Cluelessly Attempting Pinterest DIYs

I don’t DIY. I’m not crafty, I don’t have the proper tools, and I want projects done quickly & correctly. The only DIY house thing I’ve done is indoor painting, which isn’t that hard to mess up, although my bathroom walls would say differently.

But since joining Pinterest, I’ve been a sucker for a lot of the DIY pins that say Make Your Own This Out of That, and claim how easy & cheap it is. So far I’ve made:

- The gallon of liquid hand soap from bar soap and liquid glycerin. Results: When it’s not in one gallon-sized chunk of solid goo, it pumps out really stringy, like egg whites, and doesn’t get very sudsy. Could be the bar soap I chose.

- The “miracle cleaner” with Dawn dish soap and vinegar. Results: It’s okay; “miracle” is pushing it. It does make the sink rather shiny, especially the hardware. Not good on granite-like countertops. Smells sorta weird and tarty. Gets super sudsy.

- The all-purpose natural cleaner with water, vinegar, lemon juice, and tea tree oil. Results: Doesn’t seem like it’s cleaning well – it’s comparable to straight water, but it’s a disinfectant - and I can't stand the smell.

Yesterday I tried the DIY for stripping paint off door hinges with a crock pot.

This is the Pinterest pic and the link:



My bathroom had grodey, rusty, painted door hinges.





So I was ready to try this DIY. I fought with the old screws and caked on who-knows-what to get the hinges off the frame and the door. In the process, it chipped the door frame’s paint around the hinges, which sucks, but it did give me an indication of perhaps the original bathroom paint.

The original bath paint? Kind of an light-beige almond.



Then, like the DIY instructions say, I added the icky painty hinges to the crockpot and prepared to let ‘em cook on high overnight.



That’s when the trouble started.

It started to stink. Man oh man, it stunk! I can still smell it in my nostrils and I’ll be surprised if I ever get that smell out of my mind. Granted, I’m sensitive to smells, and I should’ve kept the lid on (but that wouldn’t have helped after several hours, let alone overnight). It smelled like – how to describe it? – metallic poison. You know when you change your car battery and sometimes afterward there’s this weird, bitter, stingy metallic taste on your lips? It was kinda like that. IN MY HOUSE. I wonder now if it was lead paint?? Surely not. But if so… yikes!

I poked at it with tongs to see if it was even working, and it was, so I took the dang crockpot outside and plugged it in there. But it pretty much did the job by 11:00 p.m., so, sans gas mask which would’ve been useful, I pulled out the hinges, scaped off the paint (which did come off quite easily) and unplugged the crockpot. Now, the DIY suggests shining them up with a brass cleaner, so I put the hinges in a bowl, covered them with Brasso and left them outside overnight to stink-off.

The latter was my mistake. Apparently you shouldn’t let Brasso sit on stuff – it’s meant to be wiped off immediately. I don’t know metals - I assumed that the brassy color was, well, brass, but I was wrong. After all that stinky work, the long-sitting Brasso lifted up the brass color where it had sat overnight.



I was this close to just chucking them altogether, but when I got online to buy similar hinges, it turns out that these particular hinges aren’t so easy to find, nor inexpensive. Perhaps they are original to the house, which is important to me despite my mangling them. So I put them back on the door.



So, in a nutshell: Did the DIY hinge paint stripper using a crock pot work? Yes. Yes it did. But the after picture in the instructions is definitely “best case scenario.” And there was no mention of the smell, so beware of that. And if you’re a Cluessless Homeowner like me, you have no idea of the kind of metal or paint of which your hinges consist.

But does it look better? I guess…. You could say it's got "patina." Except now the paint around the hinges is all chipped. So it’s more of a ten-footer.

Like so many things I do.

Fake It Til...Whenever

Part of the charm of homes from the early 20th century (and earlier) is their paned glass windows called muntins. Apparently large panes of glass were quite expensive back in the day, so muntins allowed smaller panes to fill a larger space. The result created some of the wonderful character we see in older homes. From the most basic to the most elaborate, muntins added architectural beauty to windows.

Here’s a nice and not-uncommon example of muntin windows in a 1920s house.



However, usually at some point in an old home’s history, the windows needed to be replaced. I’m guessing that in the 1960s & 70s, full-paned aluminum windows were as hot as vinyl windows are today. But at least the makers of vinyl windows caught on that people actually liked the muntin look because now you commonly see a standard criss-cross pattern in full-paned new vinyl windows.

Sometime in the past, my house was one that received the aluminum “upgrade” on every window in the place. Fortunately it was just the exterior storm windows that were replaced – the interior leaded glass windows that open inward are still original. Are the exterior windows good windows that keep out drafts? Yes. Do they have screens and handy removable storm panes? Yes. Are they ugly? Hell yes. It breaks my heart to think that our house likely had original exterior windows with muntins that were torn down and replaced with Practicality. My neighborhood is full of old bungalows with beautiful paned glass picture windows. I often walk the dog around the neighborhood and observe with jealously the houses that look just like mine yet with prettier windows. It makes me more and more annoyed that my house doesn’t have them. But could I justify having my house’s sufficient windows replaced yet again just to get muntins? Definitely not; I can’t afford it and besides, new windows would likely be vinyl with that cooker-cutter fake muntin.

Hm, fake muntin…

A while back, I found a website that sold plastic strips for the express purpose of creating a faux muntin look. But they were outrageously expensive and surprisingly rude when I asked a question about shipping (that’s why I’m not linking them here). Then I discovered another website of a gal who made her own muntins with wooden trim from the hardware store and super glue. I’d been meaning to do that forever, but I kept putting it off and/or running out of money.

Well, today I was bored and I’ve been antsy to start doing my 2012 Clueless Home Improvements™, but the weather keeps pushing me back and I still have no money. Now you all know that I like instant gratification when it comes to home improvement. The more I started thinking about faux muntins, the more I considered even easier, faux-er ways of doing them.

And then something in my head said, “Tape.”

I mean, if we’re gonna go faux, it might as well be FAUX, right? I got online to start looking for a really good tape that will stick to often cold surfaces and is white. When I went to the junk drawer to find a tape measure to get an idea of the size I’d need, guess what practically fell out? White vinyl electrical tape in the perfect muntin width.

An hour and absolutely zero money later, I have “muntin” windows.

BEFORE



AFTER



BEFORE



AFTER



BEFORE



AFTER



I applied it to the inside of the storm windows, so it’s completely protected from weather, as well as not being taped to the interior windows. I’ll be honest and say that it is kind of a “10-footer.” Up close on the inside of the house you can tell it’s tape – in fact, in daylight it even kinda looks like plain old not-white masking tape. But from the outside it actually looks okay. And this gives me an idea of what it will look like when I do the less-faux wooden trim muntins, plus it’s now already measured (the math was the hardest part. And who knew we had a level! What the heck are we doing with a level?! *Shrug!* Good thing though).

I have no idea how long it will stick, but I hope it’s long enough for me to get real faux muntins or to forget about doing it altogether.

Joyeux Old Stuff

Well, hello there! Apparently I have skipped right over the end of summer, autumn, and Halloween. Denied! So how about some Halloween pics and then we’ll get caught up to today.

Painting the porch black last summer made for an awesome chalkboard!







Isn’t that last pic creepy, with the moon in background? It was a clear, cold night. Also, a few months prior, I’d gotten another fogger that you can’t see in the pic which covered the porch with fog. We didn’t do the Haunted Hotel theme like we wanted. For that, we’d need even more Halloween stuff, which, whoa. Cuz we have a ton right now, but it’s unfocused, disheveled, and busy, as you can see. Our long-term Halloween goal is to turn the little side yard (which we call the “Garden of Shame”) into a haunted garden path that kids can walk through. Wouldn’t that be sweet!

Moving on to November…

So I may have mentioned that I’d been on a mission for the last year & a half to find a kitchen buffet. There was a spot in the kitchen with a tall, ugly table from Dave’s bachelor days (hey, I’m not one to talk; I had some awful glass & brass end tables from my bachelorette days that we finally pulled out of the house). This kitchen table was always cluttered, both on top and underneath it. Out of all the cupboard space we have, we had no place for the large oven cookie sheets and stuff. It drove me nuts. The table area is the perfect spot for a buffet, but the problem is that it’s a small spot. All buffets I’d been seeing were too long. I needed more of a sideboard, but even those were too long. Finally, finally, after looking forever, I found the perfect one on Craigslist for $90! (I brought it home in the convertible, with the top down on the freeway in 20-degree weather. Brrrr!)

BEFORE:

AFTER:



Inside it, I found an old film negative with four small pictures. I’m excited to get it developed.

Now that it’s the holidays, this buffet begs to be filled with lovely Christmas china. I’ve been casually looking for Christmas china for a while, but I’m particular about pattern. I finally fell in love with an old Noritake pattern “Christmas Ball” (Noritake No. 16034 or 175 or 43061 - not sure why it's refered to in three different numbers. Insights?). I’ve found lots of it on Ebay, but the shipping is a killer. For now, I just purchased these four dinner plates. I’ll just keep my eye out and build it up one piece at a time. I’m excited to have something to collect!



Oh, and while I’m posting pics, I found this great mosaic light cover at an antique store while on a trip to Southern Washington. It’ll look great in the library, replacing the “Holly Hobbie” light fixture that we’ve never liked. The pic doesn’t do it justice – it’s sparkly!



And from a silent auction at work, I won this 1910 desk chair from the Union Pacific Railroad.



This brings us up to yesterday and mine & Dave’s 2011 Christmas present to each other. The pièce de résistance…

A 1916 Victor Victrola.





It’s in beautiful condition and works great! Check out this video.



It may need an oiling – it gets tired after a while and slows down, but Dave & I did play the piss out of the poor 96-year old girl yesterday. She needs rest after an energetic polka. (If you know of someone in the Spokane area who works on Victrolas, please let me know!) Inside it, we found a very old bank deposit slip. Half the fun of buying antiques is finding the neat old things left inside of them.

And lastly, here’s the Manor all decked out for Christmas.









Happy Christmas, everyone!

Laziness Can Be Ecological

At 2:00 on a Friday, the City came by and tore up our driveway again.



At 3:30 on Friday, they left. This. For the weekend.

Um, hello? City of Spokane? You're coming back, right? Kinda need the car. Hello?



They did finally return on Monday and finished the driveway for good. Dave marked it with our initials and the year we got married.




So here it is the end of summer, and stuff at our house is either one of two things: GREEN GREEN GREEN! Or dead.

Recall our deck trellis and the Creeping Terror in April.



And here it is today:



Before I cut it back (for the second time this summer), it had crept across the deck, under the deck, poked through the deck, and even pushed through slats of wood in the table. It wrapped itself around all the furniture and, its favorite, the rain gutter of the house. As I sit now in the computer room, I'm looking out the window and I see a tendril of it creeping toward me like a mammoth insect monster leg. Its lovely innocent white flowers don't fool me. This thing is Audrey 2. I should probably throw a couple steaks at it now & then so it won't devour the dog.



The Dead is the lawn. Maybe we should plant Creeping Terror in the yard.

Here too is the cheap little extendo fences we put up to keep the pets in the yard. I spray painted them red.



See how dead the yard is? Don't look too closely - that's why I didn't post a better photo. There's a reason for this brown, unattractive lawn.

We don't water it.

Ever?, I hear you asking. Yes. Ever. Oh sure, we have good intentions at the beginning of the season and it gets maybe one or two total hours of sprinkler time. But we're lucky if we remember to water the front lawn - the yard we pretend to care about - let alone the backyard.

My reasons for not watering go beyond simple laziness, although I'm not gonna lie to you, laziness is the main factor. But my other reason for not watering is purely environmental. I don't like to waste perfectly good drinking water just to make grass "pretty." I'm interested in practicing sustainable lawn care and "xeriscaping", but mostly it comes back to the theme of this entire blog: Classic Cluelessness. I want very little effort in homeownership.

That is why we have planted clover. Clover stays green with little to no watering, barely requires mowing, and takes over weeds. (Read the advantages of a clover lawn here.) We tested it on the front yard last Fall. Granted, Dave & I aren't green thumbs, so we just scattered seeds and hoped it would take. It actually did in a lot of places. And it looks great!

Proof that clover works. Look at how green & lush the clover is compared to the rest of the grass. This is after we gave up watering.





So I just purchased a 10-pound bag of seeds and we're going to sow the backyard. Hopefully next year we'll have no need for water at all back there, and it will still be green. I'll keep ya posted.

Today, I painted the end of the roof posts, just to add a bit more accent.



Now bring on Fall and excuses to hybernate.

Color My World

One thing that can be said about Dave & I is that we're colorful. We moved into a subdued little house in a quiet little neighborhood and SHUZAAM! With us came all of the music and laughter and happiness and color that we enjoy having in our lives. I'm sure we stand out (in a good way) in this kindly neighborhood. Just ask our neighbors at Halloween.

Lots of out-with-the-old lately. The house has never looked better.


Reconstruction of downstairs is finally and fully complete. Can’t even tell there was ever any damage at all. All that’s left is redecorating the walls – that’s Dave’s canvas.

GINGER LOUNGE BEFORE:


AFTER:




SPARE BEDROOM BEFORE:



AFTER:





The City decided to come by without notice and put a big hole in our driveway. They also replaced the meter inside the house. They have yet to re-pave the driveway. In the meantime it looks good ‘n crappy. But I was impressed with how nice and helpful they were when I drilled them with questions.


My mom made new curtains for our living and dining room. Huge improvement to the bland, unhemmed curtains that came with the house. (Actually when we moved in, the window treatments were frill-tastic, complete with silk draperies and beads. Combined with the fact that the former owners were smokers, those curtains had to go. I pulled them down, tossed the outer frilly parts, washed the simple underneath parts, and kept just those on the windows for years.)

BEFORE-BEFORE (Previous owner's furniture):




BEFORE-AFTER (Nice for a long time, but these unhemmed curtains were a "Ten-Footer" - not attractive when viewed up close. It was time for a change):





AFTER (The gold makes the room look so warm & lovely, especially when closed. Thanks, Ma!):





With my sister's help, I added lovely accents to the front of the house, including painting the porch cement, painting the three roof post thingys, getting a new mailbox and house numbers, and replacing the old cutesy fabric on the porch swing seat. A new porch light is the only thing left to completely eliminate remnants of the former owner at our home’s entrance.

LONG BEFORE:





AFTER:






Things going on today at The Manor:

Even after the fixed leak under the kitchen sink, those damn teeny-tiny bugs are back. I have a feeling it’s the cheap plywood. Alpha Ecological came by this morning for our quarterly spider maintenance (HUGE hobo in the house the other day - that we lost!!!), so he sprayed under the sink too. He says it's not a structural thing, but I'll be curious to see if they return. I bet the wood will eventually need to be replaced.

Steve the Plumber is coming by to replace our main water shut-off valve and fix a steady leak in tub faucet (we’ve been collecting the water in a big pitcher and using it).


Coming up on Bungalow Happiness:

- The Female Reproductive System wallpaper is coming down and painting of the master bedroom will commence (we’ve decided on dark brown!).

- Beginning accent paint on the sides of the house. One. Window. At a time.

- Hopefully next purchases: Dresser for Dave, buffet for kitchen, front porch light.


And stay tuned for our upcoming 2011 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL! This year’s theme: Haunted Hotel!