Adjusting to the green

It's been a week, and I'm getting used to the green. I did make a few more adjustments, though.

Most of my picture frames were dark colours:

I bought some new frames, but for the large pictures, I could only find black frames, so I painted them. (The new black frames, not the original ones, in case I want to go back.)

And I bought a new clock for $3 at IKEA, and I painted that, too.

I also painted some light switch covers. (They were gold, which wasn't enough contrast and is not my favourite in general.)

I'm much happier with the colour now.

Project #3

The next project was pretty straightforward - paint the living room.

Of course, I actually decided to start on a whim, which made it more work than it needed to be. I bought the paint Saturday morning and started cleaning out the room. Removing the furniture, pictures, and outlet covers took about three hours before we could start to paint.

I painted the ceiling while Wanda painted the trim. By that point, we were exhausted, so we stopped for the day.

On Sunday, we finished the trim, did a second coat, and started on the walls. We got two coats of primer and 1/2 a coat of paint done.

On Monday, I finished the coat of paint and did a second coat, then did another coat of trim and touched up the ceiling. I finished painting at 4:20.

The Pathfinders arrived for our meeting at 6:30.

It's very green. Maybe a little too green.

I may end up painting above the fireplace the same colour as the trim.

Of course, first there's project #4 to deal with.

Project #2

When I talked about the jewellery hanger I made, I mentioned using a piece of scrap wood. I didn't mention where that wood was from.

You see, many years ago (pre-blog), I had my upstairs bathroom redone. As part of that work, they needed to access the pipes & wires in the downstairs bathroom ceiling, which was done with those foam tiles that get stapled up. They cut a hole so they could take one down (with my permission).

Of course, you can't really fix that well, and the ceiling has been less than ideal ever since.

The main room downstairs has a similar problem, but it's even more complicated. (I want to move a bathroom wall to create a bigger shower, and move the door, and ....) Since I was just re-doing the bathroom ceiling, I needed something that would work on a small scale, but that could be removed if necessary.

I pulled down the tiles and bought some 1x4s. I painted the boards white and started screwing them in place.

Half of the boards went length-wise, half across the width.

When I was done, I caulked the gaps and painted it again.

Project #1

One of the things I've been doing for the last few weeks is working on projects around the home.

Just after Easter, I saw a necklace holder on Pinterest. (I really should stay off that app!) It looked interesting, and we'd just had sparkling lemonade for Easter, so I saved the bottle and got to work.

I soaked off the label and painted the bottle with a few coats of blue food coloring mixed with mod podge. I wasn't thrilled with how it looked, so I did one last coat of green food coloring and mod podge.

Next, I found a scrap board and drilled a 1" hole in it. (Well, actually, I drilled a 3/4" hole, then discovered it wasn't big enough and tried again.)

A coat of paint and a bunch of cup hooks, and it was done.

The Saga of the Soap

Sometime last year, I was walking through the dollar store and I saw some soap.

Now, I don't normally buy soap at the dollar store, but it smelled nice and it was a big bar of soap, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I didn't start using it until fall - probably October or November. I was pretty excited to try it, because I really liked the smell.

It really did smell nice.

Well, at least until I got it wet. Then it smelled like death.

(But it was a really big bar of soap.)

After a couple of days, it only smelled a little like death, so I kept using it.

And kept using it.

And kept using it.

In fact, it's now May and I'd say there's probably 1/3 of it left.

It was a pretty good deal.

Except for the smell.