CandyBill » Diversions

New Kitchen: the Plans

Shelly — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:34:22 +0000

I thought I’d share with you our plans for the kitchen. There’s just so much that needs to be done, and we’re under a REALLY tight budget. I’ll say (and I think I’ve mentioned this before) that we attempted to redo the kitchen a few years ago, but it fell through. We even had a couple o kitchen designers come out, take measurements and talk with us for a good long while to come up with stuff. In a way, I’m glad we did that. We never did get the kitchen built (which I actually am kind of glad of – because after a few years of use, we KNOW what we want, and it’s not what those plans were going to give us), but it did give us things to think about.

So we’ve been planning this sucker to death. TO DEATH. You have no idea. We’ve been planning, talking, drawing to scale, more talking, pricing out, more talking…more drawing. GAH! I’m finished with planning already! But It’s good to plan, because then you really know what’s going on, and you get an excellent perspective on how much things will cost, how long they could take – even a nice timeline. (Yes. We’re dorks. We have a timeline.) I’m hoping that all this insane planning will make things go really smoothly. We also have a really good idea of how much it’ll actually cost us (we crunched some numbers and added in about 20% to cover unexpected stuff). Our budget? $10,000. When I first came up with that number, I about choked. That’s a LOT of money. but remember those kitchen designers we went to before? the two we finally chose were going to charge us $75,000 and $40,000. So, by comparison, $10,000 doesn’t seem like so much.

So, we know we won’t actually get to begin on the “meat” of the kitchen until this summer. The main reason is because we’re fairly certain we will have to rip out the windows, and probably the drywall – and who wants to do that when there’s still snow on the ground? Those old “water” issues we’ve had in the past tell us that there’s something going on behind the walls that isn’t good, and we want to take a look and see. We already know that the only window (towards the back of the kitchen) has some mold around it, and the header and frame is rotting out. None of the windows have flashing, and the big window has no insulation around it. They’re also hung crooked. So we know we have to take out the windows and redo at least one of the frames. We’re hoping that’s as far as it goes, that the water damage hasn’t gone into the studs or (please God no) the floor – which we also know isn’t insulated. If we do take it down to the studs, we plan on getting one of those “DIY foam insulation” kits and using that on the outer walls – it just needs it. We did foam insulation in the attic last summer, and it’s been an excellent investment. We do plan on ripping up that ghastly linoleum, and we hope to find the subfloor undamaged. But we’re planning on replacing at least part of the subfloor anyway, because we want to insulate.

We also need to hire an electrician to come in and redo some stuff, because right now, if you turn too many things on in the kitchen, it’ll trip a breaker. We have a lot of empty slots in our breaker box, so we want to redo some stuff to give the microwave it’s own, the stove needs 2, the frige needs 1, the dishwasher it’s own, and the lighting/outlets the rest. (Right now, the whole kitchen is using only 2 of them! No wonder everything keeps shorting out!)

In the meantime, hubs plans on building the cabinets – custom made, on my designs – on the weekends. He’s hoping to pump out at least one full cabinet a week – not including the glass and hardware I have in my design. I’m currently trying to find someone with one of those vinyl cutters to cut my designs for me to use on our cabinets, but so far I’ve had no luck. (If anyone is actually reading this and knows someone who can custom-create a clean design for vinyl sheets based on my sketches, please send them my way! I don’t want to have to buy a Silhouette or Cricut when I’m only going to use it once!) we figure that he can have the cabinets made, ready for me to do my thing to them, by the time summer rolls around, so we can just pull ‘em out of the garage and start installing.

We’ve chosen our appliances – and because we’re making our own cabinetry (which is the biggest cost of redoing any kitchen), we plan to go all-out on the appliances, which gets me all giddy I’ve been reading reviews and investigating stuff for the last month (yes, MONTH) to see what we can swap to within our budget, and GE Profile stuff has won us over. The thing that makes me all happy is, instead of a slide-in range (like we have now) we’re spending the extra money to go with a cleaner look: an induction cooktop with a wall-oven beneath it. That’s our biggest expense, and we both feel it’s way worth it, especially since were saving in so many other areas. (we priced out the cabinetry from other places, and the cheapest was from Cabinets to Go – they could do it for $7000, and I wouldn’t get *exactly* what I wanted. I told my husband that if I’m dropping that kind of money, I want what I want, and I don’t want to compromise on it. He thinks he can build me exactly what I want for $1000, tops.)

In any case, all of this wordiness probably doesn’t excite you. I’ll just show you the plans, because pictures are better than listening to me ramble on I won’t bother showing you the boring timeline and list of appliances we want (and our price-checking on them), but I’ll give you the other goodies.

This is a to-scale grid of our kitchen.

We used this picture to draw our kitchen to scale. They are 1″ squares, and each inch represents 25″ of our kitchen. The small window (towards the top left of the picture there) is the one that’s had the worst water damage, and the frame is rotting out. It just so happens in the future (probably next year) we plan on making a deck on the front of our house, and this window will become a door But for now, we need to fix it anyway.

The "seating wall" of the kitchen.

This image is a drawing I made (yep, to scale!) of the same wall the small window is on. That little cabinet next to the fridge will not be there – after doing this drawing, we both decided we didn’t like it. So that will go away. When we redid the kids’ rooms, they had some of those bi-fold ugly doors on the closets. We’ve removed them. We used a couple of them to made the headboard for my son’s bed, but we still have plenty of them in the garage. We’re going to paint them while and put them on either side of the windows to pretty things up. And hopefully you can tell that’s supposed to be beadboard on the lower half of the walls

Back end of the kitchen

This one is the “meat” of the project – where I’ll be working. We’ve moved the stove from the icky corner into the center, and created some neat custom storage solutions for everything I’ve got. I wont’ go into detail on it now, but as we go along, I’ll be posting pictures and showing you each of the little individual projects we do (and you’ll see why I could have exactly what I wanted, as far as the cabinets go, unless we payed exorbitant prices).

The Kitchen Layout

This is, again, a to-scale layout of the kitchen. You can see I replaced the window with the door we plan to put in This was my original drawing, and some of the measurements have changed since this drawing because, after measuring appliances and some other math, we found out tese measurements were not correct (see? If we hadn’t checked that, we would have been SCREWED! scor one for planning!)

And I so, so, SO want to show you my cabinet design, but I think I’ll save that for later. I have to say, they’re so darn cool, you’ll never see the like of them anywhere

there’s more stuff that we’ve planned out – like I said, appliances, cabinet hardware – ven the freaking door hinges hav been planned out. Already chose a sink and faucet, countertop, pantry is designed, and we’ve chosen hardwood floors. Again – because we’re saving so much money in other places, we can get a little pricey on the floors. We’re going to do nice hardwood, and we actually get to spend a little extra to have the boards placed horizontally across the room (because it’s so narrow, the horizontal placement will make it feel a little wider) AND we’re taking it all the way into the living room too!

New Kitchen: The Inspiration

Shelly — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:00:23 +0000

Now that you know exactly how ugly/horrible/embarrassing my current kitchen is, I’d like you to “see the pretty” that it will become.

I have to blame Pinterest (and houzz.com) on this. Finding Pinterest has changed how I view our home. I’m finally understanding why my mom always insisted on us cleaning up after ourselves and making our beds (aside from the fact that tripping over stuff might kill you. There ARE other reasons.)

I have a HUGE PInterest board (and a houzz.com “favorites” area) that has all this stuff in it, but I’m going to share just a few key items that really set off what our new kitchen will look like.

So rather than try to explain things, I’ll just let the pictures (or the inspiration) do the talking:

White cabinets, dark wood floors, dark gray countertops, copper/bronze ceiling tile.

In-cabinet storage for my "baking" area. Much better than the drawer I'm using now.

I actually drew up plans for a pantry almost exactly like this, only to find a visual example on Pinterest. Awesome!

Finally, a terrific idea for the odd kitchen eat-in space that both my husband and I love.

Green is my favorite color, and it makes kitchens look so fresh!

Love how this hood is covered (and the knick-knack display on op of it!)

These are just a few key pins that kind of tell you the idea I’m going for. We’ve really got the plans down for the layout (something i’ll discuss in another post), and we’re fine-tuning it so we can actually nail down exactly how much this kitchen will cost us, down to the last cabinet hinge.

And it’s going to be a lot of DIY work – which I think makes me giddier than getting the kitchen itself!

New Kitchen: the Problems We Face

Shelly — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:04:03 +0000

I think you should know a little bit about how this kitchen is now – mainly for posterity’s sake, but also because I think you REALLY need to understand how terrible this kitchen is. I tell you, we deserve to be on one of those DIY network shows. You have no idea how bad it is.

I have probably a better leg-up on understanding how bad it is, because I am actually a professional cook. (Well, I was anyway. I don’t get paid for it anymore, so I’m no longer a “chef”, save to my family.) I’ve worked in some pretty rockin’ kitchens, and I don’t just understand “work flow”, I understand my work flow, and how the kitchen should be for me.

Now let me make a few things clear to you. None of the cabinets are attached to anything. Of course, the wall cabinets (uppers) are attached to the wall, but that’s about it. They were obviously not measured before placement, because some are higher than others and none are within that “18-inches from the countertop” thing. They are particleboard and veneer ugly piece of builder-grade crap that were basically tossed in the kitchen. And I mean tossed. You can move the cabinets around however you like.

That includes the countertops.

Yes, I’m serious. The countertops aren’t even attached.

The only reason the cabinets next to the dishwasher, stove, and sink remain where they are is because the plumbing holds them there. If you detached the plumbing, you could 1) lift the sink out (it’s not glued down) and 2) lift off the countertop and slide those cabinets around as well.

Even the baseboards aren’t attached. No lie. They’re just tossed in there and leaning against the wall. (There were more, but we just took them out because they kept falling over.)

please pardon the grossness on this one - the floor is peeling, and most of that dirt stuff is stains that won't come off.

Don’t get me started on the floor. I clean that thing twice a day and it still looks like someone took a crap on it and smeared it everywhere. (And the fact that it’s peeling up just makes me so happy! At least we know it won’t be hard to remove!)

My children's marker wall-art is a lot nicer to look at than what was there before.

The one wall had a lot of ugly wallpaper over it when we moved in, and one day, I was talking on the phone and saw little piece of it sticking out. I pulled on it to remove it – and pretty much the entire wall came off. So we finished removing it (seriously – it was like press-n-seal wallpaper. It came down THAT EASILY.) and found a huge moldy spot next to the fridge. We moved the fridge and cleaned up the mold – and the huge snowstorm we had last year kind of told us why there was a moldy/bubbled spot there on the wall – it was like a fountain over there for almost 2 months while the snow melted and refroze over and over again.

When I put up the roman blinds I made last weekend, we discovered that basically the framing around that particular window is rotted out. I have a feeling when we redo the kitchen, we’ll be gutting – at least that wall – to the studs and probably putting some new framing and insulation in – I can almost guarantee that the wall studs over there are rotted out, too. (we also discovered that there was no flashing put around the windows when they were installed, and there’s aso no insulation – which explains why they’re always so drafty, even though my husband seals them with silicone every year. Seems like they just tossed those in, too.)

Yes, there used to be a door here.

And don’t get me started on the sink/stove placement. See that blank spot there, where our trash can is? The stove is pushed up to the corner? There used to a be a freaking door there. (If you go outside and stand on the other side of that wall, there are concrete steps leading up to…the side of the house.) Those light switches? One of them turns the overhead off and on, but the other does nothing. I think there used to be an outside light for the door, and when they removed it, they just disconnected the wiring. We’ve toyed with the idea of putting a window there, but I think we’re kind of scared of what we’ll find if we attempt it.

I HATE having that stove in the corner.

Oh, and even more fun us that microwave/fan combo over the stove is supposed to be vented outside, and no one ever did it. So when I cook, the fire alarm goes off all the time. The local fire department knows us well – especially on Monday nights, because ALL the city’s fire departments do training – along with the police. So if it goes off on Monday night, you get 5 fire trucks and 8 police cars along the street. With video cameras. (I. Am. Not. Lying.) The other night I was making spaghetti – I had all the windows open (yes, in New England, in February), the ceiling fan running on high, and the vent hood on high. The water was at a rolling boil – and the fire alarm went off.

When I say “I hate my kitchen”, it’s not because there’s a few odd things that could be improved upon. Put it this way – remember that Halloween storm up here in New England not too long ago? It made national news. The town I live in was the worst-hit town in the entire state. We were without power (and cell phone/telephone) service for nine days. We had to fight the power company for a week after the power came back on to get some branches off their wires. (They were trying to tell me it was my responsibility to get the tree limbs off their wires.) One of my neighbors down the street had three – THREE – trees squash her kitchen. She’s been living in a hotel (insurance paid for it) since October while the whole side of her house – including her kitchen – is being rebuilt from the foundation up, to her exact specifications. When she told me about it, all I could say was “I’m SO jealous! You get a new kitchen! Why can’t a tree fall on MY kitchen?!?”

I ABHOR my kitchen.

Perhaps now you understand why ‘m so excited to finally be able to do something about it. (OMG, looking at photos of it makes me realize how embarrassing this kitchen is. I cannot imagine what people think when they come in my house.)

I love it when a plan comes together.

Shelly — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:36:27 +0000

Yeah, it’s been a couple of months since I posted last. Things have been very busy around here. It’s funny, I always finish my old year quietly, and the new one always seems to start with a bang!

What I want to talk about today (and hopefully with more frequent updates in the near future) is the biggest project I think I’ve ever taken on. It’s been something I’ve wanted to do since we moved here to CT and bought this house, back in 2005.

See, we loved this house when we bought it, but we knew it needed stuff done to it. Although we planned to “do a major project every year,” it never happened. Finally, last summer, I got REALLY tired of living in our house as if we were preparing to move out any day. It was always messy, and stuff was always all over the place, and we never have taken time to make this house our home. I think part of it stemmed from the fact that the last house we lived in, I loved. Pretty much as soon as we moved in, I was turning it into our home. I finally did a big project -remodeled the bathroom – and 2 weeks later my husband’s place of work shut down and we were relocated here to CT. I was so sad.

It also scared me out of trying to really do anything major to this house, because I do love it so, but I’m afraid if I take something on, it’ll trigger some unseen force and we’ll have to move again. So instead, we’ve been living like we’re college kids in a dorm (but with 2 kids, a dog and a mortgage.)

I’ve had enough.

Mike and I were talking about redoing a room in the house (the BIG one is the kitchen… Oh does it ever need it. So bad. But it’s such a HUGE project, and so expensive!) and we were going to start with our bedroom. We’ve done the kids’ rooms (mostly) and the hallway/linen closet. The bathrooms (yes, both) need help, too. But we figured doing our room might make us feel less stressed about stuff, and get us more motivated to take on other stuff.

Last year, we had a HUGE snowstorm, and discovered that the “new roof” that was put on just before we bought the house was done very, very badly. So the kitchen budget ($11,000 ::gasp::) went to a proper new roof instead. (Because insurance wouldn’t pay for it. Nice. They decided that the roof failure – and resulting damage from it – was due to “sub-standard workmanship” and “contractor error”, so if we wanted $ for repairs, we had to sue whoever did the roof just before we bought it.) I’ve been resigned to wait at least another 4 years before we could do the kitchen.

Mike surprised me by saying we didn’t.

For the last month, we’ve been planning like crazy. Today, we went on a “shopping trip” – which was more to price out what things will actually cost us than it was to actually purchase anything. We decided we were really going to DIY this puppy out, instead of buying everything and having it installed.

So it appears that this next portion (of my oh-so-frequently-updated-site) will be about our kitchen remodel. Because even though we’ve been planning for a month, I didn’t actually believe we were going to go through with it until our shopping trip today. (We actually hired a kitchen designer 4 years ago, and were about 2 steps from getting my dream kitchen when we had a financial issue, and it fell through. I’m still a bit upset by that, but now, I know better.)

I will return with more, but it’s too much (and too scattered) at the moment to put it all in here cohesively. But I think it’ll be nice to share, and it gives me something to write about

Advent Calendar

Shelly — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:57:24 +0000

I love Christmas.

It’s my favorite holiday. Maybe it’s because it’s also my best friend’s birthday (aka my mom’s – who was also born in Bethlehem!) but I just love the holiday. It makes me happy… well at least when I avoid shopping during this time. Nothing will get rid of my Christmas spirit faster than going to Wal-Mart, I tell ya.

Anyway, this year, I decided to do some stuff to get the Christmas spirit going in this house. I made my first advent calendar. It was almost free. I won’t go into a huge, in-depth tutorial, because there’s so many ways to make these, and this is my meager contribution. All I did was wrap a piece of scrap wood with some felt I had on hand, and hot-glued handmade cards to it for the kids to pull out every day. I will say if I do this next year, I’ll use colored construction paper, and I’ll print the darn things off instead of hand-lettering them! (I will say – so I remember later – that the font I used was Mardi Gras!) The card template I used (with a few edits) was the “4 and 3/4″ square envelope template” from here. I could get one card and one envelope from a single sheet of 8 1/2 x 11″ card stock paper that I have lying around.

The kids are already excited for tomorrow, so they can finally start pulling out cards and see what they say. They’ve never done an advent calendar before (heck, neither have I!) so they’re wondering what will happen. I’d explained that usually, it’s “open a door, eat a piece pf candy” sort of thing, but I wanted this to be more interesting. So instead, I made a list of one Christmas-y thing per day we can do. if you’re interested, my list looks like this:

Write a letter to Santa.
Pick 10 toys (each) to give to Goodwill.
Decorate the house for Christmas.
Make Christmas cards.
Make and hang up paper snowflakes.
Play a board game.
Make snow globes.
Shop for Fred and Fezzik. This is our goldfish and our new puppy!
Read a Christmas story. This one will also introduce Christopher Popinkins to the house – so that’ll be ongoing fun!
Go ice skating.
Make presents for teachers.
Put up the Christmas tree.
Roast marshmallows in the fireplace.
Visit Light Fanstasia.
Play “Christmas Pictionary.”
Watch “Polar Express.”
Camp out under the tree.
Make gingerbread house and cookies! I think I’ll provide a tutorial for the house, too – we make it every year!
Go visit Santa.
Drive around and look at Christmas lights.
Wrap Christmas presents.
Do a Christmas “word search” game. I think this will be more of a scavenger hunt, but we’ll see!
Listen to Christmas songs.
Prepare and set out cookies for Santa and yummies for his reindeer!

It took me a while to make up this list – hubs wasn’t much of a help at all. He couldn’t think of anything! I also had to carefully arrange what was chosen on what nights – stuff like “Camping out under the tree” and “make a gingerbread house” were relegated to weekend projects. My husband is also out of town for a week in December, so I had to carefully arrange things that I could do on my own with the kids while he was gone. And the 22nd and 23rd, we’ll be on our way to my mom’s in West Virginia, so we had to do something we could bring along in the car.

Anyway, I thought I’d share. Maybe it’ll give inspiration to others!

Multiple-purpose footrest!

Shelly — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:37:57 +0000

So, our house is small. And kind of laid out weird. Everything is all long and narrow, and we’re always trying to find the best furniture configurations to make things nice and maximize space. The living room is the bane of my existence… we have tons of crap and not enough room for it all.

Now, for months, I’ve had a layout idea for the living room that required “going with it” in the “long and narrow” department. If it helps to understand, you can see and old, messy “before” shot of the living room here, that I took back in the spring, before I started this insane adventure of trying to make the house look nice.

For the record, it looks different now. A lot of stuff has since been removed, a few new things added, and we’ve sort of returned to this configuration. The furniture configuration in this photo isn’t our norm, but I think it is now.

Most Googling I’ve done for layout ideas (for rooms similar to mine in the “long and narrow” department) always have differences than what we have. For instance, where our TV is now, most have a window (if we had a window there, you’d see the picturesque view of the garage)… And where our big window is, they have a fireplace an put a TV. I still have yet to find any that have it set up like ours, with the window on the long wall. Our front door is also on the long wall, and there’s an odd “what do we do with this space?” area across from the door, which also has the half-stairway to upstairs.

Seriously, have you ever seen such a weird split-level configuration?

Anyway, I finally came up with a configuration that I think works, but it’s totally different from what I was thinking before. Which kind of sucks, because I bought a lot of stuff to go with the original configuration idea, and now I phase more stuff I have to try and figure out!

One of the things I bought were some old metal pulleys from farms. The idea was to make one of those Lineberry cart coffee table knock offs (the inspiration came from this living room, which I would die for! She even has a similar partition between the living room and the kitchen, which gives me hope!)

My husband HATES them, as it turns out.

Wouldn’t you know it, he has no opinion on pretty much anything (save he wants a hideous recliner) and the one thing I REALLY want, it turns out he can’t stand. He loves me, and was willing to build it for me, but he doesn’t like them at all.

So I started thinking about the recliner thing (which I hate…) and decided to compromise. Instead, I had my husband go out on the garage and get some scrap wood together and build me a couple of boxes with lids.

They were simple boxes: just 4 sides (made of 1/2″ scrap wood we have lying around) with a bottom, held together at the corners with 1×2′s which were cut 1/2″ from the top. He made a “lid” by gluing and screwing 2 pieces of 1/2″ scrap wood together (the bottom piece a mere 1/2″ inset from the top to create a lip edge, so they would drop in and rest on the 1×2′s and be flush with the sides). The “lid” is strong and 1″ thick, so it can hold a lot of weight.

He built two of these, and was surprised when I told him they didn’t need sanded or anything. I went to Lowe’s and picked up some hanger bolts and bun feet (for the grand total of about $24), which he measured up and screwed into place for me.

I didn’t tell him what I was doing. After he built the boxes (which only took him about 2 hours), I stained the feet a nice dark color, and then gave them 2 coats of polyurethane, and let them dry overnight. I made a mess too… didn’t even try to be neat about it! When they were dry, I got some of those stick-on felt pads and put them on (we have hardwood floors, and everything scratches them up!).

As an aside, I obtained the measurements for said boxes by measuring the height of our couch from the floor to the top of the seat cushion, which is 15″. A long time ago, we had this couch and chair set that got old and had to be tossed, but before we did that, I’d removed the seat cushion foam and the batting and saved them. I knew they’d come in handy! They were 5″ tall, and 22×24. The bun feet are 1-1/2″ tall, which (after taking out measurements for the thickness of stuff) left us with a box whose sides needed to be roughly 7″ tall.

While the polyurethane dried, I washed a great big drop cloth I picked up at Ace Hardware for $24. Washed it twice, dried it thoroughly. The next morning, I went out and used some spray fabric glue (which I had on hand from a previous project) and lined the boxes with some black felt (which I also already have on hand). I used a box cutter to clean up the edges and make them nice, making sure the felt didn’t overlap the 1×2 tops. Then I glued the cushions to the lid tops.

The batting I had from the old couch was really thick, so I pulled it apart in the middle to halve the thickness (it was actually really easy, it seemed to be layered). Then I cut it to size, sprayed and glued it around the cushion and around the sides of the box. Once that was done, I just cut 2 squares from the drop cloth that were roughly 40″, and cut out 6″ squares from the corners. I unscrewed the feet, centered the drop cloth over the bottom of the box, and pulled it tight up the sides, and staple-gunned the cloth on at the edge. Then I screwed the feet back in.

I pretty much did the same thing with the “lid”, just folding and tucking the corners and stapling under the lip. Then I used needle and thread to sew the folded corners closed (just a simple basting stitch, hand-sewn. It was more to tack them shut so the folds didn’t pop out than for strength.) When I was done, this is the end result (please excuse the undie-clad girl, it’s amazing she’s wearing that much clothing!):

I still have the second one to upholster, but hubs tried out this one last night, and is happy with the result. With the two of them together, we have a coffee table. He can recline with his feet up which watching TV, the inside is big enough that we can store a couple of blankets and pillows in there (or whatever else we’d like to store); he also likes that he can set drinks (or whatever) on them, or work on his laptop. He also likes (as do the kids) that they can also be used as extra seating, if needed.

So maybe I had to give up my Lineberry knock-off idea (anyone need the wheels for that? ‘Cause now I have to figure out what to do with those…), but by doing this, we got a nice coffee table/recliner/extra seats/extra storage in our living room, for about $50 out-of-pocket. He can forego the coffee table idea he hated, AND I get to keep my living room recliner-less!

Really, for no pattern or plans, and about 4 hours of work (not counting stain-and-polyurethane drying time) they came out REALLY well, I think.

Now off to finish the second one!

Things they are a-changin’!

Shelly — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:20:04 +0000

So over the past few weeks, I’ve had another “epiphany” (if you will.) I doubt anyone who reads this (if there is anyone) is actually anyone who’s read me since the beginning. If so, I applaud you – you are Ghandi-like in your patience.

For the record, I’ve had this blog since 1999, and it’s been through many iterations and versions. Holy cow – that’s 12 years! You think I’d do better than this with it! However, my excuse is that I have another website that I’ve updated with a lot more frequency, and it has a lot bigger audience. Over the past few months, I’ve let it go a bit stagnant – because I’ve actually been posting here. That “other” blog is for my business – and it’s not just a “business website”, it started as a simple foundry for links and code snippets that I didn’t want to lose – but then people started reading it, much to my amazement

It’s hard doing two blogs at the same time. If I’m paying attention to one, then I’m not paying attention to the other. However, I feel it’s necessary because I want to keep my personal life and my business life separated. I don’t feel that strange people (who may want to be future clients) really need to have access to my personal issues. In the same vein, I don’t feel that people who have an interest in my personal life need to be exposed to being “sold to” all the time – even though my other site doesn’t “sell” at all. I still use it as a foundry of code for myself – it just so happens to help others as well.

Anywhoo…

I don’t plan on combining the two sites. I don’t think I ever will – they have the be separate and defined for their respective audiences. BUT. I’ve also discovered – over this past year – that there is some overlap. I’ve also discovered that the more organized I become, the better I am at keeping my audiences happy.

I do want this site to be as successful as my other – and what defines that success is not how many sponsors I have to send me checks (believe me, I have none for this one for good reason – but I have none on the other one because I refuse to place ads on my site that are there solely for the purpose of receiving a check. I MUST believe in the products I put on the site. So it’s not for lack of offers – it’s for lack of quality.) What defines success, for me, is helping others find their way.

Now, I’ve said before that I’m sort of a scatterbrain. I get into a LOT of things. I love learning and doing (and mastering) new things, and then moving on to the next thing. My husband insists that this is what defines me as a genius (his argument is that Leonardo da Vinci was the same way – and he never finished anything, so I must be a genius) – which I take as a nice compliment. But to me, it means I’ll never be a real master of anything. This has been sort of a… bummer?… to me of late. I feel it’s in me to do something great – to be known for one awesome thing that I do, and do well. Others will name several things that they think of when they think of me, but I, myself, can’t name one – except being a disorganized Jill-of-all-trades.

Which is mostly why I’m so scattered on blogging here. Forget the fact that I took this site down a few years ago because someone wanted to use its contents against me in court (which totally blew up in their face, a fact that I smile about when I think of it); but I just feel like, most times, the stuff I have to say that I think is interesting, I dont’ feel anyone else will.

Well screw that. It’s my site.

I’m returning it to me. I don’t know why I ever thought I needed to write for someone else. The reason I started this blog was as a personal journal. Granted, I could just get a notebook and have at it in that, but the kids keep taking it as drawing paper, and many times I forget it somewhere when something cool happens. At least this way, I won’t lose it, and the kids won’t steal it. (And don’t tell me I could just hide it. Ha! I don’t want it hidden anyway. I don’t do this to keep secrets.)

Anyway, I’ve been really into “home decor” lately, because we’ve lived in this house for almost 7 years now, and it’s never been home. I think that’s partly my fault. When my husband and I got married, we bought a house together, and I saw i as our “forever” home. I went all big on making it nice, and just how I wanted it to be. After initial stuff, I began my first major project: I redid the bathroom. I mean I took down walls, got new sinks… you name it. MAJOR reno. When it was done, it was beautiful.

2 weeks later, my husband’s place of work shut down, and we got relocated.

So I’ve been reluctant to “make this house my own,” because I really think that traumatized me a bit. But over the past year, the way this house looks drives me insane. It looks like we’re renting the place. Its always so messy and disorganized, partly because my brain is, but partly because I’ve been too afraid to commit to anything for fear of losing it. but it has to stop.

This house is small, and it has it’s weird issues. But I love it.

With all this “fixing up the house” comes organization, and with the organization and house-fixing (and now budgeting, and coming up with ways to save money) I’ve realized I need to apply this to myself. I dont’ plan to turn this into a huge weight-loss blog, but I do plan on giving that part of this site a little more focus.

And I’m working on a redesign. (when am I not? LOL)

Anyway, just warning you.

Hall of Glory

Shelly — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:51:10 +0000

So, a while back, I posted nasty pics of my house. Yes, I was prepared for my mother to see them and have a heart attack from the horridness of my house. My plan was to start working on rooms and make my house look like a home someone cared about, rather than just a place to stay.

I’ve awakened a monster.

You might recall that what started it was my youngest daughter (who was four years old when the request first came, but has since turned five) wanted to get rid of her older sister’s room decor and have something more to her taste, since she took over her older sister’s room. As I began cleaning out her drawers in preparation, I wondered if I could do something with the dresser (besides tossing it out) and it took me to the hall closet.

And so it began.

You also might recall that the closet looked like this:

Inside of linen closet, way back in the corner where we could never reach or find anything.

Other side, with the overstuffed, really deep, shelving.

Shelf above the crawlspace that also had a rod for hanging stuff...I'm guessing to hide the ugly crawlspace door.

Now, at this point, I didn’t actually take a picture of the floor (gross), or the crawlspace door. It didn’t dawn on me at the time to do so.

I’ve also covered how we removed the molding around the ugly bifold doors (after removal), added in a wall to enclose it more, and how Mike built a custom-made “dresser” to fit in there.

And how surprised I was that we made the closet smaller and removed nearly half the storage space, and we still had plenty of room to store all the crap we had.

But the crawlspace “door” (if you can call it that) was the bane of my existence. New, beautiful hallway with beautiful storage space that we could actually show off, instead of hide behind ugly bifold doors…and this ugly… thing in the wall.

I did take a direct picture of it for you. This is how our hallway has been looking for the last month and a half:

The crawlspace. Note the little planter hook we use on the side to keep it closed, otherwise the whole thing falls out and you see the inside of the attic.

This is the point where I wish I had taken more photos for you, because this is a terrific tutorial. Now, we want more photos in our house. We have a lot of pictures, but none are really hanging up. And although you can go it the Dollar Tree or Ikea and get cheapie frames, none are very big. 8×10 at the most.

Mike took a picture of the kids that we both loved, and after a bit of photoshopping, I sent it to a company to have it blown up to poster size (20×30″). I can’t recall the name of the company, though…I’ll have to look that up and put it here later. But pretty much any place will do it for you, and I think even Wal-Mart will do it cheaper. But I hate Wal-Mart, so I avoid them when I can.

A big problem though: getting a frame for a 20×30″ photo is expensive. The cheapest I could find was $80. And in all honesty, I needed a minimum of 30×40″ to cover the crawlspace, and I couldn’t find one that size ANYWHERE, except custom-made, and those started at $200.

What we ended up doing was getting a piece of 1/2″ plywood and cut it to size. I painted the inner 4″ solid black. Then I taped off 3″ all the way around and painted the rest white. I let it dry overnight. Then I sprayed the “frame” with spray adhesive, as well as the back of the photo. Then I placed the picture in the “frame” – my husband helped me, because once the photo touches, it’s hard to peel it off to re-center – and smoothed out the photo gently. My husband cut a piece of acrylic to match the frame, then I placed washers every 8″, laid the acrylic on it and pre-drilled holes. I placed another washer over each hole and drilled screws through all of them. Peeled the backing off the acrylic and BAM! Instant beauteous photo. Total cost: $65. The acrylic was the most expensive part of it, a huge sheet coming in at $40. But I have enough left over to do more smaller ones.

Again, I wish I’d taken photos of the process. The longest part was the drying time for the paint.

Now, normally, you’d want to use 1×1′s or 1×2′s across the back to both act as hangers and give the back support so it doesn’t warp, but we were doing double-duty with this project, and also using it to replace that ugly crawlspace door. So Mike measured the inside of it, and found that if we used 3/4″ thick pieces, he could make a frame that would just fit inside the hole to the attic. So that’s what he did. I had an old desk that we took apart a long time ago, and it had these magnets to hold all the doors closed. So while he hung the magnets on the inside of the crawlspace hole, I took the old metal plates and popped them into the frame he made (that we glued and brad-nailed to the back of the picture). All we had to do then was remove the old, ugly “door” and pop the new pretty picture in it’s place. The magnets hold it there so it doesn’t fall out. If we ever need to access the crawlspace in the attic, we just pull the picture off the wall, and there you go.

Wanna see what the finished product looks like?

The finished linen closet.

Close up of the custom photo frame door!

I can’t stop looking at it. It just came out so much better than I ever expected.

And of course, now I want to attack something else in the house and make it pretty!

This little light of mine…

Shelly — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:27:13 +0000

So, still on my daughter’s room here…

She’s only 5, and likes to sleep with a nightlight on, still. My husband got some light switches that had a built-in nightlight, but it’s not bright enough for her liking. After seeing some tutorials this summer for a candle lantern made out of small photo frames, I thought it would be neat to do something similar for her using Christmas lights.

There’s an issue though – Christmas lights mean you have to plug them in to turn them on, and unplug them to turn them off. I wasn’t sure how to get around that.

Then I heard of an “ornament” for a Christmas tree – you hang it on the tree and plug the lights into it (instead of into the outlet) and when you want to turn the lights off and on, you touch the ornament. How awesome is that? They weren’t easy to find though – and in the end, I decided on a “dimmer switch” that ::ahem:: “older folks” like to use because it’s easier to reach and manage their table lamps.

When I was at Michael’s looking for some stuff (not for this project) I came upon some really cool frames that cost only $4.50 each. Quick math in my head told me that using these frames were 1) the perfect size and 2) cheaper than going to the dollar store (well, mostly anyway. I mean, I probably could have gotten them at the dollar store for $4 each. But it’s further away, so I’m including gas prices!), and 3) well, I can’t remember what 3 was. It came in and went out. “Must’ve been a lie!” is what my mom would say!

Now, these things were meant to hold little pictures on each side – they came with these cheapie plastic squares (badly cut, by the way) to cover the small photos, but they would suffice for my purpose. They also had this little sort of “lazy susan” thing going on on the bottom – I suppose so you could spin it around and look at all the pictures.

Well, I didn’t need that, so the first thing I did was take them off (I saved them in a baggie – they may come in handy later on!) it was just a single screw, so it was really easy.

Then I took them out and painted them white – mainly because my daughter’s room is pink, silver and white. While they dried, I set to work on the plastic squares that acted as the “glass” for the frames.

Now, I will note here that I probably should have sanded them or roughed them up. I didn’t, but I’m thinking if I had, this would have worked a little bit better. So learn from my mistake.

I took a brush and spread a dab of Mod Podge (first time I’ve ver used this stuff!) over the surface of the plastic, and set it down on a bit of parchment paper (baking paper – no wax). Then I Mod Podged the other side and folded the paper over so both sides were covered. (In all actuality, I did all of them on one side, on one sheet of parchment paper, then folded it over and did all of the other side. So all eight of them at one time, on a single sheet of parchment paper.) Then I set a ginormous cookbook on it to add some pressure. I let it dry for about an hour. The paper got all wrinkly and cool looking. After they were all dry, I took two of them and cut a 1″ square hole in one of the sides – this was so the cord could come through. (I think the paper helped it not to snap into a bunch of small piece all over the place – so that worked out well.)

Finally, I brought in my boxes, slid all the parchment-covered “glass” into the sections. I stuffed them with a string of 50 Christmas lights (I would not recommend more than this – they were pretty full with this short strand) and lifted the back panel (the one with the hole in it – hole at the bottom) and pulled the plug and a bit of cord through it. Then I plugged the dimmer switch into the wall, and the lights into the dimmer switch.

The cool thing was, you can connect the lights – so I got to use 1 dimmer switch for lights on 2 tables!

Light, shut off.

Now, when my little one gets into bed, she can use the dimmer switch next to her head to turn her new “lamps” on high, or take them down to really low to act as nightlights. (Yes, you can turn them off, too.)

So the entire cost of this project was about $20. (I had to spend a little on the Christmas lights because we don’t have white ones) it’s really cool. Fun project too – you can use any kind of light for this – colored ones would be neat. I’d imagine if you wanted to use them for some kind of tabletop thing, you could get battery-powered LEDs to pull that off. But it’s pretty sweet and she loves them!

The light, turned on, dimmer switch at half power.

Linked up at Thrifty Decor Chick

Guilt-free Ben & Jerry’s!

Shelly — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 23:23:42 +0000

Well, Irene passed over us during the weekend. We were lucky, no damage per se, save the power went out around noon on Sunday, and it’s still out now. Mike (my husband) usually leaves work between 5 and 5:30 and is home half an hour later, but today it took him almost 2 hours to get home because almost every road was closed, so everyone was taking the one road that was open.

Anyway, I was assuming the power was going to go out, so I stocked up on some projects to work on. The one I’m going to tell you about today is a way to eat your ice cream, and have it too.

Well, not really. But it’ll make you feel better because to do this, you have to eat your Ben & Jerry’s and wash out the container.

So yes, I know that this isn’t technically Ben & Jerry’s, but if you live in the Simsbury/Granby CT area, you’ll recognize it at a Tulmeadow Farms container, which is better than Ben & Jerry’s. (seriously. Ben & Jerry’s got NOTHING on this stuff.) But basically, it’s a pint container that formerly held delicious ice cream. Washed, dry, and ready to go.

Now, before my power was gloriously removed by Irene, I had picked up a huge ball of jute twine from Ace hardware for the whopping amount of $4.50. (I seriously underestimated the amount of twine on this sucker. It doesn’t even look like I used any of it.). I plugged in my hot glue gun, and started wrapping the container with the twine, gluing at each row, and pushing the rows up tight against the previous one.

When I was done, I ended up with a nice, twine-wrapped (a la Pottery Barn or whatever) container. (It struck me as interesting/surprising that the container seemed a lot stronger after this little treatment! I wasn’t expecting that.)

After I pondered stopping there and just popping a candle in it and maybe tying a ribbon around it and stopping there (yes, I’m lazy… I also considered using a lamp kit on them, ’cause they’re pretty cool-looking), I decided to proceed. But from this point on, I waited until the power went out. Because the point was to have something to do when there was nothing to do.

So I’d bought a few supplies from Michael’s… You’ll see stuff like moss, river rocks, small rocks, ribbon, etc.

The interesting choices are the rocks and the willow balls I bought. I actually splurged on them… 6″ Willow Spheres for $4 each. The reason I made these choices were because I want these to be reusable. Now, as anyone who does crafty stuff knows, you can use a styrofoam ball, or that floral spongy stuff, but the more you insert and remove stuff, the more it falls apart, and it quickly needs replacing. I wanted these to be easily changed out, so the holes in the willow balls seemed perfect for that.

I was also remembering a neat little knife holder I once saw when I was in culinary school: instead of your regular knife block, it was a hollow square of wood, filled with metal beads. You could insert your knife any way you wanted, and it would hold it nicely, because the beads would re-form around the knife without damage. So I used the same concept here. I first put in the river rocks, and then added the smaller rocks on top of it. Then I gave the containers a shake and a tap, to get the rocks re-situated so the small rocks filled the gaps between the larger ones (large: strength; small: stability).

The cool thing about Michael’s is that they have some nice already-arranged floral…thingies. (Yes, we are up on all the crafty terminology here.) So you don’t need to think a whole lot. So I let the kids pick out four of their favorite arrangements, and clipped them apart with wire cutters as close to the base as I could:

Then I proceeded to shove the “leaves” as far up the “stem” as I could, without popping everything off the end. (It still happened a couple of times, but they slid right back on.) Then I wove the long stems through the willow balls, trying to keep the ends coming through the same hole (or as close as I could get) at the bottom.

I kept doing that over and over again, until the arrangement was how I liked it. Then I trimmed the bottom of the wires so they were as even as I could get, and shoved them into the rocks. I then covered over the rocks with some of the moss. Then I tied orange ribbon either around the container or around the base. These are the 4 topiaries I ended up with, at a total cost of (on average) $17.50 each. Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware both sells a simple one for $59, while Ballard Designs sells ‘em for almost $80. So I think it was a pretty good deal.

What’s great about these is how interchangeable they are. For instance, say I want to swap out the “fall” for “Christmas.” The idea is, I’d change the ribbon colors (to, say, red and white, or silver and gold), and remove the flowers and replace with pine cones, snowflakes and bits of pine twigs. I could even fill in the entire willow with just pine branches all trimmed at the same length (for a true topiary effect) and weave some Christmas lights through them. You don’t even need fake flowers: you could easily find some string twigs or branches in your yard, wash the dirt off and use those for the “stem” part. Really, the possibilities are endless here.

And it all started with a pint of ice cream. (and a hurricane.)