"

"Trick question; you'll fail either way."

"You really padded this out didn't you? It may just end up getting bunched up on DeviantArt again though."

A friend of mine asked me a few months ago if writing was my passion. And I told her yes.

But, I don't know if that's true.

I love making up stories. The first story I ever created was spawned from a terrible, terrible drawing.

My friend Emmanuel had broken his arm riding his bike, so I drew a hero called 'Kast Man, King of the Kanyon'; the words were spelled with Ks because it was the early 2000s and there was nothing a K or Z couldn't sell. The drawing was exactly what you'd expect of a six-year-old who liked Dragon Ball Z. The guy was overly-buff in an non-biologically acceptable way, had upright, spiky hair, a monkey's tail, and no ears because he was facing forwards and you couldn't see ears from the front I decided.

From this one-off drawing, I began visualizing a theme song that was just the hero's name and title followed by the occasional "Ooooh"; as you would expect from a six-year-old who liked Sonic the Hedgehog.

I got into the habit of taking aspects from all the different media I consumed, mostly animated, and marrying them into one, jumbled mess of a story. This also led to me talking to myself. I didn't know why, but I just really needed to talk to myself and narrate this story happening in my head.

We used to keep a lot of rubber bands around the house for reasons I don't know and my imagination would be most active when I was playing with one. I frequently snapped them on my wrists, chewed on them, stretched them, broke them, and slept with them. When I accidently flung one in the midst of play, it was like watching television and having the power cut out. I'd just stop abruptly and frantically try to look for it. And, if I couldn't find it, I'd get a tight feeling in my chest and resign myself to sleep, unable to see the conclusion of my story until I picked up another rubber band.

This habit really freaked out the people who lived with me; mom, grandmother, uncle, and brother. To this day none of them realize what was going on.

The habit eventually switched to pencils, which I thankfully didn't sleep with, until it reached the point where I didn't need a tool of any sort at all.

This is where things got out of hand. You know how when you were younger and you saw an action movie, you'd have all this energy and just move your body in all these bizarre ways because it felt good? Like you could take on the world?

That was the next step throughout middle school.

And throughout high school.

And throughout college.

And throughout my return home.

And throughout living with my roommates.

We called it "pacing" in my house hold. Though, more often than not, if featured punching, jogging, skipping, jumping, and lots of talking to myself. I'd been caught multiple times by relatives and friends, none understanding what was going on.

Imagine getting caught masturbating, but having someone walk in every other day and everyone hearing you do it everyday.

I really toned it down while living with my roommates and now I'll just take a break to walk the floor, legitimately pacing this time, and get my thoughts together. The talking-to-myself hasn't stopped though.

It feels a little nice to explain this somewhere, even if no one but me will ever see it.

So, pulling it back to my friend's question about writing being my passion. I don't think it is.

Storytelling is my passion. I can pitch ideas, share events, or retell things I've heard, read, or seen with ease and confidence. The part wherein I have to sit down and write is the frustration, exhausting part. But, it gives me a sense of accomplishment when I'm done.

So I don't think writing is my passion. Storytelling is my passion, writing is my purpose and the medium through which I am most effectively able to share my stories.

And given how fulfilled I feel when I'm completed, and on the occasion that someone does respond to something I've written, I consider what I'm doing worthwhile. I just have to get focused on the act of doing rather than the end result.

That's what I need to do.

[billydmacklin]

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition!

At some point in the past couple of years, I got a little…stuck with my own house. I know for a lot of people this feeling might not be especially out of the ordinary, but to me it was novel. The house itself was going through a decidedly “rough patch” in the course of this whole renovation/restoration madness, and to some extent my mental health followed suit. My ability to make decisions and actionable plans seemed to evaporate, which of course made everything feel worse. I’m not sure if I was looking for answers, or trying to remind myself that beautiful things do, in fact, still exist, or just to try to un-block something in my brain, but I found myself looking more and more to visual inspiration.

I’ve had the inkling for a very long time that too much “inspiration” can actually produce the opposite result. I’ve seen this with various clients over the years—they’ll send me a Pinterest board they’ve assembled over some time for a given project, hoping that each image might in some way be represented in the final product. The trouble is that most people aren’t only attracted to one particular aesthetic: they’re attracted to lots of them. It’s much easier to recognize what we think is beautiful than it is to create it. So then, armed with too much inspiration, we try to devise a way to incorporate all these things into a given space, which is usually not possible. Or at least not possible if the goal is to produce a beautiful result. So then we have to start making sacrifices, but now we’ve fallen in love with all of these disjointed elements, all generally done by other people who are really good at this and have lots of money, and we don’t feel confident in making those calls, or even know which calls we have to make, and then we’re paralyzed.

Then, seeking clarity, we bury ourselves in more “inspiration,” as though the image that will make all of this come together could be just the next click away. This, of course, is not especially productive, but it feels like it is.

Being somewhat aware of this, I’ve never used Pinterest except when a client gig required me to. This seemed like a good way to avoid this issue for myself, but I think I failed to appreciate the extent to which the Pinterest mentality has really permeated so many other spaces. The Inspiration Overload is everywhere—Instagram, Facebook, other blogs—and this crept up on me a bit. Soon all of my own work felt so small and shitty and lame, and making simple decisions became an extended exercise in self-doubt and insecurity. Each project in my house became an opportunity to create something amazinggggg but then only if I could remove the very real limitations of time and budget. When it came to my laundry room, I got so caught up in all these things I could see doing: beautiful and spacious custom built-in storage, a sink-to-end-all-sinks, a gorgeous tiled floor, and of course something more interesting for the walls than just painted plaster. Right? I wanted it to look fresh and original and like nothing I’d seen before, while at the same time wanting it to look just like a thousand things I’d seen and bookmarked or screen-capped or otherwise “pinned” without the benefit of organization that I suppose Pinterest provides.

Naturally, once these ideas entered my brain, it became impossible to dispense with them. The floor tile would have cost about $1,000 I didn’t have, but felt so essential to the very premise of renovating the laundry room that I couldn’t see a way around it. Since about half the room would be taken up by the machines, the sink, and storage, I thought maybe I’d compromise and save the expensive tile for the visible part of the floor, but then I’d need the sink and attending cabinetry to be installed first, which of course would mean buying or making those, which I also didn’t have the time/money for. I also really wanted to get the laundry done before being completely occupied with the much more involved kitchen renovation, but in order to do that I’d have to actually start working on it, which would mean finalizing these decisions, which of course I couldn’t do. This all rolled around in my mind for months while my washer and dryer sat useless in the spare room.

I guess when I started this whole renovation “journey,” I felt like the only logical path forward was escalation. Bigger projects. More advanced DIYs. An ever-expanding collection of tools and technical skills that I’d use to create the most amazing spaces I could dream of, because otherwise what’s the point? Putting this much time and effort and money into something should not yield mediocrity.

And then it hit me. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last, but I’m really trying to actively keep it in mind: Not. Everything. Has. To. Be. The. Very. Best. It. Can. Be. IT REALLY IS OK. A lot of things can be improved and changed down the line, when the time and money materializes. It doesn’t all have to happen in one take. At the end of the day, this laundry room has to accomplish one thing: wash my dirty clothes. Everything else is bonus. Also, it’s JUST A LAUNDRY ROOM.

And then something happened: I FELT SO LIBERATED. Without realizing it, and largely out of necessity, I took away the pressure of perfection and replaced it with the momentum of just GETTING IT DONE. Added to this was the challenge of doing it as inexpensively as possible, because the goal was no longer incredible beauty but instead just getting to a place of very basic functionality—and still being able to afford a kitchen stove.

And then another thing happened: in spite of my best efforts, the room actually turned out kinda cute, if you’ll permit me just a little bit of self-congratulation. Because I actually do like my stuff. I actually am generally happy with the decisions I make about my own living space. I actually am capable of making those decisions if I just lighten the fuck up a little and stop freaking out about having the coolest laundry room that my brain can conjure, and creating it in one shot.

Because only a monster would post an after image without a before, here’s the now-laundry room way back when I bought the house! It was one of the first rooms I really tackled, trying to get my renovation sea legs, and I turned it into this office:

I loved that little office, but for various reasons it eventually made way more sense to make this little space into the laundry room. It was sad for a while. Out came the desk, down came the obsolete chimney, in went new electric and plumbing, and up went new drywall and a couple fresh coats of paint annnndddddd…

Laundry room! With a utility sink! And a pink floor! I ain’t mad about it!

By the way, YES. It feels very weird/kinda embarrassing to now have “after” photos of the “after” photos from 4 years ago. I’m also 100% positive that there are those among us who will view this as a downgrade rather than an improvement, but in the context of the whole house I SWEAR this is so much better. Second floor laundry with all this natural light is such an insane luxury. My clothes are literally cleaner because I can see stains and stuff so much more easily, so my pre-treatment game is now ON POINT. I feel very on top of my laundry situation generally and it’s a great feeling.

ALSO, due to my chronic condition of over-sharing—here is the room like a day or two before I snapped the “after” photos. And honestly this is more of what I had in mind when I was all “I HAVE NO NEED FOR CUTE I ONLY NEED CLEAN UNDIES,” but then I sort of liked the additional challenge (/let’s be honest, procrastination) of trying to dress her up a little and add some storage without spending a dime. So I spent the next day just puttering around the house and hanging things up and messing around and it got kind of nice while I wasn’t looking!

Anyway. Point being, that little bit of extra effort was totally worth it and made me feel like I don’t have to really mess with this room for a long time. It also got some of my shit out of indefinite storage and put to good use!

The single biggest new purchase in this room was this cheap plastic utility sink. Various commenters were gravely concerned about this sink choice when I first mentioned it, encouraging me to go with something higher-quality/prettier/ceramic/stone/fireclay/stainless/vintage/antique BUT honestly even trolling Craigslist for some amazing $100 antique soapstone sink STILL involves trolling Craigslist, going to pick up the thing, overcoming the lurking fear of getting Craigslist-murdered, getting it home, cleaning/restoring it, getting it upstairs, probably special-ordering various parts to hook it up, maybe needing to enlist a plumber who wouldn’t show up anyway…SO WHILE I APPRECIATE ALL THE SUGGESTIONS, I am also so very happy that all I had to do was give $95 to Lowe’s and it wasn’t some whole production. When the perfect sink shows up, all the plumbing is there waiting for it.

I still spray-painted the legs black, because I can’t help myself.

Regarding the sink, it is exactly as mediocre as you might expect. It is decidedly un-fancy. It’s very lightweight and therefore doesn’t feel solid or substantial, although I did screw it right into the wall to keep it stable. It stains REALLY easily and stubbornly. It’s also HUGE and was so cheap and I LOVE IT SO MUCH, UNAPOLOGETICALLY. But like, get something nicer if you can swing it. Tell me all about it.

The plumbing under the sink isn’t so great looking either, so I spent 10 minutes making it a little modesty skirt. It’s just a tea towel folded in half with some velcro pinned to it, so it’s all easily removable and the tea towel is intact whenever I want it to be a tea towel again.

Maybe I’ll make a bunch of them so I can change the sink’s outfits seasonally. Hawt lewks for my stained plastic tub sink.

I hung up an old mirror just behind the sink to provide a little backsplash. Problem solved! I kinda love those little plastic clips that hold it up—they were a couple bucks at the hardware store but feel so 60s kitschy. Like not something you should be able to still go buy.

I put up a shelf! My pal Anna gave me like six of those IKEA brackets when she moved and they’ve just been cluttering my basement since. They were white and I spray painted them black and hung them up with some brass screws. Cute! I don’t think IKEA still makes these exact ones, but these are really similar.

The wood came off of the house at some point over the course of renovation, but I’m really struggling to remember what it did in its former life. I guess it doesn’t matter. I gave it a quick sand and a few coats of shellac and BOOM, shelf.

On the shelf is an assortment of things I have accumulated in my short but hoard-y lifetime. The yellowware bowls are antique—one holds detergent pods and the other holds those Affresh tablets that are supposed to rid the washing drum of that swamp smell in the summer. This is to prove once again that I will decant anything.

Tucked into the mirror frame are my two Laundry Idols, my mother below and my grandmother above. My grandma’s favorite task was laundry, and she passed much of her wisdom on to my mother, and I feel some grave sense of duty to, like, not ruin my clothes and bring shame on the family. So they watch over the goings-ons in this room.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry for loving that portrait but I can’t help myself. Her expression is SO GOOD. I bought her at an auction (I think I paid ten actual American greenbacks for that!), and then they told me the staining was because someone was storing her in a laundry room and she got bleach spilled on her. So it seemed right to carry on the grand tradition of this poor little old lady getting stuck in the laundry room, but maybe with a little more respect this time around.

I love my little hooks! These just came from various closets and stuff around the house, I don’t know. The long Turkish towel hides the supply lines which are hooked up under the sink.

Here we find a small sampling of my childhood collection of dog figurines. I’ve gotten rid of most of them, but some were actually kind of cool and maybe I’m pulling it off and maybe I’m not but I don’t care. It’s sort of fun seeing these guys again.

OH RIGHT, THAT HUGE SLAB OF MARBLE. So here’s the deal. Craigslist, $300. It’s a little over 5’x3′, and I bought it with the intention of it being my kitchen island (and therefore not considering it part of the money spent on this room). It’s 2″ thick and came out of this contractor’s garage, where he’d been storing it for the same purpose for the last 30 years. He got it out of another contractor’s garage who’d also been storing it for 30 years, also for that same purpose! The original contractor had pulled it out of a Victorian-era candy shop that was being demolished—can you imagine that?! So ANYWAY it’s huge and probably weighs 400 pounds and I needed to put it SOMEWHERE since custom-kitchen-island is still a ways away, so I just put it right on top of the machines.

I recognize that this sounds like a very bad idea, but I figured….hey. If the washer can stack on top of the dryer, SURELY it can handle a 400 pound slab of natural stone, right??? So I did it, and it’s been three months, and it hasn’t budged, and the machines didn’t collapse, so obviously there’s nothing to worry about here. Lol. If I ever need to call LG out for service, let’s keep this between us OK?

The marble is COVERED in 100 years worth of dings and scratches and pitting and I think that’s pretty perfect, personally. I’ll likely want to seal it with SOMETHING but I’m not super concerned about it continuing to age and patina.

I bought those two big hooks years ago, and it turned out they they make a good rack for the ironing board and iron! For the ~2 times per year that I use them.

There wasn’t really a great spot in this laundry room to hang the drying rack I had in my old laundry room, so instead I put up my Eames Hang-it-All! Anything that needs to dry flat can go on the marble, and anything that needs to be hung can go on a hanger off of this. I love my Hang-it-All and it’s so nice the be using it again after it collected dust for a few years!

It’s hard to get a good picture of, but that little tiny closet under the stairs is my new cleaning cupboard! Those stainless steel shelves used to hang in Anna’s kitchen in Newburgh—they were part of the GRUNDTAL series at IKEA but I’m not sure they still make them. The red bucket has all the cleaning basics so I can carry it around from room to room when I clean and it feels SO ADULT I can’t even stand myself. A cleaning caddy of my very own! Talk about peak experiences.

I mentioned this before, but I re-painted the floor from white (WHICH MADE ME INSANE) to this soft Farrow & Ball pink called “Setting Plaster.” I love it! Painted floors do show a lot of dirt and dust no matter what, I think, but shifting away from white makes it much more manageable. And the rug! I have a weird soft spot for old braided rugs—they just feel so homespun and sweet. I think this one was $10 a while ago and it happens to be the PERFECT size for this room.

OH! And this is neither here nor there, but I did want to circle back on the now-painted-white-but-originally-PURPLE XP drywall I used in this room! This is the Soundbreak XP, which is recommended for rooms you want to contain noise in (or keep it out of), and it’s GREAT. My bedroom is on the other side of this wall, and I really can’t hear the machines when they’re on at all. Cars just driving down the street are louder! I do get a bit of structural vibration during the spin cycles, but nothing dramatic. Everything I was worried about with moving the machines upstairs has thus far turned out to be completely fine. Better than fine! Because I have laundry again!

And it’s sorta cute, IMHO.

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition! published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/

[interiorstarweb]

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition!

At some point in the past couple of years, I got a little…stuck with my own house. I know for a lot of people this feeling might not be especially out of the ordinary, but to me it was novel. The house itself was going through a decidedly “rough patch” in the course of this whole renovation/restoration madness, and to some extent my mental health followed suit. My ability to make decisions and actionable plans seemed to evaporate, which of course made everything feel worse. I’m not sure if I was looking for answers, or trying to remind myself that beautiful things do, in fact, still exist, or just to try to un-block something in my brain, but I found myself looking more and more to visual inspiration.

I’ve had the inkling for a very long time that too much “inspiration” can actually produce the opposite result. I’ve seen this with various clients over the years—they’ll send me a Pinterest board they’ve assembled over some time for a given project, hoping that each image might in some way be represented in the final product. The trouble is that most people aren’t only attracted to one particular aesthetic: they’re attracted to lots of them. It’s much easier to recognize what we think is beautiful than it is to create it. So then, armed with too much inspiration, we try to devise a way to incorporate all these things into a given space, which is usually not possible. Or at least not possible if the goal is to produce a beautiful result. So then we have to start making sacrifices, but now we’ve fallen in love with all of these disjointed elements, all generally done by other people who are really good at this and have lots of money, and we don’t feel confident in making those calls, or even know which calls we have to make, and then we’re paralyzed.

Then, seeking clarity, we bury ourselves in more “inspiration,” as though the image that will make all of this come together could be just the next click away. This, of course, is not especially productive, but it feels like it is.

Being somewhat aware of this, I’ve never used Pinterest except when a client gig required me to. This seemed like a good way to avoid this issue for myself, but I think I failed to appreciate the extent to which the Pinterest mentality has really permeated so many other spaces. The Inspiration Overload is everywhere—Instagram, Facebook, other blogs—and this crept up on me a bit. Soon all of my own work felt so small and shitty and lame, and making simple decisions became an extended exercise in self-doubt and insecurity. Each project in my house became an opportunity to create something amazinggggg but then only if I could remove the very real limitations of time and budget. When it came to my laundry room, I got so caught up in all these things I could see doing: beautiful and spacious custom built-in storage, a sink-to-end-all-sinks, a gorgeous tiled floor, and of course something more interesting for the walls than just painted plaster. Right? I wanted it to look fresh and original and like nothing I’d seen before, while at the same time wanting it to look just like a thousand things I’d seen and bookmarked or screen-capped or otherwise “pinned” without the benefit of organization that I suppose Pinterest provides.

Naturally, once these ideas entered my brain, it became impossible to dispense with them. The floor tile would have cost about $1,000 I didn’t have, but felt so essential to the very premise of renovating the laundry room that I couldn’t see a way around it. Since about half the room would be taken up by the machines, the sink, and storage, I thought maybe I’d compromise and save the expensive tile for the visible part of the floor, but then I’d need the sink and attending cabinetry to be installed first, which of course would mean buying or making those, which I also didn’t have the time/money for. I also really wanted to get the laundry done before being completely occupied with the much more involved kitchen renovation, but in order to do that I’d have to actually start working on it, which would mean finalizing these decisions, which of course I couldn’t do. This all rolled around in my mind for months while my washer and dryer sat useless in the spare room.

I guess when I started this whole renovation “journey,” I felt like the only logical path forward was escalation. Bigger projects. More advanced DIYs. An ever-expanding collection of tools and technical skills that I’d use to create the most amazing spaces I could dream of, because otherwise what’s the point? Putting this much time and effort and money into something should not yield mediocrity.

And then it hit me. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last, but I’m really trying to actively keep it in mind: Not. Everything. Has. To. Be. The. Very. Best. It. Can. Be. IT REALLY IS OK. A lot of things can be improved and changed down the line, when the time and money materializes. It doesn’t all have to happen in one take. At the end of the day, this laundry room has to accomplish one thing: wash my dirty clothes. Everything else is bonus. Also, it’s JUST A LAUNDRY ROOM.

And then something happened: I FELT SO LIBERATED. Without realizing it, and largely out of necessity, I took away the pressure of perfection and replaced it with the momentum of just GETTING IT DONE. Added to this was the challenge of doing it as inexpensively as possible, because the goal was no longer incredible beauty but instead just getting to a place of very basic functionality—and still being able to afford a kitchen stove.

And then another thing happened: in spite of my best efforts, the room actually turned out kinda cute, if you’ll permit me just a little bit of self-congratulation. Because I actually do like my stuff. I actually am generally happy with the decisions I make about my own living space. I actually am capable of making those decisions if I just lighten the fuck up a little and stop freaking out about having the coolest laundry room that my brain can conjure, and creating it in one shot.

Because only a monster would post an after image without a before, here’s the now-laundry room way back when I bought the house! It was one of the first rooms I really tackled, trying to get my renovation sea legs, and I turned it into this office:

I loved that little office, but for various reasons it eventually made way more sense to make this little space into the laundry room. It was sad for a while. Out came the desk, down came the obsolete chimney, in went new electric and plumbing, and up went new drywall and a couple fresh coats of paint annnndddddd…

Laundry room! With a utility sink! And a pink floor! I ain’t mad about it!

By the way, YES. It feels very weird/kinda embarrassing to now have “after” photos of the “after” photos from 4 years ago. I’m also 100% positive that there are those among us who will view this as a downgrade rather than an improvement, but in the context of the whole house I SWEAR this is so much better. Second floor laundry with all this natural light is such an insane luxury. My clothes are literally cleaner because I can see stains and stuff so much more easily, so my pre-treatment game is now ON POINT. I feel very on top of my laundry situation generally and it’s a great feeling.

ALSO, due to my chronic condition of over-sharing—here is the room like a day or two before I snapped the “after” photos. And honestly this is more of what I had in mind when I was all “I HAVE NO NEED FOR CUTE I ONLY NEED CLEAN UNDIES,” but then I sort of liked the additional challenge (/let’s be honest, procrastination) of trying to dress her up a little and add some storage without spending a dime. So I spent the next day just puttering around the house and hanging things up and messing around and it got kind of nice while I wasn’t looking!

Anyway. Point being, that little bit of extra effort was totally worth it and made me feel like I don’t have to really mess with this room for a long time. It also got some of my shit out of indefinite storage and put to good use!

The single biggest new purchase in this room was this cheap plastic utility sink. Various commenters were gravely concerned about this sink choice when I first mentioned it, encouraging me to go with something higher-quality/prettier/ceramic/stone/fireclay/stainless/vintage/antique BUT honestly even trolling Craigslist for some amazing $100 antique soapstone sink STILL involves trolling Craigslist, going to pick up the thing, overcoming the lurking fear of getting Craigslist-murdered, getting it home, cleaning/restoring it, getting it upstairs, probably special-ordering various parts to hook it up, maybe needing to enlist a plumber who wouldn’t show up anyway…SO WHILE I APPRECIATE ALL THE SUGGESTIONS, I am also so very happy that all I had to do was give $95 to Lowe’s and it wasn’t some whole production. When the perfect sink shows up, all the plumbing is there waiting for it.

I still spray-painted the legs black, because I can’t help myself.

Regarding the sink, it is exactly as mediocre as you might expect. It is decidedly un-fancy. It’s very lightweight and therefore doesn’t feel solid or substantial, although I did screw it right into the wall to keep it stable. It stains REALLY easily and stubbornly. It’s also HUGE and was so cheap and I LOVE IT SO MUCH, UNAPOLOGETICALLY. But like, get something nicer if you can swing it. Tell me all about it.

The plumbing under the sink isn’t so great looking either, so I spent 10 minutes making it a little modesty skirt. It’s just a tea towel folded in half with some velcro pinned to it, so it’s all easily removable and the tea towel is intact whenever I want it to be a tea towel again.

Maybe I’ll make a bunch of them so I can change the sink’s outfits seasonally. Hawt lewks for my stained plastic tub sink.

I hung up an old mirror just behind the sink to provide a little backsplash. Problem solved! I kinda love those little plastic clips that hold it up—they were a couple bucks at the hardware store but feel so 60s kitschy. Like not something you should be able to still go buy.

I put up a shelf! My pal Anna gave me like six of those IKEA brackets when she moved and they’ve just been cluttering my basement since. They were white and I spray painted them black and hung them up with some brass screws. Cute! I don’t think IKEA still makes these exact ones, but these are really similar.

The wood came off of the house at some point over the course of renovation, but I’m really struggling to remember what it did in its former life. I guess it doesn’t matter. I gave it a quick sand and a few coats of shellac and BOOM, shelf.

On the shelf is an assortment of things I have accumulated in my short but hoard-y lifetime. The yellowware bowls are antique—one holds detergent pods and the other holds those Affresh tablets that are supposed to rid the washing drum of that swamp smell in the summer. This is to prove once again that I will decant anything.

Tucked into the mirror frame are my two Laundry Idols, my mother below and my grandmother above. My grandma’s favorite task was laundry, and she passed much of her wisdom on to my mother, and I feel some grave sense of duty to, like, not ruin my clothes and bring shame on the family. So they watch over the goings-ons in this room.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry for loving that portrait but I can’t help myself. Her expression is SO GOOD. I bought her at an auction (I think I paid ten actual American greenbacks for that!), and then they told me the staining was because someone was storing her in a laundry room and she got bleach spilled on her. So it seemed right to carry on the grand tradition of this poor little old lady getting stuck in the laundry room, but maybe with a little more respect this time around.

I love my little hooks! These just came from various closets and stuff around the house, I don’t know. The long Turkish towel hides the supply lines which are hooked up under the sink.

Here we find a small sampling of my childhood collection of dog figurines. I’ve gotten rid of most of them, but some were actually kind of cool and maybe I’m pulling it off and maybe I’m not but I don’t care. It’s sort of fun seeing these guys again.

OH RIGHT, THAT HUGE SLAB OF MARBLE. So here’s the deal. Craigslist, $300. It’s a little over 5’x3′, and I bought it with the intention of it being my kitchen island (and therefore not considering it part of the money spent on this room). It’s 2″ thick and came out of this contractor’s garage, where he’d been storing it for the same purpose for the last 30 years. He got it out of another contractor’s garage who’d also been storing it for 30 years, also for that same purpose! The original contractor had pulled it out of a Victorian-era candy shop that was being demolished—can you imagine that?! So ANYWAY it’s huge and probably weighs 400 pounds and I needed to put it SOMEWHERE since custom-kitchen-island is still a ways away, so I just put it right on top of the machines.

I recognize that this sounds like a very bad idea, but I figured….hey. If the washer can stack on top of the dryer, SURELY it can handle a 400 pound slab of natural stone, right??? So I did it, and it’s been three months, and it hasn’t budged, and the machines didn’t collapse, so obviously there’s nothing to worry about here. Lol. If I ever need to call LG out for service, let’s keep this between us OK?

The marble is COVERED in 100 years worth of dings and scratches and pitting and I think that’s pretty perfect, personally. I’ll likely want to seal it with SOMETHING but I’m not super concerned about it continuing to age and patina.

I bought those two big hooks years ago, and it turned out they they make a good rack for the ironing board and iron! For the ~2 times per year that I use them.

There wasn’t really a great spot in this laundry room to hang the drying rack I had in my old laundry room, so instead I put up my Eames Hang-it-All! Anything that needs to dry flat can go on the marble, and anything that needs to be hung can go on a hanger off of this. I love my Hang-it-All and it’s so nice the be using it again after it collected dust for a few years!

It’s hard to get a good picture of, but that little tiny closet under the stairs is my new cleaning cupboard! Those stainless steel shelves used to hang in Anna’s kitchen in Newburgh—they were part of the GRUNDTAL series at IKEA but I’m not sure they still make them. The red bucket has all the cleaning basics so I can carry it around from room to room when I clean and it feels SO ADULT I can’t even stand myself. A cleaning caddy of my very own! Talk about peak experiences.

I mentioned this before, but I re-painted the floor from white (WHICH MADE ME INSANE) to this soft Farrow & Ball pink called “Setting Plaster.” I love it! Painted floors do show a lot of dirt and dust no matter what, I think, but shifting away from white makes it much more manageable. And the rug! I have a weird soft spot for old braided rugs—they just feel so homespun and sweet. I think this one was $10 a while ago and it happens to be the PERFECT size for this room.

OH! And this is neither here nor there, but I did want to circle back on the now-painted-white-but-originally-PURPLE XP drywall I used in this room! This is the Soundbreak XP, which is recommended for rooms you want to contain noise in (or keep it out of), and it’s GREAT. My bedroom is on the other side of this wall, and I really can’t hear the machines when they’re on at all. Cars just driving down the street are louder! I do get a bit of structural vibration during the spin cycles, but nothing dramatic. Everything I was worried about with moving the machines upstairs has thus far turned out to be completely fine. Better than fine! Because I have laundry again!

And it’s sorta cute, IMHO.

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition! published first on https://novaformmattressreview.tumblr.com/

[endlessarchite]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

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[darwinbigelow]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

You'll Also Love

Christmas & The Last Week of 2015

.yuzo_related_post img{width:170px !important; height:170px !important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{line-height:14px;background:#ffffff !important;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover{background:#ffffff !important; -webkit-transition: background 0.2s linear; -moz-transition: background 0.2s linear; -o-transition: background 0.2s linear; transition: background 0.2s linear;;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a{color:#102a3b!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a:hover{ color:#113f5e}!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover a{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo__text--title{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post:hover .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{ margin: 0px 6px 0px 6px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; } jQuery(document).ready(function( $ ){ jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); });

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[chocdono]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

You'll Also Love

Christmas & The Last Week of 2015

The post Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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from mix1 http://ift.tt/2zVV4Xn via with this info

[sherlocklexa]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

You'll Also Love

Christmas & The Last Week of 2015

The post Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

Website // Subscribe // Advertise // Twitter // Facebook // Google+

from car2 http://ift.tt/2zVV4Xn via as shown a lot

[winstonsalempainting]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

You'll Also Love

Christmas & The Last Week of 2015

.yuzo_related_post img{width:170px !important; height:170px !important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{line-height:14px;background:#ffffff !important;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover{background:#ffffff !important; -webkit-transition: background 0.2s linear; -moz-transition: background 0.2s linear; -o-transition: background 0.2s linear; transition: background 0.2s linear;;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a{color:#102a3b!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a:hover{ color:#113f5e}!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover a{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo__text--title{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post:hover .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{ margin: 0px 6px 0px 6px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; } jQuery(document).ready(function( $ ){ jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); });

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Read more http://ift.tt/2jq4pzN Areas served: Winston-Salem, High Point, Yadkinville, Mocksville, Advance, Clemmons, Kernersville, Greensboro, Walnut Cove, Statesville, NC, North Carolina Services: House painting, roofing, deck building, landscaping, Carpentry, Flooring, tile, hardwood, remodeling, home improvement, interior, exterior

[foggyhideoutgoatee]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven't exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don't really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I'm willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don't always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that's where I'm at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I've purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I'm still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn't exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn't read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way - proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I've started cooking this year. I've done my share of baking, but that's usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that's kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts' numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I've had a shelf on the fridge door that's been busted for who knows how long, and I've been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that's kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge's water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge's water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on - otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience's sake - there's a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I'm very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I'll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we're all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I'm anxiously waiting for when it's “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I'm creating this year? It's only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can't fully explain, really. Maybe it's because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I'll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn't obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I've been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

You'll Also Love

Christmas & The Last Week of 2015

.yuzo_related_post img{width:170px !important; height:170px !important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{line-height:14px;background:#ffffff !important;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover{background:#ffffff !important; -webkit-transition: background 0.2s linear; -moz-transition: background 0.2s linear; -o-transition: background 0.2s linear; transition: background 0.2s linear;;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a{color:#102a3b!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a:hover{ color:#113f5e}!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover a{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo__text--title{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post:hover .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{ margin: 0px 6px 0px 6px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; } jQuery(document).ready(function( $ ){ jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); });

The post Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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[garagedoorsbrighton]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

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Christmas & The Last Week of 2015

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[darensmurray]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

You'll Also Love

Christmas & The Last Week of 2015

.yuzo_related_post img{width:170px !important; height:170px !important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{line-height:14px;background:#ffffff !important;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover{background:#ffffff !important; -webkit-transition: background 0.2s linear; -moz-transition: background 0.2s linear; -o-transition: background 0.2s linear; transition: background 0.2s linear;;color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a{color:#102a3b!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb a:hover{ color:#113f5e}!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover a{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo__text--title{ color:#113f5e!important;} .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb:hover .yuzo_text, .yuzo_related_post:hover .yuzo_views_post {color:#454747!important;} .yuzo_related_post .relatedthumb{ margin: 0px 6px 0px 6px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; } jQuery(document).ready(function( $ ){ jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); });

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[billydmacklin]

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition!

At some point in the past couple of years, I got a little…stuck with my own house. I know for a lot of people this feeling might not be especially out of the ordinary, but to me it was novel. The house itself was going through a decidedly “rough patch” in the course of this whole renovation/restoration madness, and to some extent my mental health followed suit. My ability to make decisions and actionable plans seemed to evaporate, which of course made everything feel worse. I’m not sure if I was looking for answers, or trying to remind myself that beautiful things do, in fact, still exist, or just to try to un-block something in my brain, but I found myself looking more and more to visual inspiration.

I’ve had the inkling for a very long time that too much “inspiration” can actually produce the opposite result. I’ve seen this with various clients over the years—they’ll send me a Pinterest board they’ve assembled over some time for a given project, hoping that each image might in some way be represented in the final product. The trouble is that most people aren’t only attracted to one particular aesthetic: they’re attracted to lots of them. It’s much easier to recognize what we think is beautiful than it is to create it. So then, armed with too much inspiration, we try to devise a way to incorporate all these things into a given space, which is usually not possible. Or at least not possible if the goal is to produce a beautiful result. So then we have to start making sacrifices, but now we’ve fallen in love with all of these disjointed elements, all generally done by other people who are really good at this and have lots of money, and we don’t feel confident in making those calls, or even know which calls we have to make, and then we’re paralyzed.

Then, seeking clarity, we bury ourselves in more “inspiration,” as though the image that will make all of this come together could be just the next click away. This, of course, is not especially productive, but it feels like it is.

Being somewhat aware of this, I’ve never used Pinterest except when a client gig required me to. This seemed like a good way to avoid this issue for myself, but I think I failed to appreciate the extent to which the Pinterest mentality has really permeated so many other spaces. The Inspiration Overload is everywhere—Instagram, Facebook, other blogs—and this crept up on me a bit. Soon all of my own work felt so small and shitty and lame, and making simple decisions became an extended exercise in self-doubt and insecurity. Each project in my house became an opportunity to create something amazinggggg but then only if I could remove the very real limitations of time and budget. When it came to my laundry room, I got so caught up in all these things I could see doing: beautiful and spacious custom built-in storage, a sink-to-end-all-sinks, a gorgeous tiled floor, and of course something more interesting for the walls than just painted plaster. Right? I wanted it to look fresh and original and like nothing I’d seen before, while at the same time wanting it to look just like a thousand things I’d seen and bookmarked or screen-capped or otherwise “pinned” without the benefit of organization that I suppose Pinterest provides.

Naturally, once these ideas entered my brain, it became impossible to dispense with them. The floor tile would have cost about $1,000 I didn’t have, but felt so essential to the very premise of renovating the laundry room that I couldn’t see a way around it. Since about half the room would be taken up by the machines, the sink, and storage, I thought maybe I’d compromise and save the expensive tile for the visible part of the floor, but then I’d need the sink and attending cabinetry to be installed first, which of course would mean buying or making those, which I also didn’t have the time/money for. I also really wanted to get the laundry done before being completely occupied with the much more involved kitchen renovation, but in order to do that I’d have to actually start working on it, which would mean finalizing these decisions, which of course I couldn’t do. This all rolled around in my mind for months while my washer and dryer sat useless in the spare room.

I guess when I started this whole renovation “journey,” I felt like the only logical path forward was escalation. Bigger projects. More advanced DIYs. An ever-expanding collection of tools and technical skills that I’d use to create the most amazing spaces I could dream of, because otherwise what’s the point? Putting this much time and effort and money into something should not yield mediocrity.

And then it hit me. It’s not the first time and won’t be the last, but I’m really trying to actively keep it in mind: Not. Everything. Has. To. Be. The. Very. Best. It. Can. Be. IT REALLY IS OK. A lot of things can be improved and changed down the line, when the time and money materializes. It doesn’t all have to happen in one take. At the end of the day, this laundry room has to accomplish one thing: wash my dirty clothes. Everything else is bonus. Also, it’s JUST A LAUNDRY ROOM.

And then something happened: I FELT SO LIBERATED. Without realizing it, and largely out of necessity, I took away the pressure of perfection and replaced it with the momentum of just GETTING IT DONE. Added to this was the challenge of doing it as inexpensively as possible, because the goal was no longer incredible beauty but instead just getting to a place of very basic functionality—and still being able to afford a kitchen stove.

And then another thing happened: in spite of my best efforts, the room actually turned out kinda cute, if you’ll permit me just a little bit of self-congratulation. Because I actually do like my stuff. I actually am generally happy with the decisions I make about my own living space. I actually am capable of making those decisions if I just lighten the fuck up a little and stop freaking out about having the coolest laundry room that my brain can conjure, and creating it in one shot.

Because only a monster would post an after image without a before, here’s the now-laundry room way back when I bought the house! It was one of the first rooms I really tackled, trying to get my renovation sea legs, and I turned it into this office:

I loved that little office, but for various reasons it eventually made way more sense to make this little space into the laundry room. It was sad for a while. Out came the desk, down came the obsolete chimney, in went new electric and plumbing, and up went new drywall and a couple fresh coats of paint annnndddddd…

Laundry room! With a utility sink! And a pink floor! I ain’t mad about it!

By the way, YES. It feels very weird/kinda embarrassing to now have “after” photos of the “after” photos from 4 years ago. I’m also 100% positive that there are those among us who will view this as a downgrade rather than an improvement, but in the context of the whole house I SWEAR this is so much better. Second floor laundry with all this natural light is such an insane luxury. My clothes are literally cleaner because I can see stains and stuff so much more easily, so my pre-treatment game is now ON POINT. I feel very on top of my laundry situation generally and it’s a great feeling.

ALSO, due to my chronic condition of over-sharing—here is the room like a day or two before I snapped the “after” photos. And honestly this is more of what I had in mind when I was all “I HAVE NO NEED FOR CUTE I ONLY NEED CLEAN UNDIES,” but then I sort of liked the additional challenge (/let’s be honest, procrastination) of trying to dress her up a little and add some storage without spending a dime. So I spent the next day just puttering around the house and hanging things up and messing around and it got kind of nice while I wasn’t looking!

Anyway. Point being, that little bit of extra effort was totally worth it and made me feel like I don’t have to really mess with this room for a long time. It also got some of my shit out of indefinite storage and put to good use!

The single biggest new purchase in this room was this cheap plastic utility sink. Various commenters were gravely concerned about this sink choice when I first mentioned it, encouraging me to go with something higher-quality/prettier/ceramic/stone/fireclay/stainless/vintage/antique BUT honestly even trolling Craigslist for some amazing $100 antique soapstone sink STILL involves trolling Craigslist, going to pick up the thing, overcoming the lurking fear of getting Craigslist-murdered, getting it home, cleaning/restoring it, getting it upstairs, probably special-ordering various parts to hook it up, maybe needing to enlist a plumber who wouldn’t show up anyway…SO WHILE I APPRECIATE ALL THE SUGGESTIONS, I am also so very happy that all I had to do was give $95 to Lowe’s and it wasn’t some whole production. When the perfect sink shows up, all the plumbing is there waiting for it.

I still spray-painted the legs black, because I can’t help myself.

Regarding the sink, it is exactly as mediocre as you might expect. It is decidedly un-fancy. It’s very lightweight and therefore doesn’t feel solid or substantial, although I did screw it right into the wall to keep it stable. It stains REALLY easily and stubbornly. It’s also HUGE and was so cheap and I LOVE IT SO MUCH, UNAPOLOGETICALLY. But like, get something nicer if you can swing it. Tell me all about it.

The plumbing under the sink isn’t so great looking either, so I spent 10 minutes making it a little modesty skirt. It’s just a tea towel folded in half with some velcro pinned to it, so it’s all easily removable and the tea towel is intact whenever I want it to be a tea towel again.

Maybe I’ll make a bunch of them so I can change the sink’s outfits seasonally. Hawt lewks for my stained plastic tub sink.

I hung up an old mirror just behind the sink to provide a little backsplash. Problem solved! I kinda love those little plastic clips that hold it up—they were a couple bucks at the hardware store but feel so 60s kitschy. Like not something you should be able to still go buy.

I put up a shelf! My pal Anna gave me like six of those IKEA brackets when she moved and they’ve just been cluttering my basement since. They were white and I spray painted them black and hung them up with some brass screws. Cute! I don’t think IKEA still makes these exact ones, but these are really similar.

The wood came off of the house at some point over the course of renovation, but I’m really struggling to remember what it did in its former life. I guess it doesn’t matter. I gave it a quick sand and a few coats of shellac and BOOM, shelf.

On the shelf is an assortment of things I have accumulated in my short but hoard-y lifetime. The yellowware bowls are antique—one holds detergent pods and the other holds those Affresh tablets that are supposed to rid the washing drum of that swamp smell in the summer. This is to prove once again that I will decant anything.

Tucked into the mirror frame are my two Laundry Idols, my mother below and my grandmother above. My grandma’s favorite task was laundry, and she passed much of her wisdom on to my mother, and I feel some grave sense of duty to, like, not ruin my clothes and bring shame on the family. So they watch over the goings-ons in this room.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry for loving that portrait but I can’t help myself. Her expression is SO GOOD. I bought her at an auction (I think I paid ten actual American greenbacks for that!), and then they told me the staining was because someone was storing her in a laundry room and she got bleach spilled on her. So it seemed right to carry on the grand tradition of this poor little old lady getting stuck in the laundry room, but maybe with a little more respect this time around.

I love my little hooks! These just came from various closets and stuff around the house, I don’t know. The long Turkish towel hides the supply lines which are hooked up under the sink.

Here we find a small sampling of my childhood collection of dog figurines. I’ve gotten rid of most of them, but some were actually kind of cool and maybe I’m pulling it off and maybe I’m not but I don’t care. It’s sort of fun seeing these guys again.

OH RIGHT, THAT HUGE SLAB OF MARBLE. So here’s the deal. Craigslist, $300. It’s a little over 5’x3′, and I bought it with the intention of it being my kitchen island (and therefore not considering it part of the money spent on this room). It’s 2″ thick and came out of this contractor’s garage, where he’d been storing it for the same purpose for the last 30 years. He got it out of another contractor’s garage who’d also been storing it for 30 years, also for that same purpose! The original contractor had pulled it out of a Victorian-era candy shop that was being demolished—can you imagine that?! So ANYWAY it’s huge and probably weighs 400 pounds and I needed to put it SOMEWHERE since custom-kitchen-island is still a ways away, so I just put it right on top of the machines.

I recognize that this sounds like a very bad idea, but I figured….hey. If the washer can stack on top of the dryer, SURELY it can handle a 400 pound slab of natural stone, right??? So I did it, and it’s been three months, and it hasn’t budged, and the machines didn’t collapse, so obviously there’s nothing to worry about here. Lol. If I ever need to call LG out for service, let’s keep this between us OK?

The marble is COVERED in 100 years worth of dings and scratches and pitting and I think that’s pretty perfect, personally. I’ll likely want to seal it with SOMETHING but I’m not super concerned about it continuing to age and patina.

I bought those two big hooks years ago, and it turned out they they make a good rack for the ironing board and iron! For the ~2 times per year that I use them.

There wasn’t really a great spot in this laundry room to hang the drying rack I had in my old laundry room, so instead I put up my Eames Hang-it-All! Anything that needs to dry flat can go on the marble, and anything that needs to be hung can go on a hanger off of this. I love my Hang-it-All and it’s so nice the be using it again after it collected dust for a few years!

It’s hard to get a good picture of, but that little tiny closet under the stairs is my new cleaning cupboard! Those stainless steel shelves used to hang in Anna’s kitchen in Newburgh—they were part of the GRUNDTAL series at IKEA but I’m not sure they still make them. The red bucket has all the cleaning basics so I can carry it around from room to room when I clean and it feels SO ADULT I can’t even stand myself. A cleaning caddy of my very own! Talk about peak experiences.

I mentioned this before, but I re-painted the floor from white (WHICH MADE ME INSANE) to this soft Farrow & Ball pink called “Setting Plaster.” I love it! Painted floors do show a lot of dirt and dust no matter what, I think, but shifting away from white makes it much more manageable. And the rug! I have a weird soft spot for old braided rugs—they just feel so homespun and sweet. I think this one was $10 a while ago and it happens to be the PERFECT size for this room.

OH! And this is neither here nor there, but I did want to circle back on the now-painted-white-but-originally-PURPLE XP drywall I used in this room! This is the Soundbreak XP, which is recommended for rooms you want to contain noise in (or keep it out of), and it’s GREAT. My bedroom is on the other side of this wall, and I really can’t hear the machines when they’re on at all. Cars just driving down the street are louder! I do get a bit of structural vibration during the spin cycles, but nothing dramatic. Everything I was worried about with moving the machines upstairs has thus far turned out to be completely fine. Better than fine! Because I have laundry again!

And it’s sorta cute, IMHO.

The Laundry Room, 2018 Edition! published first on https://carpetgurus.tumblr.com/

[petraself]

Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep

Those of you who have followed along on my DIY/remodeling journey have graciously embraced my lack of finesse on many of the things traditionally associated with keeping up a home. Cooking and entertaining haven’t exactly been in my wheelhouse, and for good reason: they don’t really mix with drywall dust and bug poop. At least, not at a dinner party I’m willing to attend.

Generally speaking, if you work hard, houses don’t always stay covered in dust. As things are renovated, one starts to see a glimmer of a life beneath the demo. And that’s where I’m at these days. My kitchen is probably one of the better examples of this, since it used to look like a grimy mess:

And as of just a year or two ago, was nice enough to decorate for Christmas:

Despite the finishing touches like needing to add the door hardware (which I’ve purchased), building in a pot rack (working on the plans now!) and other things, I’m still proud of how I turned this stomach-churning cabinetry into a room to learn to cook in.

And by “learning to cook”, I truly mean that: cooking hasn’t exactly come to me naturally. I once tried to make chocolate chip cookies using one of those easy mixes that required just an egg and softened butter added to a dry mix. But I read the ingredients as they were listed on the bag, so I didn’t read the “softened” part until I had gotten down to the second step of the instructions and already started adding everything together. To solve my butter problem, I stuck the whole thing in the microwave (you see where this is going). The result was melted chocolate and a chipless, gooey mess. I was studying international business in college at the time, by the way — proving once again that education and common sense are two different things. :)

So, anyway: I’ve started cooking this year. I’ve done my share of baking, but that’s usually with family recipes and not experimenting at all with ingredients. Recently, I succeeded in making a new soup, and it was delicious (K tried it and we had it two nights in a row, it was that good), but the end result still wound up looking more like mush. I laughed at my arrogance of thinking I would wind up with something photographable and sharable the first time trying out a new recipe that I made on the fly. It instead wound up in the fridge with zero photographs of the results. I snarfed down a second bowl the very next day, however, so the evidence of my mishap is now gone, and it will be making a return appearance once I figure out the appropriate cooking time (I think it was just the pasta cooked for too long, and tortellini being a stuffed pasta, that’s kind of important).

Speaking of the fridge, I may have just reached peak adulthood: I actually got very excited that my recent partnership with Sears Parts Direct allowed me to get my fridge back in full working order. My typical experience when something breaks or needs maintenance is that I have to find the manual and dig up specific parts’ numbers and it leads me to procrastinate (as is perfectly logical, because even though I usually hold onto appliance manuals, remembering where I put them is an entirely different story). Instead, their site is built to look up the way a normal person would, by appliance model (or name) and that gets you a full parts list and you can identify them visually. So, it was a matter of a few clicks versus scouring through a lost document for obscure codes. I’ve had a shelf on the fridge door that’s been busted for who knows how long, and I’ve been running out of space every time I buy a new seasonal 6-pack or order out (given the frequency of both of those things during the holidays, that’s kind of annoying to not have enough room). So now, I have one small (but also constant) irritation crossed off my list.

I also used the opportunity to kill two birds with one order and replaced my fridge’s water filter (raise your hand if you are way overdue like I was!). In general, you should replace your fridge’s water filter every six months, but it also depends on usage (if it slows down or has an odor/taste/sediment, replace it sooner). I never realized that it had been impacting the actual flow of the water dispenser until I replaced it (instructions here, but for me it was a simple untwisting of the cap in the back of the fridge, then switching out the filter and twisting it back on — otherwise I would have written a separate tutorial for ya). Boom: like new again, tea for everyone. (P.S. You can set up a steady shipment of these for convenience’s sake — there’s a discount and free shipping if you sign up on the Sears Parts Direct site).

And as the title of this post implies: I’m very much in Christmas prep mode at this point. Part of it is because I’ll be out of town for Thanksgiving entirely (friends of mine are renewing their vows and our travel dates fall over the holiday weekend, plus there are family conflicts so we’re all basically just accepting that December will be super packed). Some years, I can barely keep my schedule on track to put the tree up (coughcough, 2016). Other years, I’m anxiously waiting for when it’s “appropriate” to MAKE IT RAIN GLITTER. Speaking of, did you see the first (of several) DIY ornaments I’m creating this year? It’s only natural that if you have to stage an ornament post early in November, you might as well put the tree up!

The dogs are a big help with fluffing the tree, obviously.

This time around… I just need the holidays a little early. I can’t fully explain, really. Maybe it’s because 2017 has been so exhausting, news-wise? I really want to have family over for dinner, make cheesy Christmas memories, watch silly movies in front of the fire in festive socks and pjs, all of that stuff. In order to do those things, I feel compelled to get an early start and avoid any last-minute stress, fix the things that need fixing, get my projects done a little early, etc. That also means setting new goals on a neglected guest bedroom, so I’ll be sharing the start of that with you next week (and a tour video so you can get all of the “before” in its real, horrifying glory, haha).

Disclosure: Just in case that wasn’t obvious enough, this post was sponsored by Sears Parts Direct. Big thanks to them for getting me the parts I’ve been needing to fix a bunch of things around the house!

Have you been fixing anything lately?

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The post Cooking Misadventures, Fixing the Fridge, and Holiday Prep appeared first on The Ugly Duckling House.

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