Home – My World With Words

May 11, 2020May 11, 2020

Ah, Moving Part II

Oh wow, I’ve moved.

The movers came last Friday. That part went smoothly and aside from losing the knob to my floor lamp, there was no damage to any of my highly valuable personal goods. (Okay, “highly valuable” is a subjective term and one I use here a bit facetiously).

The cats are adjusting. I have no idea how they feel about our much smaller home, but I guess they’ll get used to it. Mimi is quite curious about the wide open spaces outside the front door, and I’m constantly having to block her from running out. Walter has taken to hiding under my comforter, which is really cute because I think he believes he’s hidden. The lump on the bed gives him away.

I suppose I’m adjusting as well. I’m not thrilled with the new place, but now it’s home so I’m determined to make the best of it. I’ve got the living room and bedroom pretty much set up, with pictures on the wall, books on the bookcases and a few cat toys strewn about.

It’s the second bedroom that’s a nightmare. The room is wall to wall boxes. Well, okay, there’s a path to walk around the perimeter of the room, and to be clear, it’s not a very big room. But still in all, most of my worldly goods are in there waiting for me to dig them out. My desk is buried under those boxes as well, and that’s a problem, because despite its name a laptop is easier to use on a solid surface. Slouching on the sofa as I am now has multiple drawbacks.

Change can be hard, and this situation is difficult for me. I didn’t want to move out of the old place (further explanation about that can be found here). My new apartment is actually quite old, not in a charming way but in an outdated, faux paneling way. The cabinets are cheap and worn. Those in the bathroom are so bad it’s unreal, so I may paint them. You’re not supposed to do that, but seriously, the consequences are likely to be minor. I may not get my deposit back, but they keep eighty percent of it anyhow for cleaning. I’d paint the cabinets a neutral color that would go with the flooring. Yes, I’m justifying.

But like I said, I’m determined to make the best of this situation and look for the good. The cats have window sills they can perch on to watch the birds and the squirrels outside. I’m closer to work, closer, really, to the hub of this area. This complex seems to be quiet, and my unit is on the end of the row of apartments, looking out over a wooded area. I’m processing the change, and will come out better for it.

Image Credit: © stock.adobe.com

August 29, 2017August 29, 2017

The Value of Things

“They’re just things. We’re all okay. Things can be replaced, people can’t. I’m just grateful everyone is alive.”

How many times after a fire, tornado or hurricane have we heard those brave words, sincerely spoken in the moment? Yet we know, sitting in our chairs in the comfort of our safe and secure homes, that sooner or later the woman on the screen will realize some things can’t be replaced.

The stone your daughter brought you because she thought it was so pretty and would bring you good luck. The books you’ve had since childhood, worn a bit, but beautiful. The Christmas decorations your mother and your children made.

The pictures, taken before digital cameras and cloud storage.

Yes, any of us would rather have our children, spouses, siblings, parents, friends and neighbors alive and hugging us close than a household of “things”…but the loss of the material is real, and eventually will hit the people struggling to find a change of clothing and water the day after their home is destroyed.

We say “you can’t take it with you” and as true as that is, you have it here on earth. While often that expression refers to money, here I’m talking about things, objects, what you know is in your house and makes it home for you. You treasure it, at times it sustains you. There’s nothing wrong with valuing those things.

A tragic loss does put all that in perspective, of course, and you can always find new objects to hold close to your heart. But they can’t fully replace what’s been lost.

To those who’ve lost everything, my heart is with you. I know your loss is real. I pray you have the support in your life to get through whatever has brought this loss into your life, all that it represents, and that you will soon find joy again.

Photo Credit : © marima-design – Fotolia

May 3, 2017May 16, 2017

Well, the Locks Work

I love my new home, which was built in 1979 and still has mementos, shall we say, of those early days.

No sense getting rid of something if it works, right? I learned the hard way just how well some of those pieces have held up over the years. Take the doorknobs, for example. Or let me say, take the doorknobs, please.

Last night I had one of those fluke home accidents that are difficult to reconstruct and embarrassing to explain. So rather than try to paint a detailed picture for you, suffice to say, some tissue caught on fire, I tossed it in the toilet, had the presence of mind to turn the fan on, and closed the door so the smoke detectors wouldn’t go off. It should be noted I was certain the fire was doused at that point.

AdobeStock_102489175 — Yeah, one of the cats could’ve opened it.

Later, when I was sure the smoke was cleared, I returned to the bathroom and — the door was locked. I did everything I knew to do with a locked bathroom door, including breaking a hanger so I could use the hook at the top to pop out the lock, sliding a credit card past the latch and looking at the other locks for clues.

Oh yes, checking the door sills for a magic key. Those, no doubt, were lost long ago.

This morning, promptly at store opening, I entered Lowe’s and headed to their key counter, hoping they had a magic key. No such luck. Use a hanger, the guy told me, or a credit card.

My neighbors helped me with a tool or two, but still, nothing worked. I was forced to call my landlord, who got a good laugh out the situation. She’d done it herself, she said, but she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten the door open again.

A picture is worth a thousand words…here’s before and after…what you can’t see in this picture is how we tried to take the door off the hinges, then realized we’d have to pull it straight out and try not to tear out the latch. We abandoned that idea.

Before…

…After

Eventually Catherine, my landlord, somehow got the door open with a credit card and a screwdriver. We’d tried that before, to no avail, but this time she got it to work.,

It took an hour, and that was the time spent on it after she arrived. The cats were confused, but friendly (they like Catherine).

Last summer she debated about changing the door knobs. Now I helped make that decision for her.

But I can get into my bathroom again.

Image of Cat © geosap — Fotolia/AdobeStock

January 2, 2017January 2, 2017

The Perfect Time, the Perfect Space

In my last apartment, I longed for a second bedroom, an office and sewing room, with some space set aside for storage. Now I have just that, and I’m hardly using it.

My living room has the perfect corner for one of my desks, so my laptop sits here most of the time. Downstairs (my new townhome is built on the side of a hill, so you enter on the second floor) are both the bedrooms. One, of course, is where I sleep, and the other is on its way to becoming the office/sewing room I imagined. On its very long way to that goal. Right now it’s a percolating mess.

How is it that the reality never meets the expectations of the dreams? This room is a wisp of a problem, barely worth mentioning, but larger things loom. The new job, the new home, the new spouse, all bring with them (whether they intend to or not) a belief that now things will be better, now my idle thoughts will become golden reality.

Sometimes, the failure of the new to bring fantasy to life dims any good it may bring into our lives. Over time we realize the limitations of others and other things, and hopefully come to appreciate and value the times when good outweighs bad.

Life is never perfect, and many of us are wary in those fleeting moments when it seems it could be so. It’s not a matter of being cynical or negative, of seeing the glass half-empty or any such thing. Rather, it’s an awareness of the reality of this world, and a sense of gratitude for what good we’ve been given and the grace to manage to bad.

As I write this, I feel a bit foolish for seeing any bad in my life, given the horrors so many are experiencing. I’m grateful for a comfortable home, friends I can trust, food on my table. I feel no fear when I leave my front door that danger is imminent.

I pray that certainty doesn’t leave my life.

dreamin-kitties — My sweet babies think the outside world holds wonder for them…but really, it’s just cold, wet and devoid of easy living.

Interior

October 21, 2016March 24, 2017

A Simple Change

Far be it from me to give home decorating advice. There are plenty of experts out there, as well as people like my mom, who know exactly what they’re doing and can work miracles with MacGyver-like skills for interior design. I can put a room together, and it’s comfortable, but my mom has a sense for what works like no one else I know. I didn’t inherit that skill.

rose-knobs Still, I’ve been working on a couple of projects lately, and two simple changes have updated portions of my home so dramatically I can’t wait to go into those rooms. What did I do? Paint — and update cabinet knobs.

The reality for many of us is we’re forced to work with elements we can’t afford to change — in my case, I can’t renovate the incredibly outdated bathroom. First, I’m renting, and second, even if I owned this home, it’s expensive. So allow me to present some ideas you won’t find in a decorating magazine, since few of them would ever allow some of this to be seen in print as part of the updated work.

When I first moved into my new townhome, my landlord and I both looked at the bathrooms with great dismay (downstairs full bath, upstairs half). They have that faux marble gold-sparkle countertop, and there isn’t much I can do about that. I hear there’s some sort of epoxy you can apply, but that takes considerable skill and patience. I have neither for that job.

The cabinets were probably last painted when the home was built, more than 30 years ago. White. Worn, dirty white. The hardware was also likely original to the home, therefore, pretty dated. I had no plans to write this blog post when I started or I would have taken “before” pictures, but if your bathroom has the same problem, no pictures are necessary. You know what I’m talking about.

upstairs-bathroom — These rose cabinet knobs are from Pier One, and the rest can be found at Hobby Lobby.

So I took it upon myself to do something I’ve rarely done before. I painted the cabinets. I chose an attractive taupe color, but let me say right here: Get samples. What looks like the perfect taupe at Home Depot ends up pink on the cabinets, or possibly an ill green. I saw both.

I surprised myself by picking out some white ceramic rose-shaped cabinet knobs. I’m not typically that girly in my decorating, but these are classy, and as it turns out, I had some coordinating rose “accessories” I’m trying out in there. It looks kind of nice.

downstairs-bathroom2 — You can see the outdated toilet, counter top and floor — but the paint job, as well as the accessories (which you can’t see here), have really updated it!

I was fortunate that my landlord had replaced the faucets with some attractive brushed-nickle pieces, and I almost chose a grey to play up that feature, but for me, the taupe worked better. In the downstairs bathroom my shower curtain is a vintage travel-postcard design in grey and taupe, and I have brushed-nickle accessories that do coordinate with the faucets. The walls are painted a light, fun blue, so I got dark, smoky blue towels to play off of that as well as add an anchor color to the room. And just last night I found vintage travel-postcard cabinet knobs that coordinate perfectly with the shower curtain. Yippee!

armoire Now, you’d really have to see a before shot of this armoire to fully appreciate just how bad it was. Not only was the finishing job horrid, but the cats liked to climb up the side so they could survey the room from on high. That resulted in deep scratches all along the side, and I debated even keeping this piece. But I need it.

Again, I chose a taupe, and I’m loving the result. And look at those cabinet knobs!!!!! Since I painted the interior a sort of dusty blue, that blue edging on the knobs helps make these perfect. This armoire is currently my “linen closet.”

green-knob-3-drawer-dresser — This three-drawer dresser serves as my TV stand — outdated colors or not, it works well just as it is!

This last piece I finished some twenty years ago, which likely makes the dark green stain outdated. But I’m not in the mood to paint it, nor do I have any idea what color I would choose. Still, these knobs do a fair job of updating the little three-drawer dresser. What’s kind of funny is the tan color in the knobs works with those spots where the dresser is scratched down to the raw wood — that same tan color.

So if you’re looking for a simple update to some outdated furniture, or bathroom cabinets, paint and new hardware will do wonders. Try it! And it’s remarkably inexpensive as well.

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