Last Monday was a Federal holiday, so I had the day off from work. Jim’s office was open, so he had to go in [poor hubby!]. Since I had the day to myself, I decided to see how much I could get done. From 7:00-9:00AM I cleaned the rat cage which made the girls very happy! From 9:00-11:00AM I ran errands and cleaned up the condo. From 11:00-noon I relaxed on the couch and ate an early lunch while watching the Olympics.
Yesterday I couldn’t sit still. I kept trying to relax on the couch and enjoy the Olympics with my husband [which I managed to do somewhat] but there was a lot of sporadic DIY activity mixed in. So while my husband was at the gym, I decided to rip the ugly coat rack off the wall in the upstairs hallway. I never understood why the previous owner of the condo put it there – it’s not in a room, it’s not near a door, it’s not near anything relevant.
Yesterday, while relaxing on the couch with hubby, I glanced up towards the ceiling and remembered I’d bought off-white spray paint for the recessed lighting trim. A couple of quick trips to the basement and they were ready to go back up, with 2 fresh coats of off-white spray paint. They look awesome! Off-white, FTW!!!
I’ve been plotting to build a 2nd cat platform. The one I built in the dining room window was such a huge success that I’ve been itching to start constructing another. I decided the window at the top of the stairs would be perfect, since Darwin already loves to sit on that windowsill, and Bonkers loves when I hold him up so he can enjoy the view too.
Last time I cleaned our basement cage was summer 2012. It was so neat and tidy! Somehow between summer 2012 and February 2014 it looked like a bomb went off – you couldn’t even walk into the cage! So I spent 4 hours yesterday moving pretty much everything out of the cage, vacuuming the space with my new shop vac, and laying down our old living room rug for a nice, homey feel. Then I moved everything back in, with a new layout.
So… yesterday afternoon, to distract myself from the train wreck of the girl cave bookcase and ceiling lights, I grabbed one of the recessed lighting trim pieces from the living room, brought it down to the basement, and spray-painted it white. It took 2 coats to cover the black. Once it dried, I popped it back into the living room ceiling. And… It’s too white. *SIGH*.
So I had a mini meltdown last night. Caused by a string of events that started yesterday afternoon when I learned from my mom that the small bookcase I’d painted dark purple in the girl cave was originally painted with oil. Which explains why the paint wasn’t sticking. Which means a total re-do that will be 3x more work than the original paint job I did. Sanding off the latex. Priming with BIN sealant. Repainting with dark purple latex.
I have learned a lot since January. Which I realize was only 6 days ago, but still. I now know more about recessed lighting than I ever wanted to, and I learned it’s a bad idea for me to staple wires to anything, especially a ceiling.
We have [*cough* UGLY *woof*] recessed lighting throughout our condo. It’s very 1980’s. They look like putting green holes to me. Like I should be standing on the ceiling hitting golf balls towards them. They’re also reminiscent of “whack-a-mole” [although having moles popping out at random intervals, singing happy mole songs to me, would be AWESOME! *daydream*]…
Back in January, I started painting the small bookcase in the girl cave Benjamin Moore’s Galaxy, same as the ceiling. I thought it would look really nice, and it did! On Tuesday I learned I made the ever popular DIY mistake of painting latex over oil [my parents gave me the bookcase recently, but I had no idea they’d painted it with oil like 40 years ago – GAH!]. It’s one of those mistakes that almost every DIY’er makes once, but isn’t likely to repeat.
