When One Door Shuts, Another Opens

“Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”

― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

I live in a Colonial-style home that was built in 1925. The doors in my home are from the 20s with glass door knobs and heavy brass hinges. They are lovely—all except one door, that is.

The door leading to the basement/laundry area is the abnormal one. It is a hollow-core door with peeling laminate from decades gone by and I positively hate it. For a while now it has been my goal to one day change out this door to match the others in my home.

The door to the basement. YUCK!

One day, about a year ago, my neighbor (who had done extensive renovations on her home prior to moving in a few years ago) happened to mention that she had a door that matched mine laying in the rafters of her garage that I was welcome to have. I couldn't believe my luck! It was the perfect size! And it was already stripped of all of its years of paint! I rushed it home before she could change her mind! :)

The new old door! In this shot you can see I've been doing some repairs—wood glue here and there as well as wood filler in spots.

The door leaned against my kitchen wall for a year until I was finally ready to install it. I've never done this before! It took me a while to work up the nerve and sort out my plan as to how I was going to do this, after all, this was the only antique door I had on hand—no room for error!

In the meantime, I scoured antique stores looking for hinges that matched the ones throughout my house. I picked up these beauties for a couple of bucks! I also picked up a new antique-style doorknob set for the door at Lowes. Now I had all of my parts! Let's get to work!

The paint was on thick and cracked and came off without much encouragement.

Woohoo! A stripped hinge!

And... VOILA!! My new old door to the basement! I did it!! I am so pleased with it!! It even has a lock—THAT WORKS! So exciting... Now I just need to take it back down and get it painted.

My new old door to the basement with gorgeous glass door knobs and working lock!

For a future project, I've got that wretched paneling in my crosshairs... stay tuned...

It's Not Easy Being Green...

There's so many different shades to choose from!

Sis decided it was time to update her kitchen. In fact, a few weeks ago, she and Handy Hubs got a little crazy and painted all of their kitchen cabinets (you'll see this in the reveal down below)!

Kitchen cabinets before

Kitchen before

During my most recent visit, she decided it was time to update the wall color as well. The green that was in there was a taupe-ish camouflage green. She wanted something cheerier. We brought home four samples before we settled on our final choice.

Here you can see some of our sample colors. Sis has taped off the woodwork and I have started to cut in the edges. This is going to look good!

And... VOILA! White kitchen cabinets with fresh green walls. Beautiful!

Let There Be Light!

My kid and I traveled to see my sister for a short visit. As usual, Sis had a long list of tasks that she wanted to accomplish—many of which my expertise would come in handy for!

One item to address were the sconces above her fireplace—they don't particularly go with her decor. We decided to paint them until she is able to find something she likes even better.

Before

After

Perhaps they'll find their way to my house once she finds something more to her liking?

The Fairest of Them All

Our school is putting on the play "The Rockin' Tale of Snow White" later this week, and I have been tasked with making the crown for the wicked queen. The director told me she wanted it to have lots of spikes!

I scoured the internet for an inspiration crown. I found a site where someone else had made one out of Styrene that reminiscent of the crown worn by the queen in the recent hit movie "Snow White and the Huntsman".

Pics I found of someone building a crown from styrene

Wicked queen from "Snow White and the Huntsman"

I didn't have any Styrene handy, but I did have access to heavy paper! The paper I have is heavier than card stock, but lighter than chip board. I think it will be perfect!

Figuring out the right size for the ring of triangles that the spikes will set into later.

First I used a regular sheet of white paper to make a small pattern and get an idea of the size I wanted my shapes to be. Once I got my template made, I traced my shape on my heavier paper, cut out the pieces, scored them, and gently folded them.

Left and right triangle pieces waiting to be taped together.

I taped my scored shapes together with white duct tape. Then I cut a little notch in the bottom of the taped shape so it would sit on the head ring in the appropriate spot. Once I had all of my triangles sitting on the ring evenly spaced, I glued them to the head ring.

Ring of triangles adhered to the head ring.

Now it's time for the spikes. After some measuring, scoring, folding, and trimming, I had a shape that I was ready to adhere to my triangles.

And... VOILA! Here's where we're at for now! Now to strengthen it up and get it painted!

UPDATE:
I wanted to seal the seams where there were gaps between the pieces of paper, so I decided to decoupage tissue paper to outside of the crown. I thought this would also lend some texture to the crown so that the pewter effect would be more apparent after being applied.

After the decoupage had dried, I painted the crown a silver grey color. Much to my horror the crown looked like it was made of tin foil! I have worked too hard on this crown for it to look like it was constructed of tin foil! On to "Plan B"!!

Plan B consists of repainting the whole crown black and applying black glitter. I also have some silver glitter spray that I intend to use to highlight some of the various shapes, like the "V's" that the spikes fit into.

So this is where we're at tonight. Need to finish this up by tomorrow! It's needed by Wednesday morning!


YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
And... VOILA! Here's the finished crown!

I doused it in black glitter and barely sprayed a silver glitter paint over the smaller V's so that the audience would be able to see some definition from afar. It turned out pretty good, I think! And it lasted all three performances without being damaged (thank goodness!)!

Rapunzel's Gown

The following is a post I started, but never finished, so I am posting my progress now!

Big Goonie said she wanted to be Rapunzel for Halloween (2012), so I set out to make her the perfect dress. Here are some pics of my progress along the way.

Parts for the bodice

Bodice assembled with silver sparkly gimp laid in place

Cutting out the sleeves

Adding some sparkled strips to the sleeves

Time to gather the sleeves with elastic

Sleeves and bodice assembled

Deja Vu

About a month ago I told you about how my sister and I painted a couple of walls in her bedroom purple. Well guess what? We've painted them again!!

It all started when she laundered the new comforter she bought to go on her new king-sized bed. Her top-load washing machine DEVOURED the comforter, ripping a hole in it, mangling the filling, and even wiping grease on it! What a shame! It was such a pretty comforter!

The new comforter prior to being devoured ...R.I.P.!

So Sis got smart and opted for a new duvet cover instead of a comforter—much easier to launder (if you aren't familiar with duvet covers, they're basically like a big pillowcase for a comforter)! The new duvet is very similar to the old comforter in design—white background with grey and back accents—except the new duvet has some lovely wine-colored embroidery on it. Regrettably the embroidery didn't coordinate with the purple wall color very well, so we set off to find a new color!

We finally settled on a beautiful color called "Plum Harvest" by Behr (my absolute FAVORITE paint brand!). It's very hard to tell here, but it actually matches the embroidery on the throw pillows and the duvet very nicely. In fact, it looks a lot like Welch's Grape Juice (yum!)!

You can see a glimpse of the wine-colored embroidery on the duvet in the lower right corner of this picture! Also, her new headboard was delivered since my last visit and she got new lamps! What do you think?

And... VOILA!! Here is the room with the new paint color! I hope to get better pictures of the room during my next visit. As it was, I was walking out the door to return home as I took this shot. The furniture was still out in the middle of the room, painting gear scattered all over, and the paint on the walls was still wet!

I wonder what color we'll paint her room the next time I visit?? ;P

Something's Fishy!

My kid has been pestering me about getting some fish for quite some time. "What's the fun in having fish?" I said, "After all, you have a fuzzy kitty you can pet and love on and a big ol' dog to play chase with and pester. All you can do with a fish is LOOK at it!" After months of debate I finally caved.

Sandy Cheeks is a squirrel from Texas,
but lives in an underwater tree dome in
Bikini Bottom. She wears an astronaut-like
suit since she can't breathe underwater.

So two weeks ago we bought a 10 gallon aquarium. Next we added some black gravel mixed with some neon stones for a splash of color. Then we added some faux plants and air stones for bubbles, and finally we put in some super cool SpongeBob aquarium accessories to fashion our aquarium after one of my kid's favorite shows—SpongeBob Squarepants. Here you can see we have SpongeBob and his pineapple house, his neighbor/co-worker Squidward and his Easter Island moai house, SpongeBob's best friends Patrick and Sandy, and SpongeBob's pet snail, Gary.

And... VOILA! Here is Bikini Bottom* in our dining room!

*Bikini Bottom is the name of the undersea town that SpongeBob lives in.

There's Gary, SpongeBob's pet snail, hiding behind SpongeBob's pineapple house!

Gilley

We conditioned our water and waited a couple of days before adding our fish. Our first inhabitant was a blue and turquoise Crown-tail Betta we named Gil, but we tend to refer to him as his sweetie-pie name, "Gilley", instead.

Then we added some Neon Tetras. We got five of them since this fish likes to school. What better name for them than the "The Furious Five" based on other beloved characters on another of my kid's favorite shows, Kung Fu Panda?

Meet "The Furious Five"—Willie, Silly, Billy, Nilly, and Sarah.

We also added a couple of ghost shrimp. They are very peculiar looking. You can see right through them! In fact, while the one in the image below appears to be pink, it is in fact standing in front of a neon pink pebble. In person, you can see it's stomach pulsing, sending food down to the next station in its digestive tract. The shrimps usually just crawl around the bottom of the tank scavenging and hiding (they're supposed to help keep the tank clean!), but yesterday I watched one of them swim vertically from the bottom of the tank to the top! ...oddly fascinating...

No name ghost shrimp   : (

Lastly, we added some GloFish, but sadly they are messing with the harmony in the tank. There are two of them now (there had been three—Strawberry Shortcake, Orange Blossom, and Lemon Merengue—named after some of my kid's favorite dolls. Regrettably, Orange Blossom went "belly up" the other afternoon.) and all they do is bicker all day long while everyone else just enjoys the tank and gets on with living. So they're going to be evicted—don't worry, I won't flush them. The pet store has a 14-day return policy on fish (dead or alive). Perhaps I'll post an update if we get new occupants!

So while I haven't been doing my OWN home improvements project per say, I have been doing our new fishes' home improvement projects!

So what's the fun in having fish (as you may recall I asked my kid)? I must admit, I do enjoy staring into their tank watching to see what they'll do next. The Betta is especially fun to watch—his tail is so magnificent—and I keep studying the Neon Tetras to see if I can see any imperfections, but I truly can't find a single difference to distinguish one from another! Now that I have the fish fairly settled, maybe I can get back to my own projects!