My dad and I installed a much needed new faucet in my master bathroom. The old one was leaking and while it wasn’t too outdated, I wanted a new look to go with the rest of the bathroom’s new look that will be coming soon.
I highly recommend using a large pillow under your back when going under the sink. Also, don’t forget your safety goggles!
My dad and I installed a new faucet in the kitchen. My back always got sore when I washed dishes and I felt like it was because our faucet was too low and close to the sink. The faucet was high enough to fill tall glasses but everything always had to be filled in the center of the sink. I was looking for a faucet where I could move the neck and possibly one with the sprayer hose in the faucet neck. Well, once I went out looking for a kitchen faucet and realized how expensive they are, I decided to go with a gooseneck one that had a sprayer separate. I still purchased a brushed nickel one like I wanted to replace our current chrome one. I did forget to take a picture of the original faucet but found a month-old picture of the faucet – it is just a standard builder-grade chrome kitchen faucet.
It is amazing how much stuff is under the sink that needs to be removed when replacing a faucet. I took the opportunity to organize those items into a large bin. It looks so much nicer.
The attic has always been a problem area. There is so much I would like to store up there but the area is so narrow that I have to make sure everything stays close to the sides. If more than just the middle had plywood, I’d have SO much room. I still get a lot up there though and it has gone through lots of phases of organization. Each phase is better than the previous and it keeps getting better.
This time I made a lot of good improvements. I moved our seasonal clothes into clear bins so we can see them and know what we have. The blue bins the clothes used to be in became storage bins for household items. Instead of having these items in either crates or loose in piles, they are now organized by containers, office, kitchen, and bath. The Space Bags have done wonders for making more room where there used to be small bags stacked up always falling over. Our boxes are still stacked up at one end, but they always come in handy when we are selling things we don’t need anymore.
Attic before recent organization:
After rearranging bins and items, the attic looked better.
There is still more work to do, but that will be for the next time. Continuous improvement.
Sometimes just a change of a frame on a piece of art makes it look completely different. I have a set of 4 seasonal fairy prints by fantasy artist David Delamare. I really didn’t like the gold frames, so after searching, I found brushed nickel paint. I took the pictures out of the frames, sanded down the frames to make sure the paint would stick, and then applied the spray paint outside.The pictures look so much better and different colors pop out now.
The gold ones may look better with the wall color (which is the same in both pictures), however, the walls will be painted soon and the frames will fit in perfectly then.
Once I proved to myself that the Space Bags did so well organizing the attic, I waited until the following month to get more. And when I did, I went through my jackets, sweaters, and small rugs to fill more space bags.
Lots of sweaters fit in one of these jumbo Space Bags… Just a few shy of 40!
Small rugs did pretty well too. I didn’t have too many but enough to make the space bag worth it. I started with more rugs but donated a lot of them knowing I would just be wasting storage space if I held onto them. I have room to expand if necessary.
For a while now, about 7 years, I have had the same light in the main bathroom off the 2nd floor hallway. It was originally with the light facing down, but I made a frame for the mirror and then the light didn’t fit flush against the wall anymore. I had to turn the glass shades so they faced up. This created a nice ambient light that faced up, but casted weird shadows in the bathroom. This fall, I had a list of things to change in the house and this was one of them. The light is finally changed. I just have to paint the cabinet and I think this bathroom may just be complete for now.
The original light was a brown color and the new one is a trendy brushed nickel. The original glass shades were while and then new ones are a really nice brown. They cast a beautiful light in the bathroom. I decided to go with 40W equivalent CFLs and they warm up quickly and 3 of them make the bathroom so bright.
The light was purchased at Lowes. This type of light is where the fixture and glass shades are purchased separately so you can purchase exactly what you want. The wiring is simple – 3 connections – copper ground, white wire, and black wire. Just remember to turn off the power to the outlet preferably from the power/fuse box.
Old Light/New Light
Old Bathroom/New Bathroom
Guest Bedroom Phase 1 : Guest Bedroom Phase 2 : Guest Bedroom Phase 3
From blah to bold to calm, this bedroom is like a chameleon. This room started out and remained a guestroom for quite a while until recently when it became more of a craft room/office with an occasional guest.
Phase 1 of this bedroom with the white walls, borrowed furniture, and Ikea bedding and cabinet had that just moved in look since, well, I had just moved in.
Once the time came for painting this bedroom, phase 2, I was in a crazy color mood and things became a bit bold. Grass green walls and futon, electric blue cabinet and rug, green and yellow accents, and lots of stuffed animals. And, yes, this was used as a guest room still.
Phase 1 to Phase 2 changes included:
The current design, phase 3, reflects a calming of my personality. The 5 color elements used to design the room are:
This room still has a ways to go, but it is currently functional.
I saw a post by Christy (ColumbiaLily) where she organized all of her ribbon. It inspired me to get mine together. I couldn’t find the zip-top baggies but I did find some self-sealing ones at Joann that worked just fine. I can reuse the bags over and over.
We have these 2 drawers in our kitchen that are in the corner of our cabinets. You can’t open them up at the same time due to them being at a right angle to each other. This never used to be a problem until I decided one day that I wanted knobs on my cabinet drawers. The doors had them and I was tired of either grabbing under the face of the drawer or, like I usually did, grabbing the top of the drawer face and snapping a nail or making my finger tips sore. Once the drawer knobs were on, the two doors perpendicular to each other would each only open almost 1/2 way. Well, that is loosing more than 1 total drawer and that was completely unacceptable, but I wanted my knobs, so I went to the drawing board.
It took me two tries to get it right and the first attempt was a more complicated mistake so was not ashamed of it (not that you should be ashamed of creative mistakes, but I was proud of how far I got until the mistake happened and sometimes mistakes happen early that you just want to kick yourself about). The first attempt was flawed by the hinge placement. I forgot that if I wanted to hinge the drawer face that I needed to place it at the bottom of the drawer not the bottom of the drawer face since there is an overhang between those two which results in a gap that forms and a hinge that won’t open more than 45 degrees. It is all angles and I forgot about that one.
It was easy to fix though and when everything came together, it was awesome. So, what I did was use magnetic catches on the inside of the drawer and hinges on the bottom so that the drawer face could hinge down and be flush with the bottom of the drawer. This allows the drawer with the hinges to be pulled out and not conflict with the door knob that sticks out of the drawer that is perpendicular to it. Also, it allows the perpendicular drawer to be pulled out completely without running into the other drawer knob.
Some pictures to explain my possibly confusing explanation…
Even my kitty Veda helped out – well, not really, but she was there for moral support as I tried to figure it out
Updates: My dad came to visit in November and loved my solution to the drawer problem. My mom and dad came to visit for my birthday in January. I showed my mom the cabinet drawer and she was so proud of me!
