Surprise!

I've been painting again.

Greg and I always joke that whenever he goes away on business he comes back to find that I've painted a room. I try and wait until he's gone so he doesn't have to deal with paint fumes. Also, I like to sing while I paint and Eternal Flame is still such a good song you guys, but Greg doesn't need to hear that.

Hang on to your hats, this is dramatic (we're looking at the spot above the door).

Before:

After:

I KNOW. I know! It's crazy. The old color was the off-white from Metro Paint, which smells terrible and is made from recycled paint, so the colors were totally different from batch to batch. The new color is White Chocolate by Benjamin Moore, a color that looks exactly like white chocolate. Why would I bother? For starters, there was a spot over the door where I started to paint three years ago, then realized it needed to be patched, so I painted around it, then spackled it, then never painted. And I guess I got rid of the paint can at some point? So I was never going to find a match for that spot.

Then we installed baseboard in the kitchen, which I still can't show you pictures of because Tinkernation has neglected to publish my final post. I am contractually obligated to keep it under wraps until they do. But I had to patch the wall, which means the kitchen really needed to be repainted.

I bought a quart of White Chocolate and put up a swatch above the door, since Greg was away for the night. Then I was having so much fun I decided to paint a little further. Then I realized I was just painting the kitchen that night. I almost had enough paint to finish, too. Instead I had to pop over to Benjamin Moore the next day after work and hustle to get it finished before Greg got home.

It didn't work. He walked in and I was behind the stove with a roller and I weakly yelled, "Surprise!" and he was like, "I see the roller and the paint can but everything looks the same," and I had to explain the minute difference between the two colors.

All of the paint fumes with none of the dramatic impact! You're welcome, baby.

The good news is I really love the color and we have no visible patches. And it turns out I still know all the words to Eternal Flame and Walk Like an Egyptian.

Want to build your own rain garden?

Hey Portlanders! If you've ever been interested in building a rain garden on your property, now's your chance!

There will be a free Rain Gardens 101 workshop on December 1st. I took this class last year and it was excellent. They give you all the tools to plan and build your rain garden and the presenters are great.

My friends have a phenomenon we call "hippie trump." You know when you go to a barbecue and someone asks if there are veggie burgers and you're like, "Yeah, I picked up some from Whole Foods," and then someone else is like, "You know, their oats aren't locally sourced. I made some from scratch. They have bulgar wheat and organic mushrooms," and then someone else is like, "Oh, that's cute. I brought homemade ketchup that I made from tomatoes and onions I grew in my garden, using a bike-powered blender."

You've just been hippie trumped. And they probably spelled ketchup "catsup," the big jerks.

Rain gardens are the ultimate hippie trump. You do our rivers and streams a solid all winter long, the birds and butterflies love them, and when your native purist friends ask why you're growing agaves (BECAUSE THEY'RE AWESOME. GOD.) you can be like, "rain gardens, bitches."

I also think they're pretty and topography changes in the landscape only up the interest. And they are really fun to watch fill.

Super blurry because it was POURING.

Can you believe my castor bean plant was ever that small? Can you see it?

Some quick updates

Greg and I just returned from 9 days in Maui. Have you guys ever heard of Maui? It's freaking fantastic. I highly recommend visiting before the rest of the world discovers it.

I kid. October/November is a great time to visit--we had loads of sunshine and didn't feel like we were elbow-to-elbow with tourists the whole time. While we were away Meryl and Chris were interviewed by the NY Times about their renovation roadtrip. Holy shit, the NY Times!

They also wrote about their visit to my house on their blog, on Tinkernation, and on Bob Vila. I decided not to brush my hair on the big day, so I'd look extra schlumpy in photos.

The summary of all their posts is that they feel terrible that they were unable to rewire my entire house, despite the fact that they discovered and fixed a major fire hazard, possibly saving my life and the biggest investment I've ever made. We have one extra thing for the electrician we were already planning to hire to do. And they feel terrible about that. I'm guessing they must have been raised Catholic? That is some serious guilt over an awesome visit.

The good news is that I'm tan and I'm reinvigorated to work on my house. I finally, after three and a half years, weatherstripped my kitchen window. In the winter your hair blows in the breeze, the gaps are so wide. It took all of 15 minutes, but it took Chris and Meryl driving all over the US for me to get off my ass and do it. So thank you for that, Picardy Projectors. Projecters?

I'll post pictures soon of our visit to the Kahanu Botanical Gardens, AKA the land of angry falling coconuts.

The Oaklanders are coming!

As part of their Renovation Road Trip extravaganza, I got a visit from Chris and Meryl of Picardy Project. Meryl and I have known each other for about a year online but had never met in person. That always makes me nervous, so I obsessed over the state of the house in the days leading up to their visit. You'd think that would mean I would attempt to fix or hide my shoddier work but my brain went into stupid mode and said "YOU SHOULD BUY AN ENORMOUS PLANT."

So instead of buying renovation supplies to make their work go faster, I bought a new plant. Because you know Chris and Meryl would walk into the house and immediately judge that my air isn't pure enough. I found a bamboo palm (Chamaedorea seifrizii) at Ikea, which is one of the top plants for removing toxins from your home.

Oh my god, what am I talking about? Sorry, I'm so sleepy today. Anyway, Meryl and Chris showed up and it was immediately like we'd known each other forever. I highly recommend letting them in, should they ever arrive on your doorstep.

I didn't have any major projects for them to help with; instead I had a long "homeowner fatigue" list of things I could probably do myself but I'm tired and a little worried I'll do it wrong, and also there's a new episode of Revenge on the Tivo and those cookies won't eat themselves in bed.

First up: that hideous light fixture over the kitchen sink. This is what it looked like right after I moved in.

I took it down halfway when I painted the kitchen and the wiring looked strange to me. Chris took down the fixture and confirmed that, nope, everything in there was pretty normal. I felt really silly. I'd spent all this time with an ugly light when my wiring was totally normal! He got the fixture, an old piece I bought on craigslist three and a half years ago, rewired and hung up in less than an hour.

I've been wanting to repaint the kitchen, so this should be just the motivation I need.

Next we moved to the living room, where I was pretty sure there was an electrical box in the center of the ceiling, hiding beneath a spot where the plaster looked a little different. Chris climbed up into the attic, confirmed that there was indeed a box there, then carefully excavated the box and revealed the wires.

You know how normally when you hire an electrician or a plumber they'll use a sledgehammer to open a tiny hole in the wall? And then they'll leave dirty fingerprints everywhere, necessitating touch-up painting and a ton of patchwork? Chris and Meryl don't do that. There are tarps and careful placement of hands and no additional patching or painting required.

You remember how my wiring in the kitchen was supposed to be weird but it was just fine? Well, ha ha Chris, I TOLD YOU MY WIRING WAS JACKED. This is where everything got a little frustrating. For Chris, that is. Electrical is his gig, so Meryl handed him tools and assisted with testing while I braided Meryl's hair and tried to convince her to move to Portland. I was useless. The rest of the day was mostly Chris wandering from ladder to outlet to attic to ladder muttering, "This just isn't right."

Greetings from the attic.

It turns out there is an extra wire in the ceiling box. A whole bunch of weird stuff runs to here and we can't tell if the light that used to be here ever had a switch hooked to it. Despite digging around in the insulation in the attic and chasing wires, we just couldn't figure it out.

We decided to leave it for a professional electrician, one who we can pay to swim around in the attic insulation. Chris recommended installing a new switch and running brand new wire to the box. I asked him if he'd cut the switch box hole for me, because I didn't want an electrician to do it. I don't want to patch and paint this room again.

So he made me a perfect one. Then he and Meryl spent the rest of the afternoon in a shame spiral, convinced that they had failed because they hadn't magically fixed the fact that my entire house is wired imperfectly. There was a rush to fix anything else I could throw at them.

Shaky bathroom vanity? It's properly anchored to the wall now.

Strike plate that would fall out of the door jamb because the screws were stripped and the holes were way too big?

The holes were filled with toothpicks (a This Old House trick), then four-inch screws were driven in. The strike plate doesn't fall out anymore and it will make it much more difficult for someone to kick in the door.

All the sticky parts were lubricated and weatherstripping was put up. It was like Christmas but without your drunk aunt saying something shitty to you.

Please come back, Meryl and Chris, because I've thought of 600 more things I need help with. I promise none of them are electrical.

How to make your own French-Belgian linen drapes

Well, the curtains are done.

Before

If you'd like to make your own version of CB2's French-Belgian linen panels you just have to follow a few easy steps.

First, fall in love with an expensive fabric. The hallmark of a good sewing project is thinking you're going to save money by making it yourself, then spending a TON of money and wondering if you should have hired child laborers instead (kids with ADD can sew a straighter seam than me). I chose a Tencel "linen-look" fabric that drapes beautifully and can be dyed.

Next, cut off eight foot lengths from your bolt of fabric. Don't vacuum or swiffer the floors first. You want the fabric to catch as much dust and hair as possible. Ideally you should be muttering, "Oh my god, what is wrong with me?" every couple of minutes.

Starch and iron all your edges. The rolled hem foot on the sewing machine is a bitch to use and if all the stars are not aligned correctly everything will go to hell and you'll be ripping out stitches for hours. A crisp fabric really helps in this case. Practice using your rolled hem foot until you feel confident using it. I bought a smaller piece of my fabric and sewed the edge, cut it off, then sewed it again and again and again, for what seemed like forever.

Start sewing on your real fabric. So far so good.

Oh my god, what is wrong with me? Son of a . . . bitch . . . shit. I hate the rolled hem foot.

Rip out the seams and redo it when this happens. Start to wonder if it wouldn't be faster to use a regular foot, even with all the pressing you'd need to do. Run your finished panels through the washing machine before hemming the bottom, just in case they shrink (pros do this before they ever start sewing but I have issues). Notice that a lot of your seams now look like hell when they seemed just fine pre-washing.

What is wrong with with my rolled hem foot? Blerg.

Spend an exorbitant amount of time at JC Penney (sorry, JCP) trying to special order the stupid corner bracket for your curtain rods. They have a new system and the clerk is 1000 years old (but nice! so nice!). Pull up the part on your phone and show her, as you realize that you could've just ordered online, in your pajamas no less, and saved everyone the headache.

Wait for freaking EVER for your hardware to arrive. Learn that JC Penney screwed up charging your gift card twice, so your order never shipped. Also, they processed the order under the name "Haether."

Hem your panels. You'd think by this point you could reasonably sew with your rolled hem foot but YOU ARE WRONG. Decide that the lack of overhead light in the living room is probably a good thing.

Hang up your panels with simple clip rings and realize that you can't really see the shitty hems, so maybe everything's gonna be okay. And you know what? They do vaguely resemble the inspiration panels.

Congrats! When they are closed they look like you spent a lot of time and money to hang white bedsheets.

Also, you screwed up the length.

So. Greg thinks they need some color and I'm worried about the sun bleaching any color we put in them, which is why I wanted white curtains in the first place. We're going to live with them for a while and I'm going to get more Ikea Enje blinds so I can get rid of the current situation:

This attractive option was installed by the house stager from my reveal. She was *so* worried I'd peek at the room that she posted signs everywhere and glued (OH, SO MUCH GLUE) those awful looking blind inserts into the window casing.

And then she emailed me, admonishing over and over not to peek. My friend told me I should peek, just to spite her, but I am a rule follower. I didn't peek. And I didn't remove those god-awful blinds until now.

I have a couple of options now. The first, to dye the curtains navy. We have a lot of blue in the room currently.

Second: dip dye the bottoms dark blue. The blue wouldn't bleach out because it would fall below the window. This is on-trend right now but it will eventually go out of style. Of course, if that happens I can just dye them navy at that point.

It might look something like this.

Or this.

So I guess the last step in making these panels is crippling self-doubt. Tada! Any opinions are greatly appreciated.

Curtain prototype is done

Last year I found the perfect mid-century pinch-pleat draperies at JC Penney. Pam at Retro Renovation said her readers found them to be a good source. At Christmas my parents gave me a gift certificate to JC Penney for so I could buy some . . . and JCP immediately stopped producing the style/color/length I needed.

Image from Retro Renovation

So I've been buying (and returning) curtains left and right, trying to find something I liked. Then I saw this post on Emily Henderson's site about where to find cheap but good curtains. I liked these "French-Belgian linen panels," but at $60 a pop I'd need to spend $600 just in the living room.

I am so sorry for these terrible photos. Do you know how hard it is to photograph a window with natural light streaming through? I picked up some "linen-look" tencel fabric, which is dyable, and used a rolled hem foot to zip a 3mm hem around all four sides. The real deal will be a floor-length panel with a more substantial curtain rod.

I have an Ikea Enje blind behind it, which is wonderful during the day but it provides zero privacy at night. I wonder if all the people who have installed Enjes in their house realize this? Wait for the sun to go down, turn on your lights, then step outside and see your life on display.

So now I start the laborious process of doing the prep work for a bunch of panels. The fabric is so thin and malleable that it has to be starched and ironed (and any stray threads trimmed) before running it through the rolled hem foot on my sewing machine. My hope is to get one panel prepped after work each night, then sew like crazy this weekend and get them hung. I figure that gives JC Penney enough time to magically start producing the pinch-pleat draperies I wanted in the first place.

It's unorthodox but it works

We wanted to reroute more gutters to the rain garden but I didn't want to do anything permanent until we'd really tested whether it could handle so much more water. My first thought was a racquetball over the downspout hole (I don't know) but Greg didn't have one, despite the fact that he owns every piece of sporting equipment ever.

But a measuring cup worked. Don't laugh.

Believe it or not, this is effectively blocking that downspout and the water is now dumping into the rain garden (which is now filling a lot faster). I can watch it during heavy rain and see if it's in danger of overflowing. If the extra rain overflows or overwhelms the rain garden, I can just yank the measuring cup out of the gutter and take the pressure off.

And if it continues to work we can have that downspout removed professionally. And I own three measuring cup sets so I should survive without this one. Everyone wins! Now stop laughing.

He's flying over our heads in a million pieces!

Because we're painting the house, Greg felt like it was time to finally fix this nonsense that Comcast foisted on us.

Cables across the front of our house.

Cables across our threshold.

Cables across our chimney and across the side of the house . . .

. . . which came in the ceiling of our basement and ran across the length of the room because Comcast doesn't care what your house or rooms or cables look like when they are charging you $85 an hour to give you overpriced cable and Internet service.

So Greg donned this suit, crawled into our scary crawlspace, and ran the cables the right way.

He cheerfully informed me every time he found another spider egg sac, ensuring that I will never ever get in there to help him.

But sometimes your dude is in the crawl space and you're in the office, trying to fish a cable out of the wall and you're trying to figure out where the fuck he is, and you keep tap-tap-tapping on the floor, as if that will help, and he's like, "Heather, that's not helping. I'm underneath the bathtub pipes and I can't hear anything," and sometimes you drill too many holes in the wall trying to figure it out.

But that's okay because I am good at patching holes. Or I am willing. And that's a good thing because we made a LOT of holes in the basement.

I don't even want to explain what happened here, but it involved an unexpected horizontal beam that necessitated a six-inch hole in the middle of the wall, the purchase of a 45-degree drill attachment, and more patching. But we now have a hard-wired ethernet connection to the basement and the office and Greg has plans to install network drops in every room of the house, but probably through the attic next time.

Oddly, my sewing kit came in handy with all of this work. We used the forceps my mother gave me (super handy for sewing AND retrieving cables from the wall), safety pins for attaching the Cat 6 cable to the fish tape, and a seam ripper for undoing all of our safeguards with string.

We're so tired but we have almost no visible cables on the outside of our house and Greg can copy files quickly between his XBOX and his computer and I didn't care about any of this, but it was great to be the helper instead of the instigator, for once. And now I don't have to feel bad when I inform Greg that we're spending next weekend removing sod, right?

(Hat tip to Jess for the Willy Wonka reference in the post title.)