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Posts Tagged ‘garage’

Do One Thing: Second-floor decor

Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2011| 1 Comment »

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 65: Finally hung up the curtain rod for the long-suffering wall hanging that we’ve owned for years.  It came into our possession when my husband bought a Volkswagen Vanagon back in the late 1990s. (Apparently, it’s traditional to include a gift when you sell a Vanagon  — the husband left a waterbed mattress in one that he sold before we were married.)

Anyway, it doesn’t really go with anything, but it doesn’t really NOT go with anything, either. It’s handmade and unique, and I love the stylized creatures that now brighten the upstairs hallway.

Also this week:

Day 63: Made an epic find at Target. I was planning to buy a duvet and duvet cover for the guest bedroom, since I’ve found that combination imminently easier to care for than a comforter, bedspread or quilt. With the mother-in-law set to arrive later this month, it was finally time to ditch the cat-hair-laden comforter.

Anyway, I found the EXACT items I was looking for in the clearance section for half price. Woot!

Day 64: Attempted, yet again, to move the garage shelf, only to find that there was a HUGE, unwieldy pile of green wire for the robotic mower blocking the way. I spent a good 30 minutes untangling the wire and wrapping it around an empty paper towel tube.

Can it be unwrapped easily without retangling itself? I don’t care.

Day 66: Finally managed to move the garage shelf into its new place without getting hit in the head with the surfboard again or finding another tragic tangle of green wire.

Day 67: Cleared a few things out of the kitchen pantry, including a canister of breadcrumbs that expired in April 2010. It’s rather amazing how things accumulate so quickly in there.

Days 68 and 69: I spent these two days driving to Nashville, hanging out with my brother at work and then hanging out while he had knee surgery, and then driving back. Family trumps home improvement, every time.

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Do One Thing: Conversion of the junk conversion

Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 62: I think we all saw this coming. I decided that, indeed, I hated the vase/glass pebble look I put together recently. The brown pebbles seemed to be the biggest part of the problem, so I ditched them (hopefully, some lucky shopper at the New Leash on Life Market Place has more love for brown than I do) and replaced most of them with some clear pebbles that were hanging out in the garage. It’s still not one of My Favorite Things, but it’s definitely making me happier.

Previously:

Day 56: Planned to move a small shelving unit to a more effective place in the garage. Got hit in the head with an errant surfboard. Yes, a surfboard.

Day 57: Got the husband to help me pick a spot for the wall hanging, since he’s the one who brought it home as part of a package deal when he bought a Volkswagen bus. We didn’t get to hang it, however, since the neighbor’s dog barked from literally 7 a.m. until we fled the house at around 2 to seek peace and quiet in the movie theater.

Day 58: Hung the toilet paper roller AND the towel holder in the downstairs bathroom. Epic.

Day 59: Tossed a pile of recipes that I had cut out from newspapers and magazines. It seems like all people who like to cook have one of these piles of recipes that they go through a couple of times a year, yet never manage to pull anything out and actually make it. Not anymore. They’re in the recycling guy’s hands now.

Day 60: Swept out the garage, or at least the parts I could get to with a broom.

Day 61: Nada. I did schoolwork and worried about my mom and her sick dog.

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Do One Thing: Making head colds more awesome

Posted in Do One Thing, Home, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 47: This is going to sound totally lame, but I’ve wanted a groovy tissue cover box for a while. I mean, if you’re going to have to keep a box of tissues around, it may as well look good. Bless their hearts, tissue makers try, but their box designs just scream “Go get grandma her tissues.”

Target has been slowly marking down tissue cover boxes for a few months And by “slowly,” I mean they’ve been marking down $19.99 boxes to $16.49. Not exactly what I call a clearance.

Today’s Target journey, however, turned up the beauty pictured above for $4.99. It was the only one that I could find, and it was perfect. It’s groovy without being flashy, because a flashy tissue cover box would just be gauche, no?

Previously:

Day 46: Tightened a couple of cabinet pulls in the master bathroom with the handle on a pair of nail clippers. Because sometimes rattling cabinet pulls compel you to fix them RIGHT NOW without having to wander into the freezing garage to search for a proper screwdriver.

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Do One Thing: Flexing mental & physical muscles

Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 33: Computer file maintenance. My digital belongings aren’t as messy as they could be, but they’re not a miracle of modern data preservation, either.

Day 34: Lugged a heavy piece of construction debris to the curb after watching it languish in the garage for nearly nine months. The trash guys effortlessly carted it away. Girl muscles FTW.

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Do One Thing: Sorting the library, garage and fridge

Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 29: Listed a couple of books and CDs for sale at Amazon. I’m always tempted to keep every book that comes into my hands, but I don’t have room, and I don’t miss them when they’re gone.

Day 30: I have been granted permission to scour the garage and make executive decisions. Best. Fling. Ever.

Day 31: Who’s the genius that came up with side-by-side refrigerators? The freezer section isn’t necessarily small, but it acts small, with two deep drawers that items just get lost in, and a couple of flimsy wire shelves, one with too much vertical space, the other with too little. The design of the refrigerator section is slightly better, but it’s not proportioned quite right either. And, because it’s shoved into a just-right-sized hole in the cabinetry, I can’t open the fridge door enough to remove the drawers. So they’re only as clean as I can get them while they’re still inside. No soaking old dirt and grime off; it’s there for life.

I’ve only chosen my own refrigerator once during my entire life, and we had to leave it behind when we moved four years ago. Therefore, I’m always stuck with somebody else’s bad decision and missing accessories.

Sigh. Today, I repacked some small bags of frozen cantaloupe, strawberries and greens into bigger bags in an effort to make one of the freezer drawers less of an abyss. The other one may hold a human head for all I know.

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Pie safe comes together, still holds no pies

Posted in Home, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2010| 3 Comments »

Several years ago, a good friend offered me an old pie safe that belonged to his sister, who had recently died. Honored by his offer, and in dire need of a little extra cabinet space in my humble kitchen, I accepted. This unique piece did kitchen duty for several years until I moved to Huntsville, where I found a home with plenty of cabinet space. The pie safe accepted its new assignment as eccentric bookshelf/knickknack area.

One thing that always bothered me about the pie safe was the drawer on the bottom. It didn’t belong there. It wasn’t made out of the same aged wood, and it was much more stylized than any other part of the cabinetry. It seemed like it was added as an afterthought, perhaps as a replacement for another drawer that had fallen apart.

I bought new drawer pulls for it at Anthropologie a few months ago, but all they did was emphasize its non-belongingness. Another plan was in order.

Yesterday, I finally fixed it. I toured the garage until I found a piece of suitably aged wood (my garage is, indeed, full of surprises) that only needed one cut to fit the drawer opening. After worming my way underneath the pie safe, I secured the board from the back with three beige deck screws (you can’t see them).

Voila! It’s as if the mismatched drawer never existed.

My love of Anthropologie’s cabinet hardware collection was satisfied, as I installed two bright, bubbly pulls on the pie safe doors.

It’s always been a fun piece, but I think I’ve managed to update it without changing its overall character.

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