light hammer taps

a few updates on some little things i've done around the house lately. been a little busy - 2 roommates now! had to make a whole new bedroom out of the space where i used to store boxes and defunct electronics.

this is an image heavy post so i will keep them all small and you can click the pic to enlarge if you want to.

one of my old how-to/hints books recommends storing your washers on a shower curtain hook. the plain kind, the ones i love and have ALL OVER THE HOUSE. 

 

well, i haven't gotten to the washers yet since mine are mostly already stored in a plastic compartmentalized caddy. but i do have this set of cheap wrenchs that needed a home. sure i could hang them all on a long peg by their handles but then if i want a wrench in the back they all have to come off one at a time. this way i only have two things to move in or out of position and i can separate them - one hook is metric and the other is standard.

found this nifty sticky backed measuring tape on clearance at the craft store. it's perforated in one foot measurements.

i put a strip of it on the lip of a drawer in my kitchen island and i just keep finding myself measuring this one thing or that up against it.

more useful than expected

broom clips are back - i found 3 sizes at ace hardware

i love hooks. especially cup hooks. but my nerve damage makes it a pain to screw them in by hand. i finally got a hex shanked chuck adaptor for my little black and decker drill/driver and popped in a screw eye. it does NOT work to unscrew them because that just unscrews the chuck itself. but it's great for setting rows of hooks under the cabinet

having a new roommate made for some interesting acoustic challenges when we all work different shifts and watch tv/listen to music at different hours. the interior doors in my house are made of.... paper. yep, paper. with a little stryofoam thrown in for support. 

you can see this in cutaway where i was putting a cat door in my roommate's door

so while we had the door off and the tools out, i filled her door with "Great Stuff" expanding foam. specifically the big gap filler variety. some in the bottom around the cat door and then, since there are assorted partitions in the door, i drilled two holes in the top that were the diameter of the fill tube on the can of great stuff and filled the top too. took about 2 cans.

 

although, if you have previously added a hook to a door, say, using a wall anchor [wet towels are heavy] you may want to seal off around the hook with some silicone or at least masking tape first. the foam found the gap around the screws and expanded right out of the door. it mostly wiped off, but this was a mess because i didn't do it right

 

Scrub a Dub Glove

i'm a terrible housekeeper. due to a couple of chronic illnesses, i tire out easily so i tend to start cleaning with a vengeance and stop after 15 square inches of vigorous scrubbing. 

but i keep trying and sometimes i find a way to work smarter, not harder. 

this weekend i was having the usual fight with my cooking area - grease, spills, stains, etc.  kitchen crud, buildup, ick. and the places it hides. all those cute little fiddly bits on appliances: stove vents, exhaust hood vents, vents on the microwave. my microwave is a stove hood model so it gets crud everywhere. green scrubby pads and grout brushes weren't doing it. i needed something thin and flexible enough to get those crevices, abrasive enough to actually remove the crud but not rough enough to damage the finish.

what's thin, flexible, scrubby and good for sensitive surfaces?

bath gloves from the dollar store of course! so i ran out to dollar tree for a bath glove, and of course a couple of other things - oatmeal soap, cold cream and a shower squeegee.

i'm pretty sure this wouldn't work with more expensive bath gloves. the cheap ones are thin and a little loose and the fibers have enough give to squish into crevices. i've owned $4 bath gloves that had the firmness of a kitchen scrubby and the kitchen scrubby already failed this job.

i need to take some pictures of the microwave at the cleanest it's been since i moved in and update this later.

it worked really well for the microwave because i can sort of reach the top of the microwave if i stretch [i'm short] and i always worry about getting up on a stepstool and losing my balance while scrubbing an especially stubborn spot. but the glove was flexible enough and loose enough weave so that the fibers could really get into all the little places where ick likes to hang out.

all those horrible little crevices on the oven vents!

there's no reason this couldn't work for cleaning other places, just don't get your actual exfoliating bath gloves mixed up with your showerhead scrubbing bath glove.

oh, and of course to clean it, just wash your hands with the glove on. i used dish liquid soap to make sure to get the grease out and then hung it with my sponges over the sink

shower rod to the rescue

here i am, sitting down to write what i thought was a follow up entry but when i went to find the original blog to link to, it turns out i apparently never actually wrote it. i took the pictures though, so i'll just give you both parts at once.

diabetic without a level

why does being diabetic matter? well when i realized this afternoon that i have no idea where my real level is my brain did this:
"huh. i wish i'd bought that mini level cube thingy i saw at the hardware store. i could keep that in my toolbox and always find it."

using every millimeter

argh, look at all those little packets of antacid samples, lotions, sheets of blister packs of pills on the top shelf. it's like an avalanche when i open the cabinet.



for over a year i just put up with it. then i noticed one day that there's just a tiny little sliver of space in between the shelf and the inside of the door. i noticed this when i was pulling off a medicine package label that had been taped to the inside of the door by the previous owners, with clear packing tape. it looked like it was a few years old.

welcome to my bathroom. also known as the room i can't store towels in. or rather, couldn't before 20 minutes ago.

tabletop cooking

finally got my metal patio table set up a few weeks ago and was enjoying the last cool weather before summer. metal table = non flammable surface.
i have a lot of things that i can put small fires in. fire is good for making things hot. yay fire! so i did.

first off is fuel. this post is about the burning thing on the right in this picture. i haven't had a lot off success using the mini hibachi yet. so the thing i made my dinner with was actually the ... chicken feeder. that's right, chicken feeder. when i saw it in a thrift store i had no idea what it was. just looked like it would hold fire. it does. REALLY well

house modding - maximum function, zero aesthetic

what i ended up doing with the area over my kitchen sink. this is the result of the broomstick found in the shed on the last house modding post. the grundtal rack didn't completely fit over the broomstick, but that's what vice grips are for, right?

for details on what each item is, check the original flickr photo and mouse over the pic for pop up notes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/catastrophegirl/4285351995/

this is how i store my ziplocs, foil, etc. i take my own food everywhere so i always need something to put it in. this was it's always right at hand.
that little lazy susan used to go in my fridge but there's no good place for it in the current fridge and it doesn't fit in the cabinets. haven't found a permanent home for it yet. may eventually go in the pantry?



and this is the hallway.

in the middle of this pic is the linen/diabetes closet.
on the right is a magnetic tool bar from harbor freight tools with various things i reach for all the time and want close at hand.
on the left is an ikea bag holder. there are three trash cans and a litterbox in the surrounding rooms. i have a hard time keeping enough bags on hand to use, actually

again, for more details [if you REALLY need to know what's on the tool holder] notes are on the original photo, here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/catastrophegirl/4285363861/in/photostream

repurposed

my kitchen is big. i like that about it but also, it can be inconvenient.
i found that when i had accidentally left a couple of storage bins stacked in the middle that they were in just the right spot for a kitchen island. so they stayed. and stayed and stayed.
i thought.... i should just see about a real one.
checked craigslist for free ones, thought about building one but all the wooden pallets i could find posted were gone before i got there.

then i did my usual weekend thrift store run to look for cat carriers and bookcases.
and there it was



once upon a time it was a dresser. the price tag labeled it a dresser [as well as showing it marked down by $10.] it was in between two other dressers.

but... it has a towel bar and kitchen countertop style top!.... huh? the cashier said it was marked down because it had been there a while, no one wanted it because of the countertop and the towel bar. i told her it was going to be my new kitchen island. she said that sounded about perfect since it had come out of a dorm where it had been used as a mini kitchenette center - which explains the burn mark on one end of the countertop.


it even looks good with my cabinets. perfect height since i want it to be taller than it is now and intend to add wheels.

the drawers are exactly tall enough to hold my measuring cups and corningware. [the poor corningware and baking dishes had been living at the cabinets at the far end of the kitchen]


so now i have a place to put the things that don't fit in the other cabinets near the stove, a piece of countertop wide and deep enough to roll out dough on and a place to put my laptop when i need to research a recipe that still keeps my keyboard away from spills and splatters.

reminds me of the time i used the frames for underbed drawers as display shelves/bookcases by standing them on end. always see past what it used to be or what it's intended for and see what you can make of it