Sometimes Projects Do Get Finished =-)
Yes, it's true. Even people like me can occasionally conquer the home improvement project mountain! Well, maybe "conquer" is too strong of a word. How about, get to the top of the mountain and not slide face first back to the bottom (but rather, sliding much more comfortably on my derriere =-p). Indeed, I have managed to "finish" a couple of those madly exasperating projects that my twisted mind felt I should pursue.
One that sounds like it should have been way simpler than it was, was contact-papering my yaffa blocks. If you don't know what yaffa blocks are - they're like stackable crates used for storage. And they have all of those cratey-crevices that can cause one a world of grief if they ever try to dust them. Uuuughhh. Pain-in-the-rear. Therefore, I realized that I could contact paper them on all sides and make my dusting life much less tedious. I got cool contact paper, and this project was actually a success, just a slightly timely one. I don't have crazy-precision-cutting & positioning-superhero powers, so things like this take The Shababbler a bit of time. But now they're done and yaffa-stacked once again - so maybe I can get more unpacking taken care of!
But let me return to some of those other projects that have already been mentioned. As you can see by the dates, I opted to avoid those fellas for a bit before I struggled to convince myself that I wanted to return to the torture. When my roommate returned from her business trip and saw the hideous GhettoCase she asked why I didn't just spray paint it for the final step. Something she had done for a desk before. It was then that I realized she was an angel coming to save me (at least a little bit) from the hell the GhettoCase had sucked me into. Bless her for her brilliant idea! The next day I found some groovy spray paint and was able to buy it only after I switched lines and showed the girl my ID. The first cashier couldn't sell it to me because she was under 18. So I started spray-painting that night, and even though it was still a bit tedious, I felt free. I was no longer bound by the shackles of paintbrush-painting! Woohoo!! And I was reminded of how spray-paint actually smells really good and is fun to use. Ya, I know....I shouldn't enjoy the smell, but what can I say =-p. The only problem here was that I had only bought a couple cans and I needed more. The next day I went and got them and continued to spray in the crazy wind. Yay spray-paint! Yay GhettoCase!! Whoopee!! So now it is pretty much finished but it hasn't been brought in yet. And yes, it's still totally Ghetto, but now at least it's a little bit ghettofabulous =-p. The sad thing is, as easy as spraypainting was in comparison, I still couldn't do that perfectly either. But that's okay.....we'll take ghettofabulous =-).
And next up was the sorta re-upholstering of the fricking chair. I started the top tonight and actually finished in a couple hours. It too looks ghettofabulous now =-). Definitely not perfect, definitely waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy more time and effort than it should have taken. But now that it's done it looks pretty groovy =-). And I finally have a chair with a back to sit on at my computer, so yay for that! Although, you know how I mentioned previously that I bought a pack of 1,000 pins? I counted the leftovers when I was all finished. Now mind you, this was also after I had ruined some pins by trying to push them where they didn't want to go, and undoubtedly, I probably lost a couple that one of us will find rather unpleasantly with our feet sometime in the future, but I only had 164 left. Out of 1,000. That's a lot of fricking pins!!!! So if any of you ever see this chair in person you better not talk smack!! "Oh Shababbler it's AMAZING!" will be the correct response ;-).
Unfortunately, I had also thought it would be a good idea to make some simple shelves. WRONG!!!! Now don't get me wrong, I can use a power drill thingy, but there was something about the wood I bought. It just did not want to be screwed!!! I spent more time than most of you would even believe trying to drill the freaking screws. When I finally finished (after coming back to it another day), the shelf was wobbley, but functional. It was just going in my closet, so wobbley was okay. Since I had the spiffy spraypaint I decided to coat the wobbley shelf as well. Lovely idea Shababbler! Until I try to move it over after I'm all done and accidentally flip the whole thing (freshly painted), and get plastic drop cloth markings all over it =-(. That sucked. But, the next day I was wiping it and the GhettoShelve off preparing for their entry into the house =-). I was on the phone as I was wiping the shelves of the GhettoCase, and was kinda crouching over the wobbley shelf. Did I forget? Or did the home-improvement gods just want to strike me down? Well, I guess I put weight on the wobbley-shelf that it didn't want to deal with, and, in what I am certain was a violent attack from the vengeful gods of home improvement (perhaps Martha Stewart was feeling threatened and channeled her home-improvement-project-ruining Fury's), the wobbley shelf that had taken ages to screw together, crashed as though it had been in the midst of a violent earthquake =-(. Not only did the boards come off, but pieces on 3 of the 4 corners chipped eagerly away. I tried to rescrew but it was such a ridiculously lost cause. Sad me. Sad, pissed off me =-(.
But from suffering often comes brilliance, and my experience with the wobbley shelf was no exception. I'll use bricks! That was my amazing answer to my home-improvement-project-frustration prayers! Yay bricks! So I went to Home Depot and found the bricks, and heaved them with me all the way home. But my brilliance (another way of saying "how I overcame my stupidity") did not stop there! Oh no. The great mind of the Shababbler was hard at work in contemplating how to compensate for the loss of the pretty spray-painted shelf sides. Contact paper was the answer! Yes, I find brilliance in contact paper. So I covered each brick with cute contact paper (but not the same paper used on the yaffa blocks), and not only do I have a functional alternative that allows me to adjust the height, but I have achieved functional cuteness that Martha Stewart would envy! Okay, maybe not, but whatever....it works =-).
And now I find myself quietly hoping that there won't be any more projects popping up. My fingers are thrashed from pushing in so many pins and for having to violently scrub the heck out of them to try to get off the freaking spray paint. And I need to finish this off so I can go clean up the mess from all of this. If you have a home improvement project you are considering starting, let me offer a small piece of advice...Don't Do It!!!!
One that sounds like it should have been way simpler than it was, was contact-papering my yaffa blocks. If you don't know what yaffa blocks are - they're like stackable crates used for storage. And they have all of those cratey-crevices that can cause one a world of grief if they ever try to dust them. Uuuughhh. Pain-in-the-rear. Therefore, I realized that I could contact paper them on all sides and make my dusting life much less tedious. I got cool contact paper, and this project was actually a success, just a slightly timely one. I don't have crazy-precision-cutting & positioning-superhero powers, so things like this take The Shababbler a bit of time. But now they're done and yaffa-stacked once again - so maybe I can get more unpacking taken care of!
But let me return to some of those other projects that have already been mentioned. As you can see by the dates, I opted to avoid those fellas for a bit before I struggled to convince myself that I wanted to return to the torture. When my roommate returned from her business trip and saw the hideous GhettoCase she asked why I didn't just spray paint it for the final step. Something she had done for a desk before. It was then that I realized she was an angel coming to save me (at least a little bit) from the hell the GhettoCase had sucked me into. Bless her for her brilliant idea! The next day I found some groovy spray paint and was able to buy it only after I switched lines and showed the girl my ID. The first cashier couldn't sell it to me because she was under 18. So I started spray-painting that night, and even though it was still a bit tedious, I felt free. I was no longer bound by the shackles of paintbrush-painting! Woohoo!! And I was reminded of how spray-paint actually smells really good and is fun to use. Ya, I know....I shouldn't enjoy the smell, but what can I say =-p. The only problem here was that I had only bought a couple cans and I needed more. The next day I went and got them and continued to spray in the crazy wind. Yay spray-paint! Yay GhettoCase!! Whoopee!! So now it is pretty much finished but it hasn't been brought in yet. And yes, it's still totally Ghetto, but now at least it's a little bit ghettofabulous =-p. The sad thing is, as easy as spraypainting was in comparison, I still couldn't do that perfectly either. But that's okay.....we'll take ghettofabulous =-).
And next up was the sorta re-upholstering of the fricking chair. I started the top tonight and actually finished in a couple hours. It too looks ghettofabulous now =-). Definitely not perfect, definitely waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy more time and effort than it should have taken. But now that it's done it looks pretty groovy =-). And I finally have a chair with a back to sit on at my computer, so yay for that! Although, you know how I mentioned previously that I bought a pack of 1,000 pins? I counted the leftovers when I was all finished. Now mind you, this was also after I had ruined some pins by trying to push them where they didn't want to go, and undoubtedly, I probably lost a couple that one of us will find rather unpleasantly with our feet sometime in the future, but I only had 164 left. Out of 1,000. That's a lot of fricking pins!!!! So if any of you ever see this chair in person you better not talk smack!! "Oh Shababbler it's AMAZING!" will be the correct response ;-).
Unfortunately, I had also thought it would be a good idea to make some simple shelves. WRONG!!!! Now don't get me wrong, I can use a power drill thingy, but there was something about the wood I bought. It just did not want to be screwed!!! I spent more time than most of you would even believe trying to drill the freaking screws. When I finally finished (after coming back to it another day), the shelf was wobbley, but functional. It was just going in my closet, so wobbley was okay. Since I had the spiffy spraypaint I decided to coat the wobbley shelf as well. Lovely idea Shababbler! Until I try to move it over after I'm all done and accidentally flip the whole thing (freshly painted), and get plastic drop cloth markings all over it =-(. That sucked. But, the next day I was wiping it and the GhettoShelve off preparing for their entry into the house =-). I was on the phone as I was wiping the shelves of the GhettoCase, and was kinda crouching over the wobbley shelf. Did I forget? Or did the home-improvement gods just want to strike me down? Well, I guess I put weight on the wobbley-shelf that it didn't want to deal with, and, in what I am certain was a violent attack from the vengeful gods of home improvement (perhaps Martha Stewart was feeling threatened and channeled her home-improvement-project-ruining Fury's), the wobbley shelf that had taken ages to screw together, crashed as though it had been in the midst of a violent earthquake =-(. Not only did the boards come off, but pieces on 3 of the 4 corners chipped eagerly away. I tried to rescrew but it was such a ridiculously lost cause. Sad me. Sad, pissed off me =-(.
But from suffering often comes brilliance, and my experience with the wobbley shelf was no exception. I'll use bricks! That was my amazing answer to my home-improvement-project-frustration prayers! Yay bricks! So I went to Home Depot and found the bricks, and heaved them with me all the way home. But my brilliance (another way of saying "how I overcame my stupidity") did not stop there! Oh no. The great mind of the Shababbler was hard at work in contemplating how to compensate for the loss of the pretty spray-painted shelf sides. Contact paper was the answer! Yes, I find brilliance in contact paper. So I covered each brick with cute contact paper (but not the same paper used on the yaffa blocks), and not only do I have a functional alternative that allows me to adjust the height, but I have achieved functional cuteness that Martha Stewart would envy! Okay, maybe not, but whatever....it works =-).
And now I find myself quietly hoping that there won't be any more projects popping up. My fingers are thrashed from pushing in so many pins and for having to violently scrub the heck out of them to try to get off the freaking spray paint. And I need to finish this off so I can go clean up the mess from all of this. If you have a home improvement project you are considering starting, let me offer a small piece of advice...Don't Do It!!!!
posted by The Shababbler at 2:03 AM
5 Comments:
I was wondering what you were up to. The posts and e-mails had kinda dropped off in the past several days. I guess I ended up with a little Shababbler withdrawl. Good to see a fresh new long post. :)
Hehe. Ya, I've been telling myself I'm not allowed to do various things online because I HAVE to get organized and I HAVE to start looking seriously for work!
It's always dangerous turning on the computer because inevitably my online addiction takes over and any dreams of productivity are whisked quickly away under the carpet =-(.
I have to be careful about turning on the computer before work. Time just slips away, I look up and it's 7am and I am going to be late... Perhaps I should stop turining it on before I leave.
Gosh....I am such a non-morning person that I would never even have the time to think about turning on the computer then. It's a good thing too, because if I did I'm sure I'd lose track of time!
The first thing I do when I get home is turn the computer on, sometimes even before putting my stuff down. Usually the first thing I do when I get up is turn it on also.. I do loose track of time much more often than I would like.
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