Got Pumpkins?

The secret is that I really have a fondness for junk, especially nostalgic junk. I like antique and secondhand shops. I like yard sales.

And I like our attic. Thus the reason I continue to post pictures of The Stuff that comes out of it. Here are a couple other items M and A dragged down today:





The ship paintings look much better in the photo... in person, the black lines are this odd, ropy, licorice like material. The doll has clearly seen better days...her hands and head have fallen off; the arms appear to have been repaired with tape at some point.

Speaking of POs and their crap, our neighbor reported to M that he ran into the POs somewhere. Who told him that they 'left the place in great shape'. Ha. Ha. Ha. Oh, and in case anyone reading this isn't already cynical about taking advice from the folks staffing Home Depot, let me inform you that one of our POs now works there. Think about that.

Polishing Poo

This is not going to be the sort of inspiring 'I salvaged this door from the den of a wizened hermit, wrestling bears and mountain lions along the way; then I stripped it with 10 kinds of strippers (all reviewed here for your convenience), sanded and stained it back to its old luster and fitted it with the knobs I salvaged from another wizened hermit' story you usually find in houseblogs.

No. This is an ugly door. It probably cost $15. You can reach underneath it and stick your hand up the bottom and into the door. Seriously. I've encountered hollow doors before, but never ones quite like this, which doesn't even bother with a piece of...whatever it's made of...across the bottom.

At some point in the future, we are going to replace the cheap!doors with real doors that you can't accidentally kick holes in. (I suspect there will be some not-so-accidental holes in these when that day comes.) But at this point, we have other, more expensive priorities that do not involve trimming, hanging, and possibly reframing doors. The current doors fulfill their function of opening and closing (...mostly), so for now they stay, even if they are festering eyesores. But...they are so, so festering. And I have to look at them.

In particular, I have to look at this one:

when I get up in the morning. (Yes, I tried cleaning it when we moved in. Really.)

After slapping a coat of white paint on the bathroom door (which is directly across from the bed; oh, the horror) the other week, I realized that it does make a big enough difference in the room that it isn't actually a waste of time to paint something we're going to get rid of eventually anyway.

So after putting another coat of paint on the window frame today, I decided to use the rest of the paint in the tray to put a coat on the door. I didn't bother cleaning it first (blasphemy) because I learned from the previous attempt that it's not possible.

First coat in progress (ooh, contrast):



First coat drying:



Better, yes? (Ignore the frame.)

The window:

A picture of its previous incarnation is in this post.


And here's a picture of our crepe myrtle in bloom to make up for all those ugly door pictures:

Shiny new look?

So I haven't been posting much, but I have been continuing my search for a sensible, intuitive graphics program I can run on my Mac. Thus far I've tried LiveQuartz, Inkscape, Seashore, and Lineform. I won't review them here, save to say that I've spent a lot of time shouting at the computer. I spent 10 years using Micrografx Picture Publisher (which, admittedly, had its own share of issues) and I've yet to find anything else that combines versatility with straightforward, easy-to-find controls in the same way.

At any rate, Lineform and LiveQuartz were adequate enough together that I finally made a header for the blog. I'm not entirely sure I like it, but I don't entirely like the house, either, so there you go. The muddy, retro look is ugly, but ultimately what I was aiming for.

In other news: a plumber showed up last week (yes! really!) and we now have a working washing machine. We can wash clothes in our own house.

More remiss (and ultimately insignificant in the face of the giant mess that is our house) updates to come.

Foiled Again!

What's wrong with this picture?



Yup, another curtain disappointment. I don't believe I wrote about the first case -- about a month ago, I ordered a pair of 36" curtains from Target, only to discover that this measurement was actually the average of a set wherein one curtain was 35" and the other 37" rather than any indicator of the curtains each being, say, 36".

So, back they went to Target, leaving me to once again hunt for curtains that come in a wide enough size range that I can get matching curtains for the two very differently sized windows in the master bedroom.

I found what I was looking for at BrylaneHome, where they had grommet cotton panels in a wide range of lengths. The smaller two panels arrived this week (other set is on backorder); I immediately unwrapped one of them and showed it gleefully to A (who was here scraping floors and walls) and crowed about finally having even, matching curtains...before I took the second one out of the package. Ah, the folly of hubris -- as you can see, I learned tonight that, despite both packages being labeled 52"x30", one curtain is, in fact, 52"x34".

&#%@.