House

A month after the move and the house is finally presentable (meaning I stopped using the third bedroom solely as a place to throw empty plastic bags).

Here is the living room:

The dining room, with today's Ikea addition in the background:

My bedroom:

The smallest bedroom, now the craft room:

The third bedroom:

And the piece de resistance, the kitchen:





Which my sister aply described as "It's as if Ronald McDonald barfed in here."

I spent my vacation days before Christmas doing my Christmas baking, which went more quickly and smoothly than I remember it ever going, yielding (clockwise from top) peanut brittle, chocolate chip cookies, divinity, snowballs, "fire candy" cracker toffee, from-scratch brownies, almond toffee, and candied walnuts in about eight hours of total work.

This year my sister finally declared my divinity the equal of Mrs. Barnes', our next door neighbor who passed away when I graduated high school (the exact day of my graduation, so that was memorable). The secret was to use artificial vanilla flavoring rather than natural, and to only use half the amount in the recipe.

And since the holidays it's been projects all around the house. Not major ones, since the stove (a generous housewarming gift from my parents) was delivered midway through the Christmas baking and the electrical service/new circuit panel work happens next week. But a lot of little ones. One was the living and dining room curtains, which I found for a steal at Ross but the blue dining room curtains had to be hemmed and the gray living room curtains had to be lined because they were unexpectedly transparent.

For the curtains I also had to mount a new curtain rod in the living room, which was not, in theory hard, but the instructions said that if the rod would be over 48 inches it should have support brackets placed around 30 inches in between. It came with four support brackets so I put two on the ends and two evenly spaced in the middle. When I went to hang the curtains I then realized the brackets keep you from pulling the curtains closed! I had to remove the two inner brackets and put up a single bracket in the center so the curtains would close. It's obvious now.

Another lesson I learned (which is the acceptable corporate euphemism for "another mistake I made") was with the blinds in my bedroom. The blinds that came with the house wouldn't open or shut, and they would fall down if you tried to raise or lower them, so I found a set for under $11 at Home Depot I could put up. I carefully and tediously installed the mounting hardware, then put in the blinds, then went to put the caps on the hardware that actually keep the blinds in, and at that moment realized that the hardware was on 90 degrees wrong. That had to be re-done.

I also re-caulked the tub in the big bathroom, re-cleaned the other shower so I could use it while the main tub was drying, and fixed my toilet twice. It had been making funny noises before Christmas but it stopped filling completely, so Nathan diagnosed it as needing a flapper and a fill valve. I did that, but while flushing the Fluidmaster fill valve as it says in its directions, the water supply valve beneath the toilet started to leak. Panicked, I found instructions online on how to replace that too, so after another trip to the hardware store I changed that as well. Of course, when I talked to Nathan that night he said that's totally normal and it takes care of itself, cementing that I should call him before worrying about things. But after that the fill valve kept leaking water in sporadic, audible dribbles. I gave up and bought another valve at Home Depot and replaced it again. Luckily that eliminated the problem entirely! Plus, the Korky valve was tons easier to install than the Fluidmaster valve so I recommend it. Not only was it easier to adjust it to the right height for the water line, they had helpful drawings for the right placement in the tank and useful information at the end about it being normal to see water coming out of several locations of the valve. If the Fluidmaster had had the same instructions I might not have worried about it and replaced it. Boo Fluidmaster.

My thumbs still kind of hurt from installing the water supply valve on the toilet since that required some heavy wrench tightening. I think that's more man territory. Or I need better wrenches.