Bathroom facelift

I’ve wanted to change out one of the bathrooms for quite a while. It was an orange wallpaper nastiness when I first moved in. We promptly ripped all that out and made it pretty. We painted it a light beige top, green bottom, and a shimmery flower wallpaper border in the middle. I loved it when we did it. 15 years later, I was tired of it.

I specifically made sure to take photos of what it looked like before I started tearing stuff out, but I apparently misfiled it and cannot find the picture right now. You can see sort of what it looked like here, when I had taken off the border and had various paint chips taped to the wall:

Also notice the disfigured wall by the light. There had been large wooden beams making a frame up there. They were attached the wall, and then had plastic across it so you could not see the ugly utility light that was the main bathroom light. That was a challenge to take down! And then, of course, the wall looked nasty where the beams had been.

When I took down the fluorescent light, I discovered the light box was not in the center as we had expected. It was all the way over at the left end of the light. In fact, the “light box” was merely a hole in the wall with the wires coming out. There was no box at all, nor was it located anywhere near the beams that could support holding a box. As the new light was designed to attach to the light when it was installed, this was a problem.

Messing with electrics is not at all my forte, and it makes me very nervous. Having a bathroom with no light at all was even less appealing, however. So, I checked the wires, and discovered they could just barely reach to the middle of the wall where I wanted to put the new light. I punched a big hole into the wall and used this pvc light box that has clamps that expand to hold it into place without having to attach to beams. Alex and I stretched out an old wire coat hanger (good thing I still had one in the closet!) and used it like a shepherd’s hook to wrap the wires around the hook and drag it through the wall to the new hole. That was quite a challenge!

After patching up the original hole, I painted the bathroom and then installed this new light. Doesn’t it look so much nicer?

I still need to either replace the mirror or do something to cover where it is eroding along the edges, but I’ve got to do it as I have the time and funds. The visual difference of just the paint and light change is really amazing and cheers me up immensely. Now I’ve got to do the same thing to the other bathroom! At least I will be prepared for the level of difficulty in changing the light fixture for this round.

No, I haven't been boxing

Did you know that while poison ivy reactions on your regular skin (arms, legs, etc) creates the little bumps and itchy rash, getting it on the bridge of your nose and corner of your eye also causes the area under your eye to swell up? I feel like Rocky Balboa.

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but it is quite disconcerting to be looking straight ahead and have your face within your line of vision. Especially when it is just on one side.

Particularly annoying is that I knew I was pulling out the ivy, I've tangled with it several times already this spring and summer, and thus I was being crazy cautious about handling it. I was almost successful, too. I have only one little dot of outbreak on my right arm near my birthmark, about half the size of a dime, and it didn't even get me enough to be itchy. Except for my eye. I wear glasses, so how in the world did it get under my glasses to get near my eye yet didn't touch me anywhere else? Inquiring minds want to know!

Facelift at last

To the creator of wallpaper:
I really don't like you. It seems like such a good idea, until you have to take the stuff down because you just cannot stand the print any longer. Then, it is an enormously tedious job that makes me think very unkind thoughts...

That said, I'm pleased to report that I am finally removing the last vestiges of wallpaper from my house. The front bathroom was the first to go, immediately after I moved in. Later, the master bathroom got stripped. A few years ago, I ripped out the wallpaper in the foyer. Thankfully, these were small areas. (That's about the only time I've been thankful for how small those areas were!)

Knowing how tedious even those little areas were, I've put off the kitchen long past when I wanted to change the look. Once I got started, it took even longer than I'd expected. Apparently the installers wanted to make sure that the heat, condensation, humidity, what-have-you of a kitchen didn't cause the paper to come loose, and so they applied copious quantities of glue. Gallons of the stuff. What a mess! It was applied directly to the drywall, too, so much effort was required to soak and scrape without damaging the wall itself.

Here is what the wallpaper looked like:


Say goodbye:


Now it is a lovely, lightly orange color. Orange? In MY house? Yes, oddly enough, this is the color that Alex and I both decided we liked best. It's called Fall Straw by Behr. I think of a yellow color for straw, but such is not the case in paint. The color has really lightened and opened up the kitchen quite a bit. I'm very pleased with it. And should I get tired of it and want to change it in the future, I can just slap on some paint and have a new look in just a few hours. Unlike the week of scraping it took to get that nasty wallpaper off!

Unfortunately, I'm not quite done. My kitchen is rectangular, with counters, sink, and cabinets on one side, and the stove and fridge on the other side of the walkway. The cabinets side is done, but I still have to pull out the fridge and stove to get the wallpaper back in that area.

*sigh*

At least I have the beautiful other side to look at when I need encouragement to keep scraping and scrubbing and rinsing...

I'll post a picture when everything is put back together again.

Life was boring

As he walked into his backyard, he watched his neighbor in surprise. Whatever was she doing in her backyard, fully dressed, washing her hair with the garden hose?

Actually, I don't think any of the neighbors saw me. But I'm sure they would have been perplexed if they had. Sometimes, though, drastic measures are necessary.

I mentioned that I was exhausted by Friday, so I skipped washing my hair. I wasn't going anywhere, I was just cleaning up the house, etc., so I didn't think it really necessary. In the afternoon, I started washing some laundry. I glanced out the window and saw the water that was draining out of the washer running down the hill of my driveway, rather than disappearing down the sewage pipes like it should.

Uh oh.

We've twice had problems with the enormous tree in my yard growing into the pipes and blocking the passage of the dirty water. Both times, the problem thankfully ended up on the city's part of the yard. They brought out the machinery, dug up the yard, cut out the roots, and replaced the pipes. Since then, I've tried to put root-killer stuff down the drains every so often, just to make sure they don't grow back. It's a real pain, because it takes them about two days to do everything, and I meanwhile have no drainage. Think of how often the drain is used, even just for flushing a potty... and what would you do if said drainage was not available? Those are not fun times.

Seeing the water running down the driveway - times like this, I'm very happy about the enormous incline of my yard, since the flat yard I would like would have let the water come back up to the house - gave me a slight panic attack. I don't recall the last time I put the tree stuff in the drain, and I knew all the pipes in the house were working just fine. It was definitely a problem with the outside pipes. So I went out to check them. Sure enough, the water was completely backed up. I started to realize that a couple of times I've seen the driveway wet when I didn't think it had been raining, but I hadn't consciously thought about it. My only consolation: when the problem was the trees, it was a gradual problem, and this seemed to have popped up pretty quickly.

Off to Home Depot to look for a drain cleaner. I bought some of the root killer, but that needs running water to work. What I had was definitely NOT running water. The only running part was the overflow that ran down the hill... The one I found said to dump it in and give it 7-8 hours to work in slow or standing water, preferably without using any additional water during that time. Normally, I would have poured it in at bedtime, but since we couldn't use any water anyway, what was the point of waiting? Glug glug glug.

8 hours later, we took a flashlight outside to check it. Nope, still looked just the same. Bummer. Maybe it needs a little longer. Checked it Saturday morning when we got up. Nope. 18 hours after application, and it still looked the same. This was not good news. I now had places to go, and needed to look decent. If the water was just dirty water, maybe it wouldn't matter if it overflowed, but I'd seen some... other waste... bobbing along in the pipe opening and was not keen on having that floating down my driveway! So what to do?

Thus I took my shampoo and a towel out to the backyard to wash my hair with the hose. The water was surprisingly warm from the sun, which was nice as I'd been expecting it to be freezing. I felt rather like I was camping or something, except it was in my yard. In an odd kind of way, it was sort of fun. To do once.

While I was at the meeting, I kept praying about the drainage problem. I truly did not want to call a plumber on the weekend. They are expensive enough during regular hours, I didn't want to pay the emergency call fee. I was trying to figure out if we could survive until Monday. I was also claiming God's promise to be a father to the fatherless and a husband to widows. France is a little far for my dad to just to stop over to help out, so I was effectively fatherless. Didn't that count?

When I got home, it was about 22 hours after we first poured the cleaner into the pipes. At 18 hours, the stuff had not moved even an inch. At 22, however, the whole thing was cleaned out and operating properly. No more blockage! We flushed the toilet to make sure the water was not still stopped up just out of sight. Nope, washed out like it was supposed to do. I did a load of laundry, no problem. Ran the dishwasher, no problem. All better! PRAISE THE LORD!

Life can be interesting sometimes, no? I guess I'd been on a streak of humdrum activities, so I got a little surprise to spice it up for a bit.

And yes, I've applied the root killer now, too, just in case. I'll be fine with boredom again for a little while, thankyouverymuch.

Lofty Aspirations

One starts to contemplate the meaning of life when one realizes that one's burning desire is to simply outsmart one's dog.

I've had this dog for 9 years. She's a very intelligent animal, which normally pleases me. She has this horrible habit of digging herself out of the backyard, however, and nothing I can do seems to be able to stop it. She'll go for a few weeks, and I'll think I've won, and then poof! She's out again. She can squeeze herself out of the tiniest spaces, too. I'd gotten to the point where I never let them outside unless I was standing there watching them. You can imagine how tedious that can be, but we did it for a few years.

A few months ago, we installed a doggie door. She's getting older (she was at least 2 when I got her from the pound in 2000) and she was having a hard time holding it all day while we were at work/school. I figured she could go out to relieve herself, and stop peeing in the house. Yeah... she promptly started testing her Houdini skills again, so the doggie door got closed up. That rather defeated the purpose of installing it.

Now that I've been home more in the daytime and able to see her favored area of mischief, I've been trying my hand at foiling her escapes again. I thought I had it figured out; we went almost 2 weeks with her having free access to come and go and she never got out. Success! But no. One day I was gone for the day again, and came home to find her sitting on the front porch, waiting for us.

This time, it's been a week. She's tried several times to get out, including two straight days of nobody being home, but it appears to be working. I really hope so... please send thoughts of "containment" our way!

Whiter than snow

“Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Psalm 51:7

Ok, so maybe it isn't quite snow level, but it is still amazing. (and now I have that hymn stuck in my head) It's been quite some time since the concrete at my house has been cleaned. I have done it in the time I've lived there, but probably not for about 6-7 years or so. I knew it was dirty, I just didn't realize to what extent. Until I had it cleaned this past weekend. Wow. The difference is unbelievable. I am absolutely NOT exaggerating when I say it is now so white, you can see it 2 blocks down the hill from my house. (we live on a curve)

turned into

(from this angle, I realize that we only cleaned the tops of the stairs, not the sides of them. ooops! shows the stark contrast pretty nicely, though)

As well as the Biblical reference posted above, this also reminds me of the Casting Crowns song Slow Fade:

It's a slow fade when you give yourself away
It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray
Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day
It's a slow fade, it's a slow fade

Labor Day weekend

I have all this stuff everywhere that is there from ages past and nobody uses it anymore but still it sits there cluttering up the place… and I'm tired of it. We spent most of our weekend cleaning out and throwing away. We even got up into the garage attic a little bit, and I can't even hazard a guess at the last time I was up there.

Our big outside trash can was literally overflowing, and we had more trash to go that just didn't fit into it. After they picked up the trash this week, Alex hauled the rest of the stuff out to the can and promptly took it right back down to the street since it was full again! I probably could have just stacked it up next to the can, but I know they have an arm on the truck to pick up the can itself and I figured the guys would have enough manual work to do this week with everyone cleaning out the stuff that got wet from the tropical storm, so I waited. The same thing happened for the recycling. I have a huge collection of clothing that I still need to sort into little boys, bigger boys, and ladies clothes so I can take them to our women's shelter. We also have a large collection of books to take to the library. And that's just a fraction of the junk in the house that needs to be removed. Maybe there's hope for some uncluttered space in this house after all!

Coming from such a packrat family, actually getting rid of some stuff was a challenge. It's funny, though, how I would be chucking this and tossing that and then come across some silly little thing that I suddenly wanted to keep for no good reason except that I have it and I might want it some day… Alex - an even bigger hoarder than I am - would look at me like I was crazy and tell me to throw it away. aaahh, the power of teamwork. *laugh* He even finally conceded that some of the stuff in his room wasn't really necessary to keep any more. We didn't get to his room yet, so I hope that attitude is still in place when the trash bags show up!

On a side note, I had Alex replace the toilet seat in the hallway bathroom. It's not a difficult job, but I thought he should learn how to do it. Instead of just a plain white seat, it's now an oak seat. It's truly amazing how that picked up the gold streaks in the counter and really brightened up the room. I never realized what an impact a toilet seat could make to one's décor.

Alex the repairman

I noticed the other day that there was a compacted napkin and a big ol' wad of chewing gum in the bottom drain part of the dishwasher. This made me a little irritated, since I know I wouldn't have had such a big glob of gum on my plate… I managed to pick out the napkin bits, but when I tried to get the gum out, it slipped further down into the drain. great. I took out the bottom shelf in hopes of better accessibility, but simply taking the drawer out apparently turned it into a "manly" project. Alex was suddenly very interested in helping out!

He got the screwdriver and started taking things apart to get to where the gum was. After much exertion on his part, he had the thing half disassembled and the main part of the drain separated from the water line, etc. He probably would have taken more of it apart except mean mom put the kibosh on all that. I was slightly afraid he wouldn't remember how to put it all back together!

Unfortunately, after all his great attempt, it turned out we couldn't remove the little piece blocking access to where the gum had slipped. I got a straw, stabbed it into the hole, and pulled the gum out. Solved in 30 seconds… but the project was an entertaining bit of evening. He decided that being at such an odd angle and without being able to support himself by balancing his weight on the door (didn't want to damage the door) was challenging and not something he really liked to do. I pointed out that while plumbers have important jobs, he should remember the discomfort when he doesn't feel like applying himself in school…