...3 burned out bulbs, 2 sets of shades, and a partridge in a pear tree!

This weekend, I got ambitious. (Alright, so doing something that you’ve been meaning to do three months isn’t all that ambitious. But it was productive. So maybe I should start over.)

Ahem…

This weekend, I was productive (sound better?).  I finally got myself up on my stepladder and dismantled my disgusting dining room chandelier. I knew that it was dusty and could do with a good washing, but, trust me, if I’d known how bad it was I would have done it sooner.

Pretty gross, huh? And I’m sad to say that it gets worse.

I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am to show you this. But since I’ve promised to show you the good, the bad, and the ugly in my home adventure and this falls into two out of those three categories, here it is.

To start cleaning this beast, I began by pulling all the small shades/globes down.

Cleaning the glass was really simple, if disgusting. I used a dry paper towel to get out the bulk of the dust, then wiped down each shade/globe with a wet washcloth. I patted each dry with a different towel, then finished off with some Windex . When I was done, this was the difference between the dirty and the clean:

Well, once I saw how clean the small shades got, I knew I couldn’t just do a quick wipe-down of the large shade, like I had originally planned on. I had Denny help me take down the large shade (which ended up being easy, but definitely a four-handed job) so that our poor chandelier looked like this:

Although, oddly enough, I rather liked this bare bones look. If I had been able to find a way to make the bottom portion presentable, I might have considered keeping it like this. Instead, I cleaned the large shade and the two of us put it back up. I put the small shades in, then popped in new bulbs. The end result was this:

I know it looks nice in this picture, but even this doesn’t really do it justice. It’s amazing what a little elbow grease and some new bulbs can do for a fixture. Wait! I didn’t tell you about the bulbs, did I? Oh, yeah. They were quite entertaining. There were 8 different types of bulbs. Did you hear that? 8! Want to see? I know you do. Here they are…

      1)   New, large 60 watt bulb

2)   Burned-out, small 15 watt bulb

3)   Two small, burned-out chandelier bulbs

4)   Small, working 15 watt bulb

5)   Small, clear 40 watt bulb

6)   Burned-out, large 60 watt bulb

7)   Small, working, soft-white 40 watt bulb

8)   Large, working chandelier bulb

Nine bulbs, only two of which are the same (ie. the small burned-out chandelier bulbs). Anyway, so I got rid of the whole lot and put in six new 60 watt bulbs in the small shades and three new chandelier bulbs. Weirdly, though, the only chandelier bulbs we could find (admittedly, in Safeway, which doesn’t have such a great selection) were blue bulbs. See?

They’re supposed to put out an exceptionally clear light—no yellowing. Which it held true to; I've never seen prettier light.

And no blue sheen, which we were worried about. The whole thing looks beautifully clean and white. And, now, since Denny is begging me to just wrap up this post already, I’ll leave you with this little reminder of just how pretty my “new” chandelier is.

A Sucky Situation

A couple of weekends ago, when Mom and Little Brother were in town, a Macy’s gift card that I’d been hanging onto since the wedding began to burn a hole in my pocket. It was a really generous gift card given to Denny and I by his co-workers and I had managed to spend about half of it, but hadn’t yet found something nice to spend the other half on (and by “nice” I mean “practical and yet not outlandishly expensive”—even if it was “free money,” I just couldn’t fathom using it to buy a $200 teapot, ya know?).

So the three of us headed on over the mall and braved the somewhat crazy Labor Day crowd. As it turned out, Macy’s was having a legitimately impressive sale on bed and bath stuff, which worked out well for me since, as of two months ago (sidenote: stay tuned for an anniversary surprise later!), we’ve upgraded from one bedroom to four and from one bathroom to two-and-a-half! So I picked out a bunch of towels and washcloths, some new sheets, a bathmat, even a funky little laptop lap-desk.

I was feeling really pleased with my purchases until we got to the counter and I handed over my still-very-shiny-and-full-of-funds gift card. The nice old lady ringing me up smiled politely and told me that it had a balance of zero, “would I like to pay with another card?” At which point I promptly had a heart attack.

You see, that gift card did not have a zero balance when I last got done with it. It actually had a balance of just under $175. I stuttered and stammered a little, feebly disagreed, saying that it was supposed to be FULL of money, but in the end there was nothing she could do and I (still feeling totally flabbergasted) handed over my debit card to pay for the purchases.

I then walked approximately 10 feet away, threw my purchases on the closest display bed, whipped out my celly, and called the hotline on the back of my card. It turns out that someone in San Bernadino (that’s southern California, in case you don’t recognize the name) had somehow used my account to buy a bunch of clothes, leaving me with a completely useless card on my hands. Luckily, I didn’t have to throw a fit (I had definitely intended to) and the customer service girl quickly remedied the situation, telling me that they would send off a replacement card in the refunded amount right away.

I breathed an almost complete sigh of relief (although, part of me wouldn’t be calm until I had the new card in my hands) and swore that the second I had that money back, I would spend it. No more waiting around for creeps in SoCal to fritter away MY (I mean, our) money on stupid Ecko tee-shirts and Ralph Lauren onesies. [The moral of this story? Routinely check your gift card balances like you would your other cards—fraud comes in all shapes and sizes.]

So, true to my word, when I received the card in the mail on Monday night, I immediately began hunting for something (anything, really) to buy. In the end, I decided to buy some floor cleaning equipment for the house (you were expecting something much more frivolous, weren’t you?). It came down to A) I wanted to spend the money on something I wouldn’t usually buy with my own cash and B) we have a ton of hard flooring now and, frankly, I’m not very well equipped to take care of it yet.

Enter Explanation of Pig-Sty Pictures Here: First of all, please disregard the mess on both sides. The picture of the old place was taken in the midst of packing for the move, finals week at my school, and both of us working full-time (sounds like a lot of excuses, but it’s true). And the picture of the new place was taken about four days after we moved in. It doesn’t look like that anymore and I will prove it to you with the pictures I’m planning to post tonight.

See what I mean, though? And this doesn’t even show the full extent, since there’s also the catwalk to consider, the utility room and small bath downstairs, and both upstairs bathrooms. My 30-seconds-of-dry-Swiffering followed by a-solid-minute-and-a-half-of-wet-Swiffering is just not going to cut it in this new place. For example, I spent an HOUR sweeping the other day. Yes. An hour. No, I am not kidding.

Therefore, my purchase today consisted of these two bad-boys:

Nice, huh? The purple one is a Shark Steam Mop (which can be used in place of a traditional mop) and the yellow one is an Electrolux 2-in-1 Stick Vac (which can be used in place of a traditional broom AND has a detachable handheld vac, too). I am ridiculously excited about both of these items. I’m also excited that given that the total order cost over $99 and due to an online coupon, shipping was free and I got an additional 15% off of the sale price. Take that, Macy’s!

Which brings me to something that I’ve been pondering for a while now. It’s funny how my priorities have changed since we bought our house. It used to be that only a new Nine West bag or the latest TooFaced eye shadow palette would set my heart a-fluttering like this. Now, here I am. All cow-eyed about a couple of gadgets whose sole purpose is to suck gunk off the floor. My, how the mighty have fallen.

Tub Wars: A New Hope

This weekend we officially concluded our first fairly-large, indoor project: we removed the nasty shower doors from our master bathroom tub, cleaned the whole thing top to bottom, and hung up a new, curved rod. It may not seem like much, but there aren’t words to express to how great it feels to have gotten it done.

You see, before we bought our house, it had stood empty for some time and before that the people that had lived in it were clearly not…how do I put this delicately? Tidy? Organized? That doesn’t quite work. Okay, let’s just be honest instead: the people who lived in our house before us were pigs. Dust everywhere, twenty years worth of bacon grease under the range hood, hair clippings in the bathroom drawers…you name it, they left it behind. So, obviously, the first thing we embarked on was making the place liveable (aka clean). This process has taken up a lot of our time and there are still portions of the house that need work (now all we have left to clean is half the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, and a whole lotta windows).

Up until last week, the master bathroom had still been on that list. The first night we moved in, I hurriedly chose the less disgusting of the upstairs bathrooms (the hallway one, obviously), gave it a good scrubbing, and we’ve been using it ever since. The master bath had been no-man’s land for a few weeks before we were able to find the time and the energy to gut it and clean it.

We started out by removing the ugly, brass shower doors. Now, let me just take a moment to explain that this was not only an issue of taste (I mean, really? Brass shower doors?), not even just an issue of cleanliness (although that played a heavy hand, too), it was primarily an issue of space. The showers in our house are incredibly narrow and that flaw was compounded by the rigid glass doors (really, you should see the bruises on my elbows from knocking into them every three seconds). So when I mentioned to my Mom that I wanted to replace the doors, she suggested getting curved, “hotel”-style shower rods to add space. And let me just say: I’ve never been so glad to have heeded any advice as I am right now. Curved rods = all the difference.

Here’s a (sort-of) quick rundown of how we did it. (And some pictures to go along with it!)

1. See this ugly thing? It simply had to go, so…

2. we carefully removed the doors from their tracks,

3. and were left with this ugly sight.

4. So, Denny broke out the tools and began removing the screws that held the tracks to the shower.

5. He then used a flathead screwdriver to gently pry up the tracks,

6. then pulled the whole thing out (this picture was taken right before the whole thing nearly fell down on his head—we were able to grab it just in time, me with the camera still clutched in one hand, much to his completely-justified-annoyance).

7. Once the tracks were removed, we were left with this nasty mess. This is what was living (and I do mean living) under the tracks for who-knows-how-many years? The very idea makes me shudder.

8. Luckily, Denny is made of tougher stuff than I am (I could barely look at the disgusting leavings) and he used a putty knife to remove all of it.

Denny then proceeded to clean the whole bathroom from top to bottom (bless his heart), leaving me free to work on some other projects (which I will update you all on later!). He worked his butt off on that tub. Just to give you an example of how bad it was, listen to this: When we moved in, we honestly thought the tub was supposed to be beige-colored. It wasn’t. It was actually white and the beige tint was just a few decades worth of soap scum. Nasty, huh?

Anyway, once the tub was clean, he called me back in and asked me to caulk the holes left by the doors while he worked on cleaning out the vanity drawers (remember when I mentioned hair clippings? Yeah, we had to vacuum the drawers before cleaning them…with lots and lots and LOTS of bleach).

So I broke out the caulk (that’s what she said!) and a few other supplies and proceeded from there. (Be warned, this whole next section just sounds wrong, so please bear with me.)

I put some rubbing alcohol on some TP then wiped down the holes, making them completely clean and ready for the caulking to adhere to.

Next, I squeezed some caulking into the hole, then squished it down with my fingers (by the way, please ignore my sadly chipped nail polish, which will be making an appearance in some more photos later this week). I did this until I was sure the hole was completely filled, then I added a bit more (so it stuck up over the edges of the hole) and used the aforementioned putty knife to scrape the excess flat. I had to do this 2 or 3 times on each hole over the course of a couple of days because the caulking kept shrinking and pulling back into the hole. Maybe there’s a way to avoid this, but I don’t know of it.

Anyway, the end result was a flat, hole-free space which you can barely tell ever had a shower door screwed into it!

And now (because there are still 9 more pictures to go and twice as many steps), I’m going to leave you hanging and return back tomorrow with the rest of our bathroom transformation. Trust me when I say that a little (LOT) bit of elbow grease and a new shower rod pretty much changed the way we feel about our place. It was a major morale booster to get this project done and now we feel excited to get started on some other things on our list, like painting the insides of the kitchen cabinets and laying down new vapor barrier under the house. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. I don’t think anything could make us excited about going under the house. But this very nearly does the trick. J

PS: You may have noticed that the blog width is slightly larger than usual. That is to allow for larger photos to be posted, but if it's too large to be viewed on a normal screen, please let me know. My monitor at work (where I am lucky enough to be able to do most of my posting!) is rather large and I'm not sure if the banner will fit well on other computers or not. Also, the sidebar is back to being on the left side, as requested by the one commentor to give feedback on the layout (thanks, Amanda!). Love, Ash

Pretty Progress Paired With Perplexing Proportions

(Whew! Trying saying that title five times fast!)

It’s been nearly 4 weeks since we moved into our house and things are just now kind of settling down. We finally know what all the light switches control (which may sound rather stupid, but, trust me, this house was not wired by a rational, thinking person), the kitchen is just now becoming functional, and all our odds and ends are finally finding their places. We still have a long way to go, but it’s getting steadily better with every day.

For example, for nearly three weeks, our living room resembled not so much of a place to sit and relax, but instead an untamed jungle of boxes strewn about without rhyme or reason. See what I mean?

We had precisely one tiny goat-trail to travel through and if you wanted to get out the sliding door, you needed to be prepared for some major hurdling. I mean it. There was stretching involved. Eventually, I did a little bit of box shuffling and ended up with this:

Although slightly better, it still wasn’t anywhere near what it should be. So after coming home a little early from work one day, I decided that enough was enough. I’d had it with wading through a sea of boxes and it was time to make this living room liveable, darn it. I popped a couple of aspirin in advance (sore muscles are an inevitable part of moving, it seems) and rolled up my sleeves.

It took me a couple of hours, but I eventually ended up with this. And this:

Much improved, no? Along with moving a small mountain of crap out of the way, I also did a few things that helped fix some problems with the room (and, yes, I realize there are still boxes clustered along the side wall—but there’s only so much a girl can do in one day). First, I decluttered the mantel and top of the entertainment center, then replaced the odd assortment of junk that had collected there with some carefully chosen knick-knacks. I also added my garage sale mirror to the corner of the room, which helped bounce light in the corner and make it seem a little bigger and brighter.

And (just because I get amusement from this sort of thing) I threw a cushion in the corner as well and added a cute froggy bookend. Now it looks like a cozy little reading nook and amphibian lounge area. It makes me smile every time I look down and see it. I mean, who doesn’t love a frog reading a book? (I’m serious about that— I have a total of three lurking around the house.)

I was really pleased with the whole set-up, but, alas, it only made it a week before we changed it up again. This weekend, Denny brought back a spare TV from his parent’s place in Oregon and (with dreams of big-screen N64 Mario Kart in mind) we quickly made room for it.

Now, let’s get something straight: I love me a big TV. I do! Nothing makes me happier than a clear picture and being able to watch Real Housewives of NY on a scale large enough to view the Countess's royal pores (ha! “royal,” my butt). Anyway, the point is, I have no problem at all with large TVs, but as soon as we set up our new big-screen, I immediately became slightly dismayed. You see, it’s just a little too big for this space. I feel like the proportions are all wrong. Take a look…

With the white fireplace and the cherry-toned mirror and the black couch and neutral walls and carpet…ugh. It’s just a lot going on. Denny sees no problem with it and who could blame him? I mean, compared to our old set (which weighed approximately 500 lbs, had a screen the size of a large dinner plate, and glowed hot orange all the time) it’s da bomb (yes, I did just say that). But I still can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t quite fit in our cute little living room. Plus, it’s living on our coffee table right now (yes, my garage sale baby) and, of course, I’m none too happy about that. In fact, we were in such desperate need of a place to sit our drinks and remotes that I promptly installed this little guy as a stand-in.

Anyway, any suggestions as to how to fix my problem of proportion? I’m considering just moving it into the front living room and having that be the designated TV area, instead. However, I don’t think we should do that until we get blinds to cover the giant window. After all, nothing screams “Steal me!” like a huge, flat-screen TV—except maybe an unattended French bulldog puppy (I’m not the only one that feels that way, right?). But I also want the lower living room to be the main  living room and I know that if we move the TV, my husband will go along with it. Le sigh. Decisions, decisions.

PS: If you're paying close attention, you may have noticed that the dresser has found a home in the living room nook. I'll be back later with more on that.