Society of Stampaholics

Kitchen Kamikaze, Part II

So, after digging deep, deep down to find a solution to my miserable kitchen problem, I decided to inventory our assets. 

We do have the paint and wallpaper already. We bought these during killer sales and they've been quietly gathering dust in the cellar because painting and wallpapering are what you do after you've replaced the ceiling, light fixtures, cabinets, counters, and walls.  

But I'm past caring about the order of things. I'm in one of my legendary kamikazi moods. Inaction is no longer possible. I must convince Spouse to join me with my going rogue... the question is how best to do it?

Time to inventory character traits and personal preferences! 

Spouse has a Master's Degree in Scene Design, and has much experience with all things faux. Spouse can be galvanized by appearances.

More importantly, Spouse really hates our countertops.

He hates them almost as much as he hated the 18' of day-glow orange formica we enountered in our South Carolina rental. (To give you an idea of just how dreadful those countertops were, I once threw a shoe at Spouse during a heated debate, and I KNOW it was that countertop that drove me to it. I have never before or since thrown anything at anyone, so there you have it!)  

So after the Appalling Shoe-Heaving Incident, (as we came to call it) I covered the kitchen countertop with "marble" contact paper, and it was amazing how well that stuff held up. Maybe we could do that again?

Today I found contact paper (much thicker and sturdier) specifically made for covering table tops. And here's what it looks like on the counter:

You really can't tell where one piece stops and another begins unless you bend your head parallel to the counter and make an effort to find the seams. It took a little less than one roll ($5.99) to cover this bit of counter. It took five more rolls to cover the rest, so the whole cost for "new" counters" was $35.

Gigi is much enamored of my "clever" fix and boasted that she bet nobody else in her class had faux granite countertops.

I'm pretty sure she's right about that. 

Spouse was sufficiently galvanized, so he's removed and primed the doors, and is now painting them a brilliant red! Once the painting is completed, we'll move onto the wallpapering. The budget for the rest of this project is zero dollars because we already had the paper and paint. So we'll just see what happens.

More pictures to come!

The Kitchen Kamikazi

Our kitchen is, to put it kindly, a nightmare because the former owners were dimwitted, tasteless, and design-challenged. 

Which is one of the reasons our house payment is so much lower than yours (a thought that sustains us as we trudge ever-onward in our remodeling journey). 

Over the last few years we've:

• ripped out the nasty carpeting; 
• replaced the dishwasher, stove, and garbage disposal; 
• installed one of those spray attachment-thingies at the sink; and 
• removed a truly disgusting range hood.

(If you're wondering why this is all we've done in the kitchen, the answer is simple: the rest of the house is just as awful and has required miles of woodwork, carpeting, painting, etc.) 

However, I've decided that I absolutely cannot - NOT FOR ONE MORE STINKIN' MINUTE! - deal with our kitchen as it currently is. 

So check out the BEST piece of real estate in the room, the Park Place of our kitchen:

If the funky wall and ceiling coverings (a type of pressed sheeting that's a cross between pegboard - sans holes - and malamine) aren't enough to turn your stomach, check out that hip, UNCOVERED fluorescent light and the cheap, oddly-cut, and protruding counter. Feeling nauseated yet? Did you notice the cabinets and drawers have no hardware? How 'bout that gaping void between the cabinet and the ceiling? 

So here I am, just sick, SICK of the kitchen, (sick, I tell you!) and determined to do something about it, even though there are no funds for this enterprise. I am digging deep down within myself - tapping into every last drop of creativity and imaginative problem-solving with which the good Lord has blessed me - to come up with an Answer. A Solution. Something. Anything.  

More tomorrow....

An Atelier Update

As promised, here are some photos of my newly expanded Atelier. Unlike Phase I of my decorating/renovating efforts, this particular phase does not involve anything other than the storage units themselves (and the cleaning out of the eastern side of the room). So there's no freshly painted walls, etc.

If you weren't around the summer before last, you missed the first battle in the war of the attic. The previous owners of our house had started to finish the attic but, like everything they did around here, they did it badly. I did several posts on my attempts to make a silk purse out of this particular sow's ear, and you can see pictures here if you want to see what a total hole the place was in the very beginning. At that time, I didn't have the budget or the space to commandeer the entire room for a creative space, so I chose the right side and did what I could with the resources at hand. Probably the greatest challenge was the heat - it was August, the attic had no air conditioning, and the window is too small to even fit a fan inside of it.

Now if you're asking yourself why I would attempt such a project in the month of August... I can only say that you should really know me better by now. It's sort of a signature move of mine to decide to take on projects when it's the least convenient.... Like buying a million storage units that need to be assembled and then placed in a room that is completely filled with Piles of Shame.

But let's get on with it!

When you look into the room from the door, the room is "split" in two by the chimney.

I chose the western half because it's wider. You're looking at the southern and western walls (below). (I opted to sponge paint everything because the walls were not properly finished and this technique is very good at hiding multiple surface flaws.)
Moving to the right.... Not a whole lot is different on this side of the room except there's not as much stuff out in the open or crammed into the camel-colored storage cubes. (That's because they're in storage drawers now!!!)
The northern wall. (Those flowers are for using on craft projects.) Gables really pose a major hinderance to storage solutions.

And now you can see the entrance into the room. Sort of. The ceiling, by the way is about 6' 2" tall - Spouse doesn't need to stoop - just barely. (If he wanted to wear heels, he'd split his scalp open on those plaster stalactites. Of course, if he wanted to wear heels, I guess we'd have bigger problems than a lacerated head....)

I had two columns of units here before but added a third after my Black Friday Fall.

Despite the way the picture looks, everything is actually straight here. The punches live on a curtain rod. This is a great, easy, and cheap solution I highly recommend! The ink pad storage units were purchased from an eBay merchant located in Canada - and so worth every penny!

I had to stop painting at the window the summer before last because... I can't remember now, but it was a really good reason then! Spouse and his friend put in some electrical outlets for me a few months ago (I had only one before) and they installed some IKEA lights above. (It really helps when you're stamping to actually be able to see what you're doing....)

Now, moving onto the eastern side of the room....  

I'm going to permanently set up my light box and lamps so I can take pictures any time I want. No having to set anything up! (On a side note, I don't think I've seen the floor on this side of the room in four years.)

And there you have it! I'll keep you posted as I progress. I'm thinking painting is my next logical step....

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lost Weekend, Part II

When we left our heroine, (that would be me for those just joining us - go here to read Part I) she was standing on the very precipice of her ethics (or would that be morals?) staring into the abyss of wanton materialism all dressed up in its best holiday bib and tucker!

So I drove out into the hellish traffic and faced all the maniacs.

I felt a little bit like a vegetarian eating a cheese sandwich. Not quite sinning, really, but certainly approaching a line....

And then we went into Michael's.

In less than 30 seconds I turned into a raging carnivore on a feeding frenzy.

Ethics? Out the window! Morals? What are those? Principles? Fuggedaboutit!

And what brought me to this looooowly state?

Michael's was selling white pressboard storage units at 50% off.

AND we had a coupon that let you take an additional 25% off of your ENTIRE PURCHASE.

Needless to say, units that are normally $30 were now only $10. And I had a storage monkey on my back. AND I JUST COULDN'T RESIST ITS SIREN'S SONG!!!

I had $100 Christmas money from my dad, (he sent it with my mom the day before since he, too, opted to stay in Evansville) and I always get $50 from my inlaws. I also had almost $150 left in my renovation budget (for those of you who remember when I turned a portion of our wretched attic into a studio space the summer before last).

So I had plenty of buying power.

I had enough buying power, in fact, to turn both my mother and my child into pack mules, insisting they both get carts and stop that complaining or I'd abandon them in Best Buy. Oh, I had no shame! I morphed into the Pablo Escobar of crafting. (Had I donned a white suit and lit up a Havana I might possibly have attracted the attention of Homeland Security.)

I bought 20 square units, 2 paper-holding units, a desk organizer unit and 2 shelving units. (It's a testament to my superior Tetris skills that I was able to make all of this fit into our Toyota without having to strap my mother onto the roof.)

Although it was touch and go there for a few minutes.

And now we're getting to what I've been doing for the last two weeks.

I've been assembling storage units, of course! 

Which takes awhile because we're talking about assembling more than 25 units - most of which have drawers that also have to be assembled. I have screwed in no less than 600 screws (a conservative estimate).

All I can say is Thank you, God, for giving us the sense to invent power drills.

I assembled all but the two larger shelving units by myself because they were too big for me to handle easily. Spouse very nicely hauled all of them upstairs for me because they weigh a ton (real wood would be lighter). It was the least he could do, though, considering. (That man has no idea how lucky he is to be married to a woman who embraces power tools!)

However, it doesn't end there. Oh, no! Since this was a spur-of-the-moment decision, (or My Own Personal Fall, if you will) I was not prepared for an influx of cabinetry. The room that houses my little atelier has a second half and is, as I've stated before, A Mess filled with Piles of Shame. As is the guest room - ha! - located across the hall. (The guest room resembles something out of one of those shows about horders.) The wiser course (of course) would be to clean out the two rooms first and then move in all the storage units. But you don't get to prepare when you make a spur-of-the-moment decision like this one.

So I basically was forced to box up a lot of books, etc, and then attack one pile at a time, maneuvering, stacking, etc within a 3-foot-square area so I could make room for a storage unit. Often I had to move some previously created stacks to a new position so I could maneuver something, and then move the stacks/boxes back. Oh, it's been such great fun!

Having a root canal runs a close second.

And then I got all anal about it and insisted on organizing as I went - right down to installing the proper library labels on the front of all 56 drawers (that takes awhile, I'm here to tell ya)!

I am pleased to say that, as of last night, I have almost got the whole room shaped up. There are about eight UHaul boxes filled with books, office supplies, etc that will need permanent homes (preferrably at somebody else's home). And, of course, the walls on that half of the room still need to be painted, trim needs to be installed, etc, etc. But ugly walls can be addressed easily now that I can actually get to them.

The guest room, however, is another story....

I'll see if I can't post some pictures tomorrow.

The Lost Weekend... or Two... or Three... (Do I Hear "Four"?)

For those of you who may be wondering what on earth I've been doing with myself... I've been busier than a bee.

I blame the Puritans.

If the Puritans hadn't hopped across the pond when they did, they wouldn't have had such a romantic (if fatal) experience upon arriving in the New World. Which means they wouldn't have been so dependent on the Native Americans to save them from starvation. And had the Native Americans NOT successfully saved them from Pilgrim Extinction, they never would have gotten together for a meal of thanksgiving.

And had there been no thanksgiving way back when, President Lincoln would not have had the wits to think it up for a new national holiday (since he was kind of busy with a little thing called the Civil War at the time).This is really where things get dicey - once you go down the path of excess, there's no turning back.

Because Thanksgiving as a national holiday is really no longer just a meal where we all stuff ourselves with turkey and pumpkin pie. It has become a mere prelude - a sort of opening act, if you will, to the MAIN attraction....

Black Friday.

Black Friday makes the excess of Thanksgiving look downright stingy. Black Friday, to those who do not live in the USA, is a display of spending decadence unparalleled at any other day of the year. I, for one, frown on it and refuse to participate on grounds of principle. It irks me to no end that our day of thanksgiving has become totally buried beneath the rampant materialism that comes the next day. Only now we don't even have to wait until the next day! This year they finally robbed Thanksgiving of its last shred of dignity by opening stores that very afternoon. Laying on the couch in a stupor while watching the game on the Idiot Box is officially on the List of Endangered Rituals.

And I doubt the Native Americans can bail us out this time.

And if there was no Black Friday, my mother (who I'd invited to town for Thanskgiving) would not have wanted to go shopping. But, being infected with Black Friday Fever long ago, the poor woman is powerless to stop herself. (It's a little like Zombies of the 21st Century - not a whole lot you can do about it, really, except avoid eye contact and don't make any sudden moves toward her charge card.) And since she is not familiar with Indianapolis, she needed her daughter to drive her out into this mayhem.

(I would be the daughter she was eyeballing as Daughter #2 sensibly stayed in Evansville.)

So I drove out into the hellish traffic and faced all the maniacs.

I felt a little bit like a vegetarian eating a cheese sandwich. Not quite sinning, really, but certainly approaching a line....

Stay tuned for the rest of the story!

Spouse Rescues That Awful Bathroom

So yesterday we looked at That Awful Bathroom - a true eyesore amongst eyesores in the world of Homeowners Desperately Seeking Shelter.

One of the first rules of home repair is that when you have the money to renovate, you do not have the time, and when you have the time, you lack the necessary dollars. So it was with us, since Spouse had been unemployed almost three months when he tackled this project. Because of the financial situation, he had to be clever with his decisions, and we probably took longer than one would normally take to do a remodel because we needed to schedule our purchases around sales. We also had to let go of at least one major desired change: the bathtub/shower unit would have to remain as we simply could not afford to replace it at that time. So Spouse worked around it by sort of encasing it behind beadboard.

So here's a shot of the tub BEFORE:

And here it is "hidden" with the help of a strategically placed shower curtain:

 

The rail with "cups," rug, bath curtain, toilet paper dispenser, and trash can all came from IKEA.

Luckily, the bathroom is very, very small. This means you need less surface materials - we were able to get a flooring remnant very inexpensively, for instance, that we couldn't have afforded if we had had to buy it off the roll. (What you're not seeing here is all the prep work Spouse had to do to the floor - basically had to replace it and work magic to get it level. The house is old, so the floor slanted dreadfully as a result of uneven settling.)

In the end, Spouse covered the walls and the ceiling with beadboard and built some shelves behind the bathtub.

The above space now looks like this:

We hit pay dirt in late March when Lowe's had a killer sale on their bead board - and this is, ultimately, what made Spouse start the project. He'd determined that the walls were so far gone it would make more sense to just cover them up with something more substantial than paint. Since none of the corners were even remotely square, he had a lot of fun doing this. (Great amounts of cussing and hammer blows ensued.)

Towels by IKEA!

BEFORE:

And AFTER:

The placement of the sink was moved from the eastern wall to the northern wall, and despite the way it looks in the photo, it's about six inches from the eastern wall - not flush against it.

We were able to get the mirror and picture (which you can only see a tiny bit of here) from Hobby Lobby during one of their 50% off sales. The sink came from Lowe's, as did the light fixture above. (It was wasting away on the clearance aisle, and we couldn't figure out why until we discovered the bulbs cost a bloody fortune to replace. But we don't care - we love it!)

This photo shows the ONLY thing we salvaged from the original bathroom (the tub doesn't count because we HAD to keep it). Can you guess what it is? (Hint: it's a trio.) Give up?

The faucet and spigots! For some unfathomable reason this hardware was unblemished, and we liked them so much we planned everything around them. (That, and we both love the Kohler commercial where the couple present the snotty architect with a faucet and tell him to design a house around it.)

We're funny that way.

The ceiling from Hell... and the beadboard from Heaven:

The combination light/exhaust fan and the toilet were discovered at Menards - surprisingy, the former actually cost more than the latter. Go figure.

Although we didn't have them at the time I took this photo, I later was able to get three lovely baskets from Michael's that fit just perfectly in the space above the tub. (This is where we keep the extra toilet paper if you happen to be visiting and need some.)

The only thing Spouse did not do himself was the plumming because we had to move the sink's pipes about three feet over, and, of course, we discovered eroding pipes, etc, so we had to call in a professional (blow torches were involved).

Didn't Spouse do a great job?!

Just wait until you see what he does with the kitchen. (This may actually take a few years because we call it The Wretched Kitchen, and it's much larger than the bathroom....)

Spouse and That Awful Bathroom

I just doscovered this nifty little setting on my blog that allows me to look at all my blog posts that (for whatever reason) never made it past draft status. I found a whole slew of them, so I'm looking at trying to see if I can salvage some of them!

I think I started this particular lost post with the intention of publishing it as soon as I had the AFTER pictures to go with the BEFORE pictures we took upon moving in but then forgot all about it as other posts bumped it right off the list page. I did a search of my posts using the word "bathroom" and I'm not coming up with anything, so if I've already shared this subject in another post, my apologies!

The following post was started in March of 2009, but it's still tasty blog fodder! 

Spouse may be Unemployed, but he's not been unemployed.

Ah, yes, he's been busy taking care of our fixer-upper - a house so in want of just about everything that we have studiously avoided inviting guests out of sheer embarrassment.

It was mainly the bathroom that made us cringe in shame (although the kitchen is a close second). We call it That Awful Bathroom.

Now I have been online and I have looked all over for ugly bathroom contests, and we have not won any of them. But it is NOT because we don't have the ugliest bathroom. We very much do. It's because not only do we have the ugliest bathroom, we have the bathroom with No Possibilities. Unless you want to just start from scratch - seriously, I've seen better looking outhouses. And there is no sense in spending more money on a bathroom than the whole house is worth - and I think that may just be what's needed here.

It's true. That Awful Bathroom doesn't have a single redeeming feature. Not one.

And I have the pictures to prove it.

Check it out....

What's not to love? The old, decrepit toilet? That rusting cover over a vent that sticks out into the room? The battered vinyl flooring that's also been patched? How's about that - whatever-it-is that they've used for baseboard? And let's not forget that fluorescent lighting and ceiling reminiscent of early '70's insurance agency! And then there's the whole tub/shower thing - oh, my head hurts just looking at them!

Allow me to point out some of the special features captured here. You can't really see it, but the edges of the basin and sides of the sink are discolored from the many cigarettes that somebody was smoking while grooming. (Okay, first of all, that's just gross - can we not go fifteen minutes wthout a fag? As an ex-smoker, I can honestly say this is just ridiculous. And even more ridiculous is a smoker with no ashtray - that's like trying to have a baby without a vagina!)

The front doors of the cabinet are all warped and inside is an eyesore of mildewed, rotten, yech. The mirrored medicine cabinet and light strip are straight out of the late 70's - although they're at least not falling apart from abuse and neglect (which makes me very certain they got these long after the 70's were over - probably at a garage sale or something).

The wallpaper job is, perhaps, my favorite feature. Not only did they try to wallpaper the corners by wrapping into them, but they obviously did not buy enough paper, or a repair was needed later, because they bought another role of the same paper but in another color entirely for this chunk of wall immediately beneath the light switch. We're not talking about another lot number - we're talking an entirely different HUE, people! (And I can't even tell you how much I hate that little painted switchplate.)

Just a note: the outlet was installed upside down. The people who did all of this had eight children, and this whole house is a testament as to why some people probably should really get out of the gene pool before they pass down their defective repair traits....

More in-depth study of the ceiling. That's quarter round between the ceiling and the wall.

 
This goes all the way down to the floor. Those are the shower doors you see - doors that were removed because their days of sliding are long gone. (Why they didn't just drop them off at the dump is a mystery - oh, wait! That would require a little effort. What was I thinking?)

So that was all the bad news. Thankfully in our past. To see the way things turned out, check back in tomorrow!