2020.

 

I admit it, I have been a bad bad blogger. 

Every day I am like, man, I need to get back to my blog! 

But it was also 2020 and it isn't as if 2021 is letting up any.

The mental toll has been real. I won't bore you with family drama, terror, boredom, more fear, loneliness, tears, celebrations, love, Zoom.... 

I got a bonus 2020 slap in the face of a horrifically painful foot condition called Morton's Neuroma. I don't recommend it. Seriously, this is awful. I am in Florida and cannot walk barefoot or wear flipflops ever again. Ever. 

Right now I am happy to be able to walk at all. 

So, back to the blog. 

What have I done? 

I MURDERED A WALL OF SHRUBBERY!  Ok, half a wall, the other 50 feet is still sitting there taunting me. 

It's ok, I did it for a good cause! Other than the loss of much of my yard to wasp filled shrubs wanting constant trimming, I now am able to install a REAL FENCE! I just love it so much. 

Replacing old drapery hooks in window cornice for cheap

For four years I have been fighting my curtains.

As an ADHD person who loves to renovate, you can probably imagine how much I love changing my window decoration around. Seriously, I love switching it up at least quarterly. However. 70 years ago my grandmother wanted that drapery hardware with all the little hooks. I curse those little hooks. The curtains have to be perfectly pleated or they look like CRAP. I don't have the time, money or patience for such nonsense and the hundred feet of custom tan curtains my grandmother made in 1960-something finally fell apart when I had the gall to try to clean them.






The problem that had caused a four year delay in this was that every window has wood boxes with flourescent lighting in them, The four inch depth made it impossible to fit normal curtain rod holders. Everytime I tried to figure it out I would get overwhelmed and give up. Like this:

But this entry is about VICTORY!! and saving money.

First I wandered Ace Hardware looking for a way to hold the rods. When I walked onto the plumbing aisle I hear angels sing! 69 cents each. perfect size!






Then, the rods had to be found. I love Ikea, but this was on a  weekend and I do not believe in going to Ikea on weekends. Amazon saved me. They had 3 part long adjustable 1 inch curtain rods for $7!!!!!   While they had a ridiculous amount of packaging, they are perfect. strong, easy, no fussy balls on the end.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L45GLFH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1



Sorry for lack of real pictures of these actual windows but my camera is acting up :)

Thanks to Amazon also having nice insulated black out curtains for a great price I can now clean the cat hair filled curtains or change the colors due to boredom without dealing with 800 tiny hooks!!! 

YAY! 

MORE CARPET!

Tearing out old carpet SUCKS. but it is very satisfying. 

So here are pictures of all the fun I had ripping out the 20 year old carpet that no amount of rug doctoring could save anymore.

Before. 

\

Carpet plus padding is a pain, and filled all trash cans before I was even half way through. 

Prying up the stabby carpet tacks one nail at a time. This took the longest of all steps... rusty nails are so much fun!! 

The padding had a wonderful aroma. And by wonderful I mean imagine all the dirts there are and how they smell. Now inhale it for several hours... aaaaacccchhhhooooo

There is a layer of 1940s asbestos tile over the bare concrete. For this room I decided just to keep it down, it is not worth the hassle and as far as I can guess was probably put in as a sort of vapor/moisture barrier. It has worked for 70+ years, why mess with it? With a good sweep and mop the new vinyl stuck down good! 

Finished product. 100 times easier to clean though it smells like plastic. With two new bedframes it almost looks planned and designed! 

Looks better doesn't it? Now I am ready to do the entire rest of my house! 

And this goes back to some previous chatter, I stumbled on some clearance fencing that they even cut to 4 feet tall for me (being me I also saved the scrap they cut off for future crafting.)  What does a person do with 80 feet of 2 foot tall wood fence? The bar is getting a roof, but what else? Give me ideas!!  

This is the bar... in need of a roof :) to compliment the pink flamingo lights. YACHT ROCK FOREVER!

For reference the new vinyl floor is from Lowes, it is called Weathered Oak and was 97 cents a sq foot.

So many things So little postings

When I started my blog I really hoped to update weekly to give a good idea of the never ending dramas of home renovation. 

Sadly, so much work and 3 computer crashes has definitely made this difficult even to update monthly!

So for now lets add some highlights!

There was a small hurricane in September. You might have heard about it.. The morning after I stumbled on this poor little PTSDed frog on my wall.

 Half a tree came down in my front yard. They got the debris removed about 6 weeks later, and my yard is finally starting to recover as I fill in the ditches created by gravity and oak and try to get the grass to grow back over the dead spots...

Here is a before and after shot of the back yard... 

I ordered this AMAZING cart off Amazon right before the hurricane, I do not know how I could have cleaned up without it. I had a 1/3rd of an acre covered in limbs and spanish moss...   Pro tip: If you get it, grab your drill and drill a few small holes in the bottom so water does not collect and start to fester with rotting leaves and dirt... or become a mosquito farm.

 It tilts. This is the best part!

I snagged the elusive Disney stacking ghosts tiki mug. I love it so much. They are so hard to get!

 Monkey is doing well, being cute.

I built a BAR! I love my bar. Here are some action shots. I made it primarily from pressure treated lumber that I stained and sealed. The top has many many coats of sealant since it will be outside. The bottom yellow part is painted with exterior paint.

Remember the bald staring dog from last year? He has had to have several haircuts since then! Now he is so furry I have to trim the hair from his eyes! He is curled up on me while I type this.

I discovered the beauty of Amaryllis. Someday I hope can afford to plant dozens of these.

Other projects have been on hold, kitchen counters and tile work sits half finished. Been upgrading fences (which will be a whole post because fences are COMPLICATED and involve long rants... )

How to kill a Bolivian Sunflower (Mexican Sunflower) aka Tithonia diversifolia

I had this monsterous plant, it took some research to identify it and FINALLY after two years I HAVE KILLED IT.

I am a fan of plants in general, love them! I hate using chemicals but sometimes there is just no other way to get something dead.

This thing was not a normal plant, it was a beast that could not be killed and caused everything around it to die.

Here is what this thing looks like:

Looks harmless and pretty, huh? 

What you can't see is that it is like 12-14 feet tall. 

And what happens when you try to keep it shorter? It is like getting a gremlin wet, you cut a branch and it grows 5 more! And these are LONG branches, that 12-14 feet is the length of each branch coming from the ground. Not only that but they grow SO FRIGGIN FAST!!!!

So after several tries cutting it to nothing, I decided to kill it once and for all. And I succeeded!!!

So here is the trick: First, curl up in a ball all night while a hurricane rages outside and cry like a baby, then spend two days in a stupor staring at your sad destroyed yard.

Second, put on your long sleeves, jeans and boots and spend 2 hours cutting all the branches down while swearing like a sailor, then drag the giant limbs to the curb, with more cursing and scaring the neighbors. Basically you are hauling 40 or so long small trees, it is not fun.

Once cut I soaked it in weed killer. Every leaf and stump was soaked.
Next day, nothing was even remotely shrivelled.
So I soaked it again.
(I highly recommend using one of these:)




Days 3 and 4.
Soak the evil demon plant again and again.

Day 5: Some leaves finally start looking like they are slightly ill. Spray again.

Somewhere around Day 7 it actually started to die and proceeded to die slowly for the next week.

After a couple more days. IT WAS DEAD!!!!! I tried taking a shovel to the giant 4 foot diameter base of it and could not get even the slightest bit of progress.

Then I got really busy and would just stare at it every couple of days, being glad it was dead but having no idea how to get it out.

BUT... here is the best part.

After 3 months of procrastination and frustration and having no idea how to get this thing out I went over and started kicking it. 

Something wiggled.

In that 3 months of pointless head shaking the roots started to rot! It rotted so much that I could wiggle and pull out sections of it relatively easily with the roots (roots were still alive BTW, remember this is an evil demon plant.)!

I feel powerful and victorious now and anxiously wait for Spring when my Agapanthus, Birds of Paradise and banana trees will finally get SUN!

And in March I can pick out a shiny new lime tree to replace the evil beast with.

More updates!

Not much going on, working a ton has made the renovations take a back seat.

So this is more of an examination of tools every girl renovating a house should have...

I have spoken about My Precious, my wonderful little drill. But there is one thing my precious cannot do. Drill into concrete.

When living in a concrete house this can become a bit of a difficult thing to get around. For instance, something as simple as hanging some curtain rods turns into work arounds and frustration. 

Here is a good research article.

https://www.familyhandyman.com/tools/drills/drilling-into-concrete-tools-rotary-hammers-and-hammer-drills/view-all/

Next step is to decide whether to buy it now or add it to my Amazon wish list and hope for Christmas presents :)

Almost finished results of previous work

And what was the result of the countertop staining? See below!

There were also week of debating with myself about backsplashes. They really make or break a room!

I ended up choosing a plain white ceramic glossy brick from Floor and Decor, and adding a stripe made from a pale slate mosaic they carry. Since the mosaic is 12 x 12, I get about 6 feet of strip our of each $7 sheet.

If you are new to tiling, mosaics with small pieces are GREAT to start with, there is very little cutting needed and the slight variations hid mistakes easily.

When finished this will have a white grout to keep it simple and hide any small mistakes :)

This project is currently delayed to to work, and due to having to change out all the outlets with extender boxes so the plates sit on top of the tile, which has to be done with the power off, and it is too damn hot to work without AC right now. Plus I am getting some electrical upgrades next month and the power will be off for many many hours for that, so I will just do it then.

Solution to doggie trash diving.

Anyone with dogs knows, they like to eat the trash. My tall can has just never been enough to keep them out and I have been so stressed they will get into a chicken bones or something else poisonous...

So I was looking at all those expensive trash can cabinet inserts. They are super nice, but $60 is ridiculous! 

Then today a light bulb went on.

My cabinets had slide out shelves for baking dishes! Voila, I took out the top one and put in the can! woot! Then I realized that opening the door and sliding it out was annoying. 

So I removed the door and took the hinges off, and after a few tries to get it aligned right when screwing it to the insert thingy... VOILA! 

Change to our cast of characters.

There have been some changes to the four legged team I work with.

Kesha, circa 2005

First, little old lady Kesha is gone. Poor little thing was just frail and seemed to be in pain, when I took her to the vet they agreed she was very sick, so she is now gone. The new yard cemetery has bricks and fluffy plants so it is well marked. I learned the hard way many years ago. ALWAYS mark where you bury pets. Remembering incorrectly and then going to plant something is very very traumatic...

I had Kesha for 14 years, it is strange not hearing her chirp or having here cuddle up and silently fart on me everyday, but I know I did the right thing.


What happened next?

We have a new cast member!

In May there was a notice on Nextdoor.com about a found dog. Having grown up with a Yorkie I watched the drama unfold as people tried to match this bald lost little stinker to an owner.

He was a MESS! But with some food and baths they said he was super loving and sweet. So I offered to foster him. He is about the same age and size as Monkey. 

The first few weeks were rough. If he had ever been housetrained...he forgot it. His skin conditions made him STINK! 

Monkey was jealous, cats were being terrorized... and he is an escape artist, forcing me to rebuild the fence I have... multiple times. (and I still have to do another alteration since he keeps figuring out more escapes. He can jump over a 4 foot fence! I wish I was kidding... )

Once he started learning he managed to really win me over. More importantly he won Monkey over. They are now brothers from another mother.

And now he has HAIR!

His favorite activity is to sit and stare at me...
Like this

FOR HOURS!

So many updates! So little time!

I have been doing so much work that I have not had time to blog it!

So I will jump right in to the latest non painting project!

To start my kitchen overhaul without a ton of money I chose to refinish the countertops and add a backsplash.

Here is the before look: a great style if you like unsealed wood and orange wood.

As you can see it is a solid wood construction, and the surface is...destroyed. Plus, no one needs that much orange wood... ever. 

My original plan was to keep the backsplash and stain it also. That plan ended when I started trying to actually get it stripped and stained.  

The stripper goo worked well. but the nooks and crannies were pretty much impossible. 

After what felt like hours of sanding and attempting to stain, I basically created a huge mess. It was bad. 

I will add photos of the disaster if I have any.

So since that staining was a disaster the plan changed...

I had to remove the wood backsplash. On the plus side, removing this means I get 3 more inches of counterop depth.

The downside was that the backsplash was WAY TOO WELL CONSTrUCTED!!!!!

First there was 50 year old high quality hardwood. It ain't called hardwood for nuthin!

Then, the backsplash was attached with hidden 4 inch screws that were drilled into a vertical hole into the countertop, then hidden with a dowel.


 

This started a one month long saga.

Trying to drill the dowels out filled the hole with sawdust and then the screw could not be removed. So started the buying of tools. First I tried a multitool thingy, the hardwood just laughed at me, it barely could scratch the surface... Dremel was too small to get deep enough.

So then I got a jigsaw. I figured I would probably need it at some point anyway for something else, so I made the $40 investment. 

After some practice I found that I could jigsaw down on either side of the hole and then pry the wood out. Since the saw dust did not go in the hole, I could use a long screwdriver to start the screw loosening then finish with the power drill. Only one screw got so stripped I had to get all crazy hulk on.. 

Once the back was removed...   we are fast forwarding like 2 moneth at this point...

There is beautiful 1970s wall paper, a couple of mummified cockroaches and a ton of glue residue to be seen... 

Then started the painful process of removing the 12 foot span behind the sink... I will spare you the pictures of my hell...

Sigh.

Today I went to my favorite local hardware store to get shims and a handsaw to use when installing new toilet in the Air Bnb.

I asked where the shims are, no problem, guy shows me the display.

Then I ask for handsaws, he points and starts asking questions about how I will use it, I say I am replacing one I lost and just needed to know where they are. This begins 3-5 minutes of two men explaining to me how saws work and completely ignoring me when I say "I know what I need, thanks!"  They grab things off the shelf and stand between me and the shelf, refusing to leave me alone to shop for myself or look at the selection. One man went into detail about how bigger teeth make a rougher and is faster....   Because apparently me saying I am replacing a saw means I am completely stupid and have no idea how saws work at all.

As the two of them waved things in front of me explaining how they work ($8 handsaws, remember?) I turned away and said I will buy this somewhere else.

I have no doubt that as I walked away they both called me a bitch and proclaimed that they were trying to help. None whatsoever.

And neither would ever, even for a second have talked to any male over the age of 8 like that.

It is like the time last year a man told my I have to turn the screwdriver to make the screw go in.

Hardware stores can be just as bad as car dealerships...

Women and Home Improvement: Size

Genetically women are usually a bit smaller than men, we have a little less muscle mass. Does that make us somehow less able to do most home improvement projects? Nope.

I struggle a bit with bags of concrete and boxes of tile. They are heavy and awkward and I hate them. Does that stop me from building a fence or tiling a room? NOPE!

There are many ways to get around this that do not involve spending a ton of money.

The first trick is learning how to move heavy things without hurting yourself. Many many tools exist to help with this. They have the added benefit of reducing chances of injury. The first investment to make is good handtrucks and dollies and carts. You don't need a lot. I have this baby and it does 90% of what I need.

It works vertically and horizontally and can hold hundreds of pounds. It can move large furniture or appliances or a big pile of concrete bags.

A dolly, which is just the flat 4 wheel cart is also a key tool. You do not need to pick up a whole couch or other large heavy thing to use it, all you have to do is tip it and roll it underneath, Having a pair usually helps greatly. Wheels are amazing in making jobs easier with no need to prove you can lift any great weights.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/a-tip-i-learned-from-a-pro-about-moving-heavy-furniture-176175


The second trick is hiring muscle. Paying a little extra for delivery or hiring a strong young person for a short time to haul things can be completely worth it! Sometimes it is worth the cost to save some time, stress and injury.

I also prefer the 40 pound bags of concrete to the 80, because I can lift them. I have yet to find a task that was too heavy for me as long as I have my stash of helpful wheeled tools.

As I already addressed with the drill in the last post, there is nothing wrong with needing slightly smaller tools to fit your hand.

So don't let anyone treat you like you are too little or weak to do what you need. There is no shame in rolling your tile to the room you need or even opening the box and moving the tile 5 at a time instead of with a whole box.

As a side note, I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that TVs are no longer giant 100 pound horrors. Having to get something off a higher surface DID require muscle, and I hated it!

Skipping a few steps

I admit, I have been so busy doing the renovations that I have not been showing them to you. I promise I will go back and visit the different projects!

So I have decided to go ahead and show you the almost end result of phase 1 because in the next couple of days it will be available to rent as an Air BnB!

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/17573041

See images. Tell me what you think!

Women and Home improvement: Education

I HATE using a saw. Hate it. It is almost crippling.

Is this a girl thing? sort of.

It is also a family thing. My paternal grandfather lost most of his fingers on a saw in the 1930s. The danger has been real for us our whole lives. That blade starts spinning and I freak out with pictures of severed fingers flying around in my head.

My mother was not afraid of saws, her family had all their fingers... but she never forced me to learn because I was afraid and refused.

So my fear kept me from learning how to use this important tool. I have gradually forced myself to learn a trim saw and even a chain saw, though my imagination goes wild when I use them.

Where am I going with this? Before I get into the gender issues, some things are just personal taste. I love building wood things, I HATE using a saw. I get around my issues as best I can by making the guys at the hardware store cut my lumber or work with the standard sizes :) It does sometimes cause issues though, projects get delayed or cost more due to my fear.

None of us can do all things all the time, regardless of gender. I also have zero interest in fixing my own car or doing my own taxes. I love cooking and making sparkly jewelry. All people are different!

So let's get back on topic, and that topic is that women are crippled by not being taught to play with and later use tools the same way boys are taught. They start practicing those motor skills, the righty tighty, lefty loosey from toddlerhood. They get the muscle memory started from the very beginning. They played with daddy's wrench, felt it click into the wider setting, pushed it back into the narrow one.  They held their hammer at the end of the handle to get more power out of each hit, and to have confidence when they swung it and hit that nail hard, practicing getting nails in with as few hits as possible, and getting those hits straight. They got to bend nails and strip screws in order to learn. They knew the clickety click of a socket wrench.

Most girls do not seem to have had these experiences. I see a lack of self confidence in how women hold their tools, surprise from women that I do know how. We tap tap holding our hammer at the top of the handle, we are fidgety when trying to drill a screw in, we hesitate at the thought of drilling holes in our $10,000 cabinets even though we really really want those handles installed. Nails and screws end up crooked or stripped. Tools get dropped, fingers smooshed with a hammer. I know because I did these things. I would hand my tools to a man to do a job on the assumption he should know better than me... something that is not always true. We get so scared of failure that we do not try. After all we have decades of being trained to hand all that stuff over to the boys because they like it and we don't! right?

Nope. Most girls don't even know if they would like these things because they have never been able to learn enough skills to see.

In the last decade I have learned that I love painting, tiling, and general building of things out of concrete, bricks or wood.

(I admit that my own life was not so strict along gender lines, I was lucky that way, but it was still there, still encouraged in certain directions by friends and family towards the creative crafty side of things, not the rough, dirty, hardware side) My mom was self taught and she tried to teach me, both of us had big gaps in our skills. I will say we were both good at painting though!)

Outside of the muscle memory, we do not learn the vocabulary. To this day I do not know the names of different wrenches and pliers and have never had the time to make a study of it. I basically make up my own names (flippy sink wrench, giant grabby wrench, little lockey wrench). This makes things difficult when shopping online or trying to be taken seriously at a hardware store. I constantly have to remind myself that when I am stuck on something there is probably a tool that does the thing, I just do not know about it because I have not seen it or held it in my hand (which creates a more meaningful memory). I constantly have to fight the urge to reinvent the wheel and force myself to do research into tools that most men probably already know about.

I am neither a super woman who knows all the things, nor am I a helpless little girl who has to be rescued. We all struggle with being a little bit of both. I will say that I would like to see more women out there in the spotlight not just decorating or making flea market furniture pretty, but digging in and getting dirty like http://www.diynetwork.com/shows/rehab-addict


What is the solution to this?

I have found the internet to be incredible. I can usually find answers without having to risk being called darlin' or sweety by a salesman or sold extra crap I do not actually need. A month ago I spent hours researching dremel bits, this week I learned how to remove and repair/replace my shower valve that was leaking.

Google is your friend. Googling "how to change a drill bit" gives many choices for instructions. There is no shame in googling "how to hammer a nail" You may find some tricks that make simple tasks easier. (Seriously girls, do NOT hold your hammer near the top except for the first hit to hold the nail in place, and even that is debateable. Practice getting a good self confident straight hit with your hand at the end of the handle)

Here is a nice tutorial that is, of course, very manly: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2009/09/29/how-to-use-a-hammer/

Or here are some nice tutorials from Bob Vila:

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/978-how-to-use-a-hammer/#.WKy3UzsrLIU

Remember, there are NO stupid questions. None.

We girls need practice. We need lots of hands on messy, nail bending wood splitting, battery wasting practice. Take a scrap piece of wood, some drill bits, an assortment of screws and just try all the things. Get your muscles used to the feel and your hands used to holding things in place while using the drill. predrill holes and see how that differs from using self driving screws. Strip some screws. Try phillips head and star bit and see which you prefer. Next thing you know you can remove your cabinet doors or replace handles with ease and comfort and self confidence. Practice on scrap and it becomes far less intimidating.

Include your children! All children should learn these life skills. Let them see you mess up and learn from mistakes.

But it is okay to make big strong men haul the boxes of tile. Those things really suck/

Worried about making mistakes?

When I fixed my shower valve this week I reminded myself what the worst case was. If it didn't work I would have to call a plumber, which is what I would have done if I didn't fix it myself. Living with the water cut off would be the worst part. Calculate the realistic risks involved. I never had to do that, the repair went well. In fact I don't really know what I did, I took the valve out, squiggled it, replaced it. figured out the handle was replaced upside down... fixed it, and voila. no more drippy shower, no money spent. Know what gave me the confidence? I watched the plumber do this repair a year ago and asked him all the questions, then I watched some you tube videos. It helped that I have an extensive collection of bits for My Precious  (see below)

Real risk:

Note to everyone: There are very real risks. Start slow. Try to anticipate what could fall, puncture, break, spark, flood, etc.

Get pets out of the way. Make sure kids are safe and won't have anything fall on them or stab them. Do not leave nails or screws in driveways or carports.

Trying to do electrical work without studying or being sure the power is off? DON'T DO IT. That is risk of death. Same thing with heights and other genuinely risky things, learn those things from pros and be incredibly over cautious. As demonstrated in my opening story, bad things can happen to good people.

Also as a side note: My house that I am renovating was built by that very grandfather who lost his fingers. His fiance at the time married him and would later be my grandmother. He became an architect and was very successful. Funny how things work isn't it?

Some thoughts on gender

I have noticed some tendencies when I talk about renovating my house that have got me thinking. People seem pretty universally surprised when I tell them I am renovating a house and blogging it when they meet me in person. I am a 42 year old woman, 5 feet 1 inch tall. No one would be shocked that I changed a sink out by myself if I was a man, no one would be impressed. I am proud of learning new skills, but very sad that women are not taught these things from the beginning alongside their brothers. (As a side note, people are shocked when men are good at cooking and baby care, and that is the other side of the same coin)

I admit I am a little unusual, my mother did a lot of home improvement on her own, some good, some not so good. I was trained in art handling, including the moving of large sculptures in my mid 20s. In doing so I broke through some mental, sociological and physical barriers.  My whole life men did the heavy lifting. That is what we know as girls, we hand the jar to our dad or brother to open. We let them mow the lawn and fix the sink. When they fix the car or build a deck our fathers taught our brothers how to use the tools, how to cut the wood. For centuries that is just how it was.  It is not surprising that we have internalized these tendencies, all of us.

So there are issues related to gender I wish to address in my next few blog posts:

Education: Most women are not taught how to use tools, we are not taught the vocabulary to know what to look for.
Size: We do tend to be smaller, less muscular, but 99% of home repair does not require brute strength.
Expectations: Women are treated differently, talked to differently. This is a barrier to learning.
Our own minds: The other factors take away our self confidence in the ability to do the things. We get tired of fighting.  


As I mostly know my own experiences, I will mostly address those. And I want people to know that while there is a great deal of frustration, and some people have really pissed me off, I do not in anyway think all people are sexist or that there is some huge conspiracy. Socialization starts early and is very very powerful. It is in our media, our families, our language and our own minds. These stereotypes and tendencies date back centuries and cross continents. There are always exceptions, there are always heroes and villains to any story. There are women who are master carpenters, men who can barely change a light bulb.  

My wish is to address these things and the roots of it and help people find confidence to learn more, to do more. I would like people to ask questions and frankly be impressed anytime someone learns new skills and accomplishes new things.

However, I am mostly addressing women, because we start from far behind men in learning to fix things, replace things, upgrade things. As a result we spend far more on repairs, get tricked into buying useless crap, get ripped off by contractors or designers. 

What started me on this path? My kitchen faucet exploded. Poof! It started spraying water all over and I had NO IDEA WHAT TO DO. I think I might have been able to shut off the water but was lost after that step, I had no idea what happened and I called a plumber.  $400 later there was a new faucet.

Later I was at Home Depot and saw that the faucet I paid $400 for was a $50 faucet. I lost $350 because I did not know how to do a VERY simple repair. And I ended up replacing that faucet because it was awful and I wanted a nice one (10 years later I still have the nice one by the way, I brought it to my new house with me and installed it myself.)

Anyone who wants to learn some basics can save themselves thousands of dollars.

And if you are like me you hope you can afford to pay people to do the tedious work in the future, but until that winning lottery ticket comes in, I plan to keep learning and saving on these little things. 

Back to the bedroom

After ripping out the stinky shag, painting the walls and trim, removing the old no longer stuck down tile, I decided to also paint the back bedroom floor.

I plan to add real tie at some point, but for now this creates a nice clean color floor that is useable and easy to clean... for all of about $40.

Removal of the old vinyl left a stained messy concrete floor. After much scrubbing...it still looked like this. 

So cleaning, more cleaning, and more cleaning prepared it for paint. 

On the left you can see where the holes left from the carpet installation were filled in with concrete patching. 

And VOILA! The mostly finished result!