apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I like the photo you picked, good pick-me-up for a friday. :)

Is this question going to be posted every couple days?

Hiring the contractor recommended by my husband's then-boss to work on our renovations; not contracting him to specific jobs, but rather paying him by the hour, and taking any advice from him.

Our 1929 house had dessicated drywall full of holes; he talked my husband into repairing the drywall instead of replacing it ("that would be too much for you to handle").

I'll never forget the night my husband put the final layer of drywall compound on the final patched hole, turned around, and put a 2 foot long gash into the wall with his tool belt. The swearing!!! Of course, we had to replace every single wall in the house, but at least we were able to insulate (there was next to nothing in the walls). The renovation though, took us YEARS because the contractor had gotten all our money, and we were barely out of grad school ( I was still working on my thesis).

It was a very painful lesson to learn.

So my Father painted our picnic table green. Over time the paint started to peel away. I thought to myself "I'll just paint over it!...with WHITE!" Needless to say without any sanding or peeling of the original paint, my work wasn't exactly a masterpiece. It looked so horrible I gave up and now we have a half white half green paint peeling picnic table that my sister never shuts up about how I ruined it. I'm posting this for her.

Sarah: u forgot that you nailed a tablecloth to it to cover it up
Jennie: HAHAHAHA omg! i did do that

I forgot to mention that I was so horrified by my work I found a tablecloth and proceeded to nail it to the picnic table to cover up what I had done...but of course my sister called me out on that too.

I have a frien who tried to stain an old white pine country style table with darker finish, and somehow managed to do it really irregularly. Now the table looks REALLY weird, but she doesn't really care that much about it, and at least we had a good laugh.

I also remember my sister trying out a pattern mix in her stairway sometime in the early 1990s : the lower part was a blue pastel pattern, the upper part was a wallpaper that represented tigers and leopards (with the appropriate brown and yellowish gold colors), and they were separated by a bathroom type pink and seafoam green pastel freize of seashells.
At 13 I remember finding it the most horrid combination of colors I had ever seen (only beaten since by a chance encounter of bright fuschia, brown and maize yellow).

OK, I'll confess -- this was this past week! (I blush!)

Measured the wall in my dining room where I planned to put 2 IKEA Expedit 2x4 cube shelving units on their sides to hold drawers for my crafting stuff and to serve as a buffet. Assembled the two units. Slid them into position. They OVERLAPPED by (a lousy) 1/4 inch!!! (I forgot that the point on the wall where I measured didn't include the baseboard molding!) Sigh!!

Resolved by removing the end panel of one unit in center where they meet and using the drawer and door inserts to support the shelves. I may add metal braces later. It actually looks better without two thick end panels abutting, but it's still embarrassing!

In my efforts to save money and use salvaged materials, I bought windows and door parts from a building supply store's "yard sale" and had them installed to close in a little porch. Code requires the glass to be tempered and I am replacing them with new sliding glass doors. (that I should have bought in the first place)