The only important content here is cats

So you'd think we'd be getting things done. I'm raring to go. I have tons of plans. But... I am not good at follow-through.

Not gonna lie. I am TERRIBLE at follow-through. But we did one thing. A minor transformation.

We turned this:

Into this:

Magic! Amiright!? No?? We also got chairs! Cool, right?!

Um, look, cats!

In boxes!

On chairs!

Do you want more?

OK, ok.... I will give you a teensy weensy hint as to what our next big project is going to be:

Imagination was needed for this setup

Hopefully we will be getting to a few things this weekend; we will see!

The rest of the weekend

Sooooooo... it's been kind of a crazy week and this has been sitting in my drafts for a while, so I'm just going to publish it as-is with a handful of edits. (Ok, not gonna lie, by "crazy week," I really mean "lazy week which involved a lot of couch time and microwave dinners. Also never try driving to Trader Joe's when there is a soccer game.")

Over the rest of Sunday, Adamo and I got a few more things done:

Unpacked/organized the pantry

Added a knife rack! We have a lot of knives. 

Put together the lawn mower (finally!!)

Mowed the lawn!! 

It's so nice and not-scraggly, now!
Except in the back where the orange jewelweed is out of control.

Added a bathroom hook in the bathroom

Took the door off of the sitting room built-in to make a desk/bookcase/towel storage area

Things still left to do:

• Find someone licensed to hook up the freaking stove T_T
• Fix the awful plumbing in the kitchen drainpipe
• Finish the edging/thresholds in the kitchen
• Replace the baseboards I broke
• Add our pull-out trash bins
• Power-wash the garage roof moss garden and add zinc flashing to prevent new growth
• Hang some curtains. Any curtains. It'd be nice to have some privacy.
• Paint some of the rooms so that the whole house isn't the same color
• Paint some Kilz in the basement stairs so it doesn't smell 
• Find a small pull-out couch for our office
• Add a bathroom downstairs... :P 
• Get distracted from doing all those things by playing with the cats and eating cupcakes while Adamo is gone this weekend! 

The dryer is finally hooked up!

Yesterday (after I finished putting towel racks on the kitchen cart) my parents and my brother stopped by for a visit. They brought us an extremely generous housewarming gift of a patio set, and helped us set it up!

You guys are the best!

And since that wasn't nice enough, my dad also helped Adamo set up the dryer vent. The old vent was crappy and falling apart, so it needed to be replaced before we could use it. It had a ten-year-old newspaper and a pair of men's underwear stuffed in it so that various animals couldn't just crawl in the basement. Nice. (I handled the grundies with gloves.)

We had decided that it would be easier to simply remove the boarded up window where the vent went out to, because there was a GIANT RUBBLE PILE in the way of accessing it under the porch.

Seriously, wtf?!

It was a really bad time removing the board, though, because it was screwed on with millenia-old screws. Same with the vent itself on the board. 

Look at that teamwork

Luckily, my dad and Adamo are the greatest and managed to acquire some replacement screws and attach everything back up again. 

Aww, I can't see outside anymore. 

Then my dad and Adamo hooked up the tubey part of the vent (that's a technical term). We used the semi-firm stuff because I saw a youtube video where some guy lit the squishy kind on fire and OMG NO I JUST CANNOT HANDLE THAT.

Hooray, we can do laundry at last! Without any fire!

We also put a cabinet we got from craigslist next to the washer for a bit of storage. (One door will be used to the trash pull-out in the kitchen!)

I guess we could put toilet paper in there for the Lonely Basement Toilet

Meanwhile, Kevin was going around on a spider annihilation mission, using the spider repellent that I made. I guess it kills them, too. 

He cleared out the entrance to the basement like a true hero

My mom and I mostly aimlessly wandered around the first floor and basement, but at one point my mom found these weird brass things in the ceiling space. Why were they there? What are they??

Seriously, anyone know what they are??? 

We didn't accomplish much else because we got distracted by pizza and the Apple TV, but it was a super productive day! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to do about 276842184645 loads of laundry. 

While Adamo was sleeping

So I'm going to start off by saying that I finally unpacked my camera. Unfortunately, it doesn't take very good pictures. You were warned.

I woke up at an ungodly early hour with an obscene desire to actually get out of bed. So I figured I'd just do one or two little things... starting with a little hook for my onion goggles on the kitchen cart.

Don't judge me, I'm sensitive!

Then I figured that since Adamo was still asleep, I could add those cabinet handles I bought at IKEA to create towel rods. (My first IKEA hack! -wipes a tear-) Bonus points that I got to be the first one to use our new drill bits.

Please ignore the sawdust

After I finished the first one, I realized I probably should have taken pictures so that I actually had something to talk about the next time I wrote a blog entry. Luckily, there were two handles! So here is a step-by-step of what I did, in case you have an IKEA Stensorp cart and want to add some towel racks. (For the racks, I used the 17½" Lansa cabinet handles.)

First, I basically eyeballed where to place the handle. I figured if I was off by a little, no one besides Adamo would notice. :P

It's crooked; don't trust it!!

Then I somewhat haphazardly squiggled carefully marked where to drill with a pencil at the top of the prong-thingies. (That's a technical term.) Forget the fancy drill templates you can get from IKEA; I am a rebel who can kinda measure stuff for myself!

Please ignore the mess and my morning hair

At this point Adamo woke up (probably because of all of the banging and drilling) and started taking pictures. And by taking pictures, I mean leaving the camera where it was on the counter but pushing the button for me. He is to blame for the weird faces I was making when I started drilling.

This face was the least weird

The Lansa handles call for a 3/16" hole, but I was nervous about wrecking the paint, so I did a starter hole of 1/8". I have no idea if that was actually necessary, but it seemed to help. I wish I had put painter's tape where I drilled, though, because the paint did end up chipping a bit. 

But with the base of the handle there, you can barely tell!

Not gonna lie, screwing the handles on was really annoying. Basically, I couldn't see what I was screwing into. At all. Not that it's necessary to figure out where the hole to screw into is necessary or anything!

One down, only five or so swears to get there

Unfortunately, despite my incredibly careful measuring, I was off by about two millimeters for the other side of the handle. It wouldn't have been a problem if the screws were a little longer (or the Stensorp a little thinner), but so goes my luck. 

I am saying, "$*^&#!! %^*$@!! *%$&# *&@$#!!!!!"

At first I just thought I was being particularly dense about managing to get the screw at the appropriate spot (it was really hard to tell since I couldn't even *see* where it was supposed to go). So I drilled a 1/2" hole for the top of the screw to fit into so that I had a little more length to wiggle the screw where I needed it.

reeeeeally should have used painter's tape to prevent chipping here :(

That did the trick and I was FINALLY able to attach the handle completely. 

Hooray!

A quick cleanup later and I had an added-function kitchen cart! 

Wow, I wonder why the kitchen suddenly became clean...?

Then I made some homemade spider repellent, because Adamo is amazing and has started the massive project of vacuuming all of the spiders and webs in the basement.

Like my label?

The next kitchen project is going to be adding a pull-out trash and recycling center to where our trash compactor used to be. We found a cabinet on craigslist that almost matched ours and snatched it up so that we can use the door to attach to the pull-out unit. 

It is also being used to stop the cats from going behind the cabinets.

That is going to be a big project, because we are going to need to build a base for the pull-out unit to rest on. That is obviously going to match even less, but we are also planning on painting the cabinets so that I can bear them for a couple more years before we remodel.