Susie Homemaker

On Saturday while Dan was in the hot and sticky attic, I was in the air conditioned house hanging curtain rods.  I’ve got lots of curtains ready to be sewn! Money saving tip: Instead of purchasing pricey curtains, the fabric store just might be the place to go.  And if you really look around, you may even be able to find some great sale or clearance fabrics.  In my case, I found great fabrics at $1 to $1.50 a yard. 

Sometime ago I purchased lots of fabric for curtains in my living room, bedroom, and dining room.  I attempted to sew these curtains and ran across many issues with my sewing machine.  There’s a problem with the tension on my machine that I have yet to resolve and if possible seems only to be growing worse.  I sew only a few centimeters and suddenly the thread is knotted and tangled.  At best it is simply a pain, at worst it can cause holes in the fabric.  I finally gave up trying to use my machine and thanks to Aunt Maggie, I went to her house Thursday night to get started on my curtains.  It ended up being a rather helpful trip as she is somewhat a seamstress and years ago worked in her fathers’ upholstery shop.  And she made my life easier with some great tips and help with measurements where my poor math skills were lacking.  Thanks Aunt Maggie. 

Hole in the wall realities.

About a year and a half ago I was given a beautiful light fixture (I tend to call it a chandelier but it doesn’t have any crystal hanging thingies and therefore I’m not really sure if it qualifies as a chandelier or not) from my cousin Tony.  I intended to put it up in the living room long ago and took down the ceiling fan in preparation for doing so.  Because of other higher priorities (some may call it procrastination but really, who’s keeping track?) a hole with wires in it has been hanging open in my ceiling this whole time. 

The reason I haven't just attached the wiring from the fan to the wiring from the light and had my new lighting up is that it won't work like that. Actually, more accurately it will maybe work, maybe not, but if it does then that is all it will do. ...A light working means it on right? Anyway, what I mean is that the lightswitch on the wall was not connected to the ceiling fan. The fan was controlled by pull cords. Since the light fixture does not have pull cords then attaching it to the wires from the fan will either leave the lights always off or always on. Either way, it's not really what I am aiming for.

So Saturday, I coerced Dan into crawling into the attic for me to run wiring for my chandelier.  The goal was to connect the light switch by the front door to the ceiling lighting so I can control it from there. Especially when I first come in the house. (I am pretty night blind and stumbling around is never fun.) After hours of him in the attic, fiberglass insulation in his arms and chest, communicating by yelling through the ceiling, a 12 by 7 inch hole in my living room wall, there’s still no wires to be found.  We gave up and will now turn to the help of a trained electrician, my cousin Mike.  After that sweaty, itchy, stuffy, hot and frustrating experience poor Dan deserved lots of ice cream, hugs, and thank-you’s.    By the way, the hole was easily patched up and spackled. 

you live, you learm

As I was doing my house repairs, I had the opportunity to do them for a school project as well.  This blog as well as a scrapbook I've been putting together have been just a couple of the fun elements of this school project.  However there is one part that just didn’t want to cooperate.  I’ve taken lots of pictures for visual memories of my journey in home improvement.  But my attempt at videotaping has been less than satisfactory.  There are simple obvious reasons like completely forgetting to video tape(though I did record an hour of a table and wall, and more complicated reasons such as battery failure, lens failure, user malfunction, and tape incompatibilities.  So, after many tries and many failures I’ve scrapped the videotaping and decided there’s no future for me in a career as a videographer. 

for the long hall

My house layout is in true 70's fashion; the "common areas" (living room, dining room, kitchen) on one side of the house and all bedrooms and bathrooms on the other. Thanks goodness my house isn't too big one might have to sprint down the hall to make it to the facilities. The bedrooms and bathrooms are on the right down a long narrow hall.

Bentley on Left and Kaycee on right

My hopes for this hallway (yes, I even had hopes for the hallway) were to make it a sort of art gallery. I painted the walls the whitest white long ago in hopes of putting great pictures or art all down the length of it. I even bought canvases in hopes of being the next Picasso, but I've yet to be discovered so they are not hanging on the walls.

What I did find was not too long ago at Target were small wall shelves 11" x 4" on sale (same as the box shelves in the bathroom)! I have hung those along the walls (again with Dan's help since I still cannot hang things straight) alternating one higher, the next lower, the next higher...you get it. Because of bedroom doors along the hall walls there are 4 shelves then a door, then 1 shelf then a door then 2 shelves. On these shelves are 5x7 pictures in colorful (imagine that) frames.

On the other side of the hall there is much less wall space for hanging things because of 3 doors and the air conditioning closet. So all I have space for there is a "Let's got for a walk" sign with 3 hooks for the dogs leashes. (that's  Bentley's favorite wall!)

The very back of the wall displays whatever artwork I hang there at the time (I switched it out every so often) and 4 small elephant tables that I love. They were given to me by a coworker.

With a little paint and a few shelves now even my hallway is personalised and enjoyable!

Bathroom spruce up

Face it people, we spend a lot of time in the bathroom. Sometimes we rush in and out to check our hair or faces in the mirror. Sometimes it's an hour long bubble bath. But of course we probably spend the most amount of time just sittin' around. And when you spend that much time in one place you have plenty of staring at the walls to do.  So, it's nice to have a happy uplifting color to stare at. Like gray.

The main bathroom of my house made me happy the first time I entered the room.
You may ask: Really Christy? A bathroom made you happy? What kind of lame-o person are you?
And to that I say: Yes. And: Be nice!
Yes, I was pleased with what I saw because it meant as soon as I signed, it would be mine. In the case of the bathroom it was updated very nicely with a new sink and large cabinet, a new toilet (that may be one of the tallest toilets I've ever...er...know), and a lovely big three door medicine cabinet. But what made me smile specifically was the deep new Jacuzzi tub!  Woo hoo! There were only two things I didn't love about the bathroom: the paint and the vanity light.

The paint was a dull aqua bluish color and the vanity light was ugly. It was a plain rectangular wooden box with 6 light bulbs sticking out across the front of it.

The nice thing about the walls is a beard board and chair rail that goes just under half way up the wall. It's plain white and makes the bathroom look clean and fresh with the white framed medicine cabinet and white tub, toilet and sink. Anyway, I had been looking through Lowe's and Home Depot idea ads and decorating ideas and I saw a bathroom in deep gray, white and purple that I loved! So I started with that.

Now for redoing my bathroom I used those two money saving tips I talked about in the other posts. 1) oops paint and 2) clearance items! I found a quart of paint at Home Depot in the perfect gray color on the oops paint rack. For weeks there were little paint cards in various shades of gray taped along the wall across from the toilet and as time went by I would take down the colors I didn't like to narrow down just which shade I should get. Then suddenly one day I didn't even need those little paint samples; I was able to paint my bathroom for $1 in a color I love!

Mom helped with the painting as well as a few friends (Susen, Jenn and Mike). Mom cut in all around because she is great with that and got it looking good for me! I love the color. There was only one problem. It's very hard to match gray. Kind of like trying to match black or white; seems it would be easy until you have to do it, then you realize just how many shades there really are. So long story short, after taking back many towels and rugs to stores I decided to forget it and use completely different colors. But then the problem was deciding just which color to use. I like so many!

I used them all! Well, a lot of them anyway. There's a multicolored striped shower curtain which my mom gave me as a gift and was used Virginia. There are 4 main towel colors: orange, limey green, aqua blue and deep bright pink which I waited for a sale at JCPenney and got their big fluffy kind. And my newest purchase a double set of orange bathmats on sale for $5. 
Yes, I love that it looks like Crayola exploded in my bathroom! I think it's cheery, especially in the mornings!

That all fixed the problem of the dull colors in the bathroom, but the light fixture still needed help. Thanks again to clearance items and a random trip to wander around the hardware store I found a great replacement for my bathroom light for much cheaper than the original price! A 4 light brushed silver curving light originally $40 was on sale for $10 and amazingly (another one of God's gifts to me!!) there just so happened to be 4 smokey pendant glasses originally $6 on sale for $1.49 each! I snatched them up with a smile and thanked God all the way home!! He'd done it again; given me more than I'd hoped for but for a price I could actually afford!

 Installation: It may be a good time to add a "time saving tip" here. Just because one light fixture was centered how it was hung doesn't mean that a new one will be if you hang it in the same place. Oops. We had to un-install and reinstall it a second time. But with Dan's wonderful help it is back up and in business and well centered!

We also installed 4 great little box shelves. ("We" because I cannot hang anything straight! It's ridiculous! no matter how many times I measure it WILL not line up.) The two biggest are hung normal and the two smallest at an angle to form a diamond shape. I haven't figured out yet what will go in all of them, in one of the little ones I have rolled up wash cloths and in one big one I have perfume bottles. These shelves I bought also on clearance at Target. Originally they were priced at $12 and I got them for $3. Along with other little shelves I got for the hallway, but we will talk about those in the next blog.

All said and done I LOVE my new bathroom! It's bright, modern, and cheery! And so much more fun for just sittin' around in!

Artsy-fartsy

Remember as a kid how fun it was to color? You colored in your picture book, colored on the walls and furniture. Got caught and spanked and told never to do that again... Ah, those were the days.

Well, since my mamma's not here to tell me "no" and it's my house anyway, I am at it again! I drew on my coffee table. OK, so I painted on it, but that doesn't come off as easily.

original look

It's a nice little coffee table that was given to me by a coworker. It's rectangular, light wood and has storage space inside (for board games and photo albums!!) and now has a design on it! I've got a very obvious theme in  my living room; purple! But besides that I have a wall hanging that I just love! It's a big heavy, rectangular piece of wood with tropical type flowers cut out and carved in it and painted silvery gray. I love this piece. I got it some time ago at a used furniture store for $20 and hung it the wall directly across from the front door. 

wall art and glass door

When I first saw it I knew I liked it, but somehow it seemed familiar. It wasn't until much later after moving some things around that I found a cabinet I have and it's glass door with an etching in it. The etching is almost the same as the big art piece hanging on my wall. That art in my mind has become sort of the theme of the room and will be continued on that table.

tracing the design

So, I took the aforementioned table and the wall hanging and paired them up. I placed the art on the table top and with a pencil I traced the flowers where I wanted them on the table. After removing the art I tweaked the tracing a bit to add a petal here and change a petal there. Then came the fun part. With a flat brush I carefully painted the area I'd traced with the same color purple that is on my walls in that room. 

Which leads to this post's  money saving tip! This tip is useful in most areas of life I think. Use your resources! When doing a project (like the artwork on my table) instead of having to match paint colors and nickle and dime yourself with such things as craft store paints; simply use save excess paints from other projects (or in my case entire walls) for use later. I made my table look completely different and it didn't cost me an extra cent!!

beginning of painting

thanks Bentley for not licking the table

It took a couple coats to not be streaky and to match the walls and amazingly enough my overly curious poochie didn't even attempt to lick off the paint!  And now I have a well coordinated artsy-fartsy coffee table!

The red door

The door is red.

No, I'm not talking about communism. I am talking about my front door. It has been painted a deep brick type red as well as the matching house numbers I hand painted. It was fun for me but not so much for the dog. Bentley after having just being bathed was banned from going outside until fully dried. As an alternative to being outside with me he laid by the door breathing heavily into the doorjamb and whining as I painted away. Don't worry, I am not heartless; when he was finally dry and as I began my second coat of paint I allowed him outside with his 8 foot leash caught in the door so he couldn't run off. As a thank you he rolled in the grass collecting all the sand and dead grass on his back that he could.

Painting the door ended up taking a long time (most of the afternoon) for being such a small space. It's a careful job as inevitably people stare at that before they even get to come inside. It's all about first impressions! I used a small foam roller made for doors, trimming and cabinets specifically to not leave streaks. And with such a deep red, many coats had to be applied to ensure even color all over.

The numbers were fun to paint. Positioned directly under the outside light to the left of the door they can be seen even at night. I brought a pen out and drew out the shape and size of the numbers to get an idea before I began painting. I had to thicken them to make them appear bigger so they could be viewed from the street. This took a few tries to get right simply because they seem bigger from close up while painting. So I would stop, walk to the street, and stand at the street for a moment to decide, "the top curve of the 9 and the straight long line of  the 1 should be thicker..." In the end I liked the results and found it relaxing to pretend to be an artist!

Here is the segment of the blog where I give the money saving tip!  
        Two words: oops paint -- Most Lowe's and Home Depot stores have an "oops paint" section in their paint department. It usually consists of small shelving tucked away in a corner or near the paint mixer counters. These shelves will hold any paints that people brought back because they just couldn't get the color quite to their liking. Though, as they say, "one man's trash is another man's treasure!" In this case since the paint is already tinted (and they do not allow changes) it is quite cheap! A $20-25 gallon is usually $5-8 and a $12-15 quart of paint will cost you only $1-5 (Home depot tends to be cheaper for these will the gallons for $5 and the quarts $1. Lowe's varies between brand for oops prices.)

These paints are especially good if you are not sure of the color you want. As in my case with the front door. I often stop by Lowe's or Home Depot on my way home from work in search of any great bargains [see "An Open Door" posting]. So when I peeked at the oops paint and saw a pretty red I figured for $2.50 even if I get home and hate it on the door I can afford to repaint the door and now I have an extra craft paint.

POWER TOOLS!!!

From the start I was working with a small budget for purchasing a house. While the market had gone down significantly it was not finished. This meant that I was looking at lower costing and for the most part older houses. Therefore I expected to have to do improvements. In fact, I actually hoped to have to do improvements. I wanted a place to make my own and what better way than to actually get in there are change it up with my own two hands?! Yep, my own two little hands!

When I told people of all the things I wanted to do to the house I usually ended up with a conversation that went something like this:

"...and then I'm gonna tear down a wall and I'm gonna take out kitchen cabinets and I'm gonna remodel my entire back bathroom and I'm gonna replace the back door and paint the entire house inside and out and install carpet..." [note: very fast, very excitedly speaking]
"Wait, who is doing the work?" [note: very skeptical]
"ME!" [note: even more excited]
"You mean you are going to make the phone calls and write the checks to pay the person that does the work." [note: tone of voice I very much dislike!]
"Nope! I mean ME, I am going to do the work." [note: believe-it-buddy attitude]

You get the point I am sure, but this usually lead to many reasons given to me as to why I cannot do it on my own. Of course I would not do it on my own, I would have help, but I wanted to have a hand in it as well! I wanted to use POWER TOOLS!!!!

To boot, Christmas of 2008 shortly after I bought the house Dad sent me my very own POWER TOOLS!!! They are awesome!! A Skil brand circular saw, a reciprocating saw, an electric drill, an awesome heavy duty flash light, battery pack and charger and even a carrying bag for them! And to boot, they are pretty red!

I love my POWER TOOLS!!!

An open door...part 2

old door handle

Sunday after church and after an excellent lunch at Texas Roadhouse (thanks Mom and Dwight!!)  Dan, Kaylee and I went to Lowe's for the necessary trimmings needed to finish my door. We ended up spending a long time in the store thanks to my indecisiveness and love for browsing their aisles. But in the end I found the trimming I wanted and even priced out the materials I would need for another project coming soon to my house!!

tools!

Due to the uneven lines of the house where the door has been placed; the gap between the house and the door frame is uneven all around. In some areas it is a small barely noticeable gap and in others it is about an inch. The trimming I chose is about 1 and 1/2 inches to ensure complete coverage of the gaps and to overlap the door frame a bit as well. It was $5.90 for 1 10 foot long strip. I also needed spray foam to fill the gaps from the outside of the house. After the spray foam is set a vinyl casing bead (vinyl strip with holes down it) will be places on the outside of the house and stuccoed over to repair the damage done by widening the hole. And to finish I needed a silicone caulking to line the outside bottom part of the door for airtight and weather resistance. The total for all of this was $54.43. And I am hoping to not use one container of stucco and hopefully be able to return it and recoup the $6.96. Every penny counts when you're working on a budget!

new and improved handle

Kaylee is 10 and thus very easily bored when it comes to the "boring adult things" as she has referred to them. But she was great! She entertained herself and us multiple times when she used her young imagination to invent something we could make with whatever was down the aisle we were on at that time. We had a pretty good time all in all. And hey, when you spend about 2 and 1/2 hours in a home improvement store that's asking a lot!

Dan was able to borrow a miter saw from Dave and we're ready to add the trimming.

An open door

It was installation weekend at the Christy-house!

old door

The sliding back door that my house had was the original from the 1973 construction. I suppose it may have been a mighty little door in it's day, but it now is a tired, over worked, rusty, ugly, energy-wasting, bug-lettin'-in, loud, hard-to-open, nuisance of a thing. And with the big dog I have and the little one my roommate has, it gets used many times throughout the day. It's only gotten worse throughout the course of time living in the house. In fact it had gotten to the point that about once a month I would inevitably get stuck outside unable to pry it open. The solution was to simply lift it off the casters, let myself into my house and realign the entire thing. (glad a burglar didn't realize this simple little trick!) It was time for a new door!!

So, the budgeting, bargaining hunting and pricing of doors began. At minimum I found I might be able to spend $400 but the prices went up from there. I did what I do...saved and kept my eyes open for deals. And I guess it's a good thing I've got big eyes; as the shopaholic wolf might say, "better to see the good deals with, my dear."

After work one day I went to Lowe's just for the fun of it (and yes, I really do find it FUN to walk around the home improvement warehouse stores!) and came upon a nice sliding glass door just like what I would need with an impossibly low price. So of course, as is human nature I assumed there was something wrong with it and asked a store associate as much. To my delight the only thing wrong was a missing screen door! I didn't even want a screen in the first place for surely, if my dog didn't go busting through it, I would. After measurements and phone calls I bought the door and the Lowe's employee even threw in $25 shipping (usually $79) my grand total was $224!

[Money saving tip: While of course everyone knows it's smartest to shop around and compare prices; another idea is to look for the things you need before you actually need them. What I mean is if you're planning a project, keep a list of things with you and when you're out and about take a few extra steps down the aisles housing those items. You may be surprised to find a great sale you may have otherwise missed if you waited until you began your project to look.]

Mom and Dwight came from Tallahassee and on Saturday (10.23.2010) morning they came to my house as well as Dan and the kids. Mom loves being Abuela (grandma) to the kids so she gladly took the job of entertaining them while me and the men folk got to work.

We take to heart the saying, "measure twice and cut once" with all the cutting and measuring we've done to this house. And I've yet to have a project be completed without some sort of complications. So first things first, we measured. Thanks to Dwight's construction savvy and skills, I know he'll get it done right and that he knows what to do; so I usually just do what he tells me to. He has been dubbed my personal contractor! (And don't tell Dan I told you, but I've often called him my worker bee.) But he always lets me get in there and do all I can to work on my house myself!

It really wasn't too difficult to take the old frame out (ask the boys, they might have a different thought on that) with a power drill to take out the old screws and a crow bar to pull the frame away from the house it came out and we were ready to put the new one in. And that is where the problems arose. The new door frame was a bit bigger than the hole it was being put into. And the door was made for a wood frame house, not a concrete block structure such as mine. The word "saw" was mentioned and next thing I was cutting vinyl off the side of the new door. At least until my poor little Popeye pre-spinach arms got tired, then Dan and Dwight took turns cutting.

Once that was completed, the boys lifted the door into place. (I was too paranoid to try that; I felt like I would drop the heavy thing every time!) This is where problem #2 showed itself. Even with the leveler showing my door as level, it would not fit into the gaping hole in my house. My house was crooked?? Solution? Saw off the plastic strip on the other side. But alas now the door fit on the sides, but was too tall. You guessed it! The door went under the knife again. However, this third time was not quite good enough. The top of the door was still too tall. So Dwight took chisel and hammer to the outside structure and made room.

With the door in place Dwight used the leveler time and time again to ensure that the door was completely straight and level within it's spot and shims were put in place and screwed into the door frame and wall. The process was long but fun and without Dwight's expertise it would not have happened or at least it would not have happened like it did. Because of removing the plastic stripping on the sides to make it fit in place, there is a gap all the way around the top, left and right sides of the door. Unfortunately there was no more time on Saturday to complete the trim work to close this gap, so the temporary closure was newspaper. That's right, the good ole' Central Florida Future (Go UCF Knights!!) is as we speak within the walls of my house holding my new addition in place!

The beginning

On October 28, 2008 I signed an enormous stack of boring papers legally binding me to the purchase of a house. A 1973 three bedroom, two bath shoebox shaped house in Palm Bay, Fl!

I decided in 2007 that if I moved back to Florida I would look into buying a house to see if it was even a possibility. I had been renting places for 6 years and had moved 9 times and I was tired of seeing my money thrown away never to be seen again. The idea of buying seemed a smart investment, but based on my income and savings and lack of credit, a highly unlikely one.

On one short visit home to Melbourne, I called a mortgage broker who told me that no, it wouldn't be possible for me to buy a house. He said that he would be able to approve me for so little that he believed the house I could get for that amount would be unsuitable for living in or in a neighborhood that was. So, for the moment I let it go and waited until I moved back to Florida from Virginia (moves #6-8) where I'd been living and working as a flight attendant.

However, almost immediately upon moving back (move #9) I knew I needed to pursue this buying idea a little more. So after starting my new job and next part of my life, I began making more phone calls. I was connected to a realtor that was often surprised that I wanted to see houses that were below the amount that I had been approved for and (sometimes) tried to hide her cringes as we walked into houses that were clearly below the standards of most people. So we kept looking. I knew that if I wanted to have financial peace of mind I would buy something costing less than I'd been approved for. After all, I know how I spend and save better than mister-suit-jacket-bank-executive. I also knew I wanted safe and livable.

I found a house online that looked good, very good and I called my realtor. We decided that since the price was so low it was possible there was something hugely wrong with it and that I would go to the house and take a look and if I liked what I saw she would meet me there. After feeling like a bad person for trespassing on well, no one's property and looking through the windows I gave her a call and drove around the neighborhood while waiting for her.

The purchasing process was started and before long I was signing paperwork at the bank on my lunch break. (Big things happen on my lunch breaks! I paid off my car on a lunch break too.) And oh, by the way, it cost less than the amount I was told would get me a "scary" place in 2007. God is GOOD!