apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Hmmm...it's not allowing me to vote.

Whoa--long post here.

Even though this thread isn't very visible, I'll kick it off. I was out of town last weekend through Monday and had a tough week at work (and I have work to do over the weekend - blah), so my Cure was on hold. I just did some more chipping away at the kitchen deep cleaning. All I have left is the inside of the fridge (and I already chipped away at that too) and the restaurant table and the floor under it and behind the fridge.

I still am on Week 5 - the office, which won't be much, just weeding through files and a supplies storage cubby, and normal weekly clean up of the desk. That's pretty much the extent of my office nook. So, I should be able to do that and the bathroom, which also won't be bad, since I've Cured that before.

The BIG news is finally, finally, the bathtub faucet drip/torrent is fixed! After trying to fix it myself, a handyman trying to fix it, the plumbers coming over on a holiday, when I can't do a building water shutoff, the plumbers were here yesterday and fixed it!!! I keep waiting for that water torrent noise to start, it's been going on so long. But, instead, wonderful silence - as it should be. Crossed off the list at long last!

Repairs have been a major focus for this Cure, because I'm sick of seeing the same crap on that list Cure after Cure and also seeing it grow. This Cure, besides the end of the Fixing the Drip Saga, I've fixed a floor lamp, had the lights in the kitchen fixed (just jiggled really), and had a new faucet set installed in the bathroom sink (a cheap one - just to replace the aged-out old one).

Before the end of this Cure, I hope to at least pick a new water heater (I'm thinking tankless, for which I can also get a tax credit, thus greatly cutting the cost and it will save energy--anyone have experience with these?) and a new toilet (probably Toto, the great low-flows) to replace my awful low-flow. I may also replace the bedroom blinds which are falling apart and just cobbled together so they stay up, hopefully today. I also have a programmable thermostat ready to install and got a diagram/key to the odd wiring behind my current thermostat from a neighbor (the building's systems are old) and hope to tackle that too.

Getting repairs done feels like such a luxury--they do cost $$--when they should be a necessity. I feel so great when I get something fixed, whether I fix it or someone else does, it doesn't matter!

Pixie - when you say a 'tankless' water heater, do you mean one that heats water for baths / radiators as you need it? In the UK they're called combi or combination boilers - not sure about in the US. If so, we've had a gas one for ten years and it's wonderful - extremely efficient and hot water on tap (no pun intended). We have had it serviced every year and have had no problems whatsoever. I can recommend them wholeheartedly.

"tanks" zooza! (sorry...) Yes, that's the same thing. They are also called instantaneous or on-demand water heaters:
http://tinyurl.com/a8ze3
The idea being that you don't waste energy keeping a tank of water hot at all times.

Mine will necessarily be electric, like all else in my condo and building.

Fantastic, Pixie.

I just want to say that I do feel like taking a big long break--or at least poking about on the things that still need to be done. I feel exhausted and anxious to resume "normal" life around here. The chaos that descended when we painted the dining room still hasn't abated. We need to get back to our routines --for example, the kids argued with us about eating at the kitchen table last night--they wanted to eat in the living room with a "family" movie as we had been doing for the last month.

The living room needs a big clean, so do the bathrooms. The kitchen is still a bit of a mess (some of the furniture removed from the dining room parked itself in there and seems immoveable now).

There's lots of painting to do: dressers, desk, and shelves. I must admit I'm not anxious to don my painting duds again!

All that and I want to get started on a headboard project I've been itching to get to for about a year.

Time to prioritize. (And why is the bedroom always last on that list?)

Alana,
You've got ambitious plans - maybe a breather is in order. Take a break!

Alana - I agree with Pixie. Take a break - get out of the house for a while and have some fun. It's tough when you get to the point you describe (I've been there many times) and a change of scenery is usually required to clear the mind. Otherwise, it gets overwhelming, mistakes get made and everything gets a lot worse!

I've posted a few new pictures of the livingroom with the new filing cabinet and printer, plus a photo of my new recycling bin situation.
http://flickr.com/photos/13108435@N03/1659168025/

It turns out the part I thought I was missing for the filing cabinet was just the result of absolutly terrible directions. They showed the drawer slides being attached a specific way on one side, and didn't show the other side. Turns out you have to attach them upsidedown on the other side. There was absolutly no way I would have ever known that from the directions, but the parts department was quick to make me feel like an idiot for not understanding....yeah, definitly not ordering from them again, bad experiance all around. I need to find a brown marker and see if I can hide some of these scratches.
I'm pretty happy with how everything there looks now, though, and I love the printer!

I also did a deep clean of my bathroom the other night - scrubbed the floor with a scrub brush, scrubbed everything, cleaned out the shaving cabinet, etc. I still need to clean out the medicine cabinet, and maybe see about getting the landlord to ok reinstalling a shelf that got taken out in that terrible bathroom renovation (I don't want to talk about it - 5 months of having a huge hole in our bathroom wall due to compleat incompetence on the part of building management). The reno did end happily, in that we got a nice new white bathroom, but we're still missing our shelves, so there's very little storage space.
Today has been spent picking up clutter and studying for exams. Next week is hell-week as far as exams go (4 in the course of 3 days, plus normal school work b/c we don't get any time off for mid-terms), so I don't know what I'll be able to do with the bedroom. I have a lot that I want to do - cleaning under bed, sorting out clothing (the boyfriend is on-baord with that bit!), dealing with my shelves (I have a plan!), and the normal clutter reducing and dusting/vacuuming. So we'll see. I don't have a set end date yet, although we'll be having some guests towards the end of November, so I may add an extra week for the bedroom, and just take this coming week off to dedicate to studying.

Very nice, Rosie!

Well, no, I'm not exactly going to quit. I did manage to wash the hallway and living room floors today and then watched the transformers movie with the boy who will be 10 tomorrow. That was a good break!

I think I'm ready to give the bathroom a good scrub (though, I did it about two weeks ago) The glue from the floor tiles is oozing out--they really need to be replaced as the floor gets grungy very quickly. Maybe I can talk the husband into something. He's on holidays next week and I can keep him busy, if that's what he wants.

By the way: don't forget to wash/vacuum your bath fan grille. I think the problem with the floor is too much condensation--due to the dirty grille.

Just reporting in: the downstairs bathroom is as clean as it gets! Shower rod, all faucets (toothbrush action here) The sink, underneath the sink, the hose pipes to the taps under the sink, the exposed plumbing, the toilet, (yes every bit) the toilet scrubber holder (eeew does that thing get gross) the shelving, baseboards, floor and cold air return vent grille. And, of course, the fan grille, too.

And you know what else? We replaced the toilet tank and the silver hose that connects it to the water supply in the floor a couple of years ago. There's a tag that comes attached to the hose--just like those big tags that come on uphostery and rugs that say "To be removed by consumer."

Well, this consumer finally removed the hose tag!

It looks like I posted my latest update in a thread that was no longer current, so I'll summarize here: after an interruption because of illness and work, I'm starting to catch up. Yesterday evening I assembled a sofa (which had been waiting for about six weeks) and arranged the furniture in the living room. Later today I'll hang pictures and a mirror.. A rug and a console table are on order.

The room is long and narrow, and the seating area is at one end, near the fireplace. The console table is for the other end, which is also the passage among the front door, garage, all the other downstairs rooms, and the staircase to the bedroom level.

As usual before I start a major writing project, I make sure all my reference books are where I want them. Several of these worker tomes had migrated to other shelves and the spaces were filled with alien volumes.

It’s easy enough to pull out the illegal aliens and find the books that should be there, except that then there are holes in another row of books and a stack of books that need shelving. And since the shelves involved held the non-writing research volumes, it did seem both easier and more effective in the long term to get those shelves in order as well. It has to be done.

But then, pulling those books from where they were misshelved and pulling others to make room, disrupted still another bookcase’s worth of books and shelves….

I haven’t done much work on my writing project over the past week, but I have completed reshelving three and a half out of five bookcases. At this point, I may as well finish.

I hope to wind up about 10% below capacity, but will be happy if I’m only 10% above capacity. So far the book discard stack is growing nicely.

Meanwhile, the files are waiting, but I hope to get the floor lamp fixed sometime this weekend.

Pixie and Alana:

As someone who keeps postponing a bathroom renovation, I know what you mean, Pixie.

What I wound up doing -- and I'm not sure I'd actually recommend this anyone -- is creating three priority lists: the first, the "cosmic" one, is the most important to the least important -- walls, appliances, heaters, etc, down to accessories; the second, the "wow factor" one, is what will make me happy when I walk into my space and see it -- it's the same list, just in a different order; and the third, the "irk factor" one, is the same list but ordered in what annoys me the most to what annoys me the least.

I then averaged the results and have been working down the list ever since. While some important things have dropped to the middle of the list -- like the renovation -- and minor things sometimes wind up high on the list -- closet door handles -- overall I find a lot is getting done and I don't wind up feeling stale or frustrated or helpless.

JonathanB - ha! I like those priority lists. How do you "average" your results? Give me an example.

I've had the flu and have fallen a bit behind with posting. I am now in the process of 're-glazing' my bathtub, and I painted my office and did some updating in there. Need lighting and a bit more storage for the office. In the living room, I hung a print I won online at a housing works auction and purged the room of magazines. I'm still working on repairs and plugging away at the clutter.

Last week I was convinced that my cure was doomed-- mr. gray had a freakout in the Container Store -- but this week he rallied, and we spent all afternoon sorting through music room crap. So that's done. There are piles of stuff all over the floor, but at least I have an excel spreadsheet telling me what it all is!

Today we went back to the Container Store to get in on the last day of the shelving sale, and spent a frightening amount of money on elfa shelving that will go on the guitar wall. It gets delivered next saturday. Yay!

Plus, Mr. Gray has started listing a bunch of gear on e-bay, which is a breakthrough. And last weekend I organized my desk drawers for the first time in about eight years.

We have tomorrow off, so I'm hoping to either make an ikea run for storage boxes to go on the shelves, or to start painting. There's still a lot of work to be done, but it's such a relief to have made some progress that I'm actually looking forward to doing the rest.

gray lady -- great feeling to see progress and the promise of more progress, isn't it? Yay.

JonathanB -- I loved your description of how the books got back to their proper homes, and then your method of prioritizing -- excellent! Like Pixie, I'm wondering how you average your results.

Everybody's doing great.

I'm glad bathroom week is over -- but I'm not looking forward to bedroom week. People over on the Chicago thread have been encouraging me (thanks, y'all!) because I'm feeling rather disheartened by the fact that the things I really want to do to get my bedroom the way I want it are things that cost money, and I'm not able to spend money just now. So I'm feeling kind of down about not being able to make my bedroom as nice as I would like. My "after" pics will look very much like my "before" pics. Sigh.

On the other hand, I'm very happy with the way the living room, dining room, and writing room have turned out, so that's still a pretty good batting average...

There are now pics of my clean and shiny bathroom on my Flickr, link in my profile.

Two photos of the living room (without rug, as it's not here yet) are now at flickr. I need suggestions about pillows for the sofa; the back is fairly hard and it looks sort of bare.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7765379@N03/

Well, we painted the living room wall!

The color we picked was "Red Dahlia" from Martha Stewart. We made two coats, looked at how the wall was slightly uneven with the color and translucence, and decided we kinda liked it that way, so we stopped after the 2nd coat. We'll get pictures when it all dries and we can take the tape off, etc.

What was really amazing was the way painting this big wall got us in touch with the house in a way we never thought would happen. Standing on a stool hand-painting the top corner of my wall, touching a piece of it that I had never touched before, it was really interesting. We learned more about the structure of our home than we ever had before. And I've lived here 3 years!

I feel like I need a break, too - SO TIRED! But it's been great. Last week I did pickle the wood on my built in desk, stained some shelves from IKEA and will install those this week. I've cleaned the bathroom and, b/c my grout never looked clean, found this cool stuff to 'stain' the grout in my bathroom. Now the grout is white and it looks like it's a whole new floor- it's terrific and was so easy to do! This weekend was crazy with family commitments and I took the day off tomorrow to actually paint my bathroom. I've never painted a room before by myself, and I'm a bit nervous... but thinking I can always paint over it.

teatrosnynj -
Can you tell us more about the grout stain? Name, where you got it, if it was toxic & smelly, how long it took?
The floor of our bathroom could certainly use something like that, and other people here have asked about something like that before too, sounds like the perfect solution!

It's called Tile Grout Coating by a company called Tile Guard from my local hardware store. It comes in a little applicator bottle like one you'd get for shoe polish. It was a bit smelly, but not terribly toxic smelling. Best of all, I have large tiles in my bathroom and not a lot of grout, so it didn't take long at all - all I had to do was run the applicator along the grout lines and wipe off the excess with a rag.

Thanks, teatrosnynj!

Not much to report here :(
The bathroom did not get cleaned this week. Bathroom cleaning is the boyfriends job since I detest doing it. Only problem is, our ideas of "clean" are a bit different and I always think it needs to be cleaned again before he does. If he doesn't do it soon I'll just do it myself, but I won't be happy about it. blah.

Good news is that we did get curtain rods yesteday! The curtains should be arriving today (although JCPenny messed up the address so instead of them being delivered to my company's mailroom I'm going to have to run all over the 49-floor building to find it). After I opened up the curtain rod packaging last night though I realized we should really have a level of some sort before we start drilling holes in the wall. Hopefully the curtains will go up sometime this week!

AmandaC, I don't have a level either, so I just use a tape measure and measure straight down from the ceiling, on both sides. It's not completely scientific, but it sure beats buying/storing extra stuff. :)

Week 6 news - I finished cleaning the bathroom last night. What a difference a decluttered counter makes. I also put one of my new candles in the bathroom.

Pictures are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poweredbytofu/sets/72157602200956960/

My Week 6 detailed recap is here:
http://www.poweredbytofu.com/

Does everyone else have a shopping list that's growing? I've always been picky, but now I'm having even a harder time buying things!

My bathrooms are clean, but the shower project is not done. We have an older plastic shower enclosure, and my Mr was sure he could change out the fixtures (the bathtub faucet thing was rusted through- which I only found out when I scrubbed off the soap and minerals and went THRU it. ) anyway- we went out, bought a really nice set- and we can't change out the fixtures without knocking a hole in my bedroom wall, or ripping out the plastic enclosure (and then of course buying a new shower enclosure) EEK! We can put a new replacement faucet thing on, so it's back to the lowes. What a bummer.
The kitchen work has finally started. Got the first coat of paint on the wall- and I like it. Bonus, the counters were bare for the paint job, and I found out I really like bare counters. Who knew?
Tonight is my Mr.'s birthday so we are having folks over for dinner and adult beverages. No work tonight- or tomorrow morning!