Bed Nook

“Are you getting divorced?”  The store clerk asked nonchalantly as if asking how I liked the town or something.  I was at Big Lots, buying my new bed.  Buying a twin bed because it’s all that will fit.

The nook off the main room at my new place, now dubbed “the bed nook,” is exactly the size of a twin bed.  As soon as I realized that, I knew it’d be perfect.  It looked like the previous tenant had used it as an off-shoot of the kitchen.  There was a large shelf with a microwave and an interchangeable basket shelving unit like Munchkinhead has in Cudahy attached to the wall.  I relocated both.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I painted the walls in the nook blue and repainted the ceiling above it with a fresh coat of flat white.  I also gave the alcove near the window a fresh coat of white.  I made sure to put anything I’d want in that storage unit in it before setting up my bed.  And I made sure that would be stuff I wouldn’t want to get to unless I were moving again, because once that bed’s up, I’m not getting into the storage unit.  Luckily, the water meter is viewable from the hole in the side of the alcove.

I use the alcove basically as a nightstand.  In the alcove, I placed a holder of some sort that I picked up at my aunt’s house.  I think it’s for mail or something, but I use it to hold my books so they won’t fall through the cut-out in the wall down into the storage unit.  I also placed my alarm clock on the alcove shelf with a power strip so I can plug my phones in at night. 

The outlet is in the middle of the wall, which is nice.  It’s easily accessible even with the bed in place.  The nook has it’s own overhead light with switch.  (The rest of the apartment, aside from the bathroom, is on a single switch.)  And that switch is in the nook itself but still reachable from the main room.  Perfect.

To help separate the bed nook from the main room, I decided to hang curtains around the foot of it.  I considered a number of different fabrics, including heavy light-blocking curtains, but in the end decided to go with a light beige mesh.  The mesh allows light to flow into the main room from the alcove window, but still separates the nook and the room.  The beige goes well with the main room color scheme and the mesh has sort of a mosquito net feel that works with with the African decor in the main room.  The net is hung from buttonholes in the top of the fabric on a number of  brass cup hooks screwed into the ceiling.

The bed nook is super cozy and a great place for sleeping, especially with the down comforter and four quilts on my bed.  It’s a nice, quiet area away from any work spaces in my home, reserved solely for rest and sleep.  Having a window right nearby is very nice and I am excited for the breezes this will provide in summer.  I love crawling into my bed at night and hate crawling out of it in the morning.  A perfect score in the test of a good bed.

(And for those of you who were wondering: yes, it’s on risers and yes, I have to practically jump to get on it.  The top of the bed is 39” from the floor.)

Making Room for Clothes part 2

Even with my fabulous new double-decker closet pole, that closet can not hold all my clothes.  I generally have kept most of my clothes on hangers, pretty much everything other than undergarments and socks.  Circumstances were dictating a change.

The apartment came with a neat little white bureau of some sort.  It has a large cabinet with two shelves, a smaller cabinet with two shelves and two small drawers.  I also got a white dresser from my aunt’s house.  Between these two items of furniture, I was able to tuck away most of the clothes that people traditionally fold: t-shirts, trousers, handkerchiefs, sweaters, etc.

But what to do with all my dresses and skirts that didn’t fit in the closet and big bulky things like hoodies?  Poles to the rescue!  Poles installed by a partial-Pole. Hee hee.

After making the hanging pole in the closet, I had a length of metal closet pole left over.  I trimmed it down to the appropriate size and installed it next to the fridge.  I’d originally had a tension shower rod running through that space, from under the overhang, but that kept falling under the weight of my jackets.  A mounted closet pole is much sturdier and works great to hold all my hoodies, my shawls, my scarves and my extra winter jackets, including my high school letter jacket.

Original attempt with the shower tension rod.

Mounted closet pole

That shower tension rod went to good use elsewhere, with two other shower tension rods.  The three of them are hung together as a cluster across the narrow part of my Dressing/office/sitting room.  They essentially split off the dressing part of the room from the office/sitting part. 

At first, I just had two rods.  That didn’t work so well; gravity and all.  With three hung all three together they balance out the load by sharing the weight.  One has cardigans, one has dresses, one has skirts and empty hangers from whatever’s in the wash.  Since redistributing the weight that way, they haven't’ fallen.

Quick, knock on some wood.

Making Room for the Clothes part 1

My new place has one closet.  One not-so-very-big but oh-so-very-tall closet.  The ceilings in the apartment are only about 7feet, but for some reason, the bar in this closet is still higher than most, almost near the top of the closet.  “This is awesome!”  I thought to myself, “so much potential.”

First, the tall bar means I can hang up my long dresses and my catsuit without them dragging on the floor.   That’s excellent.  It also means there’s room for a double-decker bar.  So, I built one.

I went to that fabulous hardware store and picked up a metal clothes pole, two eye bolts, two S hooks and two pieces of 6-ft lengths of chain.

I wanted the double-decker pole to only be half the closet so that I still had a place to hang my long dresses.  I measured that space in the closet and cut the metal pole to size with my hacksaw.  I’m not very good at cutting straight with a hacksaw, especially when I’m using my legs as a clamp to hold what I’m cutting.   The edge is a bit crooked, but not too bad.  I used the wire brush attachment on my Dremel to remove burs and smooth out the cut edge of the pole.

Then I drilled my holes.  Well, I tried to drill my holes.  I had a 1/16” drill bit the hardware store gave me for free that was strong enough to go through metal.  But my eye bolts were 1/4” and the only bits I had big enough for that were masonry and dry wall bits.  Neither would go through metal.  I had to put the project aside for a week while I gallivanted all over the country and come back to it when I had the proper bit.  I picked up the proper bit in Milwaukee.

Once I had the holes drilled, I put the eye bolts in and screwed on the nuts.  I put holes in both sides of the bar so that the eye bolts go all the way through, making the bar studier when it’s on the chains.  I put one end of each piece of chain on empty hangers and hung the hangers on the closet’s existing pole.  I put an S hook on the other ends and the other side of the S hooks on the eye bolts.  And there I had it, a second level in my closet!

I have it arranged now so that my long dresses are in the single-decker area, my suits are on the top level of the double-decker area and my blouses are on the hanging bar.  It’s working great so far.

New Home

Somehow, I manage to keep moving into smaller and smaller places.  El Cerrito smaller than Nashville, Cudahy smaller than El Cerrito, and DC smaller than all. But it is going to be so cute!

It’s a one-bedroom spot euphemistically called an “English Garden apartment.”  It’s the basement.  It has it’s own entrance out back to the “garden.”  There’s a main room and the other room that’s called a bedroom, and a bathroom, and a hallway, and a nook, and the house’s laundry room and furnace room, and some under-the-stairs storage.

I’ve adjusted things a bit.  The nook is now my bed nook.  It has a window and a very large alcove above a storage area that houses the water meter.  It’s holding the things that would normally be on my nightstand: alarm clock, phone chargers, reading books, journals, etc.   The “bedroom” is now my dressing/sitting/office room.  The main room is combination kitchen and living room, also makes julienne fries, it will not break, it…. sorry.  Too much Aladdin.

It is mostly below ground in front and in back, so the windows are small and there’s an air conditioner in one.  But I’ve found that opening the curtains and the back door lets in a fair amount of light.  The below-ground bit also means there’s stairs to go up when you go out.  They’re under a cement porch.  Duck!  There’s a good chunk of cement missing from all the people who have hit their heads.

It’s going to be a lot of work to get the place set up.  I’m hoping by March.  But I’m already in love with what it’s going to be.  The first thing I did was move the refrigerator out of the main room.  It was taking up almost a quarter of the room.   There’s a very large area at the bottom of the stairs.  I measured the opening between the stairs and the wall, at the molding, and it was just big enough to get the fridge through with some finessing.

Fridge’s new home.  (Above, moving fridge through the gap.)

Then I painted.  It was amazing what a fresh coat of gloss white on the painted woodwork did to the place!  It suddenly seemed bigger and brighter and no longer dingy.  The walls in the place were peach, pretty much the same peach as our old Africa Room in Cudahy.  I painted the bed nook the blue that my bedroom in Cudahy was.  In the dressing/sitting/office room, I painted one accent wall the green that Munchkinhead and I had put in the hallway in Cudahy.  In the main room, the back wall of the room is actually the hallway wall; that side is open except for a pillar.  I painted that wall a dark brownish red that I got at the fabulous newly opened hardware store I found in town.  I was their first paint mix!  It’s going to go very well with my African decor.  I gave the rest of the main room walls a fresh coat of peach.  I also touched up the ceilings.

Main room accent wall

New Desk

It was the one thing I felt like the apartment was missing: a work space for me.  Everything else about the apartment is fabulous.  But, I needed a place where I could sit and work at my computer. 

Finally, I ordered a desk.  A small desk, a portable desk.  Something we could sort of squeeze into the existing layout without too much trouble and move out of the way when company comes.  It doesn’t match at all, but the only ones that did match were way too short.

I chose a fairly inexpensive but decently rated, Amazon-prime eligible desk from Amazon.com.  It’s called the Techni Mobili Mobile & Compact MDF Computer Cart.  Well, that’s what the manufacturer calls it; I call it a wheely-desk.

It’s light-weight; awesome.  It came with a Philips screw driver and wrench for assembly; awesome.  It did need a little tweaking before assembly though.  The desk comes with the cams already inserted into their proper places.  But, the holes for the screws to access the cams were laminated over and the cams were not quite in all the way or turned the proper direction.  I had to open the screw-holes with the screwdriver, and use a flathead screwdriver to push the cams all the way in and rotate them to the proper direction.  Once I did that, the desk went together ok.

The desk is designed to have a roll-out keyboard tray and a CD holder.  Umm… CDs?  I don’t like keyboard trays; my knees need that space.  So, I didn’t install the keyboard tray. Instead of attaching the metal CD rack vertically to the side to hold CDs, I decided to turn it into something useful.  I bought long screws, wide washers and wingnuts at the local hardware store and attached the wire rack to the keyboard tray arm.  Now I have a hanging basket that I can use to hold pens, post-it note pads or other small desk wares.

Desk as pictured  on Amazon:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desk as I assembled it for me:

My New Lamp

Last week, I wrote about the end of my Lego lamp.  Death is always connected to rebirth in some way.  So, after taking apart the Lego lamp, I made a new table lamp.

Introducing, my Lego Bucket Lamp!

I had started this lamp years ago, after building my Lego lamps.  I had gotten two lamp kits and two sets of steel nipples back then.  So I had this Lego bucket with a hole drilled in the lid and in the bucket’s center bar sitting around just waiting for finishing details.

To finish the lamp, I drilled a smaller hole in the bottom of the bucket.  The holes in the lid and support bar are sized for the lamp pipe.  The hole on the bottom of the bucket is smaller so the lamp pipe doesn’t fall out the bottom.  That hole is for the cord.  Lego buckets have a groove on two sides of the bottom of the bucket.  They’re the perfect size for the cord; the bucket sits completely stable on a flat surface.

  I strung the cord first through the bottom hole and into a 6” steel nipple inside the bucket.  Then I put a longer piece of lamp pipe through the hole in the support bracket and threaded a coupler onto the bottom of it.  I pulled the  cord through that pipe and threaded the 6” pipe into the coupler.  The pipe rests on the bottom of the bucket, held up straight by the snug hole in the support bracket.

Next, I put the lid on the bucket and attached the shade holder and socket pieces to the top of the lamp pipe, wired the socket to the cord and placed the socket cover over the wires.  Lampshade harp and bulb in, and the lamp was ready to try out.

It worked!

 

 

Mr. Weasel is demonstrating how the lid can be lifted and the bucket can still serve as a storage device. :)

 

Other neat things to do with Lego
buckets: Cute as a Bucket

So Long Lego Lamp

It was one of my favorite pieces of decor.  But, having no place to put it now that I rearranged my living room and the fact that I broke it moving it means that the Lego lamp’s time to shine is over.

Its coordinating partner is already long gone, having been broken years ago by an old roommate.

One lamp was black with a white stripe and the other was white with a black stripe.  Zebra colors to go with the African decor in my living room.  I had gotten some zebra home decor fabric to cover the lampshade but didn’t like the lampshade enough to cover it.

I made the lamps with Legos – obviously – a simple lamp kit and standard 1/8-IP Thread steel nipples, aka lamp pipe.  I built a little house with a door way and window openings.  The cord exited through the door so the lamp could sit flat on the table.  Then I built a tower with a hollow center.  Near the middle, a Lego stuck into the tube to catch the lamp pipe.  At the top of the hallow tube, I inserted the lamp pipe and cushioned around it with tissue so it would stand-up straight inside the Lego tower.  You can see some of the structure in the picture above.

The lamps had fun little details, such as a ledge, ladders and other places for Lego people to hang out.   This lamp, the one pictured above, served as a table lamp in my living room.  It was home to a little Luke Skywalker and Darth Maul, much to my sister’s chagrin since those two are from different generations.  No creativity, that one.

Taking the lamp apart was pretty easy.  Breaking Lego creations is always easier than putting them together.

  And the great thing about Legos is, if I ever decide I want another Lego lamp, I can just build a new one!

 

Here’s the lamp that replaced the Lego lamp.  I got it from church when we cleaned out the building.  It’s an old surveyor’s stand.  (There used to be a speaker there, serving as an end table for the Lego table lamp.)  The awesome ceramic bunny was also a church-cleaning find.

Cute as a Bucket

There was one thing still missing from my beautiful new bathroom.  A storage place.  You see, my roommate has the left side of the sink, but I had already monopolized the drawer on that side.  And things in that drawer, I wanted to keep on that side.  Clearly, I either needed to keep being an unfair vampire, or I needed to create a new solution.

New Solution: bucket!

  Isn’t it cute?  Would you believe that in it’s former life this beautiful bathroom bucket was red, plastic Lego bucket?  You wouldn’t!

I have a number of empty Lego buckets lying around.  They’re perfect for lots of things.  So I thought, ‘why not use a Lego bucket instead?’  However, after all that hard work making my bathroom look superb there was no way I was going to just stick a red, plastic bucket in there.  So, I made a cover for it.

It was a bit more work than I expected.  My original plan was just to wrap a big rectangle around the outside.  Problem: Lego buckets aren’t rectangular; they’re sort of trapezoidal with rounded sides and corners.

So I tried a new prototype with stripes.  The center blue stripes and the brown flowered stripes are all regular rectangles.  But the blue corner pieces, they’re trapezoids. 

When I sewed all the strips together, I had a sort of little skirt.  A little skirt that fit snuggly around the bucket.  Then I cut some slits to go around the handles and added a rounded-corner square to the bottom.  From little skirt, to little bag.

The bucket just nestles right into the little bag, perfect fit.  The top edges fold-over into the bucket and are glued to the insides.  The handle cover is also glued on.

The lid was one of the hardest parts.  You see that blue fabric is actually an old blouse of my mother’s that I really loved.  The blouse had too many stains to be worn as a blouse any longer, so I used it for my bucket cover.  After piecing together what was left of the blouse’s large flat parts (as opposed to collars and sleeves), there wasn’t enough to fully do the lid the way I wanted.  So, I added a 2” band of the brown flowered material all the way around.  Like blanket binding.

The lid is wrapped in the very large square (about 3x the lid’s size) and wrapped with string to create a cute little bow/flower looking thing.  It looks much cuter in real life than that picture.  There’s fiber-fill in it to poof it up a bit, make it look cozy and hide the red color that would otherwise be seen through the blue.  (The bucket cover itself is lined).

I’m really pleased with how the bucket turned out.  It’s a great addition to my new bathroom.  :)

My New Bathroom

Maybe the desire to overall my bathroom was hereditary.  Over the years that my parents have owned their home, I think they’ve redone every bathroom (and trust me, there’s a lot of bathrooms).  With mustard toilets and avocado sinks, I can’t say I really blame them.

In the beginning, it was simple things, like removing the carpet.  Carpeting is probably the worst thing you could possibly have in a bathroom with a potty-training toddler.  By the end, they were hiring interior decorators and completely redoing the wood work.

I certainly couldn’t get that fancy.  For one, I can’t afford an interior decorator.  Besides, I rent, which means whatever I do has to be easily undone and scars need to be easily repaired.  Sucks, but hey, it opens the door for more creativity ;)

Disguising the Enemy

Somewhere in this blog, at some point, I must have complained about the bathroom here.  Don’t get me wrong, it has some redeeming qualities, like a speckled counter and real tile.  But it also has the one bathroom fixture I hate more than any other in the world: shower doors.

My bathroom growing up had shower doors.  It’s a strange tub, accessible from both sides, a separate bathroom off each exit.  Somehow, I always managed to knock those shower doors off their tracks, get them jammed, knock them out of the tub.  It was bad.  When my parents decided to reglaze the tub from orange to blue, they removed the doors on my side of the tub.  To this day, if I’m home and I want to take a shower, I walk all the way around to the side of the tub without the shower doors.  I hate them that much.

In addition to my inability to use them properly, I detest shower doors for a number of much more logical reasons as well.  They are evil.  (See, very logical reason.)  And like most evil things, they are out to harm you any way they can.  Trying to shave?  Dropped the soap?  Bang!  There’s a pretty fresh purple bruise for you.  Want to get out of the tub?  Sc-raaaa-aape.  Oops, looks like you didn’t quite lift your shin high enough to get over those extra inches the rails add.  Hope your towels go well with blood red.  And the worst when you’re trying to get out.  SMASH!  Why are the rails for shower doors so much lower than curtain rods?! Really, I mean is there any reason I should have to duck just to take a clean myself?  And lastly, quite simply, they are ug-ly.

Seeing as how this is an apartment, I can’t do anything other than duck, be careful, and keep band-aids on hand for most of those problems.  But I could do something about the ugliness.

Isn’t that fabulous?  It’s a decorative tension rod, no damage to the walls at all.  The branches on the curtain blend through several different shades of blue.  As you’ll see, it coordinates well with the rest of the decor.  :)   Thank you Bed, Bath & Beyond.  Of course, the ugliness is still behind there, but this adds so much.  As a bonus, it keeps the cold air (from the window in the tub that is designed not to close, aka our ghetto-fan) in the tub instead of the bathroom proper and the hallway.

A Lil’ Color

The bathroom tub, sink, tiles, walls and ceiling are all white.  Nothing wrong with white.  White tile floors are way better than black, orange and yellow shag carpeting like my first my-own-bathroom had.  But, it was just too much white, dreary, no fun.  I fixed that.   Can’t paint?  Enter wall decals!

The tree theme carries over between the wall and the shower curtain.  I blended decals from two companies, Flair4All and Dali’s Decals.  Dali’s allows more customization, but I prefer the ones from Flair4All (reusable and easier to put in place).

No More Cold Toes

When Mr. Trizzle and I first moved into the apartment, the bathroom included a small bluish-turquoise-ish round bath rug.  With it’s short, prickly texture, it looked like it should be for a dog and it shed like one, too.  But it was a rug, and we were glad it was there. 

I ditched the old rug, put it in storage to put back when I leave.  I replaced it with two beautiful, light blue, soft, squishy, luxurious rugs.  One for the tub, and one to stand on at the sink so my toes don’t get cold while I brush my teeth.  :)  The blue goes nicely with the blue in the flowers of the Wall decals.

Wrapped in Warmth

Now, what good are warm toes if the rest of you is freezing?  Enter, beautiful, soft towels  Light blue and tan to coordinate with the rugs, wall decals and shower curtain.  They’re embroidered too, with little A’s for goldenrail.  The blue towels have tan A’s and the tan towels have blue ones.  I really wanted towels like my mommy and daddy have at home, superbly soft and fluffy.  But there’s are from Linen’s and Things, which is now gone.  The ones I got turned out to be just as fabulous.  They’re from JC Penny’s.  Same brand as the rugs, that way I could be sure the colors would match when they arrived.

The ducky towel stayed; there are still a number of small ducks around the bathroom, they match the yellow flowers and go with the general bird aspect of the theme.

The Finished Product!

Ta da!  Here it is, the final result.  Because of the size of the bathroom, it’s a bit difficult to get a good overview shot.  Here are the best two pics I could do.

I really like the results.  Stepping onto a soft rug after a warm shower, wrapping myself in a fluffy towel and taking a deep breath of fresh clean air in a room full of happy images and uplifting colors fills me with so much happiness!  The Legend said “I thought it was fine before.”  And Mr. Trizzle said, “there’s a lot of stuff on the walls.”  plhhhh.  guys.

 

[All pictures on this post are licensed under CC-BY  by goldenrail. ]