Author Archives: The Girl

A Cry For Help

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I fear we may have become Hoarders (with a capital “H”). Maybe I just watch too much television (really, though? When am I doing that? In a former life?). Yet the unmistakable signs are there. Getting in and out of the front door has become a struggle, as well as accessing our one functioning bathroom, and I am too embarrassed to have people over or even to open my door to a stranger.

The scene of the crime. Somebody call TLC.

Pictured: the dresser I saw at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and just “had to have” (sans drawers, which reminds me, where are they? Oh yes! “Hidden” behind the longer couch), the buffet which will become the vanity in the master-ish bathroom, a portion of the secret furniture project I have been working on, the hutch we are desperately trying to use in the master-ish bathroom, pieces of mirror from this adventure, and the window we need to install in the master-ish bathroom.

Help me.

A few nights ago we were reminiscing with the neighbors (while standing in our driveways handing out candy to a few straggling trick-or-treaters, because we were too embarrassed to have anyone come to our door and see that catastrophe) about how difficult the first few months were, when we were living without a kitchen, doing dishes in the garage, and our fridge was in the living room.

Yep. Notice the peach walls and stack of tiles too.

I feel as though we are dangerously close to reverting back to those times. In fact, we initially had one functioning bathroom (the green bathroom) and a toilet room (the now renovated bathroom). We currently have one functioning bathroom (the now renovated bathroom) and a toilet room (the green bathroom). We also have a very crowded living room again.  We are one credenza or bookshelf away from chaos. Wait, no … we are already there.

To do list for this weekend includes: install window (check!), finish secret furniture project (check!), finish stripping (not that kind, Mom!) and maybe even start sanding buffet (ugh – it is taking forever!), and finish the dresser so I can get it listed on Craigslist (check!). I was looking forward to a weekend full of completed projects, and then The Boy entices me with a Saturday full of helping a friend we owe big-time, and a fun time with other friends we haven’t seen in a while. I suppose it is a great “problem” to have that we have lots of fabulous friends, but it is really cutting into my project time!  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Pinbusters – Cutting Glass and Mirrors (Without Fire)!

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Have you ever wondered if the stuff people post on Pinterest is true? Well I have, and I test them all so that you don’t have to, ’cause ain’t nobody got time for that.  Click here to check out all of the pins I haven taken on. You might be surprised by some of the results!

We needed to test this pin for practical reasons, because we wanted to cut the huge mirror in the bathroom that we took down. I had originally intended to reuse the mirror by making a pretty frame for it. However, I mentioned that the buffet I bought on Craigslist that will become the vanity in the master-ish bathroom came with a very large hutch, which I love but don’t know what to do with. Since it has been sitting in our living room, staring at me and taunting me, I have spent too much time staring back and contemplating. Then one day it hit me: remove the glass in the door, replace it with mirror, and just use it as the mirror with hidden storage (ok, not very hidden, pretty obvious, but not open shelf obvious). Boom! Who has two thumbs and a giant mirror she can do anything she wants with?? You guessed it.

After spending a large portion of today in the driveway stripping the buffet down to bare wood (stripping is exhausting!), we got busy cutting mirrors (because strippers need mirrors, obviously). I purchased this necessary instrument at Home Depot:

I know my Home Depot pretty well, and I could tell you generally what is on each aisle. I figured such an obscure tool would be hard to find, though, and I was right. It was located in the tool department, with a bunch of other small miscellaneous tools, and anyone under 4 feet tall would have to be crawling down the aisle to find it. Thank goodness Doug was there to guide me.

We moved Jim (the coffee table) out of the way, and laid towels down on the big rug.

Then we brought the mirror in and laid it down.

We used the piece of glass we had removed from door to trace out our size with a permanent marker, and then we got to scoring.

We did make sure to lube the glass cutting tool with some lubricant I bought a few months ago, with delusions of improving the sliding capabilities of our impossible to move “sliding” glass doors (and which I had been procrastinating on ever since, but finally tackled! Yay me!).

That is the tiny little wheel I greased. A long piece of wood worked double duty as a scoring guide, and then we slid it underneath to snap the mirror.

The mirror did not quite break along the line as intended. It broke off at a curve on one end.

Instead of using the side of the mirror with the curved cut, we put the glass template on the other side, where the line was pretty straight, and used that side. On the second cut, we scored it a little better, and the cut was much cleaner.

It worked surprisingly well! What was more surprising was the fact that once cut, we discovered that this mirror is too thick to be used in place of the glass. We are searching around for prices on having a glass shop cut us a thinner mirror to size, so hopefully we can still follow through with our plan. As far as this glass cutting pin, though, it is totally legit (unlike the cutting wine bottles with fire one!). Happy glass and/or mirror cutting!

Slide, Baby, Slide

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Our “sliding” glass doors in the living room, leading out to the back patio and pool, require the strength of ten men to move. Or one The Girl, bracing myself against the door frame, and using the weight of my body to drag the door open. Sometimes, when trying to close the door, my hand slips and I accidentally punch the wall and/or door frame. This makes me very unhappy, as you might imagine. Yet after over a year of living here, with the doors getting gradually worse, we have done nothing about it (unless complaining counts!). Well, nothing is an understatement. I have looked at stuff on the internet a LOT. If I got credit for all of the sliding glass door removal/cleaning/replacement/roller greasing tutorials I have read, pinned, or emailed myself, those doors would glide open operated only by my mind.

Since the weather was cool enough today that I could leave the door open without “air conditioning the neighborhood,” I decided to tackle it. A lot of what I read suggested taking the doors off, putting them on saw horses, checking for broken rollers and cleaning them. My aversion to anything coordinated makes me hesitant to handle large quantities of glass. Well that and The Boy said no (much more colorfully). So I resorted to a tutorial I read over on Home Repair Tutor, which involves cleaning and lubricating the doors as a first resort. Jeff has a lot of helpful tutorials for relatively fast and cheap fixes to common household needs. His post on sliding glass doors had me at “leave them on their tracks.”

I used a stiff bristle brush, the shop vac (a/k/a Snuffaluffagus), and some lubricant I bought at Home Depot, which says “sliding doors” right on the container. I assembled my tools and got down to business.

 

I used the brush to loosen up dirt in the tracks, and then Snuffaluffagus to get it all out. There was a massive amount of dirt and dog hair in these tracks! Ew.

After about 30 minutes of work, I did not notice a huge difference in how well the door slid. We played with the lowering and raising of the rollers, and lowering them definitely made the door much harder to slide, but raising did not seem to help. Not surprisingly, having the door actually sitting on the TRACK was helpful. Huh, who’d have thought? Once I was sure I had removed as much dirt as I could, I squirted the lubricant all over the tracks, moving the door back and forth to get it on the rollers too. This did help, and the door moves a lot easier than it did. Unfortunately, though, I think the rollers are just so gummed up with crud that we are eventually going to have to take them down and clean everything. For now, though, it is a vast improvement, so I am happy.

Sliiiide to the right. Now sliiiide to the left. Criss cross!! (I HATE that song but cannot get it out of my head now. Dang it!)