I've Been A Busy, Busy Girl ...

I have had a very productive few weeks as far as my house goes. I'm getting to be quite good at fixing things too :) Case and point - when we moved in, we knew there was some kind of leak in the kitchen sink. The cabinet was all mildewed and nasty and everything was damp. In an effort to find the leak and fix it, we turn on the faucet to full blast and even ran the dish washer - nothing made it leak! We finally just decided they had fixed the leak but not repaired the cabinet (or even cleaned it out at all - so gross). Then last week I heard my husband yell for me in the kitchen while he was rinsing some paint brushes. All of the water from the sink had poured directly in to the cabinet below. It was a paint covered mess, but after I wiped everything up I quickly identified the problem:

Yep - the pipe was completely undone. No matter what I did with pushing it, it would just come right back undone, so apparently the previous owners had tried to defy gravity and hope for the best on this one. Obviously that  didn't work out so well. I sent a picture to my dad and he explained to me how to fix it. Apparently there is a clear, angled, gasket-type piece inside that needs to have the flat side facing the receiving pipe before you screw the connector down. If it isn't facing the right direction, it won't hold onto anything. Such a simple thing that apparently the former owners never bothered to look into. It seriously took me a few minutes, but I felt so accomplished :)

Also, I had taken down the beige colored mini blinds in our office when we painted and I hadn't put anything back in their place yet. It sounds silly, but it kind of freaked me out to work in that room at night because there could be someone standing right at my window watching me and I couldn't see them. Ridiculous, yes; easy problem to solve? Yes :) I went to Target and grabbed a new set of white mini blinds for $3.99 (I knew they were cheap, but who knew they were THAT cheap!) and installing them took literally 2 minutes because the pieces that screw into the wall to hold the blinds up were exactly the same as the previous ones = no hole drilling! Yay :) I just screwed the new piece to the wall, slid the blinds in place and we were good to go. No more feeling like I'm being watched in there, lol. Also, I left the previous anchors in the wall as well because I knew I would put up a curtain. I had already brought all my curtains and rods from my condo over to the house, so I decided to put one up while I was working on the window. Another 2 minutes later et voilà!

Obviously this picture wasn't finessed - I actually just took a quick shot to show my husband what I did that night. I still have to get tie backs up and I don't keep the curtains apart like that at the top, but at least it's an improvement :)

I also finished a painting project about a month ago, but I've been so unenthused with it that I haven't remembered to take pictures until now. I finished this the same week as my desk, lol. Remember this guy?

I blogged about this trash can back here with other items I had thrifted around then. It was originally a very 70s green (as evidenced from the inside of the can) and the previous owner had painted it this tan color. I knew I wanted it for my sewing room. First I removed the handle piece and cleaned it well, then painted both handle pieces black with Rustoleum Gloss Protective Enamel Spray Paint. Then, I primed and painted the can and lid white with Rustoleum Semi-Gloss Protective Enamel spray paint. I made sure to do several coats of primer and then several coats of paint until it was nice and even. I also did inside the lid and inside the top edge of the can and the bottom. Since a trash can tends to get pretty banged around, I topped it off with 3 coats of Minwax Polycrylic Protective Spray Finish in Clear Satin. This is the same poly I used for my desk and it's worked very well so far :)

Once I had it painted, I decided it needed a little something to fancy it up. Originally I wanted to do the same stencils from my desk in black, but I didn't have any black paint on hand that matched the black of the hardware - and frankly, I was impatient. I wanted to get it done and in the room, so I just used the leftover paint from the sewing room - Valspar's Signature in Icy Mint. This was my big mistake, as you can see here"

Oh, wait. You mean you can't see anything? Yeah, neither can I or anyone else who looks at it. Here is a contrast adjustment to show you what I actually did:

So, the scrolly stencils are definitely on there, but they completely disappear from the light color. It's even worse in my sewing room with the walls all that same color mint - you really can't see anything.

This project was a bit of a bummer - at least the can was only $6. One of these days I will redo the stencils in black, but at the moment it's at least done and usable. I've got plenty of other things i need to work on first :)

I have two other much bigger completions from the past week, but they deserve a post to themselves, so check in a little later to see what else I finished up!