Tag Archives: Sink

DI-Why-Not

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Here at the ol’ Sparks Ranch (well, just a ranch-style house, but we are in Texas after all), DIY projects happen for a variety of reasons, but there are three main motivators that have the best chance of eventually getting me involved in them. The first is that I get, ahem, the spark of an idea for something that could be better than it is. The second is that I don’t often have the moolah to purchase such an item or bit of action ready-made and fabulous. And the third is that sometimes just the right piece of the puzzle arrives on my doorstep to nudge me into  motion after all.

These three inspirations converged recently when my longstanding desire to spiff up our built-in bar–an item I’d never been accustomed to having in my home, but what the heck, it came with the house–complicated by my unwillingness to spend much on the project, met with the gift of our renovating next-door neighbor’s removal of the built-in bottle and stemware rack from the bar in her house. (Thank you, LM!) As our houses are of similar vintage and share close cousins of the woodwork stain variety, the ejected cabinet was a close enough match to those already in the lower half of our bar to make a fine fit.

What began as a modest set of lower cabinets, a set-in [and nearly stainless] bar sink with a cheap but functional faucet, a nasty very fake looking ‘wood’ laminate countertop and some glass shelves on a simple bracket style rack is now, I think a reasonable bit better: it’s both a fair amount more functional and a little less sketchy looking, and I think I won’t be quite so worried about keeping it closed constantly as I had been in its shaggier state.

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Homely yet functional. Kind of like me. But I always want to be a little better, so why shouldn’t my house!

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Now, with more storage! And a little bit more finished look, despite its humble beginnings.

What I did: first, I remembered that I’m now over half a century old and therefore should not lift a couple-hundred-pounds cabinet up and bolt it into place solo, something I would undoubtedly have been dumb enough to try in times past. Okay, and I was silly enough to lift the thing onto the counter by myself before I decided that not being hoist on my own petard was a really appealing concept. So after I cleared all of the previous bits out of the spot and plugged up the screw holes from the old shelves, I hired a carpenter friend to come and heft the oak box up, herk it into position, and bolt it generally in place with me. I’m cheap but not [entirely] insane.

I masked off the space and did the most gruesome part of the job: prepping and spray painting the countertop and the lower half of the walls, along with the sink and faucet, with my old friend Hammerite paint in the bronzy brown hammered finish. The walls and hardware (including the light switch and outlet) were all in extremely rough shape and it seemed to me the better part of valor to just embrace the rugged look and be a tiny bit old-school industrial in style. Then I brought in all of the scraps of trim and moldings I had left over from our previous reno projects here, along with my little hand-saw and miter setup, and pieced together some legs to support the front of the already weighty empty cabinet and horizontal supports for shelves over the sink, cut two short shelves out of a couple of old bookshelves no longer in use elsewhere, and then trimmed out the whole conglomeration. Under all of the paint, if you look too closely, you’ll see that it’s one wild concatenation of mismatched trim profiles and caulked, spackled, sanded and glued odd parts, but I did my best to pull it all together with the finishes by painting the bottom half all in Hammerite and the top half (including the ceiling) in plenty of primer and a finish coat of satin latex in simple cream.

I borrowed a couple of unused curtain rod finials to hide some of the weirder joinery at the corners and loaded the cabinets, and I believe I’m now within an nth of Done with this particular DIY. Or, if I’m to be honest, I suppose I should admit it’s DIM (Did It Myself–and yes, dimly enough). I just took the globe off of the ceiling light and stuck a reproduction Edison bulb in the fixture for now; eventually, I’ll want to either move the fixture itself or get a swag to relocate the bulb over the sink, so it doesn’t sit right next to the wine rack and heat it up, however briefly I keep the light turned on in there. And I’m going to put some of those little chalkboard labels on the front of the ‘new’ cabinet in those flat spaces so I can write in what’s in the rack and change it as the inventory changes. At the moment, I’m done with what I have materials on hand to do, so I think I’ll just enjoy it. Probably ought to sit down and have a drink!

Cheers! Sláinte! Salut! Prost! Egészségedre! Here’s Mud in Your Eye! Skål!photo

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Little Things that Make Me Happy

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Having Gotten some Stuff Done around the house is high on my list of everyday joys. It should be noted that I don’t say ‘getting some stuff done’–that, to be fair, would be slightly disingenuous, as I’m lazy enough at heart that I prefer the finished product to the process much of the time. Not always; I can get off of my haunches and get active, it’s just a rarer occurrence than that I’m pleased to perch on them surveying my handiwork as an end in and of itself. So I’ll just show off a few of those chores and projects that have given me that sort of pleasure, and perhaps inspire you as well: after all, some of the enjoyment, as you’ll see, comes from the knowledge that each of these items succeeds in making my daily work simpler, and thus, my laziness more tenable. Which, not to be too tautological about the whole thing, is the point of the Doing in the first place.

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Putting latches on closet doors that, no matter how they’re hung or how the hinges get adjusted, refuse to stay fully closed. I apologize to the poltergeists whose chief form of entertainment this may have curtailed, but not so much that I am going to remove said latches.

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‘Customizing’ the laundry room on the cheap. I’m the sort that teeters between an out-of-sight = out-of-mind mentality, generally, and liking my tidiness too, and since like many homes mine’s most frequently entered through the laundry room (the garage entrance lies there), I can’t abide a junked-up laundry space. So I have over-the-door hooks for quick hanging and access when it comes to day backpacks and *nearly* dry laundry, wall hooks for baseball caps when it’s time to dash out in the blast of sunlight, a wire shelf cut to fit on top of the two opposing door jambs so I can put my laundry basket out of the way but in reach, and my favorite new tweak, replacing the hall door that used to overlap the garage entrance one when they were both open (every time we left or entered the house) and was wont to grab my fingers and scrunch them nearly every time they met. The new door is a bi-fold, and so sits neatly out of reach of that garage exit door and unable to do its dirty deeds any more. I was seriously cheap on this one and bought a closet door that’s unfinished on the laundry room side (plain Masonite), but when I paint it I am planning to use some blackboard paint I have around, and I figure we can use it as a coming-home message and reminder board after that.

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While I think it’s nice to have a bookshelf with an assortment of books and magazines in the guest room, ready for any visitor, I know too that many of our guests are en route elsewhere when they stay here, so I like to keep a shelf of it filled with books, magazines and pamphlets about any of the sites, sights and adventures available in this region, in case they’d like to plan further while here. If they happen to open a box with a little sweet treat in it while rummaging, that can’t hurt much either, can it?

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Having illogically arranged spaces tends to make me *un*happy. So after a couple of years of being piqued that the cupboard door over the kitchen peninsula, which happens to be the one closest to the kitchen table, open the wrong direction–thereby making the cupboard unreachable and useless–I decided it might be time to cash in on the open shelving trend. Now my drinking glasses are reachable both from the sink and from the table, and are in visible proximity to the tea-and-coffee mugs hung simply on the end of the cabinet. Much easier all ’round.

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One of my pet peeves in a kitchen is not being able to find towels for hands or dishes when I need them. But I don’t like having them hanging where they can be schmutzed or pulled down accidentally by any passing person or pet, nor do I appreciate when they block drawers, doors, oven windows and the like from their normal uses. So I took advantage of the sides of the cabinets flanking my kitchen sink window and put up hooks for towels that I think are reasonably identifiable for their respective uses on either side–the hand towel over the side of the sink usually used for hand-washing and the dish towel over the side where the drying rack lives perpetually on the counter. Yes, I am gifted with enormous work spaces in this kitchen and can spare the room for air drying dishes. That, of course, makes my lazy soul happy too.

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I’d be lying if I said that having the thermometer outside the kitchen window makes me *happy*, exactly, since it usually tells me nothing more than that It’s Boiling Hot Out There. But forewarning or at least a reminder that the great outdoors might not be as splendidly inviting as it appears here is valuable, at that.

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Admittedly, a dish towel hook may not seem like such an impressive possession, but if the one thing it simplifies in my life makes me more willing to actually *do* the dishes, that’s worth something, isn’t it. Having a pleasant view out the window there doesn’t hurt either, even if it’s always a work in progress itself.

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My stack of well-worn flour sack dish towels is evidence that doing dishes is not anathema in my kitchen. The wholly holey character of a few of them, I’ll admit, is not dish-related but due to their also making perfect straining cloth for fresh cheeses and home-brewed broths and ideal for drying all sorts of leafy greens and fruit and veg as well. Many trips through the bleach load take their toll, no matter how kindly I try to treat the cloths otherwise.

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Replacing what has given its all for many years of intensive use is a source of happiness, too. While it may make interesting textures and patterns and colors, a pot whose nonstick surface has finally converted to everything-sticks status and whose base has warped into a minimal-contact bowl that teeters on the cooktop is facing retirement as soon as I can get my hands on a choice replacement.

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On the other hand, being able to refresh the old geezer items with new life is worthwhile and can be fulfilling in its own way as well. A lamp with wiring that has officially hit the half-century mark is probably best not turned back on until I rewire it. The one I have on my work table just now may prove to be an intriguing enough project that I’ll share it with you–when I disassembled it I discovered it was made from a commemorative Jim Beam decanter. Oh, the little things that can bring me happiness. Hmmm. Suddenly I’m inexplicably thirsty. Wonder if there’s any whiskey around.

What’s-in-My-Kitchen Week, Day 1: Cheap Organizational Tricks

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A selection of inexpensive reusable plastic containers serves not only for food storage but for a multitude of small miscellany–kind of like my stomach and my brain, but probably in a far more effective sense.

Since I spent my anniversary hauling everything out of my kitchen cabinets, scrubbing everything down, and reorganizing about 90% of the kitchen’s contents, I shall give myself the pat on the back of showing off a bit. Mainly, in reality, because I was struck yet again on doing this necessary and not entirely unpleasant (thank you, Results) task at how much benefit is got from the process and how little it needs to cost besides effort and a tiny bit of ingenuity. The sort that comes from use and practice, in fact. And because when I rein in my high-end urges I often find it satisfying that my inner (and too often, very well hidden) miser can make a positive difference in my life.

Let me explain.

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In the lower cabinets facing the kitchen table, a ‘breakfast center’ of the simplest sort for guests who want morning tea, coffee, toast or cereal (the latter goes on the empty middle shelf when grocery shopping has occurred again!). At the bottom is a bucket of birdseed for our avian guest who might appear at any time on the patio just on the other side of the table, a box of lightbulbs and a seldom-used steamer dish.

The biggest thing about cleanup and re-org is that it satisfies my inherently neatnik soul. Though I crave tidiness generally, I can be as sloppy and untidy and dirty as the next person, especially when, as now, there are projects afoot–and underfoot. We are having some work done on a widely dispersed set of items that take the mess all around our house despite the majority of the individual projects’ being relatively small. A back door adjustment, where last month’s under-slab hot water leak led to re-plumbing the line to bypass the slab by going up and through the attic, which in turn led to the soil under the slab drying out, settling into the void left by the leak, and pinning the nearby exterior door frame shut. Removal of three horribly outdated and worn countertops and sinks and faucets in two bathrooms for replacement–and waiting, sink-less, for the new stuff to arrive. Getting the living room wall put back together after it was disassembled to run that new plumbing line down for reconnection after the leak about fifteen feet away was repaired. And pulling the old kitchen cooktop out to replace it with new.

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Another set of lower cabinets houses the large pots and the small appliances. It’s amazing how much putting a few of the latter into a clean, open-topped cardboard shipping box can do to keep the space from getting ridiculously cluttered by ‘floating’ parts and cords.

This latter, necessitated by the persistent crabbiness of the mistress of the kitchen about having a wildly un-level cooker, each burner skewing a different direction so that none could offer an even surface for a pan and finally, only two of the four actually, well, burning. So I was more than willing to forgo having any functional cooktop for the short term, thinking that it was not terribly different from having had a barely semi-functional one for the two years since we moved in here. Tomorrow we expect the stonemason and his crew to be in to install our new bathroom sink counters, and he will re-cut the cooktop opening to fit the slightly deeper configuration of the new appliance.

In the meantime, it was essential to pull out the drawers directly underneath the cooker for removal and replacement access. And there you have your ‘trigger’–the moment when it becomes clear that once a half-dozen dominoes of order have been tipped in the house, the rest will soon follow. As they did. The immediate effect of pulling out the drawers was a reminder that as neat as I can be at times, the world and our actions in it fill up the neatest of spaces with bits of detritus; things shift in moving drawers until they are nestled invisibly in odd corners and buried under other things, and stuff entirely forgotten as soon as it was put away and out of sight may be well past its shelf-life, if not the half-life of radium. In short: time to clean and reorganize thoroughly once again.

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Sometimes it’s the littlest things that please me most: having airtight plastic boxes to keep tea sachets together and fresh, and a cheap little plastic basket to keep the boxes proximal and easy to carry to the breakfast table, and a quick scribble on the boxes to remind me what the heck I’ve kept in stock–that makes breakfast time ever so much more relaxed.

Being a visually oriented magpie and loving things to look ‘right’ and living within moderate means can work at decidedly cross purposes from time to time. What I have begun to acknowledge as useful wisdom in my encroaching antiquity is that there are places I can compromise comfortably on having everything look (my definition of) perfect or designer-coordinated or fancy-schmancy or otherwise idealized. One simple rule for me is to remember that what is in a drawer, a cupboard or a closet does not get seen when the drawers and doors are properly closed between uses. If they are neat, clean and practical enough in their order for my purposes when open and in use, they needn’t be expensively or extravagantly stored, only tidily and securely. So although I may cock my glinting magpie eye with a tinge of lust at those magnificent custom closet installations and the exquisitely artful antique containers that fill some people’s pantries and the fantastic item-specific systems adorning someone’s million-dollar shed or garage, I look for a way to repurpose the extant and then ‘shop low’–look at the thrift stores and dollar-an-item bonanzas for bargains before I look elsewhere.

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Another tea-basket, this one with the sugars for visitors’ tea *and* coffee, lives by the first and by the one with the instant coffee–that, more for flavoring my cookery than for drinking, since most guests happily prefer using the French press or drip coffeemakers that I keep handy nearby.

Even this is hardly necessary for the quality of life. I know that plenty of people manage to keep their belongings in check by merely tending them carefully enough and placing them wisely enough that they are where they should be, in the required condition and easy to get and use at all times. I, on the other hand, find that grouping things with their fellows helps me immensely in having a sense of order and functionality and to survive the intermittent bombed-out adventures of a project taking over any part of house or life. So I love to find well-suited containers that fit the occasion and the objects and go forth from there with my space-arranging efforts.

To be Continued!