Born Again TV Stand

Today my productivity is falling a little short of what I need to accomplish. Which is why it feels good to have this project done and put in place. It's like making a to do list, and putting something on it you've already done, just so you can cross it off. But it still feels pretty good.

Anyway, in my grand tradition, this project has been about a year in its completion. Major hangups include procrastination, and choosing a color for the inside. Don't worry about the mess in the background - it's still on my to-do list ;)

I love the way it came out! And my little helper in the corner. Hubs helped me pick the color for the inside, and I think it's pretty fabulous. Here's the before picture:

As you can see, I chose to keep the original hardware. I actually really liked it, and it's one of the reasons I liked this piece of furniture in the first place. The challenging part came with the veneer - painting veneer is HARD. Especially with all the little crevices in the doors and drawers. There are some paint chipping problems, but I think it helps it to look "antique" with the peeling paint. If it gets too bad, I'll touch it up at some point.

Here you can see the spot where the paint isn't sticking very well.

Since I don't notice it from a distance, I'm not going to worry about it right off. I also had my handyman cut a hole in the back so I can keep the base to the surround sound and our dvd player on the inside. It has definitely cleaned up this little TV corner from what it used to be, and is another step towards us living like grown ups.

Here's a before picture of the inside of the drawers:

I really liked the look of the old newspaper, but in the end I decided to paint it green because it just all went together better that way.

And another picture, because I just like it so much!!

Fiona Came Home!

Our darling little girl cat, Fiona, disappeared for a full 24 hours yesterday. Well, I think. We last saw her right before we went to bed, and the next morning she was nowhere to be found. She's a self-imposed indoor cat, has never really wanted anything to do with going outside, but we leave the door to our attached garage open so she can go in there and catch mice. Something she does almost too well. The other night she woke me up during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night to show me her TWO kills, and she was soaking wet! So obviously she had gone out the not quite closed garage door to the outside. I guess she discovered a world out there that she missed from her days as a stray. Or maybe she got shut in the neighbor's basement. We'll probably never know.

We made a point of leaving the garage doors open, but Hubs hadn't seen her all afternoon. On my way home late last night, I drove past our house to see if she had  been hit by a car, or met some other terrible fate on the road. But no kitty. I walked in the house, and she was standing at the top of the stairs as though nothing had happened. The dogs came out of their room and sniffed her all over (too bad no one can tell me where she was!), and then she discovered there was food in her dish, and chowed down.

Today she is all snuggles, enjoying the warmth of her home and her person's lap. She doesn't seem affected in any way, really. So I guess nothing terrible happened to her, she was just out having a good ole' time.

New Dryer!

We have a shiny new dryer!! It was quite the process getting this dryer. We went to every store, looked at all the different functions and styles, reviewed rankings and reports, weighed stackable vs not stackable, and finally I gave up and said, "Honey, just get a dryer." He picked out a Kenmore (honestly, not sure which one) because it was ranked pretty high regarding both value and function, and at the time it was on sale. However, I had to work all weekend and without me around to nag him, Mr. Fabulous didn't get the motivation to go get it til Monday, and it wasn't on sale anymore. *sigh* He's an even worse procrastinator than I am.

The decision to get a new dryer came after the hubs had been gone fishing for a month, I had been doing very little laundry with it being just me home, and our electric bill went down considerably. Our dryer was a hand-me-down from his parents that was probably as old as us, and definitely not the most efficient appliance in our house. We got the new dryer a week ago, and since then it sat in our living room and taunted me with all of its newness covered up by a cardboard box. I decided a good way to get the new dryer installed faster was to boycott doing laundry until I could use it. Like the majority of my household labor boycotts, this did not work. What happened was all the laundry built up in the laundry room and blocked the way for getting dryers in and out. And then I ran out of clean underwear. Well, at least the pairs I prefer to wear.

Last night I finally buckled under the pressure and decided to just do some laundry, and that action somehow prompted hubs to take the new dryer out of its box and put it in! Yay! So far I love it, though we have yet to see if its "fisherman approved". We tend to wash a lot of sweatshirts and jeans in this house, so even when I choose the "bulky" setting, my dryer seems to underestimate how long it will take to dry his stuff. Or maybe now I need a new washing machine with a more powerful spin cycle so my clothes aren't as wet when they go in the dryer (I have no idea if that's a new thing with washing machines, but I will totally use that as my argument for why I need one).

Turns out the real answer was I needed to read the manual and "bulky" is for things like jackets an pillows, and "heavy duty" is for, well, "heavy" items.

Instead of annoyingly beeping when it's done, it plays a happy little song! Yay! The laundry is done! How exciting! It almost makes me hate folding so much. Almost.

Here she is! Pardon my crappy cell phone picture.

I'm really excited to use the sanitize function, and the sweater rack! I'll let you know how it goes :)