Black Belt Living

One Thing Leads to Another...

It all started with a door that wouldn't close properly. For more than two years the door between our kitchen and the garage wouldn't close right, or when it did, it wouldn't open. It made me crazy...made all of us crazy.

Last week it actually dawned on me that HEY! Maybe if I buy a new doorknob, the door will work again. (Yeah, I know...DUH!) So within one hour, I was off to the Home Depot and the new doorknob was installed. It works like a charm. I feel stupid for not realizing ages ago that it was just a doorknob that needed replacing. 

That doorknob replacement got us to discussing the hardware on our front door. It's always in the sun and over the years, the hot rays have taken their toll. The finish was not looking good at all. Andy suggested that we replace that hardware with a new opener and deadbolt.  

So today I headed back to "le Chateau Depot" for new door hardware.  Oh...and a new exterior thermometer because the one we had blew away in a windstorm while I was in Dallas. Of course once I was there, I forgot to buy it. I knew there was something that I was forgetting. That was it. 

Several of our kitchen cabinet doors haven't been hanging right either. Some don't close right, some are crooked. After all these years, the hinges have gotten bent or warped or whatever. So I figured that while I was getting the other stuff at "le Chateau" today, I'd get some replacement hinges too.

When I got home, I took the old hardware off of our front door and installed the new set. Looks nice! Then I took two of the cabinet doors off, removed their hinges, cleaned them up, put on the new hinges and re-hung the doors.  Wow, what a difference! I was on a roll at this point. 

The problem I found in removing the doors, however, is that I got a very up close and personal look at just how bad our painted cabinets are looking. Dirt, chips, stains...oh my. It's probably been ten years since I had our cabinets painted, and they are showing their wear and tear. I try to ignore it most of the time, but today I couldn't ignore it. So back to the hardware store I went for new primer, some sandpaper, and some new brushes. It looks like my next two weeks are going to involve giving my kitchen cabinetry a brand new coat of oil-based enamel. 

And of course, since I put the new hardware on the front door, the paint has gaps where the old hardware was. So that will be getting a fresh coat of paint as well. And since I'm repainting the front door, I might as well do the back door too, right?  Yep. 

And since I'm freshening up the cabinets, I might as well take this opportunity to change out the door and cabinet pulls. I've been wanting brushed nickel, so now's the time. Before I buy new hardware, I'm going to try to use brushed nickel spray paint and change my existing ones. Hopefully that will work (because I need 40 something!), but if it doesn't, I'll get new ones. 

Can you see how this is going? 

Finally, I figure that after the holiday decor comes down, and since I'll have already crossed that line into the world of primer and oil based enamel, I'm finally going to paint the natural woodwork in my family room (as well as the brick on the fireplace) so that it matches the rest of the house. 

I'm not kidding. One thing leads to another. I guess it's no coincidence that the band who sang this in the '80's was THE FIXX.  

Projects never end, do they?  Well, at least the list never ends. It's kind of like the "if you give a mouse a cookie" books.....

Hope in the Garden Springs Eternal

I was talking to a friend on the phone last night. She asked me what I had been doing all weekend, and I told her that we worked basically all weekend finishing up our lawn and garden chores. We put in literally hours and hours of work this year getting the place all shaped up. When she called me a "gardening goddess", I nearly spit out my Crystal Light. 

The truth is, I detest gardening, and it gets worse every year. I only do it because everybody else in my neighborhood seems to love it (or pays somebody else to do it for them) and I don't want my yard to look like The Clampett's yard. We all have those neighbors, you know the ones I'm talking about. I would rather do my gardening work than be that neighbor. It's all about priorities, of course. 

This time of year it's not so bad. The lure of the lovely plants at the garden store suck me in with their crazy color and bug free foliage. I don't even mind planting much. It is nice to see some color in the yard after the long winter season.  And I really love my roses and peonies, they are spectacular every year, and I don't need to do much to get them that way. 

Sadly, it's all down hill from there.  My roses, have only been blooming for about two weeks, and the spider mites are attacking them already.  My pink vinca plants have been eaten down to nothing already by some kind of bug. Grrrr.  Clay soil, blazing hot summers with no rain, spider mites, japanese beetles, tomato worms, critters of all kinds, and the damn deer have really put me off on the joy of plant care. I don't even bother with hosta or impatiens anymore. They're just deer snacks. Two years ago, when it was super dry, the deer even ate my roses, big nasty hairy thorns and all. They didn't care. 

For several years, I've been trying to grow one solitary tomato plant. I LOVE fresh tomatoes, but evidently, the deer, the squirrels, and the raccoons like them even more than I do, and they help themselves. When I try to plant a tomato in the front (where it's sun 90% of the time), I fight a losing battle with critter control and blazing heat. In the back, I get no sun. Here's last year's spectacular effort:

That's pathetic, isn't it.  Yeah, it's okay. Go ahead and laugh.

But hope does spring eternal, right? Every May I get all excited, thinking that this might be the year I really get a decent tomato. This year I'm trying the Topsy Turvy Tomato growers and hanging them off the deck in the back. They don't get a great amount of sun, but they won't get a great amount of critters either. So we'll see how it goes. 

Not too long ago we had a world-renowned speaker in at ACME, and he was big on daily, positive affirmations. So I was thinking that maybe I'm just too negative about gardening.  Maybe instead of my "I hate gardening" point of view, I should wake up every day, look in the mirror and say, "I am a great gardener!  I will have lovely tomatoes this year! I have a green thumb! Deer and tomato worms are God's creatures and they deserve love too!". 

Maybe if I keep saying these, I'll learn to believe it.  In the meantime, I'll continue to water, water, water; weed, weed, weed; and most likely gripe, gripe, gripe. I hate gardening. 

It Doesn't Suck

Well, here we are, about two weeks away from Christmas and I am so happy that the vast majority of my holiday planning is done. The gifts are basically done, the cards have been printed and picked up, and I've got the Christmas Day brunch planned.

But ugly, rainy weather and a black dog that sheds constantly have put a bit of a rain cloud over my holiday joy. My floors need a cleaning and I'm left powerless. That's right, my trusty Oreck XL has decided to skip this holiday season and move along to the great vacuum cleaner afterlife. That's right, it just doesn't suck any more, and that sucks. I'm sad. I've been living in denial that it was on it's way out for some time now, but the smoke in the basement last night when Andy was tidying up pretty much convinced me (the again, I can't help but think....WWJSD? What would Jeff Spicoli do?  "Dude! I can fix it! I got a bitchin' set of tools!").  It didn't go out for the trash man today because I might be able to keep it on life support for another few weeks, but the writing is certainly on the wall. 

Sweeper shopping brings back bad memories. Several years ago when we were younger and well, insanely stupid, we plunked down the GDP of a small country for a monster vacuum cleaner when the trusty Kirby salesman came a calling. He convinced us that everything from dastardly dust mites to small animals were basically living in our mattress and the only thing that could save us from the onslaught was to purchase the king of kings of vacuum cleaners, the Kirby. 

Well the Kirby ended up being one of the worst purchases that we've ever made in the history of our marriage. You know, it's the kind of purchase that you can laugh about years later, but when you're trying to pull that sucker up the stairs it's no laughing matter. Seriously, that thing must have weighed 30 lbs. And never mind the fact that had we invested that money instead of buying that Sherman Tank with suction, we might be able to bail out General Motors today. Well, okay, maybe not.  

 

We ended up getting rid of that thing before back surgery was required. Believe it or not, a neighbor volunteered to take it off of our hands, and that's when we got the Oreck. It was everything that the Kirby was not...lightweight, quiet, back friendly. I loved my Oreck so much that not even the genius Dyson Animal marketing campaign could get me to look elsewhere. But alas, it's been about nine years now and the Oreck has moved along. 

So now it's two weeks before Christmas, the dog hair is piling up, and I get to find some extra time to go get a new vacuum cleaner. I should run straight to the Oreck store and get the 2008 version of the old one that I had, but I spent a little time last night surfing the web and it seems that these days it's hit-or-miss on the quality. Perhaps they don't build them like they used to when I got my last one, so I'm hesitating. They're not cheap and if I'm going to buy a piece of crap, I'd rather just go to Target and pay less money for a piece of crap. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who love their Oreck just like I loved mine. 

Then there is the allure of The Animal. It's the same price as the Oreck. I have an animal with black hair. I have a house with very light colored carpet.  The two are not a good combination and I admit that the slick ads have certainly caught my eye. Does it really work well with pet hair? Can it suck the nails out of my carpet? Can it suck the grunge off of the hardwood so that I don't have to mop? Can it suck the fat off of my arse?  If it can, I'm all for it and screw the pet hair. I don't know. Tell me what you think. 

One of the things I also read is that Dyson is all show and slick marketing, but when it comes to getting the job done, they just aren't engineered that well. But who knows?!  I see people online dissing my beloved Oreck and I can't believe it, but I don't want to be suckered by the great gods of sweeper marketing either. As my new boss tells me, "Good marketing doesn't have to be accurate, it needs to be effective," and I think Dyson puts on one heck of a slick marketing campaign.

So Merry Christmas to me. Santa is bringing me a vacuum cleaner!  Do have any advice for me? I would rather spend a bit more to buy something that's going to last a while and doesn't weigh a ton. I'd love to hear your thoughts, unless your name is Kirby, in which case you can go blow.

Purdy!

I can't believe how much the painters got done in their first day!  I'm glad they started in the front, so that we can really see what it's going to look like. I know one thing, we've got some serious landscaping to cut back. Now that the house has a lot more contrast, I can see how overgrown everything has gotten this summer.  Time to get down to some trimming!

See this tree on the right?  It's outta here!  

Here's from the front...you can see the sections that are still white (like right behind the tree on the right that's soon to be leaving us).

Anyhow, I'm really liking it!  I've always loved yellow homes with black or green trim, and in a few days I'll be living in one!

Have a great weekend, for us, this weekend is wedding #1 of three coming up in the next few weeks!

Procrastination

 

We got our bids and put our names in last fall to have our house painted. It needs it BADLY, really badly. Well with a wet spring and early and busy painters who are always in demand, we've been waiting and waiting. We've put off mulching and flowers this summer, thinking that "well any day now, we're getting painted", but it hasn't materialized.  However at long last, today is the day! This will finally put a close to the "exterior Extreme Home Makeover" that we began last fall with the new windows, new roof, new guttters and gutter toppers, and getting the drains cleaned out. I can't wait. We're changing the color too, so it's going to be a totally fresh new look.

And with that, I have two storage units to move, lots of shrubs that are touching the house that need to be cut back, three trees that need to be trimmed back, ivy to be pulled off the brick, and outdoor furniture to be moved.  Have I started?  No.  What did I do last night?  I stayed up until 1am again to watch the Olympics (and how about that Michael Phelps, who isn't just the world's greatest Olympian these days, but also a Michigan Wolverine.  Now that rocks!  M Go Blue!).  It's 7:00am right now and as usual, I'm doing this, trying to infuse some strong French Roast coffee into my bloodstream, and watching the Olympics again, of course. 

I need to get moving. I seriously need to get moving. I'll do that now. Okay, just a bit more coffee, and after this set of beach volleyball....

Back with pics later, hopefully!

Get A Piece of the Rock

If you're old like me, you probably remember that old commercial. I can't help but let my mind wander to the old Rock Hudson joke, but we'll skip over that thought! 

Anyhow,I mentioned the other day that my girlfriend is getting a new kitchen.  I helped her pick her cabinetry, her hardwood for the floor, and appliances, but so far the most fun as been picking the granite.

We are fortunate in our area to have Mees Distributors, a regional wholesaler of tile, granite, and marble who has in the last few years started selling retail to the public. Their prices are rock bottom (ar ar ar!), and their selection will just rock your world, especially in the warehouse when they keep the granite and marble slabs.

When I was a kid, I loved pretty rocks.  I still do, but my tastes have refined a bit, morphing from things like fool's gold when I was 11 to real gold, diamonds and semi precious stones, and lovely polished granite in homes. For me, a trip to Mees is like going to the jewelry store, only your kitchen will wear it instead of you.

It's fascinating to me that brave, strong Italian men quarry these beautiful stones out of the mountains in Northern Italy. How do they know what they're going to get? How do they know that it's not just ugly rock? How do they move all that weight? I don't know, but I'm glad. The different pieces range from very subdued, to over the top, including some of their very "high end" finds that include fossils and geodes like these (for some reason, Typepad always washes out the color in my photos and it makes me crazy.I promise you that the color on my photos is really bright and brilliant.Thanks Typepad!):

Mees ought to pay me to advertise for them, seriously! The place just ROCKS! 

 

My girlfriend thought she had the one she wanted all figured out, but it didn't work with her kitchen accents as much as she would have liked, so nothing has been decided yet. I'm glad, because that means that I get to go back. In my head, I've basically replaced all the surfaces in the kitchen and every bathroom in my home. So when that winning lottery ticket drops into my purse, I'm ready to place my order!

That's about it for today. Gotta finish packing and tie up some loose ends for our trip.  And it is Friday after all, so maybe I'll just GET STONED.   

Don't Erase Your Face

Okay, I admit it.  I'm a first class idiot.  I always take pride in being able to clean just about anything, and you already know of my big love for the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  

Well I got back yesterday from the kitchen painting project with more primer all over me again, and found that when I got out of the shower, I was still covered in primer. I had a few big blops on my face, and several on my arms and hands.  Back in my decorative painting days, I scrubbed primer off my bod with a Scotchbrite in the kitchen.   It worked pretty well, and didn't hurt me.  It was like one of those Buf-Pufs (remember those?) that I scrubbed my face with as a teen with zits. No big deal.

So there I am in my bathroom and there's a Magic Eraser sitting on my sink.  It was a clean, fresh one so I decided to use it to take the primer off.  BIG HUGE MISTAKE!  Do NOT use a MCME on your skin!  Within five minutes, the skin that I "erased" felt like it was literally on fire!  I'm pretty sure that these blocks don't have any chemicals in them, but that sure felt like a bad chemical burn.  I'm serious, I have a high pain tolerance, but I had to take some Tylenol for this.  I was hurting badly.  It's better today, but I can see that it's all going to scab over just like a burn.  Lovely.  I'm glad we have no plans this weekend.  

Of course after I did this, I did a Google search on "Magic Eraser on Skin" and found PAGES of stories of people who have unfortunately discovered this the same way I did.  There's some bad cases of kids getting really messed up.  Jeez!  Who would have thought?  Not me.  

I still love that darned Magic Eraser, but I'm smarter now.  Next time I'm coated with primer, I'll stick with the Scotchbrite and leave the eraser for cleaning the house.

Speaking of the painting project, I'm almost done!  I'll be back there this afternoon to wrap it up.  

I got a few requests for some before photos and I asked my girlfriend about it yesterday.  She said that when the house was first put on the market, it was total "Brady Bunch" with the bad light fixtures, lime green kitchen cabinest (ewwww!) and everything in a thirty five year time warp.  She's going to try to get those pics for me if possible and when the house gets done, I'll be sure to post the before and after.  I like to watch those house flipping shows, and I feel like we're doing a total "flip" but my friend is moving in instead of selling.  The transformation is going to be remarkable.  I'm excited to see the changes that happen every day.  

Sweat Equity

I met my friend yesterday at the house that she'll be moving into in a few weeks.  Initially Shannon and I were just going over to help her give her kitchen a really good scrub down.  It didn't turn out that way however, when the cleaning day turned into a major project of painting the interiors of her kitchen cabinets.  

 

The outsides were already painted, but the insides were a dark, disgusting mess, starting with layers of foul old Contact paper that's been there for probably 40 years.  What's worse than stripping old wallpaper off drywall?  Stripping old contact paper off of cabinets made of particle board.  Yucko.  That was a job right there.  So we soaked, and scraped, and then sanded.  Nice, huh?  I can't blame her for not wanting to put her pretty dishes and things in there. 

After that, I primed using nine cans of spray primer and it's still not done. After the priming and a quick sand-down with a brown grocery bag (I learned this trick after years of priming and painting furniture), I followed with two coats of spray enamel.  At the moment, the two large upper cabinets are nearly completely done.  Here they are!

The rest of the cabinets are primed.  Today and tomorrow I'll finish up with the enamel on the cabinets, and prime and paint the drawers.  

Right now we're still in the scraping process on the drawers ~ get an eyefull!  Scrape, scrape, scrape!

Let me tell ya, I was FULL of primer, all over.....in my hair, all over my body, up my nose.  I felt like a walking toxic waste dump. I was getting so much spray paint in my hair, that I finally gave up and tied a plastic home depot bag over my head like a gangsta "do rag".  I'm sure I was QUITE a sight.  I'm really sad that I don't have any photos of ME to share with you.  NOT!

Anyhow, I'm totally whooped!  I wrote this last night because I'll be out the door bright and early so that I can get a jump on the painting again this morning.  Hopefully it'll be done by the weekend. It's going to look great when it's all done.  The kitchen is small, but very workable and has a ton of charm that's just dying to shine.

I like to do projects, especially ones that really make a difference, but this one is a toughie for sure.  I spent five years doing decorative wall and furniture painting and this is one job that I know how to do, but would never accept from a client for money. I'm happy to do it from a friend who needs help, however, just don't call me anytime soon.  I'll be scraping primer out of my nose for a few weeks at least!  Sorry, too much information, I know.