Bathroom Cabinet

Hey guys, we've been hiding out, mostly because we can't get a ton done every week.  There's this pesky work and studying we have to do, and it's a real drag.

I popped into Sherwin Williams on a day I was erranding around like a crazy person, and picked up a quart of cabinet and door paint, ProClassic Interior Acrylic Latex in Sea Salt,
a near-white that had a lovely green-gray tint.  Some bad things have been happening to our kitchen cabinets, like being used, and I wanted to regroup on the paint I thought we could use for them because something or other has not held up and the paint/primer needed to change before the top cabinets could be attempted.

The bathroom cabinet is just a pair of the same cabinets in the kitchen, so it was all of the same effect with none of that pesky finishing the initial project result.  I researched a lot, and decided to trust in the knowledge of the internet and NOT sand the bathroom cabinet down.  This means I could do it in the middle of the night!  A time I am not booked by any outside entities or needed for human interaction with Alex or confined by the concept of decency to neighbors.

I scrubbed the cabinet doors, false drawer fronts, and frame down with no-rinse TSP to get any speck of grime off, and let them dry well.  I have a dish brush set aside especially for this that fit into the grooves on our doors.  Then, I laid them out on the dining table.  My grandmother would not have minded, that woman did all kinds of projects on the table including gallons of poly.  I met them.  Also, I used a drop cloth, so it's fine.

I primed them with Zinssner 123, which I now love because I read you can recoat after one hour.  One hour?! That's so much faster than four.  I got a real leg up on time management in this project, even though the shop should not be open that late.  Both coats of primer did not happen in one night, but it was very exciting to know Jane's window to ruin my work would not be nearly as long.  The painter's pyramids came in handy here again, as I was able to do both sides and walk away so fast.

The cabinet frame was a little trickier, because I could not remove that to the safety of another room.  So I had to be quiet and not let my X Files viewing bother Alex, who has a real life and places to be.  I only have places I should try to be, and things I should be reading, and things I should be studying, but that's for the next day's Jenn to worry about.

I followed up with one coat of paint per day, because I do really try to do those other things I discussed.  This lovely man put the hardware back on and rehung the doors, added soft-close hinge adapters (purchased with kitchen cabinet supplies) to the doors, added new knobs, and added tip-outs to the drawer fronts, and I did a bit of patching and touchup.  Then, Alex went to Austin and I let the paint cure.

Overall, this was an extremely fast test project.  The paint was around $20 on promotion at Sherwin-Williams, the pulls (six, including two for additional storage we still need to determine) were $4 each, and the soft-close add-ons were in the large package of 25 we purchased for the kitchen, about $3 each.  The  whole thing came in around $50, and we have a less noisy, cluttered sink area to make our mornings (and nights!) a little smoother while seeing how we feel about the cabinet paint.

Over a month later, we're quite happy with the cabinet and door paint's durability, and I am quite ready to get back in the kitchen and wrap it up for good!

Living Room Joy

We moved around a lot the first five years we were a unit - three apartments before we were ready to buy.  It was very apparent that we would not be staying in any of them for long (too Pittsburgh, too pricey, too awful) and so we sat on a lot of things we didn't hate, but didn't love either.  One example is a brown and blue rug that we bought six years ago in Pittsburgh, when we were engaged.  It was an indoor/outdoor carpet, and suited our needs in the subsequent apartments well.  We got here, and knew this was going to be our home for the next five years, minimum, and I knew that I was over the rug.

The Kon-Mari method, detailed in the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, has been working for us in some areas, like clothing.  We're not people who buy fancy clothes, and I buy a lot of mine in resale and consignment shops, because I hate waste and these are in reasonable enough shape.  Meanwhile, Alex is a fancy-man, and by that I mean we buy a bunch of decent (mostly non dry clean, definitely no-iron) clothes for him at a time and go with that.  I would rather buy some fruit with our dollars.  So, my sweet husband read about Kon-Mari, and we suddenly had a space-cleaner here.  Which is great!  But he advanced from his well-selected clothing to things, and I am still stuck on where do I put these laundry supplies so that I don't lose it later.


And in the living room, all cooped up this winter, I knew the carpet had to go.  It was too dark, and our more recent sofas (by the showrooms of Craigslist, thank you very much) did not exactly cooperate.  We'd purchased a smaller, lighter rug, at the people's store of Target, but the cats.... let us know how much they liked it.  So it did not go back out when we moved here, but the blue did and I remembered how much I did not want it for the living room.  We discussed buying one, and searching resale, and new cat-friendly materials like FLOR tiles and sisal, etc.  But we're frugal.  And there's really not anything wrong with the old one, other than not working anywhere like I want it to.

I realize how difficult I might sound, but I was just over the brown-blue, and I finally told Alex, that I had to Kon-Mari it.  "IT IS NOT BRINGING ME JOY."  I think he understood then.  We found one that mostly fit the bill at Costco - which happens to stock indoor/outdoor rugs every year after Christmas and is where our last one came from.  We didn't pull the trigger, and then when my mom was in town after a small surgery (carpal tunnel, and she is fine now) she and my brother and I went to Costco.

Also, my brother and I are not really allowed to go to Costco, according to his person, but that's too bad, because I have a car and we have weekdays free together, sometimes.  So I found the rug, which was on sale (at Costco, that's like the lottery!) and had my cash money ready, and my mom sweetly offered to buy it for my upcoming birthday.  I felt a bit funny about it, and mulled it while Trev and I found lots of other things we had been meaning to find, and then Alex gave the thumbs up on the rug and I let her buy it because the year you buy a home is so freaking expensive, it's not funny.

We went out carousing for pizza and beer (I had a salad and only a little pizza) and came home, then after she left Alex and I put it out.  It is a little narrower than our previous rug, and I love it.  A few weeks went by and we went to a local carpet shop and had a carpet pad cut to fit under it, for a whopping $5 per square yard - and it is puppy and animal slave heaven, so cushy and lovely.

Of course, if you give a girl a carpet, she will probably want some curtains....

Making orchids happy

Historically, our home has not been a great place for plants.  We tried container gardening one spring and summer, and again the following year, but Jane mostly just wanted to play in the pots while they were inside.  The past few years have only really involved herbs in our lives, until this year with some pepper plants and tomatoes on the deck as well.

 

This summer, we gave orchids a try.  They were just the normal potted kind from Whole Foods, but I was able to keep a number of them alive and have had some for over six months.  If you are not so great with regular maintenance, orchids might be a good plant to try - they take 1/4 cup of water once every week or week and a half, and are absolutely gorgeous when they bloom.  People think you know what you're doing!  Most recently, two bloomed so full their containers continued to tip over and spill their bark, perhaps with some cat-sistance.

I finally roped Alex into going to the garden center with me.  He really ought to go so I don't buy 37 pots of ridiculous scale and colors for our tiny home, but sometimes your wife drags shopping out because of her inability to decide so errands seem more like torture. Also, everything might end up pink and/or neon bright if he doesn't.  We chose some gold colored pots for the living room, and were happy to find a metal option that would not break if it were Jane-d off the sill like many a clay pot has... 

We learned a bit about orchids from a very helpful man in the greenhouse at Gethsemane Garden Center.  These beautiful plants naturally grow on trees in the jungle, with roots extending around the branches to anchor and obtain moisture.  Hence, the plants don't need to be planted in dirt to receive nutrients, instead a bit of mossy potting mix is sufficient, and bark can be added.  So, basically a great fit for a Jane-home, as she doesn't have much to dig in.  To repot the plants, an only slightly larger container is needed, as it just needs to have some breathing room for the roots, and not much water around.  The environment should really be mostly dry, which is why special orchid pots have ventilation in their sides.  We didn't ultimately choose those, but there is still lots of time left for me to pick up ones I liked at the Home Depot...

When removing the plants from the old container, it is best to wait until the plant is not in a blooming cycle.  I totally disregarded this rule, as I had the supplies, the knowledge, and wanted to get something productive done while Alex was away.  It is important to maintain as much of the live rooting as possible, but ok to remove parts that are dead.  Also, to trim off dead stems.  You can test either by snipping off a small part to check for a green center (wick), and sometimes the dead parts will just pop off.  It may be easier to cut the previous container if the roots have grown around it, and it's important to untangle roots that are shaped like a sphere or with a hollow in between - this would be formed around a tree branch in nature, but there's no such stabilizing structure in a pot.

The plants were actually repotted into smaller plastic containers that I placed inside the pot on top of a layer of stones for drainage.  If we need to repot in the future, we have room for larger ones to fit as well.  I also added stones to the bottom of the plastic planter to help with balance - orchids can become quite top-heavy - then the potting mix around the roots and finally some bark on top to break down as needed.

After everything is stable in the base of the container, it's necessary to stake orchids, as their blooms become quite heavy for the slender stems to hold up.  I had a few bamboo stakes held over from last summer, and just used those in the pots.  They were inexpensive, I think $2-3 each, and I actually scored and snapped long ones in half with a sturdy pair of garden shears to fit some of our pots.  Most orchids come with miniature claw clips anchoring them to a slim stick, but the bamboo is sturdier and taller which is probably necessary if the plants are large enough to repot.  I've also been short of clips and just tied them up with several loops of thread.



While I had a drop cloth down and dirt on the dining room table, I decided to repot other plants that were around our place.  We had a few that were in a larger container that needed more room to continue to grow, and one that had already earned its own pot and needed another upgrade.  I ran short on containers, and removed the handle from this basket for a tentative solution - it has a plastic liner, so I could remove it and spray paint if I really can't stand the wood tone any longer.