Paint on Doors
Jul 27, 2008 A House is a Home
OK. I’ve moved from fixing up hinges to painting the doors.
I apologize for the bad picture. It’s the best I can get from a basement with little light. I painted the first coat today. Tomorrow after work, I’ll add coat number two. On Tuesday. I’ll hang them. Oh, I can see the light on a finished project.
Reusing
Jul 26, 2008 A House is a Home
I’m really good as starting a home improvement project and getting about 80% complete. Last Fall, I painted my craft room, set up the furniture, and forgot all about finishing the doors. My excuse? I’m not fond of painting. Lately, I’ve been thinking about starting other home improvement projects. Then my conscience got to me. I really need to paint the doors and finish a few other projects before I start a new project. (sigh)
Last night, I started to prep the doors. The last person painted the hinges. Originally, I planned on painting right over the hinges. Then I started to think about it. I don’t want paint on my doors. I want nice pretty hinges. Yet it seemed wasteful to buy new hinges when nothing was wrong with these hinges. Then it struck me—just remove the paint. A quick search on the internet gave me a couple of options: paint remover or simmering water with baking soda. I chose to easy method: cooking the parts in water and baking soda.
I started with this:
The parts cooked for about 15-20 minutes in simmering water.
The paint just rubbed right off. I used my sewing awl to remove some paint in crevices and Q-tips to remove paint in the pin holes. The process amazed me. All the paint is gone without using any caustic chemicals.
If you try this process yourself, use a junky pan. You don’t want to cook your food in a pan that contains paint chemicals. All my cookware is fairly nice. I picked up my junky pan at a local thrift store for $2. Not a bad investment considering the result. In fact, I plan on removing the paint from all the hardware in the house. That should keep me busy for a while.
Nothing Better to Do
Jul 25, 2008 Life
OK. That’s probably not true. I’ve got lots of good things I could be doing, but I’m not. Instead I’m playing with Wordle.net. See what I made.
You can customize this until your blue in the face. In the end, I settled for a default setting. I drove myself crazy trying to find the perfect lime green. I’ll save that task for another day.
My Treasures from Anthropologie
Jul 17, 2008 A House is a Home
I’m back from my week in Portland, OR. I have lots to share. First up: my Anthropologie finds. OK, I know that Anthropologie isn’t unique to Portland. In fact, I can visit Anthropologie right here in Salt Lake. However, I never allow myself an hour or so to touch all the pretty stuff. In Portland, I had plenty of time to convince myself that I couldn’t live without a thing or two.
Find No. 1: A pretty bowl.
I believe this bowl was intended to be a cereal bowl, but not in my house. I’m using it as a soap bowl for pretty bars of handmade soap. It looks perfect in my upstairs bathroom.
Find No. 2: A key hook
I’m still looking for the perfect place to install this. A couple of places are contenders. I’m think that I need a little shelf to place over it to store things like my sunglasses and such. You know the stuff that tends to clutter the table and counters. Then I’ll just need to convince Ross to use it.
Find No. 3: Pretty measuring cups.
Now just prior to our trip, I told Ross we needed new measuring cups. I no longer have a 1/2 cup measuring cup, which is odd since we’ve had at least 3 sets of measuring cups in the duration of our marriage. It looked liked Anthropologie satified my need for cute + function. Then for some reason I decided to verify the accuracy of these measuring cups. Much to my dismay, they’re far for accurate. Look for yourself.
The 1/4 cup hold more than 1/3 cup of water. The 1/2 holds close to 3/4 cup of water. I’m so sad. I really like these. Tomorrow I’m returning them. My quest for cup measuring cups will continue. I wonder if their other sets are more accurate or if I should just resign myself and go to either Sur la Table or Williams and Sonoma. Oh the dilema I have.
Holiday Weekend Wrapup
Jul 8, 2008 A House is a Home, Quilting
I need to learn to post more often. Right now I have so much to say that I don’t say anything, because I don’t have time to say it all. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be a problem if I could do without sleep. Until I figure out how to do without sleep, my blog posts will always be WAY after the fact.
Let me start by saying that Ross and I had add a very nice holiday weekend. We started the weekend by spreading mulch in the front yard. For us, mulch means we are done messing with the drip irrigation configuration, well at least until next summer. Now we going to just watch thing grow and keep the weeds at bay. I’m loving it
The back yard is a little less cared for. (sigh) We spread a little mulch. The biggest problem was getting the sprinkler’s to run. We have a nice system with a controller and all, but the outside electrical outlet stopped working. We had no idea way. Granted neither Ross and I are electricians, but we couldn’t figure out why it would just stop working. Then we were rescued by my brother Moses.
Before I get into the details, let me say that I’m so lucky to have a younger brother that likes to figure out how things work and help me. (Actually I have two brothers who could do this. However one of them decided to move to Seattle, which doesn’t work for me when I need help.) Everybody needs a brother like mine.
(I don’t know why I’m documenting all these . If this is boring stuff to you, skip to the end of the post where I talk about a quilt.)
Now for the details. First we had no electicity to the outlet. Nothing worked when we plugged it in and the test light verified this for us. Moses decided to venture into the attic to check out the wiring. I knew of one entrance to the attic, the tiny hole in my closet. Moses, being clever and all, found another way through an attic vent. In fact, it’s safe to say that this vent is the commonly used entrance to the attic. Proof being the installed work light at the attic vent entrance. In fact the work light has an extension cord that runs the length of the house. I think a previous owner was rather clever.
In the attic, the wiring looked good, but there was no elecrical current. This moved us to the breaker box. Now the the breaker box would have been easy if everything was labeled, but we only have a few labels that Ross and I have added. So Moses, the curious one, started fiddling with the wires. (Dad – Don’t worry. Before he started to fiddle with things he turned the main breaker off.) It took him about 3 minutes to realize that one wire wasn’t screwed into the breaker properly. So in a matter of a couple of minutes, we had electricity to our outlet. Like I said, everybody needs a brother like Moses.
With electricity to run the controller, Ross and I set up sprinklers. Of course this involved taking apart on valve and cleaning it before it worked. Thanks goodness for the internet. I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out without a little guidance. So how did people get answers before the internet? I’d really like to know.
Yeah! Everything is working. Now it’s time to play.
While in Michigan I bought this jelly roll of patriotic fabric.
After I purchased it, I had a little big of regret. What was I going to do with a bunch of partriotic fabric? Lucky for me I had a light bulb moment. A friend is having a baby this month. Of course he needs a patriotic quilt. So I went to work. Before I knew it, I had the quilt top done.
I like it. The pattern is based on a modge podge of ideas and constraints floating around in my head. I did end up buying a little bit of fabric (1/2 yard) to make it this size. What can I say? I like square quilts. This measures 54″ x 54″. Now I need to quilt it. I’m seriously considering sending this out to be quilted by a long-arm quilter. I want it done, and I’d like to try out the process before I send in a huge quilt. I’ll worry about it after my trip to Portland.
Now it’s time for me to get ready. I think I need a new purse/tote for this trip.
