bohemian hellhole

The William Morris Project, Week 4

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This is week three of the Pancakes & French Fries William Morris Project, happening every thursday in 2012.

Last week I knocked out quite a few items on my list for 2012. {13 to be exact} This is what I finished this week:

Replaced all the remaining switch plates and outlet covers

Removed the super gross shower door track that was caulked on to our tub. The doors have long been gone.

Replaced the ceiling fan in bedroom #2 with a the light from bedroom #1

Replaced the light in bedroom #1 with a new fancy light

Removed ALL of the wallpaper in the kitchen

Added a shelf above the refrigerator for my radio

Took down the Christmas lights {before January was over-the last possible time that is still reasonable}

Began downsizing the junk in my office corner, but I got overwhelmed and started crying halfway through, so it's not done yet. But hey, I started! Now at least I have more than a tiny corner of the desk available for my computer.

{In my defense, I couldn't keep up with last weeks pace because I was in Seattle all weekend.}

The kitchen here was lovingly wallpapered with a 'Tea' themed border. When I began scraping it off, I realized that the Tea paper was put on over some pretty great vintage rose and ivy wallpaper. 

If that had still been there, I might have left it alone, but there was no saving it. The rose wallpaper was so strongly glued on to the wall that it kept pulling the top layer of sheetrock off as I scraped, leaving behind big dents and chunky places. It took forever. My arms ached, I got sweaty, it was annoying. Eventually, with the aid of some wallpaper stripper, I got through all of it. After the walls were dry again, I skim coated everything with joint compound to even out the craters and scrapes. Once that was dry, I wet sanded it with a kitchen sponge because I hate the mess of drywall dust, especially in a room devoted to food preparation. Now that the skim coat is finished, if you squint, you can pretend the walls are all painted off white.

I love finding little pieces of history while doing projects, it's like getting to know the house. During the removal process, I found the word 'paper' scrawled in cursive along the wall, in two places. I kept hoping to uncover a secret panel harboring someone's money stash, but it didn't happen. {Thanks Nancy Drew}
The wall was also originally painted pink, a discovery that made me quite happy.


{Here's the little shelf I put up over the fridge. The cord is so long, that it just ended up in a big wad behind the radio when it was on the counter. Plus, it kept getting covered in mail, or hidden behind dishes. This way, it has it's own little house.}

Replacing the switch plates in the kitchen was an added bonus because someone had very carefully wallpapered those too. With Tea paper.

I am glad to be done with all of that dusty blue nonsense. What do you think of the lights? Keep them? Replace them? If so, with what? I'd love some ideas!

Listening to the 'College' Pandora station, Alice

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Hellhole Celebrity: Amanda Johnson

via decomyplace

I love these images of Amanda's home. Well, now it's her old home. According to her blog she is moving and planning a whole new beautiful place to live.

Trying to fix my office so that it doesn't hurt to look at it, Alice

Movie Monday: Drive

from here

via S&G Builders

Someday I'll actually post one of these on a Monday. Maybe. Last week we watched 'Drive'. I have to say that I was a bit concerned with the casting. There seems to be some sort of huge love affair with the world and Ryan Gosling that still makes no sense to me. Before I dig myself a hole, I'll just leave it there. Besides that, the soundtrack was good, in a creepy, 'haven't I heard this before somewhere?' kind of way. Afterwards, I just remembered that the bathroom in Irene's apartment had some fantastic green subway tile in it. If I ever have the chance to tile our basement bathroom, it will look like that.

Washing my coat, Alice

Edu Barba ~ Everything you do is art

All prints by Edu Barba and available on Etsy. Prices for prints range from $15-$35. {Wouldn't the heart make a great Valentine for the non-Valentine type?}

Eating lunch, Alice

Yes, another light.

On my list of things to do this year is 'replace the ceiling fan in bedroom #2'. In order to do this, I had to go light shopping. When visiting Hippo Hardware, there was a sign above the knobs and pulls that read 'The Jewelry of your Home'. I have to disagree, I think that lighting is the jewelry, knobs and pulls can be the accessories that compliment the lights. If you change a regular boring light to a fancy pretty one, your room automatically becomes fancy. Just like if you put on a fancy necklace, your jeans and sweater are then fancy. It's easy. Finding the right light isn't always that simple. We visited Seattle this weekend, and since there was still some store credit in my name at the ReStore from the last trip, I took the opportunity to go light hunting. Amy was with me, and she wisely cautioned me against buying a ridiculously gaudy wall sconce that looked like ribbons and tassels, but made of brass. {I still love it} Walking away from it we spotted this light that went unnoticed until then, and I quickly bought it. It is vintage, blown glass and hand painted.

It is a complete and total grandma light, but it is fancy, and shiny, and ended up being perfect in our bedroom, which freed up the 'Nimbus' light for bedroom #2, giving me immediate cause to take down the ceiling fan. When I got it home, I realized that the mounting holes were {as always} abnormally spaced, so I went to work rigging a wider crossbar. What I discovered was that Erector Sets make the perfect small, sturdy additions to mounting plates and crossbars.

They have the exact right size holes, and come with tiny little machine screws and nuts, that don't take up much space, and do a wonderful job making an oddly shaped bespoke piece of lighting hardware. {go run out and buy a little set right away and keep it in your toolbox~you'll thank me later}

Watering the plants, Alice

Someone else's journal

Ryan Worsley's journal doodles. I wish my notebooks were this fun to look through. Read more about Ryan here, or visit her website.

Switching laundry, Alice

Ask Alice: Is it hard to re-wire a lamp?

Dear Alice, I recently purchased a lamp with a frayed cord. Is this easy to fix? Where should I start? ~ Regina

 

via Rental House Rules {where they have how to links and lots of advice on buying second hand lamps!}

Dear Regina, Last week I did an unreasonable amount of little projects, spurred on my the list I made for the William Morris project. Funny you should ask, because one of the things I did was to repair and re-wire a lamp. This little light was given to me years ago by a dear friend for Christmas. I used it, and moved it, and eventually broke it. Somewhere along the line I also lost the threaded rod that held it all together. It sat in a drawer, or a box or a bag for seriously 9 years, and I could never bring myself to just get rid of it. I also never managed to fix it until this week.

The first thing to do is inspect what you do have, is your lamp complete? Does it have a socket, switch, cord? Is it stable? Do you need to add feet, or like me a new threaded rod to hold it all together?

This is a diagram of basic parts. Not all lamps are identical, but they usually include a healthy dose of these parts. {via glassart3}

When I got out my bag of parts, I realized the the bakelite piece holding the socket together was broken. I decided the best way to fix it was superglue and duct tape. It works quite well, and no one will ever know. Except you. Then, I made a list, went to the hardware store and purchased a lamp kit. It was the easiest thing to do, it came with extra nuts and washers, as well as two threaded rods. I needed a cord too, to I took one off of a super lame Ikea lamp that was in my give away pile. {free!}

The lamp I have is basically a bunch of parts, stacked on top of a threaded rod. It was like a giant beading project, only I didn't lose all the beads. I started by threading the socket cap onto the rod, and then adding parts down to the base. The rod was longer than what I needed, so I marked it, and cut it off with my very favorite English hack saw, the 'Break Neck'. It's so lovely, and so handy!

After that was done, I added a washer and two nuts, forming a lock nut on the end of the rod. This keeps the whole thing firmly together. The next step was the actual wiring.

I threaded my lamp cord through the rod, up through the socket cap, and stripped about half an inch off each side.

{you may say 'hey, I can totally see that duct tape!', just wait.}

Twist these wire ends so that they don't fray out and poke you in the finger.  Each socket has connections that vary a bit, this lamp just had little 'tunnels' that I sent the stripped wire into, then tightened down the connection screw on top of the wire. {lamps are simple circuits, unless you have a crazy fancy light that has computers or AI inside it, you don't really have to worry which side each wire goes to}

Once the connecting screws are nice and tight you can add the finishing touches, socket sleeve, harp {if relevant}, shade and bulb. I do not recommend a CFL. If you are really worried about how much electricity you use in your lamps, buy a halogen bulb please. Other wise you might end up with a brain cloud. I am not kidding, CFL bulbs can do you in.

That's about it. If you have further questions, ask in the comment section below, and I will do my best to help!

Washing clothes, Alice

Ask Alice: What am I doing wrong?	Ask Alice: How do I put up wallpaper?	Ask Alice: Is it hard to re-wire a Lamp?

The William Morris Project, Week 3

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This is week three of the Pancakes & French Fries William Morris Project, happening every thursday in 2012.

 

Well, I finally made my list of things I would like to get done in 2012 during the William Morris Project. It seems like each time I cross something off, I add at least one more on. Some of the items may never get done, ever; and some of them I should be able to do in my sleep. Regardless, they are all mixed in together, and I am working through them in no particular order. So far I think I am up to 29 things crossed off the list that includes over 150 items.

This last week I managed to:

Fix a giant crack in the living room ceiling

Patch holes and paint the dining room

Fix a gap in the floorboard

Paint bedroom #2

Purge closet items and books in bedroom #2

Organize the closet shelves in bedroom #2

Replace the sink strainers {the ones that came with the house neither plugged nor drained...annoying}

Remove terrible built in shelves in the entrance to the kitchen

Trim out the archway into the kitchen from the dining room to match the rest of the house

Fix the cabinet above the refrigerator so that the bottom doesn't fall out

Remove one walls worth of wallpaper border in the kitchen.

Put up a kitchen towel hook

Repair a lamp that has been in pieces for like 9 years

{Perhaps the list helped? Maybe it made me neurotic.}

Most of these items were not documented.

This is what happened to the terrible kitchen shelves. Here they are as we found them while touring the house for the first time.

The day we moved in I took off the contact paper. Since then I have been glaring at them, cursing their ability to harbor junk. It was just so easy to put things on them that really belonged somewhere else. It wouldn't seem that bad until one day I would realize there was a huge pile of household cast offs hanging out in a very conspicuous spot. How can things like that go unnoticed? What is my problem? I still haven't figured it out. But I decided to take action against the shelves the second I got the 'OK'. This happened to be in the evening, while the kitchen was a complete disaster from a wallpaper removal project. I tend to take the same approach to all endeavours as I do when hanging wallpaper.  Whenever there are at least ten other things that need my attention more, I take on a messy project. The following photographs prove this with their un-biased counter top depiction.

One board at a time, I took them down. I had to break off the long nails that stuck out from the wall, and then counter sink them into the wood again. The top and wall pieces I left there, since they were part of my trim plan. I used all the wood I removed to trim the archway out. {this is a personal issue, I really hate un-trimmed doorways. They remind me of cheap construction, or bad apartments I've lived in. Maybe that's the same thing.} The goal was to make this opening to look like all the other door frames in the house. Using the wood that was removed in the process resulted in trim that looked like it had always been there.

The casing trim I found in the garage, and since there was a need for something along the wall, I cut a little piece of shoe molding to fit along the top trim and the linoleum backsplash. I had to whittle it with my Victorinox. {I didn't even cut my hand, which would have been normal}

After it was all said and done, there are still some things I would like to tweak, like for example, sand the whole thing down to bare wood and re-stain it so that the color isn't blotchy...but that's not on the list for this year. it is finished to this point, and I am so happy with how open and simple it is now. Before there was so much visual noise. {the wallpaper didn't help}

{pictures taken at night=dark and grainy photographs} These images really showcase the awful hardware in the kitchen, as well as the before/after wallpaper border look. The floors look amazing too! Wow, more to add to the list.

Wishing it was warm, Alice

 

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

New pieces from Agapantha!

all available at Agapantha!

One of my favorite jewelry designers just put up a few new pieces on her site, they are beautiful.

Just wanted you to know...

Spraying lysol, Alice

More Yellow Bathroom Ideas

via Barn Light Electric

Martha Stewart's Nimbus Cloud

via Etsy

available at Lowes for around $4 each

Anthropologie's Fresno Towels via Retro Renovation

I found this light at Barn Light Electric by accident, while looking for something else. The yellow seemed....familiar, but not trusting my computer screen to accurately match color, I requested a finish sample from them. Sure enough, it was a perfect match. That light is now officially on my shopping list, probably a pair, flush-mounted.

The walls are still up for debate, I am leaning towards Martha Stewart's Nimbus Cloud, although some vintage yellow rose wallpaper would also be wonderful. {not sure if I can even wallpaper the bathroom} I found the Whistle Knobs at Lowes, and they meet my knob and pull standards {not hollow on the back,  smooth to the touch, or at least pleasant, no sharp or gritty feeling parts, easy to clean, simple....etc}. All of this should go well with my vintage towel collection, or maybe a few new, vintage styled towels are in order...

Organizing the closet, Alice