July 18th, 2010
I’m not sure the Universe will survive this…I actually finished another project.
Okay, so it’s been slightly over a year since I finished the Cat Condo (and now it’s taking me forever to write the post on the cat condo), but I took much less time to get this one done. I had this bookcase in my bedroom that was 8 feet tall and 42 inches wide, and because it started out life as a packing crate, only 7 inches deep. I got the crate from Texas Instruments when I worked in the facilities department and R and I had added some cheap lumber and made it into a bookcase for his office (which is now my bedroom). It was primarily for paperbacks, VHS tapes, and DVDs and was perfect for that. There were 6 upper shelves all just high enough for tapes/paperbacks, then two more “medium-sized” shelves that were about trade-paperback height, and then a slightly higher one, and then one more on the bottom that is abut 11 3/4” high, with a brace in the middle (behind the computer screen in the pic).
I had R cut the top 5 shelves off and trim the sides off to make three separate boxes. The bottom now sits on my desk and the top part formed three floating box shelves in my bedroom. I anchored 2x2s to the studs. Because of our craptastic builder, the studs are 24” on center (instead of 16”) in that room, so the right end and the middle I secured with 4” wood screws to the studs and the left end I had to secure with a toggle bolt. The 2x2s are cleats to which I screwed the boxes. Just waiting for the touch-up paint to dry. (When the room was R’s office, the case was unpainted, when I took it over I painted it “Cotton Whisper” to go with the “Pensive Sky” walls, and one “Painted Turtle” accent wall”
This is the base, in my office/studio/sewing room (ig..look at the clutter!)
And here are the three floating shelf boxes..the camera kind of “wide-angled” it, so they look warped, but they really aren’t. And they are all the same size, level, and evenly hung, even though the pic doesn’t show that very well. I only had to buy corner braces, an 8’ section of 2×2 (I had one piece already), and some 4” wood screws. All the rest I had. This is the “Painted Turtle” accent wall, and the color is off in this photo, of course. It’s a deep, cool warm green…and yes, the green in both pics is the same color.
Wheee! Can’t wait to get my stuff up on them…Dry paint, Dry!!
Categories: My House |
Tags: My House, projects | 2 Comments
June 6th, 2010
A clean fridge is a marvelous thing.
A clean refrigerator. Aaaah. My hands are raw and I’ve dripped soapy water from one end of the kitchen to the other, and most of my groceries (except dairy) sat out all day. But the fridge is all washed and the crap cleaned out. I took out every shelf and door pocket, took them apart and scrubbed ‘em with Method Purple Spray (which, by the way, works better than anything I’ve ever found on that tough, sticky kitchen grease), and also with soapy water, rinsed and dried, and reassembled them. Also took a bunch of stuff out to the compost. The person who messes it up will not be a happy camper.
The freezer side is next. Then to conquer the rest of the kitchen. Ennui be damned!
Oh, and the spousal unit laughed his ass off at me taking this picture.
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Tags: cleaning, Kitchen, My House, projects | Comments Off
June 6th, 2010
Taking apart my fridge and washing all the various trays, drawers, and parts has sharply reminded me why I want one of these:
I currently have the original, cheap-ass, shallow, stainless steel double sink that came in the house. If you look at a dish the wrong way, water floods your counters. I would dearly love to have a sink like this one. Image from Southern Living.
Categories: My House |
Tags: Kitchen, My House, remodeling | 2 Comments
June 5th, 2010
We’ve lived in this house for exactly 20 years and 1 month (not counting the 4-5 months I lived in an apartment by myself, but that’s a whole other story). It was built by a less-than-reputable builder, Nash Phillips/Copus Homes or NPC. Back while this subdivision was being built but before I’d heard of it, I was dating a guy whose mom lived in a fairly nice neighborhood in the south part of the city…why am I being coy? If you know who or what NPC Homes was, you’ll know where I am, so what the hell. In South Austin, off of William Cannon. This boyfriend was the first person to tell me the other names for NPC: “Nails, Paper, and Cardboard” and “Not Properly Constructed.” The year after we moved in here, a tax adjuster for Travis County said he had been one of the original owners in the little exclusive condo neighborhood attached to the bigger development of single-family homes. They had a HOA and tons of issues with NPC…he added the epithet “Never Pays Contractors.”
After 20 years of living here, I’ve added my own: “Nothing Per Code.” The sheet rock is cheap, too thin, and barely taped; none of the plumbing was installed correctly–we’re still waiting to find the money to have the hall bathtub drain fixed (as in new stuff, properly installed), so we can replace the flooring in the greatroom–on long walls, there’s only 1 duplex, instead of the 2-3 there should be; everywhere we’ve torn up flooring, there’s been some cryptic message scrawled in black marker by an inspector “not plumb” with an arrow pointing to the wall, is my favorite. But the single biggest code whanger I’ve found was brought to my attention by the guy who bought the house next door. He’s since sold and moved, but I remember one day, not long after he moved in. He was furious. He’d bought the small footprint, 2-BR house with the intention of adding on a second story, only to find out that the studs were 22 inches on center. If you’re not the constructionly type…studs are supposed to be 16 inches on center. The builder saved about a third of the framing costs right there. My studs run 22-24 inches on center (and no rude jokes, please).
Since NPC went under, Nash Phillips came back and started Wilshire Homes here in the Austin area. As far as I know, they are very nice, well-built houses, in fact, we had looked at some up in Round Rock. Either he learned his lesson…or another thought occurred to me. Perhaps the people working for NPC were robbing the company blind, some sort of concerted effort by a superintendent, etc. to skim as much as they could. Imagine, if you will, NPC buys enough wood to properly frame out the entire subdivision. But the contractor, because he knows he’s not going to get his money anytime soon…skims 1/3 of the 2x4s. That’s a fair chunk of change, and in these cheap little houses, purchased mostly by first-time, low-income buyers, who’s going to notice? Makes you wonder.
None of this really has much to do with my dilemma, except that the house is built of cheap materials which are now falling apart. Not horribly…yet. But enough that the house really needs work. Add to it my proclivity for STUFF and we have a problem. Add to it my total lack of energy when I get home and we have an even bigger problem. Add to that my ADD and …well… Anyone who knows an ADD person knows that we tend to start a whole lot of things, but never finish them, which of course adds even more crap and inability to decide even where to start. My doctor, who’s a sleep specialist (never, ever tell a sleep specialist you snore…), says he’s not sure he believes in adult ADD. eh…doc? So I guess we grow out of it? Doc, that’s like saying someone will grow out of their eye color. Supposedly, all my symptoms can be explained by sleep deprivation. That’s fine, but I’m not sleep deprived, as long as I actually go to bed on time. I also find it hard to believe that certain behaviors specific to ADD are caused by sleep deprivation. Like starting a project or taking on a position in a group, and then losing interest, but meanwhile, you’ve gone gung-ho into it, and have all the tools, books, materials, etc. only to leave them behind…usually in a pile somewhere and start another project. Or, be working on a project and think about something else you could do with an item in your hand and go dig out all kinds of fabric, etc, to look at and then leave that out. Then later, you want to clean up, but literally do not know where or how to start. Inability to concentrate? Sure, I could give that one over to sleep deprivation…except that it’s been going on all my life, and I’ve only been snoring since I got really overweight….
Any who…back to the house. In some regards, you could say I’m a type of hoarder. But I can throw things out, I can organize them, I can give them away…having the energy to do that and enough time to think about it, that’s something else. Depression…did I mention that part, too? Crap. Well…and you can see just how easily I get distracted by reading this, yes?
This started out about my house and all that needs to be done…stayed tuned for part the second.
Categories: My House, Self |
Tags: clutter, My House, projects, remodeling | Comments Off
July 2nd, 2009
My foray into humor yesterday left me wondering, why IS my house such a wreck? Yes, I’ve always had issues with being tidy, but the underlying house was always clean and it really only took a short time to tidy up, once I got around to it. But for the past 15 years, I’ve had increasing issues with finding that round tuit and things get dirtier and pile up. I’ve tried FlyLady (I think the crappy fuchsia and purple layout keep me at odds, I’m not sure), I’ve tried treating my ADHD, I’ve laid out plans, lists, and routines, given stuff away, thrown stuff away, and stored things until I could deal with them…but it just gets worse.
For the last eight years, I’ve given myself a break because I was diagnosed with ADHD at 49. Then I determined I cannot form a habit, even a bad one. Fly Lady says it’s perfectionism, and I agree to some extent on that—I find myself looking at something and thinking, oh, I could pick up that little bit, but rationalizing, “I can’t do it all right now, so that won’t really do any good.” I’ve called myself every ugly name in the book: fat, lazy, worthless, stupid, inept…
But this week, a couple of things happened that made me re-evaluate the situation. First, my daughter’s best friend since high school came in town for their 20th reunion. I adore (I’ll call her Annie) and always want to see her when she comes in town, so I met the two of them at a local Austin café, Thunderbird Coffee in Brentwood. We spent a lot of time talking about parents, and Annie’s mom, who was my best friend for years, but we’ve drifted apart since she moved away. I can’t divulge what was talked about, but suffice it to say that things weren’t always rosy between Annie and her mom. I stopped and asked them something like what was the biggest life lesson you learned—one way or the other—from your mother. Annie talked for a bit. My daughter kind of clammed up, so I was thinking okay, she probably doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. So, being the kind who sticks the needle in the wound to see if it still hurts, I asked…and you?
What she said made me deliriously happy. She said the main thing I taught her was that you get up and get what needs to be done, done. Regardless of what else is going on, some things have to happen, and I always did that. I thanked her later; if the best—or worst—thing that could be said about my parenting is that? Then I did just fine.
The other thing that happened was that my husband went on a business trip for the week. I dropped him off at work on Monday at 7:25 in the morning and won’t see him until tomorrow afternoon. And, while I cannot say that I was a tornado of cleaning efficiency, or even that I got that much done, I can say I did some things I was dreading and I got up on time, kept a regular schedule with the animals and felt like I could physically handle things that I would normally defer to him. For instance, it took me about 10 minutes to move several of the roughnecks full of stuff off the patio, sweep it, and hose it off, then I loaded the roughnecks in the van and later took them to the storage unit (yeah, I have one of those again). I had been waiting for a good time to ask him to carry them. Guess what? I can do it myself. Yes, my hips and upper back are bitching at me today, but I don’t really care.
I told my daughter that I think I have CDCS (Co-Dependent Cinderella Syndrome). Subconsciously I keep expecting someone to rescue me. Insert confused dog head-tilt here. No, I don’t expect him to clean up my crap, but I do sit around and wait for him to do things or ask him to do shit that I could very well get up and do myself (feeding the dogs, for instance, which means they get fed “whenever” instead of on the schedule that I set). My crap gets piled higher and deeper, but he doesn’t ever say anything about it. I also get resentful when other than taking out the trash and occasionally mowing the lawn, he won’t initiate doing anything without being prompted, but that’s a whole other issue….or is it? Is my resentment boiling over into what used to be an “I can do anything” attitude? Some things, I cannot do any longer. I simply do not have the strength that I used to have, but, as with the roughnecks, I obviously can do some things. And those things take a lot less time than I thought, and certainly less time than waiting for Prince Cleanemup to come to my aid.
The funniest part about this is that I’ve actually imagined what it would be like if Niecy Whatsername from Clean House showed up.
Knock knock knock (they are knocking because I took the plate loose on the doorbell in 1995 to paint and have never screwed it back in—even though I’ve actually bought a new one—so people don’t know if it works, will electrocute them, or connect them to the Whitehouse)
I open the door and give them the haven’t you read the fucking “No soliciting” sign? glare.
“HIIIII! I’m Niecy Whatsername from Style Television’s Clean House!”
Deadpan. “And?”
Flummoxed look. “Well we’re here to save your bacon!”
“I have no bacon that needs saving. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Oh, well..that was just a figure of speech. Have you heard of our show?”
“Yes. And a) I don’t have enough stuff to sell for 2-, 3-, 4, 000 bucks…heck I don’t even have enough to fix the drain for the bathtub and replace the tub and surround, which all needs to be done before I can even think about flooring in the greatroom, and that’s another 1200 to 2000…unless you’re giving money away?”
“Um, no. But you neeed us…”
“…who sent you? I want to take a contract out on them.”
Slight look of panic. “Well, we..uh…can’t we just come in and take a look around?”
“No. I don’t want you telling me what to do with my things. I’m not going to negotiate to keep my Golden Retriever furball collection.”
Blank stare.
“I kid. But seriously, who sent you?”
The entire crew breaks for cover as Niecy shouts over her shoulder, “Martha Stewart!!!”
Categories: Self |
Tags: about me, cleaning, My House, relationships | Comments Off
