Product Recommendations

Another product that I adore is "Krud Kutter Brand Brush-Wash," which is invaluable if you are a sloppy and forgetful painter like me. This stuff is practically magic in the way it restores brushes gloppy with paint and perhaps a little caked with the dry stuff. If you put it in your paint caddy with some water, you can peel the dried on latex paint off in a solid piece. An awesome product that I have only found in the paint aisle of Target (What? Target has a paint aisle? Indeed, I was a little surprised too. More like a paint accessories aisle.)

Appliance Deathwatch

Okay, so in the past month I have had the following items die on me:

the washer
my digital camera
my VCR

I swear, it's like I've got some bad appliance mojo going on here.

Anyone care to bet on what will go next?

Just Pick Up A Paintbrush

Okay, all I have to say is that the people who say "It's so easy! I just slapped a new coat of paint on the walls and it completely changed the room! Just took a weekend! Cheap! Easy! Wonderful!" are smoking crack.

Painting is hard. And the prep work and the waiting for the paint to dry and the cleaning up the splatters (which go everywhere, because I have almost no fine muscle control, plus the kitties tend to be very, very interested in the stinky paint stuff). And I'm convinced that Goo Gone really kills the brain cells, even with an open window.

I will say that the room is really pretty and upbeat though. Lime Rickey is much better than Wheatgrass. I have a couple things left to handle and It's completely finished, but I'm happy. I'll post pictures soon.

Snow!

We had snow this week--I got about 1.5 inches over here on the western end of Cleveland. More's expected tomorrow out in the snow belt. They're predicting 6-12 inches out there.

However, it's time to plan the garden! I've got the Burpee catalog, and it all looks gorgeous. I think that I'm giving up on veggies in the front yard bed, except for cucumbers. I love cucumbers. I'm planting the lemon cukes again, even though I was not real successful with them last year, and a regular long green. But that leaves me open for flowers! I like orange and red and yellow ones. I think they look best up against the toad color of the house. Snapdragons are my favorite, but I also love marigolds, zinnias and the like. I also need a ground covering for the backyard since it's so shady that it's nearly impossible to grow grass.

Mantras

Along with "It's good enough for now," I have a couple of other mantras that I've taken to repeating as I do things around the joint. "It's an old house. It's a used house. It's not perfect, and it's not new." And I also have "It would look better in a magazine" in the back of my head.

What I should also do is go to some open houses in the area. It's always good to groove on the crappy design choices of others.

Light Shade Update

I just put the light shade from Schoolhouse Electric--received on Tuesday and up on Sunday? It's a record for Kerry Enterprises! Looks great, and Schoolhouse Electric has great customer service. I called them because after measuring the fitter 3 times I was conviced it was 31/2" which no one had any record of existing, much less in stock. Jill assured me that fitters are the devil to measure and that it was almost certainly 31/4". She was right.

Input Requested!

I'm requesting input from my dear readers: up in the attic, I have a bunch of plastic dairy crates. You know, the heavy duty kind that are so valuable when you are in college for their stacking and organizational ability, but in the adult world? Not so much, and rather ugly. Considering that I'll be moving within the year, should I keep them or freecycle? On the one hand could be useful. On the other, maybe not and are just hanging around the place. They have slight sentimental attachments--no, I did not steal them in my halcycon (ha!) youth, my mom would get them from the deli that delivered sandwiches to her department. I said slight sentimental attachment. That deli had excellent pickles and good free sandwiches that she'd let me have in the car on the way home from school.

So: stay or go?

I was up in the attic to retrieve another object d'freecycle: a 6 foot cardboard standup promoting the release of "Moulin Rouge" on Cinemax. I picked it up off the treelawn some time ago, and I must confess I never properly capitalized on the spirit-lifting possibilities of having Ewan McGregor in the house.

Design Inspiration

Do you think I subconsciously adopted this book jacket for my new workroom? I wish it were in better condition. I'd frame it. I just like the color/font combination.

By the way, my digital camera broke in transit to Phoenix, so there will be few pictures until I get it fixed.

More Little Changes

In my bedroom, I have a very odd closet. Actually all the closets in this house are a little odd--2 have windows, and the other has a built in seat and possibly removable floorboards. Anyway, this one is about 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, but it's a laid out like a little room. You could use it as a nursery, I suppose. But I was looking at it and the holes in the woodwork that the ex hadn't bothered to fill in when he painted*. And I had these hooks I had bought to put in the other closet but hadn't bothered....

And some drill time later, we have the above result! Not bad! I stripped screws as I was screwing them in with the drill, but I just continued repeating my new mantra, "That's good enough for now." And it is good enough. I also put the vacuum cleaner and my dirty clothes basket in there, along with the home repair stuff and the Christmas storage.


*There's two types of people in this world, those who do prep work like that, and those who don't. Guess which kind I am and why I'm a superior person. Or annoying details nazi, depending on your point of view. Ahem.

Closing In On A Finish Here

Christmas was tsunami of loneliness, PMS and sadness. So I tackled the rest of the wall. One more layer of drywall compound, sanding, and paint give us the above result--you can see in the 2nd photo there's a bit of a bump. Not the best result, but it will do. It's better than having a two foot crack forming an x-y axis with additional cracks that would make a geometry student cry over its slope. The bump is due to the fact that we had this weird layer of chicken wire-like stuff on the wall. I later figured out that part of the wall had its original plaster repaired--the plasterer would have nailed this stuff to the lathe to provide a base for the layers of new plaster that matched up to the old. You can see some of it in the pictures of our excavation.

I start on the trim tomorrow.

And did I mention my washing machine broke on Christmas too? Geez Louise!

Ripoff Alert!

I have a tub of this in my project room at the moment. I guarantee you, it did not cost $18. Nor did I have to order it over the web from Restoration Hardware. I think I got it at Home Depot, and it was less than $10 (probably closer to $5).