So Much for Lent

It's just about the third Sunday in Lent.  What I hate about Lent is all the people that treat it as the time for taking a second stab at the diet they abandoned three weeks after New Year's.  The thing you give up, or, alternatively, try to do more of, is supposed to be something that is a SACRIFICE.  Something that pains you so that when you're tempted you pause for some reflection and inner growth instead.

I gave up thrift store shopping.  And, boy, has it been hard.  I wear thrift store clothes, I furnish my home with thrift store decor, I use old sheets as muslins for sewing, and I find lots of raw materials to re-do, reupholster, and re-paint.  To stay away from the thrift stores is a Sacrifice, indeed.

We're a whole month from Easter and already I've failed.  I went to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore today.  And I came home with this:

But let me rationalize explain. 

First, The bagged stuff is actually on it's way TO Goodwill.  (See - I can purge every now and then!)

Second, spring is coming fast and it's time to plan the garden.  I've always wanted raised beds but new wood is Ex-Pen-Sive.  So I wanted to find some scraps.  And I did!!  I found enough pieces of NEW wood, already cut in equal measures for THREE raised beds. 

The drawers are for a future project that will help me eliminate clutter.  And the picket pieces are for a quickie craft project. 

The particle board is for a spring cleaning project that I'm already halfway done with. 

And the last piece only took me 10 minutes to put into place.  Watch:

Here's my current pull-out cutting board. 

Nasty.  The wood has been pulling off in chunks which, of course, has nearly gotten in my food many times.  I flipped it over to use the underside.

But you can see that, in the divet used for pulling it out, food scraps collect and are impossible to get out.  I especially like when pie crusts get caked in there.  Yick!  I've been hoping to find a suitable replacement and I finally did, today!

It was a little wider than the original so I just laid the old one on top centering it over the pullout divet,  and drew some cutting lines.  Two quick passes over the cutting table was all it took.

Back in the kitchen I cleaned both sides with a mix of baking soda and vinegar.  If you remember 4th grade science, vinegar makes baking soda get all bubbly.  It's about the best, albeit stinkiest, all-natural cleaner for surfaces like wood that are porous. 

And there you have it.  My brand "new", Lousy Catholic cutting board.  So....

Plant Cabinet

Here's a super quick project I did on vacation.  I found this plant stand at a thrift store for $5 on sale for half off.

I just primed it then put two coats of my living room shade of white paint on it and Voila!

A pretty new plant stand. 

You can see how the white paint matches the chair on the left that I renovated a few months back.  I'm on my way to a matching "set" of living room furniture.  It's awesome how you can transform a room with just a container of paint. 

Pimp my Cabinet

I know it's been over a month since I last posted.  But really, there's been nothing to post.  August in Wisconsin was unbearably humid.  The kind of weather where you can't even breathe outside and everytime you set out to do something you just turn into a slug.  I got a whole lot of nothing done.

It was too hot to be out in the garden.  So this is what I ended up with:

This is supposed to be two tomato plots, a raspberry bush, two separate flower patches, and a squash patch with beautiful grass paths dividing each.  The brown strip is my sidewalk that should be 24" wide, reduced to about 12 inches with all the overgrowth.  An urban jungle if ever there was one.  I was too hot to even go out and water.  But despite no water and the heat, I've had pretty good luck with just about everything I planted.

And my sewing room is upstairs.  I was infomred by my A/C man that my unit is too small to boost the cool air to the upstairs.  Since heat rises, it was to dang hot to be up there sewing.  Even though I wasn't up there working, my sewing room still turned into this:

Can you even spot the sewing machine in that whole mess?

But the heat finally subsided in time for my vacation and I managed to get some of the projects done that I've been putting off all through the heatwave.  Here's my first one:

I got this cabient from my friends Amy and Shane who rehab houses as a side business.  I had mentioned I was looking for a used cabinet to put on my enclosed back porch which is just off my kitchen.  My plan was to use it to store dishes and appliances that don't fit in my kitchen cabinets.  This was torn from a house they were working on.

Um, yea.  For now, it's doubling as a workbench for my miter saw.  My basement is a disaster.  As you see in this picture, the doors don't even close because there's so much crap in there.  Even worse...well...brace yourself for the inside view:

Yikes!  Everytime I go inside this thing, I have to prepare for an avalanche of dishes and appliances.  Time to pimp this cabinet! 

I have a lot of different sized cake pans, bundt forms, jello molds, tupperware, and holiday shaped cake pans.  The upper left is an attempt to stack all these but you can see how great that's worked.  I managed to find two pullout drawers for a buck a piece at the Habitat for Humanit ReStore.

Mounting them was easy-peasy.  After deciding to put one on each shelf, I just screwed the bases right into the main shelf. 

The the drawers slid right on.

I also have a lot of cookie sheets and cookie racks.  Those slide all over and are just a pain because they usually land up on the bottom of a huge pile of dishware.  I've even broken finger nails trying to separate them to pull one out.  A slash rack was the perfect solution for storing them upright - I can pull them out easier and I can spot each one easily.

I found some scrap wood and used L-brackets to attach one to the main shelf. 

I initially thought I'd need to make two, but one did the trick and left enough room in between the slash rack and the pull out drawer for two big appliances to sit.  The oblong pans nested nicely and also left room for two more bigger items. 

In the process of organizing, I even found four items to pack up for Goodwill.  I have two other casserole dishes I like already so I gave the peach one away.  I tossed the square cakepan because I can fit the same amount of batter in one of the many circle pans I have.  The cheesecake pan went because I have one that's almost similar that was a gift from Amy.  Why I have two , I don't know, but it was clearly time to clean because I also found TWO angel food cake pans.  I make angel food cake maybe twice a year so I hardly need two pans.  Geez!

The whole project took about 20 minutes.  Which is sad because I've been staring at this mess for two years!

When it was all finished this is what I ended up with this:

Isn't it beautiful?  The stuff I use most is near the front.  Less used stuff is in the back but easily accessible in the pullout drawers.  No heaping piles of dishes.  Here's an even better view:

Nothing like the  look of no clutter!  And now that I have organized my cabinet, I'm off to make a pie for the Conductor. 

Bag Bag

In my last post you got to see my utility closet re-do.  One of the things I did was to make a bag for my bags.  I've seen some versions of this before that have drawstrings on the bottom that you have to open and close every time you put in or remove a bag.  That's too putzy for me so I like make these with elastic on the bottom.  Here's what I did: 

All you need are
a) two strips of calico or craft cotton (mine were were 10" x 20")  (FYI - To clue you as to how bad a craft addiciton I have, this was a piece of cotton I bought 15 years ago back in high school.  I never dreamed, at age 18, that this would turn into a storage bag holder.  Funny where life takes you...).  

b) a hanger - child size are great
c) about 10" of elastic, give or take












1.  Place your pieces right side together.  Working with the end you ant to have as the top (one of the short ends) use pins and mark a one-inch opening in the center.  Sew this edge together, stopping at your pins so that, when you press your seam open, you have an opening like this:

2.  AFter pressing, adjust so the right sides are back together again.  Sew the long sides.  

3. On the short end that is fully open still, turn your ends under.  (I will assume you know how to finish your ends off properly, if you're a fanatic about that like I am).  When I say "turn your ends under" look at what I'm doing in this picture - I'm turning them under so that I'll form a casing big enough for my elastic to slip through.  You'll have to adjust your casing to suit the width of the elastic you use.

I find that 3/8" elastic works best.

4.  Once you've sized your casing, pin it.  Be sure to keep an opening big enough to slip your elastic in!  Then sew the casing.

5.  DECISION TIME:  Where will you hang your bag?  And how will you hang it? 

This decision will help you determin how to shape your hanger.  Here's a bag I made years ago for my basement:

You can see it hangs a) flush against the beam/wall and b) on a nail.  That's why I shaped my hanger like this:

The flat bend will hold the bag against the wall and leaving the hook part will work fine for a hanger. 

But for my utility closet, I was going to hang it a) suspended from the ceiling and b) on a cup hook.  So for this bag, I shaped the hanger like this:

Forming the hook of the hanger into a loop will keep it on the cuphook and the swiveled design will allow the bag to move without falling while mounted to the ceiling.  

So bend your hanger appripriately, then slip it into the bag and through the hole.   

6.  .  Take two large safety pins.  Stab one end of your elastic and pin that to your bag near your opening.  Stab the other end with your second pin, close it shut, and use it to run the elastic through:

 

7.  Adjust your elastic so that it's tight enough to hold bags in while allowing enough room for you to get your hand inside to either stuff a new bag in, or pull one out.  Cut off any excess.  Sew your elastic closed and close up the hole. 

8.  Stuff it with all your bags and hang it up!

In the Closet

My birthday week vacation is but a distant memory. I woke up on Day One with a to-do list a mile long. Coffee cup in hand, I looked at my utility closet and decided that the obvious first choice for a project would be the quick and easy task of hanging a shelf. All I wanted to do was take this:

And give it a mere ten minutes of my time so I could enjoy the instant satisfaction of crossing something off that endless list. That was on May 24th. My closet has been teetering on the edge of utility ever since. . But today is June 18th and it’s finally done!

I love this closet. The previous owner (whom I refer to as The Old Man) had the lower half of the stairs rebuilt. An avid do-it-himselfer, he got the brilliant idea to use the space under the stairs as a broom closet. The longer I’ve lived here, the more I’ve realized, however, that his brilliant ideas rarely translated into brilliant craftsmanship.

I don’t have a Before picture, but his closet was basically an opening between the studs and the wall (about 10 inches wide) with an old cabinet door slapped over it.

True craftsman have a great rule of thumb: measure twice, cut once. The Old Man felt he was above all that. He’d cut first, then realize his opening was way too large or too small for standard sized doors. So he had to jerry rig his way out. In this case he took an old cabinet door and slapped a piece of scrap wood on the bottom to make it long enough.

All told, the closet door was too narrow to even get a vacuum through, to short for a person to walk through, and too dark to see into. A total waste of space. So when my awesome friend Amy’s equally awesome husband offered to transform the space into a usable closet I was ecstatic. It has walls! It has a real door! It has lighting and an outlet! So I pulled out all the mess to hang the shelf. And that’s when I remembered this:

The one part of the closet that didn’t get finished. So my little ten minute shelf hanging project turned into a full scale insulating, drywalling, painting, and re-organizing project that spanned well beyond my vacation week. I both love and hate the results.

I hate it because, frankly, I could have done better. The walls were down to stud in some spots but other spots had plaster & lath and some even had wood paneling over that. Most of it ran under the stairs from above & couldn’t be ripped completely off. Did you ever try using a reciprocating saw while crouching under a stairway? Not fun. Kinda dangerous.

So the drywalling was done in pieces using scraps. Which meant it’s not flush and the mud job was half-arsed. If you look close, there are still plenty of gaps. But then again, it’s the back of a closet. Not exactly a place I show off to house guests. While it’s not a job to be proud of, it’s good enough to be functional.

You would NEVER use drywall pieces this small or leave gaps that big or let your surface be that bumpy!

But I love how organized it is now! Not only did I hang one shelf, I hung a whole section. I used removable shelving so I could still have easy access to the plumbing for the bathroom (on the opposite side of the wall).

  

I hung hooks so my brooms & whatnot aren’t a tangled mess.

And I hung a door spring under one of the stairs to hold my spare bags.

The green thing hanging there is a bag  for my…bags. (Tutorial to come!).

Not only can I can get the vacuum into the closet, but I can walk in with it. My storage boxes are easy to pull in and out. And all my spare utility supplies are easy to find. Best part of all, the whole project only cost me $6.25 – for the spring and a pack of clips to hold the shelves. The shelving, paint, and drywall supplies were all leftovers in my stash.

Now I just need another vacation to tackle the 436,987,214 other things on my list.