Save Yourself

After sealing the fence, my hands were left with a splatters of oily paint. I didn't have any hand scrub in the house so I quickly mixed up a bunch using what I had in the kitchen. It was fantastic! So, I'm passing it on to you my dears. . .

- 1.5 cups of kosher salt
- 3/4 cup hand/body liquid soap
- 1/4 cup olive oil


That's it. Seriously. Just mix them all together and store in a glass jar.

You'll save time, cash, and your poor-tired-paint-stained-hands.

My Secret Shame

This is my closet . . . 

But, um, this is my wardrobe (which only includes items that were hanging) . . .

On Sunday, I rented two clothes racks in an effort to stop the madness and purge my closet. Trying to get a tally for everything, I made counted of everything I had. I stopped counting at 400 pieces. I'm here to say that no one needs 60 cotton tank tops, or 65 sweaters. When everything was jammed in my closet it was easy to overlook the sheer mass of it all . . . but once it was brought into the open. Oh my. The shame.

After roughly 7 hours, I purged about 30% of my closet. While I'm sure I could have done more, this was about all I could handle in one day. Some things had never been worn and still had tags attached. Oh, and apparently I really like cardigan sweaters and peep-toe shoes.

As I was wrapping up, Dan brought home an early birthday present for me:

I can now say that all my clothes fit in the closet. . . though I think the next step is going to be a better organized space.

The Non-Weekend Weekend

Can you really call it a weekend when you spend both days on home projects while running to and from the hardware store? While I guess it's the end of the week, this past weekend we busted our tails getting stuff done.

The horror of our ceiling got to be too much so we finally decided to have it painted. There is a reason I haven't posted a full picture of the kitchen light. . .

So, a year and a half later, we tackled the ceiling. I gotta say, painting the ceiling is a huge pain in the ass. The amount of plastic we used to cover the floor and some of the walls and the light fixtures was insane. We (plus three painters) spent about two hours of time just laying down all the plastic sheeting to make sure nothing was going to get messed up.

It took me about 30 seconds before I looked down and my hand was smearing blood on plastic. It ended up being a tiny cut. Seriously, just mention "home project" and my body will split open.

In the end, the change was huge! No more holes in the ceiling or ugly patch marks, no more blue square around the light fixture.  Things are looking up!

 We even had time to paint the fence outside. 

To say we were exhausted at the end is an understatement. But, it's always worth it in the end.

The Latest

It's not like we haven't been doing anything at DC Rowhouse lately . . . it's more like we haven't completed anything lately. But, there hasn't been a lack of activity.

We had a new hot water heater installed.

We put in new baseboards in part of the living room (more on that later), but haven't finished the spackling.

Plans are being made for the upstairs bathrooms, and I'm sorting through colors for the downstairs 1/2 bath.

There were big plans to paint the ceiling in the living room this weekend. . . but we never got around to it (mainly from sheer laziness on my part).

So, stay tuned, hopefully I'll have some completed projects to show soon!

Giveaway WINNER: All Modern

The winner of the $55 gift card to Allmodern.com is . . .

EMILY!

Congrats

Giveaway: All Modern

With all the snow storms hammering the midwest and northeast, a lot of us have been staying in and surfing the web. After all the shoveling, and cold and news-watching, I think you deserve a treat. Allmodern.com, a great site for modern furniture,  has graciouly offered up a $55 gift certificate to one of DC Rowhouse's readers. If you haven't been to the site, you should take a minute to check it out. But, I warn you, it might take more than a minute to browse . . .there is too much to see! Below are some of my favorites:

Thomas Paul Octopus Pillow

Flower Pots

Classic Wine Decanter

What do you need to do to enter? Leave a comment on this post by Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at midnight. A winner will be selected using random.org and announced Friday March 25th, 2011. Make sure to include your e-mail in your post if you enter it anonymously so I can contact you should you win!

Ask DC Rowhouse: The Front Door

Benny,

I love the mahogany door you bought for your front door. We are looking to replace ours and we were wondering where you found yours. I absolutely love the look. We may mimic your entire set-up with the all glass security door. Really opens up the entire face of your home. Lovely!
Thanks,


Lauren
 


Hi Lauren,
 
Thanks for your gracious comments! Choosing the front door was actually one of the easier projects. As it turns out, everything was from Lowes.  We choose a mahogany six panel door at first, and stained/painted it ourselves. We had to special order it from Lowe's, but it was a pretty simple process and only took a couple weeks to arrive. We hired someone who installed the hardware and hung it for us. After a couple years, and sick of the draft, we had a storm/secure door installed. Since installing the glass door, we've seen our heating bill go down and have no more drafts. Overall, it's worked out pretty well. Thanks again for reading the blog!

Benny