The Blog - Page 1202 of 1273

Oh, how I adore clear countertops…We’ve already installed under-the-counter mounts for our paper towels and wine glasses to free up valuable space, but we aren’t stopping there – Ohhhh nooo. We actually have a pretty decent amount of counter space in our kitchen (especially with the addition of an island in the center of the space), but counter real estate is still precious. I probably won’t stop until we come up with handy organization solutions for EVERYTHING – I dream of a sparklingly vacant work space that’s ready for whatever we throw at it.

This is a little-by-little “to-do” list item as we continuously weed things down and find new places to store the rest. Our most recent little addition is a towel hook beside the sink – I decided to make this priority because our dish rags were often just heaped on the counter top. They don’t dry out very efficient this way, and they look pretty bad…

I am on a use-what-we-have kick, so for this project I used a piece of leftover bathroom hardware from when we redid the half bath this past April. But if you don’t happen to have one of these on hand, my go-to suggestion is a Command hook for 5 or so bucks – I L-O-V-E the easily removed 3M tabs that come with those bad boys.

Here’s where I decided to hang our hook – Right next to the kitchen sink, which is obviously where we need it most. Ya know…That whole hand-dish-washing chore we all have to do at least a couple of times each day.

To motivate myself a bit (John was still at the car show I mentioned on Wednesday so I was all by myself on this one) I went ahead and chose a fresh, clean towel for my soon-to-be-hung towel hook. Of course, I picked one with an owl embroidered on the side!

First things first, I draped the towel on the hook and held it up to the paneling to figure out where to attach the hardware. Then I dropped the towel and hook and marked the spot with my finger, ready to put the screws in place.

I took a quick look at the hardware on the back of the hook and put the backing hardware up on the wall based on my observations (as you’re about to see, I’d never hung these types of hooks before).

Tada! Oh and here’s my process for drill-less screwing of hardware -It’s not rocket science, but it works for me:

Mark the spot for your screw as you would for any hanging project
Place screw point on the mark and then, using a hammer, gently tap it into the surface to start the hole
Use a manual screwdriver (and some elbow grease) to screw the hardware in

Yay for no drill needed!!!!!!!!!

Alas, when I tried to put the hook on top of the hardware, it wouldn’t catch! So I tried loosening the screws, thinking the metal edge was too close to the cabinet surface.

But that didn’t work either!!! So the hook sat on the window sill for the next couple of hours – I gave up in a huff, thinking to myself that John could deal with it when he got home – I knew he’d be able to put it up in no time.

……….Two hours later……….

After a bit of retail therapy by myself out on the town, I came home and glanced at the hook waiting forlornly on the window sill for John. And then the answer hit me like a ton of bricks!!! I knew exactly what I needed to do. So I plopped my shopping bags down and grabbed the screw driver. In no time we were back in business…

Yup! All it needed was to be flipped around!! I know most of you are probably thinking “DUH!” but I was completely ignorant to the proper install of these types of hooks…Not anymore though! Here’s my new hook in place and ready to go – The last step was to tighten the little screw underneath to guarantee that my owl towel wouldn’t make it come crashing down into the sink.

As you can see, the groove for the screw needed a teeny tiny screw driver, which I just happened to have on hand thanks to my sweet and thoughtful fiance. John had bought me a little DIY-er tool kit for my birthday, so I was well-armed with a mini screwdriver. If you don’t have one, I HIGHLY recommend snagging one. Mine is about the size of a pen and has two ends on it – One is a Phillips head and the other is a flat head. I think this one may be exactly like mine, sold on Amazon.

All done and no more heaped towel making our counters look messy and unloved:

But we aren’t done yet! While I was hanging out around the sink, I went ahead and changed out the unsightly dish washing liquid bottle for a pretty glass one I had on hand. The new glass bottle actually came from our Williamsburg trip this past spring – I love when useful, practical things have a nice memory attached to them (see our bell for more sentimentality).

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I’m off to a baby shower on Saturday to celebrate with my dear friend, Bonnie (and fellow blogger), who is having her first baby this December. What are you guys up to?

Before I get into today’s main project, which uses absolutely nothing but this little household gem:

I wanted to show you a quick bit of rearranging we did in our upstairs master bedroom! Sometimes I just get to the point where I need to move furniture around…There’s something really energizing about waking up to a new perspective each morning – Call me crazy, but it literally makes me excited for the day to know that I have a newly arranged room in the house. Can’t explain it, but maybe some of you other OCD ladies/men can agree with me!! Here’s hoping at least 🙂

Anyway, originally the bed sat against this wall here:

But now, here’s a new photo from the same perspective – We switched the bed with a little seating area I had set up alongside the bed.

To orient you a bit, here’s an older photo of the seating area as it was before the switch:

And now, here’s that same wall today: (although the camera is now angled towards the right rather than the left…sorry if this is totally confusing)

My revamped night stand also went along with the rearrangement, ending up on my side of the bed again. See that project unfold here!

My sister once told me that your bed should never be the first thing you see when you walk into the room. As you can see from the photo below, the newly situated seating area is now the main focal point from the staircase – I guess we are now following proper bedroom arrangement etiquette! Phew 🙂 (feel free to ignore Luna-the-cat’s toy fish on the carpet)

But back to this little guy…

So here’s the issue…Arrant, deadly blinds strings are driving me up a wall! Now you may be thinking to yourself “Deadly? Isn’t that a bit dramatic?” but if you have kids (or “kids” in quotes, i.e. pets) you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

As you can see, I’ve rigged the long thin strings into the curve of the curtain rod hardware so as to keep them out of the way. If I were to let them fall loose, like so…

This is what happens…

One of our three animals is bound to get curious and start batting around the loose strings. This to a paranoid “mother” of two cats and one dog is enough to lose sleep over. So, until now, the blinds strings have been living in an unsightly mass at the end of the curtain rod in every single room of our house.

All I did to fix this problem was wrap the strings around my hand until there was no slack left. Then I gently slid my hand out, clamped the clean, untangled loop of strings together in the middle and twisted on a white twisty tie that I stole from our loaf of bread – Easy as that!

I’ve only done this trick to the one window in our house (gotta get more loaves of bread to collect the ties), but you can bet your bippy that I’m going to go through the entire house to make sure all the strings are put up and away from curious paws and guests’ eyes.

But we aren’t done yet…Since I was already up and intimate with the bedroom window curtain rod, I went ahead and tackled one other to-do item that’s been high on my list. For whatever reason, the curtain rod was initially hung with a distinct upward trend towards the right side. Since that day of careless hardware install (don’t know where my mind was when we hung them), the obviously uneven curtains have been bugging me to no end. It’s probably not easy to see in this TERRIBLY-lit photo (someone please remind me not to take photos of a window treatment in direct afternoon sunlight!) but the rod is definitely “off.”

I should show you just how badly askew the curtain rod was…Here’s the “bad” side, hung a bit too high and a bit too far from the window frame:

And here’s the “good” side at a nice, reasonable high-and-wide distance from the window:

All it took for this project was a screw driver and some elbow grease! Unfortunately, I uncovered some unsightly anchor hardware…Still need to take care of that. But the right-hand rod hardware is now nice and even with the opposite side. Hallelujah!!!

MUCH straighter…(And no more unsightly wad of stringage to look at on the right thanks to Mr. Twisty Tie!!)

The heavenly glow of the afternoon sun through the white curtains is pretty much exactly how joyful I am now that the curtains are straight and our pets are safe from harm’s way…It’s the little things in life.

What were you guys up to this weekend? Take care of any projects you’ve been meaning to get done like us? We’d love to hear from you!

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