Category Archives: diy

cutting, ripping and idying curtains

Posted on January 21, 2012 | 16 Comments

I have a curtain problem: I want nice curtains but I can’t justify spending more than $10 a panel for a piece of fabric. This is why I painted the curtains in the kitchen and why I went to town on upcycling (I’m so tired of that word but I can’t think of another one: redoing? changing? manipulating?) three tab-topped pairs from IKEA. I’ve spent more time on these curtains than they were worth if I translated that time to an hourly rate and I’m still not sure that I like them. See for yourself.

Our living room, as of a few weeks ago. Notice the tension rods holding up some sad white Wilma curtains, $12.99 for a pair. I hated walking the dog past our apartment and looking at the tabs from outside. They were just messy. So I tried to sew down the tabs. That was a disaster. I studied them closely after my failed attempt and noticed a little pocket attaching the tabs to the body of the curtains: it was the perfect size for some thin rods I had also picked up at IKEA.

I used a seam ripper to pull off the stitches holding the pocket together. My neck hurt from looking down afterwards but it was worth it. No more tabs!

Still not satisfied, I picked up a couple of packages of iDye while in LA and dyed the curtains in our apartment building’s washing machine. It couldn’t have been easier, minus the staining my hand received when I reached into the washer to agitate the fabric. Don’t make that mistake or you will have tinted cuticles for days. The color, to me, is much more blue than gray and this is probably due to the short washing cycle of our crappy shared machine. If I had a machine that allowed a longer wash/soak cycle I believe the color would have been richer.

I don’t love them. I don’t hate them. They will do until the perfect set of affordable curtains come my way.

Here are some questions for you.

1. Should they be hemmed?
2. Aren’t they more blue than gray?
3. Should I have mounted the rods on the inside of the window well to show off the woodwork?
4. Isn’t our coffee table too big for this living room?
5. What do you think of our new Kattrup rug?

xxoo

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Posted in diy, my NEW apartment

Tagged apartment, cheap, decor, idye, ikea, jaquard, tab-topped, washing machine, wilma curtains

paint stamped curtains

Posted on December 1, 2011 | 3 Comments

When we lived in Palo Alto I took an art class with this amazing abstract painter. I had to have been the only one who left each period with yellow and purple hair, paint embedded into my fingernails, paint streaking my jeans. I have no problem making a big old mess of myself.

I do, however, have a problem with plain white tab-topped curtains. And mini-blinds. The problem was that I had both: blinds in the kitchen and boring curtains in the Room Where Things Go To Die. I woke up on Sunday feeling exceptionally aggressive after a disastrous post-Thanksgiving dinner with my immediate family and needed to channel my energy into something. Anything! The curtains were screaming for attention, the mini-blinds were assaulting my otherwise coming-together kitchen and I had some blue paint and a red Solo cup.

So I tested a few stamps on some crappy stained white fabric. I liked it. Then I took my tab-topped curtains, ironed down the hems, and stitched a small seam so they wouldn’t be visible on a rod.

Next came newspapering my kitchen floor and laying my freshly ironed curtain down. And stamping. Stamping and stamping. I didn’t have much of a pattern in mind and thought I would do the whole thing until my wrist got tired and I realized how little paint I had.

I finished one and snapped a photo of it so I could check the pattern while stamping the second. Then I stared at it. Where in the hell was this thing going to sit to dry while I worked on the second piece? I left to buy– the horror– some tension rods and prayed it would be dry when I got back (Chicagoans, that K-Mart on Ashland and Milwaukee? Instant depression, stay away). It wasn’t. Where was it gonna go?

Onto the stove. I know this was probably dangerous, right? I couldn’t believe The Mister walked in without chastising me.

After three hours of drying, the first curtain was finally ready to be hung. It was too long. I half-heartedly measured before I started and I guess I got it way wrong.

So, I cut and hemmed. And wanted to cry a little.

Not many circles made it to the bottom. One of these days I’ll take them down to re-stamp. Why did I make it so short? My plants need sun, folks!

This is what they looked like around 5:30 in the morning on Tuesday. Don’t ask.

And there they are at night. Why the one on the left is leaning forward all weird is beyond me, I need to go adjust it. Also, flatware people: they’re up!

Overall, I’m satisfied. Not in love, but glad to not have to look at the mini-blinds. The tension rods pose the biggest problem but I don’t quite feel like drilling hardware into these walls just yet. We’ll see if I can stand them for a bit.

Sorry for the iPhone photos. My SLR isn’t behaving these days and I really just felt like blogging without waiting for some time to shoot the curtains in the daylight.

PS I took the cabinet doors off! The kitchen is my favorite room in the house these days.

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Posted in diy, my NEW apartment

Tagged chicago, cup, decor, diy, kitchen, painted curtains, stamped curtains

putting up the plate wall

Posted on September 19, 2011 | 8 Comments

The Mister was in NYC for the weekend and I happily spent my husband-less Sunday putting up our wall o’ plates and generally organizing and decorating the kitchen. I am embarrassed to report that I did this through three cycles of Nostalgia, Ultra, an album I swore I was ambivalent about but haven’t been able to turn off in the 72 hours since I saw the newly released and weird Swim Good video, which prompted me to check out all of the songs in their entirety again. It provided good background music and now I know all of the songs and interludes by heart. I need to start buying albums and not relying on Pandora so much. It was fun to be exposed to something new that all the kids out there are talking about! I feel very with it now. Moving on.

Before the plates. The silverware is in mugs because our new drawers are too small for cutlery holders; we’ll have to come up with a better solution soon.

Per Rosie’s suggestion in the comments of this post, I laid all of the plates out and moved them around until I found a pattern I liked.

Then I started hanging. The walls are plaster, so I was able to use a nail for some of the easy areas but had to resort to my trusty drill when I hit something hard.

I changed my mind a bunch of times at the last minute and decided to make it longer rather than wider. Even though I did this rather haphazardly and didn’t follow my initial plan, I can see the curve in the smaller plates and it is just what I initially envisioned but couldn’t get on the floor. Some of my plates did not make the cut so I have a few plate holders left over. I must go thrift more of them, of course.

I hung up my old orange and now turquoise shelf above the stove and put up the wood cutting that I swear is my dog in the recess between the counter and our cabinets.

And that is the kitchen so far. Not bad for the first two weeks in our new apartment, huh?

I still miss a lot about our old kitchen. Namely our old gal of a kitchen sink (I really did call her old gal in my head) and our cheapie white cabinets and faux wood counters. The latter two are things most people in an apartment would hate but they worked so well with our style and this granite-and-brand-new-cabinet thing is so not me. Next up: the doors come off. I feel a little strange taking the doors off of cabinets that are so new and shiny but I can’t take it anymore. I want to see my glasses, my plates, my bowls. Looks like me and the drill have some work to do this week!

Do you like the plate wall? Don’t you think I need more of them? Shouldn’t it stretch down the whole hall? Aren’t plates awesome?

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Posted in diy, my NEW apartment, thrifted vintage love

Tagged apartment, art, cheap, decor, decorating, diy, kitchen, plate wall, thrift, thrifted

radermachera aka china doll aka super-easy houseplant

Posted on March 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

This little sucker has grown a lot in the six or seven months since its purchase. Commonly known as china doll, it is one of the easiest plants I’ve ever dealt with. I’ve treated my doll pretty poorly and have still gotten great results. It might be because I superstitiously pay my flora in the form of coins atop the soil but that wouldn’t explain all of the other little guys I have killed, now would it?

Plant literature says that radermachera is not cool with temperatures below sixty, likes to be root-bound and only wants water when dry to the touch. It needs four to five hours of bright indirect light a day and dislikes any major changes in its day-to-day care, so keep it in one place with little to no temperature fluctuation, water it on a schedule and it will grow big and tall for you in record time! Happy purchasing; please don’t kill yours.

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Posted in diy, plants

Tagged china doll, houseplant, planting, plants, radermachera

an urban casita christmas

Posted on December 6, 2010 | 5 Comments

Our house is Christmas-y! I stumbled upon the last remaining bouquet of pine boughs at our local Trader Joe’s and took it as a sign. Along with your helpful decorating tips in my post on kitschy decorating last week, the $5.99 bouquet gave me the encouragement I needed to just get on with it over the weekend.

I picked up my normal bouquet of alstroemeria as well, and added a few flowers to some of the vases. As you can see from the kinda-bootleg arrangements, I do not have a calling for floral decorating.

Some of the vases didn’t get alstroemeria. I just liked ‘em as they were, simple and plain.

Well, maybe not too plain. The white was a little boring and not quite cheery enough until I remembered Linda’s comment about tying ribbons around the leaves of her palm trees.

I even hung ornaments with no tree! These modish ornaments came from our Saturday IKEA trip. They had little white ribbons attached for hanging that I removed and replaced with fishing line.

I think they’re high enough to keep the dog’s paws and teeth off of them. If I had been smart, I would have purchased more of these for our kitchen and living room windows. I see the mini-moible staying for bit after the holiday season is over and I’m pondering what else I can hang up seasonally. Dried flowers perhaps?

Last but not least, a little tiny milk glass vase graces my desk, precisely where I’m sitting as I type this. A few more vases are scattered around the apartment but winter darkness snuck up on me before I got the chance to photograph them.

Milkglass vases: around $1 each
IKEA ornaments: $2.49/6
Pine: $5.99
Flowers: $5.99
Green ribbon: $2.50
Fishing line: $1.50
Listening to Christmas Pandora while I put it all together: Priceless

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Posted in diy, my apartment

Tagged bouquet, cheap, christmas, christmas decorating ideas, diy, hanging mobile, holidays, ikea, milk glass, pine boughs, ribbon, thrifted christmas, trader joe's, vintage christmas, vintage decorating

easy thrift store art update

Posted on November 30, 2010 | 2 Comments

Small pieces of art–even original art– will cost about a dollar at most secondhand stores. Take this golden bad boy. It was sixty cents! I loved the bright colors on the canvas and swooped it up to give it a nice home. But the gold was not meshing with the rest of the colors in the house. Enter my favorite thing in the whole wide world: spray paint.

Some sanding, a little blue tape inside the painting, a few shakes of the can and we’re done.

I can’t decide. Keep it or gift it? Reply if you’re interested in a special spray-painted present from yours truly.

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Posted in diy

Tagged spray paint, spray painted frames, thrift store

fix it yourself: a family book from 1929

Posted on November 1, 2010 | 2 Comments

I am proud to come from a long line of doers. My grandfather was a tool and die maker, my father is a roofer and my baby sister is following in his footsteps. She came down to Chicago on the Hiawatha Service train on Friday and helped me get some work done around the apartment. She excitedly produced this book upon arrival and it took my breath away.

The book is called Fix It Yourself: Home Repairs Made Easy and it was published by Popular Science in 1929. If you’re interested in a copy of your own, it went for one cent in 2007 here. While it may not be worth much on the market, this book now holds a great deal of importance to me.

In it were discharge papers for my Scotch-Irish great-great-uncle (I think) dated 1940 and 1941, describing him as a machinist in South Carolina and Washington, DC respectively. I figured out who this mystery James was– we have many, many James’ in our family– by consulting my grandfather’s bio sketch, written before he passed in 1982, two months before my birth.

At least I thought I had figured it out. The mystery thickens here. The only record I have of a James D. in our family is the James D. mentioned above but his last name is Duncan, my grandfather’s mother’s brother. So who is this James D. Godsil of the discharge papers, from my grandfather’s father’s side of the family? And how old would he have been in 1940? So confusing and I have a call in to my Papo to straighten it out for me.

In any case, the papers show that he received a raise in this time period, from $7.20 to $7.52, which I assume was his weekly wage from the note below.

It reads:

The rent man is coming and I don’t have the thirty-five dollars that’s due. Jesus Christ is coming if we don’t pay him the rent, we’re out on the street, he owns this dump flat and we all got to pay him or all four families get dumped on the street. He owns all the junky banisters and steps etc. crummy sinks and toilets and all these fucking flats.

I’m happy to know that the f-word is in my lineage.

Bridie, my twenty-two year old sister mentioned above, is using the book for schooling. She is a roofer, general handywoman and maintenance worker and says that the information in the book is just as useful today as it was in 1929.

I love this photo of the man in the hat.

And this, describing the skeleton keys of yore as common door keys.

One cent to an auction house, priceless to my family. I’m sad that Bridie took it back with her but happy that it continues to provide how-tos two generations later. Now if my dad could just call me back and tell me who the mystery man with the f-word is.

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Posted in books, diy

Tagged 1929, donnely, duncan, Fix It Yourself: Home Repairs Made Easy, godsil, How-to, james d godsil, james godsil, Popular Science

memory book for gram

Posted on October 23, 2010 | 1 Comment

Happy birthday to Gram, happy birthday to Gram, happy birthday deeeaaarrrr Graaaaam, happy birthday dear Gram! I made my Grammy a little memory book last night.

Tools
Plain notebook with thick paper
Scrap piece of fabric
Stickers
Colored Pens

Simple
Sew fabric to cover of notebook
Write questions in the book
Apply stickers

I asked about a dozen questions and left room for her to answer. My gram had little education, like a lot of women born in the 1920s, but she puts a pen to paper like nobody’s business and has excelled in writing classes over the years. When she is done with these questions, the instructions at the end of the book tell her to give it back to me so I can add more. My family will now have a living document of one amazing lady’s history.

A Few of my Queries

How did you get to school? What was your favorite subject?

How did your parents meet?

What was your first job? How much did you make? Did you have to wear a uniform?

All of these questions focused on her girlhood. As the book becomes filled, I’ll move on to how she met my grandfather, where she gave birth to my aunt, uncle and mom, her favorite country to live in, her first memory of grandkids, her hopes and dreams for us now, etc. Maybe she’ll even pen a few questions for me!

Happy Birthday Gram!

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Posted in diy

Tagged grandparent, living history, memories, memory book diy

i miss sewing

Posted on October 20, 2010 | 4 Comments

When I organized the closet on Sunday I had to repair two dog beds that the boy had torn into. I hauled my trusty sewing machine out for the first time in nine months and got to work. Though the fixes were small and took less than ten minutes, I really, really enjoyed it. I missed hearing that little buzz of the machine, winding the bobbin and trying to maintain a straight line.

I swore I wasn’t going to pile any more onto my plate for the holiday season this year but I’m rethinking that and wanting to sew, sew, sew. Here are some projects worth pondering.

A cozy for my to-go coffee cup: I was forced to purchase from Starbucks and would love to cover up the logo!
Really pretty pillowcases to dress up the bed
A really cute pincushion
A little set of teatime towels from the Goddess herself

I have a large box of unused fabric from my Christmas gifts last year and plan to tackle a project or two this month. Sewing is a serious stress reliever and I enjoy the high I get from completing a project when all is said and done.

Are any of you guys getting ready for the holiday season this early? Making handmade gifts? Do share some of the easier ones!

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Posted in diy

Tagged dog bed repair, easy sewing projects, holiday sewing, urban casita

chicago’s spray paint ban is really irritating

Posted on September 19, 2010 | 5 Comments

On Friday evening, Aziza B and I trooped out to Evanston, a forty-five minute drive from our neighborhood in Chicago. We parked downtown, walked up to the doors of Blick Art Materials, and found them locked. I knocked on the window, begged, cajoled, pleaded. It did nothing, the doors stayed locked and we went to Urban Outfitters to cheer ourselves up. We missed Blick by fifteen minutes and left Evanston with a pair of pants for me and a rug for her, from a store that also has a location five minutes from my apartment. What a dreamy Friday night.

Non-Chicago readers are probably wondering why we would have to drive forty-five minutes away just to get to an art supply store. Spray paint. All for spray paint. The city of Chicago has banned the sale of spray paint in city limits since 1995. My google research shows that we’re the only city in the country with an outright ban on its sale. The Supreme Court was even involved. And guess what? We still have tons of graffiti in every single neighborhood in this city. But you have to drive or order online to get it for a simple household project. Grrrr.

I went back to Evanston solo on Saturday morning after a stop at Salvation Army, where I found a cute little wicker magazine rack and knew that there would be no rest until it was bright yellow. Blick carries Montana Gold spray paint in about sixty colors. It was heaven. Four different shades of turquoise alone! The clerk assisting had to stand next to me while I picked out my colors and I kept apologizing for taking so long. So many choices, could I spray paint my whole house in these paints, please? I left with ten cans for $7.99 each and got 10% off of my purchase for signing up for their frequent buyer card, which is offered free for a limited time.

I got home and got to sanding. And painting. And being in love with life. I have done tons of spray painting projects around the house (dresser, alley-find nightstand, bricks and a chair, an outdoor set and of course my first spray painting foray with an old spice rack) but never with these paints and these colors. One small hardware store in Chicago will sell spray paint without a contractor’s license (email me for the name of it if you’re not a narc, okay?) but the color options are nothing to write home about. Montana Gold is vibrant, easy to use, and perfectly matches the colors on the rim of each can. I implore you to sand your stuff well while using this particular paint. Other brands are more forgiving with lazy sanders like me but Montana Gold is not one of them. I noticed some crunchy build-up around areas I missed while sanding and did a much more thorough job with my little sandpaper block on my second project of the day. I also got a great tip from a contractor who is doing work in our building– wet sanding. When sanding metal, get your sandpaper or block a bit wet to avoid having to wipe it down ten million times after sanding it dry. Worked like a charm.