What a Pain!

What a Pain is right! More in the wrist than the neck though... And it all could have been saved if only I planned better. I started out on the right track... cheap-o craft crystal knobs foiled me. Literally, the foil came off and happened to be the only thing gluing the crystal to the knob

{seen here}

Bummer right? So I installed the Beachy-Peachy Window without the crystal knobs. And later had to come in and put in blocking {seen here} in order to install my new and improved crystal knobs.

{So can we talk about how they're actually crystal door knobs you can get at Lowes or Home Deopt for $7 a pack. The cheapest crystal knobs to be actually used as cabinet pulls or hooks that I found were at least $15 each for the size I wanted, and they look just like the door knobs! Win for me! I got 4 for the price of one!}

The downside to using crystal door knobs is, apparently they are threaded at an impossible thread to match. No bolt in the world {except the weird square one that came in the pack} would fit. But I needed 4 bolts, not 2. Who would have thought it would have been so hard to find a bolt? I stumped handyman after handyman at different stores with my little crystal knobs. Finally I called my dad to see if he had any ideas {I almost was going to give up on the knobs}. This is when I rediscovered my Dad is the handiest of all handymans in the entire world. "If you can't find a bolt to match the thread then let's just find a bolt you like and re-thread the knob to match". No one out of the 20ish handymans that I talked to at all sorts of stores with bolts said anything about rethreading the knob! My Dad finished rethreading the knobs {with a tap & die set} in under an hour and handed them back to me. All done. I spent weeks trying to find a bolt!

I'd like to say the rest of it was easy... and mostly it was... other than with a 2x12 in the wall already, we didn't have much room to try and squeeze our arms up in there and try to put the nut on the back.

Enjoy the pictures... I enjoyed taking them:

After a LONG time of scratching up our wrists trying to get them on, we were successful. We now have towel hooks under our beachy-peachy window.

I'm loving my decorations up on top {now that I took the time to wipe off the dust!}

I got the apothecary jars at Porters for only $25 for all three of them! 

The birds I got at Tai Pan for $30 for 4 of them.

This glass fishing float my mom bought me on a road trip to Seattle. It was found on the coast of Alaska after a huge winter storm... Awesome right?!

Beachy-Tray Love

I loved this little tray from TJ Maxx. I couldn't help but get it {even though it was $12}. But when I got it home, it didn't really fit anywhere in my beachy bathroom. So I decided to make my own {for less money - boo yah!}. I'm going to throw a little "I'm so awesome" love out there as well, Roeshel from TheDIYShowOff also loved this tray. As seen here in this picture:

Beautiful wood right?! De-Nailing kinda sucks with the ol' barnwood, but it is so worth it to have the awesome weathered look. 

I actually took a hand sander to the beautiful wood {please don't hurt me barnwood lovers!}. But I'm going for the beach-y weathered look, not the rustic farm look. Also if I'm going to be putting towels in the thing I don't want slivers to get all up in my towels! I also polycrylic'ed the inside.

The rope is wired on there {thats how the TJ Maxx was done too, just so you know}. It takes more rope than you expect to make a handle, so get plenty. I need about 6 feet just for 4 handles. It took me about 4 different stores to find the rope, ditch the craft stores for huge manly rope and go to a ranch/farm store.

 

I have a couple more to go under the vanity.... but they are waiting on the final decision on what the vanity is going to do before I finish them. So for less than I bought 1 little tray for, I will have 3 good storage bins. And they are sooo cute! At least I think so.

Partied @

Light Saver

So the light fixtures in our place.... well they weren't exactly the most attractive. One of the first things we did was replace the chandelier in the dining, the ceiling mount fixture in our bedroom, and the vanity light fixture in the bathroom. For about $20 we got a fixture from Home Depot {on sale}.

{please excuse the fingerprints going on on the ceiling!}

We love our new light and cant believe the differences they've made around the house, check out what our dining light looked like before!

Its hard to see {sorrowful pic sorry} But can you believe that "upside-down-dish-over-a-bulb" fixture?

Mirror Magic gone Awry

First, I have to confess... I had to call my mother to figure out how to spell "awry". But I needed the word. What else could explain such a simple & smooth project {not to mention cheap} going so totally off the wire.

Our bathroom came with a nice, big, plain mirror. It needed some loving. And while I have lots of trim laying around {literally- you can see it there lying in the hall} I might as well have it be doing some good, other than giving us stubbed toes. 

So I chose 3 different trims that I put together to make a "bomb-dig" frame for our mirror. I'm going to let you make up the story of how it happened... but here I'll provide the pictures. {Just so you know, no blood was spilled during the destruction of the mirror} 

We only lived with the table top mirror for a couple of days. Thats all we could handle. Have you ever lost a giant mirror in a small room? Makes you claustrophobic! So I called around to a couple glass shops and got the best price on a new mirror. Don't buy mirrors from a store if you're planning on framing it yourself... its so much cheaper from a glass shop.

The new frame is liquid nailed up, so I didn't have to work around any of the little plastic holders. I was very careful framing the new mirror {I think I would have given up if I broke the mirror twice}.
I had to work on the corners of the frame a bit. My husband {rightfully} gets on my case for painting before it's ready. So I had to sand off a layer of paint to work on the corners... Putty is becoming my new best friend, slowly.

It's coming along, but it's not quite finished yet. One day I'll be able to take off that blue tape.

The King's Throne

The standard of living rose at our house this week. We've lived with this toilet seat that 1. has a gnarly gash on the top and 2. the seat wouldn't stay up. Not like it's my problem... but I do love my husband and felt bad for him when he had to hold the seat up. We eventually discovered that if we shoved back the tank lid far enough the seat would stay up on its own. I know bad huh?

So I found the trick to get a new toilet seat. Use your current one as a stepping stool. I may have or may have not, broken the seat hinge while trying to drill into the ceiling...

 

My handy-dandy husband not only took off the old seat, installed the new one, but also cleaned the toilet while he was at it.

 

And all the anticipation paid off. The toilet seat now stays up all on its very own. Chris is so happy.

I broke a nail!

Like literally people. Going to the gym everyday is really paying off. First you have to hear the whole story....
So one day I saw this picture:

and I thought to myself, "me-likey!". So I started thinking Beach for the bathroom. Not like that is an original thought {I'm pretty sure lots of people do it}. But I like the feel of beach cottage. So we're going with it.

First things first in "decking-out" style you must usually start off by destroying something, making a giant mess, and forgetting to tell your husband until you're about 1/2 way done with the demolition part. That happened here and here when I built the Beachy-Peachy Window.

My main problem in building the Beachy-Peachy Window was that I wanted to hang towels from the bottom trim piece. When my awesomely-sucky crystal knobs fell apart, I figured I could work it out later and finish up the window so we could enjoy not walking all over wood scraps and tools in the bathroom. So what's the problem? I didn't put in any backing for the towel hooks.

So now that I've found my replacement crystal knobs how am I going to put them in? Of course in "decking-out" style with lots of tearing apart and making a mess. By this time I've got things going all up and around the Beachy-Peachy Window. So getting back in behind the Towel Hook trim board was a little tricky. First I cut a big hole in the wall {surprise surprise} The original towel bar's backing was right in my way... like right there. So I used a hack saw and cut it into 3 pieces, then used pliers to rip out the blocking that was secured by the worlds most manliest nails. {p.s. I had to do this twice, on either side of the center stud}.

 

Thats when it happened. I was going at the stupid blocking for all I was worth {also being careful not to disturb the peaceful surroundings I stupidly put in before addressing the issue of towel hooks}when I totally obliterated one of those manly nails. Broke it right in half. I'll show you I'm made out of metal.

So in the end, I got the old blocking out. Tah-dah! Ready for newer, badder blocking.

 Not like you can really see it... but that little 1/2" of board you see sticking down there, that's the bottom of a 2x12. That sucker goes all the way up behind the towel hook trim board. The old blocking was only 2x4's and way too low for my Beachy-Peachy Window trim.

And so ends the story of when I found out how awesomely strong I am. We've hit another road block in the crystal knobs... we'll see if that gets solved this weekend... till then, we have another hole in our wall.