Curb Alert II

As you may recall, in a previous post way back a month ago I found this "lovely" item sitting by the curb. Here is the little story of its transformation:

Before it was several colors with dirt and probably some flaky lead paint.

Sanded and ready to go with a coat of paint on one drawer. It was free paint I picked up from the Eco Store and I obviously enjoy free things.

Another gross side view.

Tada! A clean, very bright green set of drawers!

Cammie helps me model the new drawer liner.

Hopefully it will help me organize my spare closet a little and eliminate the stack of small boxes where what I need always seems to be at the bottom.

Happy Halloween!

I guess I haven't posted updated painting photos but that is what we er, Mark has been finishing up with. Painting the windows and finishing up edges here and there. We might just get this done yet before it gets cold thanks to the freakishly warm fall we have been having. I have been cleaning storm windows and cleaning up around the yard.

I think festive Halloween pics are more fun than dirty storm windows.

Ignore Frankie's bike and misc. porch junk in the background. Drat! I guess I ended up photographing some dirty storm windows anyways.

This is why I enjoy the fireplace. I haven't even attempted to use the fireplace for its actual purpose. I figure if the toilets were barely working why would I even think to try something attached to a gas line?

Frankenstein trolls!

Soo, are they implying this guy is dressed as a ghost??

Of course I have a Halloween Hello Kitty! The pink troll's shirt costume is more successful than the green one's.

Coffee table decor.

and it's our little Halloween kitty.

Curb Alert!

Me? Pick something off the street? Yes, it's true. Randomly discovered free stuff does excite me.

We were driving home from lunch when my mom spotted this "fantastic" set of drawers sitting on the curb down the block. With the pretense of walking the dog, we wandered back on foot to take a closer look. It had a free sign on it which reinforced the fact it needed a new home. I want to clean and paint it so bad right now but I better keep any painting I do to the exterior of the house.

Some of the drawers are open and some have inserts. Perfect for organizing my crafty items which are currently stacked in random little boxes all over the spare room's closet.

My mom's other fantastic find she brought me this weekend was this crazy gondola lamp. The 2 compartments are removable. Planters I suppose? And it is tricky to see in the photo but the shade is oblong to match the width of the boat.

Painting!

I thought we were making progress on the painting. After all, the neighbor's house behind us looks worse than ours and...wait, what the!? He hired painters so now his house is all shiny and new in less than a week? Drat!
A full back view of our house, hideous deck rails and all. We successfully recruited some help so the progress did improve over the weekend. Nicolette is scraping the kitchen windows.

Ryan Scraping the trim above the side door.

Rollers are amazing! As long as you don't mind paint splatters and outdoors I don't mind paint splatters. The afternoon sun was too hot (yes, 90 mid-October? What is with that?) so we moved up front.

Mark using the roller with the extender up front. The extension thing is also amazing as Mark can pretty much paint all of the house standing on the ground. Too bad the edging and trim still need a ladder.

Bathroom Flooring

The bathroom still taunts me as I'm stuck working on the exterior until it gets cold. I did manage to check out some floor tiles to see if the color works.

It looks really too gray/beige on the sample. My first choices average $40+ a sq ft but if I had that much money to spend on flooring I would be blogging about redoing a house down the block which was twice the size of this house.

But I do have the remains of an original tile from my parents for comparison and it is almost exactly the same color. I don't know, maybe it is the bright white grout which makes it so dark? Whatever the reasoning, I think this tile with a black hex flower pattern and dark grout is going to look amazing compared to the circa 1981 carpet.

Space Age Find

My mom and I were at one of our favorite Goodwill stops in Omaha when I spotted this fab object on a shelf.

Whatever could it be!? A vase? Part of a lamp? A large juicer? (my mom's guess) For $2.50 I figured it needed further investigation so it found its way into the car and back to my house. It is a little over 19" tall and the yellow insert is removable.

So what is it?

Yep, an ashtray. I Googled the markings: Space Age Products Inc. and came up with their web page. It looks like they have been making the same ashtrays since 1954 so I was rightfully attracted to its vintage-ness I guess. It doesn't look like they currently make yellow but I'm not sure how one would date these. They run $37.95 plus S&H so I didn't get ripped off and as my brother states "he knows of a few hipsters who will buy it from me if I decide I don't want it." I think I'll keep it for a while and see what I can come up with.

Whenever I try to flip through the records at these places I always get some creeper standing in my personal space. I am afraid they are trying to think of some clever pick up line for the "hip" girl trying to find vintage exotic music to listen to on her record player. In actuality they probably just want to look through the records to find a few for their ebay store. I even had some older guy yell at me one time, "Do you even know what a record player is!? Watcha goin' do with that!?" Did he really think my Starland Vocal Band record was priceless and he was going to convince me not to buy it with that comment? Whatever the reason for creeper's closeness yesterday I made my selection and then made my escape without any awkward communication. This one was my favorite find:

I'm sure I lost all cool points if Mr. Creeper saw my selection but how can one resist Grover dressed as John Travolta!? The record is in amazingly good shape too with classics such as C is for Cookie and Rubber Duckie.

The Jungle

Oops. I forgot to post my very unexciting tree/shrub removal post so here it is.

This is the side of the house I never see. Our poor neighbor, on the other hand, does from his kitchen window. A while back I looked at the side of the house and realized Mark had not been moving over here. When asked about this he said "I thought it looked cool, like our own little jungle garden area." OK? Yes, I'm sure our neighbor feels the same way.

So here is our little jungle garden. Mostly trees at this point since I have been more closely monitoring the mowing.

Tada! The trees are gone leaving the bridal veils which also got trimmed back so hopefully they come back next year.