Did ya know?
You can clean your used paint brushes with white vinegar.
Just soak them overnight. Then give them a solid rinse and a good dry.
We’ve found this works best if the paint is still wet and not dried on.
If your paint is dried on…throw them away.
This is a follow-up to the posts on Cedar Planking our garage and Installing the Lack Shelves over the washer and dryer.
When we last showed y’all our garage a few months ago, it looked like this…
We had hung our old kitchen cabinets along the left side wall and started planking cedar over the unpainted drywall.
I continued planking the cedar and floating the drywall seams in the ceiling…
and Jamie installed the cabinet doors (including the Ikea Tyda handles that we would have used in the kitchen if they were available in other sizes) and painted the cabinets sparkling white…
Over the hottest of the Texas months, working a little at a time, we slowly got to this….
After a little more detail work we reached this point…
“Pure Coolness” in a garage, am I right?
We topped the cabinets the cheapest way that we could think of, with framing lumber. Total cost was about $12. This was the only way we could get a 14 inch deep counter that was 10 feet long. It’s not a super efficient workspace, but it is just the right size to drop paint cans and open tool boxes. Besides, there is a decent sized work table in the middle of the garage that is always covered in “assorted important stuff”.
Here are a couple of “steal-able” ideas to make a garage workspace a little more efficient.
Ikea, I know another plug for Ikea, sells knife magnets for the kitchen. Why not use them in the garage too? Now we have a perfect place to hang the things we usually have to rummage through several toolboxes, or drawers, to find. Needle nose pliers, sharp scissors, paint-can opener…..Yepp, right there. There is also no better way to dry paint brushes.
Tomato soup cans hung on the magnet strip are the perfect place to put pens, pencils, and paint brushes. They don’t really take up that much counter space, but they are just easier to find at eye-level. And yes, I choose the cans for the red color….and a slight nod to Andy Warhol.
We built open shelves to lengthen the counter top space because we only have about 7 feet of cabinets. Cool, red baskets wrangle extension cords, shop towels, rubber gloves, and assorted electrical supplies. If we can see it, we can find it faster. The minute I saw those baskets I knew I’d find a home for them somewhere.
Our friend Jimmy was getting rid of these “C- Shaped” metal medicine cabinets. We have other plans for the bathrooms, but they work great here…..
All those little things have a home now. Upcycled salsa and baby food jars are unmatched for holding screws, nails, thumb-tacks, jingle bells…….pretty much anything. The baby food jars filled with metal fasteners always remind me of my grandfather’s tool shed. It was shaped like a red barn with an American eagle plaque over the doors.
I still need to get in there with a label maker, (Lord knows that I LOVE a label maker), but I’m pretty confident that everything is easy to find now.
There are more uses for plumbing pipe then just making shelf fixtures, firewood holders…..or for actual plumbing I suppose. Try strapping one across a wall with toggle bolts and using hooks to hang necessities.
We used kitchen pot hooks (from, you guessed it, Ikea) to hang all those odd-ball things. They are only about 1$ each.
Now that the garage is clean-ER, we can hang all those things that haven’t quite found a place in the house yet. Like this “longhorn-less” longhorn hanging over the old Coke machine. Wouldn’t y’all just expect there to be extra horns just laying in the streets of Dallas? Well, there aren’t. But someday I’ll find a replacement set for him.
We have barely even started planking the right side of the garage…but we do have a few more projects out here to show off.
I don’t want to ruin any surprises…but we found a few unexpected places for storage.
Just wait……
While cruising the isles at Target the other day (I know, a lot of our stories involve shopping at Target, or Ikea) we stumbled on this poster in the men’s shoe department. Odd placement since the “Dad’s” feet/shoes weren’t even visible.
Isn’t that just the greatest door ever? Just look how happy the family in the poster looks….We could be that happy too with a door like that.
We had a “door-man” price out a door like this for us, and he came back with a bid of 1800$. Uninstalled
And no, I didn’t forget a decimal point. For that much money we could remodel both bathrooms….and take a small vacation.
Never fear……we will keep looking…..and shopping at Target.
I picked up this idea from the DIY network. We pretty much stream that channel in this house all weekend while we are doing projects.
Fracture is a cool-as-heck site that will print any picture you have on a piece of glass (either wall hanging or with a cardboard easel on the back).
Prices seem pretty reasonable too.
That’s about what it would cost to print a photo and buy a matt/frame.
I thought ,”What the Heck?”, why not commemorate our 36 hours in Key West with a piece of art?
I choose this one.
Because…….every other time we go to Key West alone, and I take this same shot myself with my arm extended….and it looks like this…..
See what I mean? Not this trip. We thought ahead and brought a photographer (My brother Ben)….and then dragged him to all those spots where we have always wanted decent pictures taken.
Anyhoo, I uploaded our picture to the Fracture site, choose my size, No border, wall hanging, and pressed the “Place Order” button.
I even Googled a discount code (RFR19835) for 5 dolla’s off….(That means that you folks can try the 8″ picture for only 5 bucks right now, go on, try it)
It takes about 2 weeks to process, so I’ll keep y’all up to date on how she looks when we get her.
We both love to eat, ….and drink.
We’ve wanted to start posting a few of our favorite recipes…and somehow it seemed fitting to start our foray into recipes with a cocktail.
Go figure,
This is the perfect “dead heat of the summer” refresher…..Just imagine slurping down one of these on a warm summer evening after a meal of grilled burgers and fire-roasted corn on the cob.
This idea was actually inspired when we replaced our glassware. I know it sounds lame, but we have been using logo’d pub pints for way too many years now. They are the kind of pint glasses that tap houses used to give away on Tuesday nights. Remember those? Drink the beer, take home the glass. My brothers and I would hit the Flying Saucer just for the glasses….and I still have all of them. I know, I know…hoarder.
But we are grown ups now, (yes we are, Kylie), and we should be drinking from actual glasses.
Fear not. I found these massive “Man-sized” 21 ounce glasses at the Crate & Barrel outlet. 5 ounces more than a pint. I looked that up. And yes, we do need to start shopping at a few other stores. (other than Ikea…..or Target)
Start with a heaping scoop of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream. No other kind will work. Every Texan will agree with us on this point. (OK, use whatever brand of vanilla ice cream you want….but they won’t taste like ours)
Into the massive tumbler it goes. Folower by 1 ounce of 3 Olives Root Beer Vodka and 1 ounce of Absolute Vanilla Vodka.
Pour root beer over the whole mess.
Insert straw.
Enjoy……Now wasn’t that easy?
Actually, we were fighting Oncor, our electricity provider.
Last Saturday we were abruptly awakened at the crack of noon to the sounds of chainsaws in our neighbor’s back yard. The Oncor tree trimming specialists (I should say Dudes with Chainsaws) were in our neighborhood trimming ( I should say Butchering) trees that were hanging over the power lines. We have seen their work before and apparently their idea of trimming was either make a HUGE V-shaped gash down the center or to cut off entire sides of trees.
Then there was a very loud knock at our door accompanied immediately by an excited Doberman running back and fourth. 2 creepy looking dudes with chainsaws. They wanted in our backyard to slice off the back side our only tree.
We have one, solitary tree in the backyard. I think it ‘s a live oak but it’s mostly mistletoe. He’s a tall slim broccoli reminiscent guy. And, AND, AND……..about 15 feet from the powerline. If he is such a threat…Shouldn’t they be able to reach him from the alley? We are understandably all for safety, if we actually had ANY trees that hang over the power lines we would most certainly want them trimmed. But NOT slaughtered.
I let them in the backyard and quickly ran to the internet to research some kind of intervention.
Jamie’s idea of intervening was much more effective. He stuck his head in backyard and bluntly told them to get the hell out of our tree. Only his language was slightly…… “saltier” …….than my edited version.
They retreated quickly and he released the Doberman to patrol the perimeter and prevent anyone from entering our backyard without our permission. Or they would be severely whined at…….
This wouldn’t be our only confrontation with Oncor…….
This morning they were back; as we knew they would be. Only this time it was two good-ol’-boys wearing very official neon vests with “Utility Forester” on the back….I can only assume they were wearing neon so people won’t accidentally run them over,…… or shoot them.
Jamie actually said, get this, ” Let me take care of this, I can speak red-neck”. Good thing too, because when the guys noticed the Whitetail deer antlers in our garage, Jamie was able to talk to them about “point counts”…..and not about how they can be used to hold up Christmas wreaths, ……….like I most likely would have. Because that’s what antlers are used for in this house.
Good news,
They agreed with us and only trimmed off about a foot and a half from the branches that were close to the power line…and they reached them from the alley on a cherry-picker with clippers. No need to climb into the tree with a chainsaw.
We feel much better. We still have 98% of our tree….
and no one was accidentally shot…..
(Quick update on this post,
One of our readers sent us this link about a similar encounter she had and the resulting article on Angieslist, Read it Here, it’s exactly how we feel.)
I know y’all are thinking that we already took a vacation this year; a cruise with our dear friends the Pecks.
Last year we stepped out of our comfort zone and bypassed our annual trip to Key West and tried out St Croix instead….big mistake.
Key West was calling us with her sweet, sweet song………and it’s a lovely song she sings.
So much so..that we thought we would squeeze in a 5 day excursion at the end of August.
Why not fly down to Miami and drive the Overseas Highway through the Florida Keys? What a great opportunity to see all the keys. We only had to make the drive once? Right? That’s what we thought .
We flew to Miami, rented a convertible, and made the 3 hour drive…..
We got to Key West just in time to pick up my little brother Ben at the Key West Airport.
Then we dragged him to El Meson de Pepe for great Cuban food. Might be a little “Touristy”. But we love the roasted pork, pressed Cuban sandwiches, sangria, and guava bread pudding. I’m almost drooling just typing this.
“Peace”
This picture I’m posting just to embarrass Ben…like that first one wasn’t embarassing enough….
In the morning, there was a possibility of bad weather (rainstorm Isaac) so we squeezed in a much fun into a day as we could.
Breakfast at Pepe’s (Not to be confused with Maison de Pepe’s). This little hole in the wall is one of the oldest eateries on the island and one of the best. Every time the waitress came to our table she told us the specials….it was a little like “Groundhog Day”.
After breakfast we headed to Fort Zachary Taylor Beach for snorkeling. The entire park surrounds a pre-Civil War fortress. The water was a little dingy and rough….so we didn’t last too long.
But we did have time to pose at the mileage signpost on the beach. I don’t see Dallas on there anywhere.
Then we zipped (we rented Vespas to get around) over to the Hemingway house for the tour.
Key West has had a myriad of interesting residents (Jimmy Buffet, Tennessee Williams, Hunter S Thompson, Judy Blume, Kenny Chesney, John James Audubon, Harry Truman, Truman Capote, and Robert Frost…..just to name a few). But Ernest Hemingway is by far my favorite. Even though he only lived here for about 9 years, most of which he was a foreign war correspondent and before he was the fully established “Papa” writer, most residents here consider him to be the equivalent of Key West royalty.
I just love this portrait of him …..
After a tour of his house it was only fitting to visit not only Hemingway’s favorite bar, and the most popular bar on the island as well, Sloppy Joe’s.
Sloppy Joe’s used to be across the street from its current location, but when the landlord raised the rent 1$ (which I guess was a lot of money in 1937 ) Joe Russell the owner decided to move locations. At midnight Joe enlisted every patron in the palace to help move everything in the bar across the street….including their own drinks. The only thing that didn’t make the move was the men’s room urinal. Hemingway declared that he had flushed a small fortune down that thing and he dragged it home for himself. His wife Pauline was mortified and had it converted into a fountain where is remains today.
Fish tacos and a frozen “Rum Runner” at Sloppy Joe’s. A Rum Runner is a glorious mixture of Bacardi, blackberry liquor, pineapple juice, orange juice, and grenadine…Delicious. The girl at the table next to us was ordering one out of her “Florida Keys” guidebook……..typical Tourist. She couldn’t blend with the locals like we did.
The southern most point of the United States is only 90 miles from Cuba. And yes, we still have a trade embargo with them. I was reminded of this fact when I ordered a Cuban beer. Cuban refugees continue to wash up on U.S. soil looking for better lives. Their abandoned “crafts” are found on Key West beaches all the time.
A little souvenir shopping at the local stores.
Isn’t this “Sponge Man” one of the absolute creepiest things you have ever seen in your life? You would have to literally pry me off the ceiling if I ever woke up and saw this thing standing next to my bed.
Dinner was at a remodeled whore house, the Blue Heaven. We actually ate in one of the (clears throat) “entertaining” rooms. Seriously. It’s even painted “Whore House Red”.
The food is amazing and they have the BEST key lime pie on the island…Trust us on this!
It wouldn’t be a trip to Key West without a drag show. So we dragged Ben to Aqua to see the girls. Like dear, sweet little Inga here…….
We knew that there was a tropical storm in the Caribbean. Because no one on the island seemed to be affected by it; we weren’t worried either.
The front desk woke us at 8 AM to say they were shutting down the hotel and we had 4 hours to leave. Tropical Rainstorm Isaac looked like he might be a little threatening. Threatening enough for the island Elders to ask the tourists to leave. We certainly didn’t want to repeat of our trip last year to St Croix where we landed on the island about 1 hour before Hurricane Irene and then we sat in a dark hotel room for a couple of days. It wasn’t fun.
So rental car it was, and the 3 of us drove back up the Overseas Highway to Miami.
Even with the looming storm, we managed to get a hotel room and morning flights back to Dallas. We took a short trip down to South Beach for deco buildings gawking and dinner.
The beach was mostly abandoned, so we jumped up on a lifeguard station….
In the morning, Jamie and I booked it back to BIG D. Seriously short trip. I don’t know why we brought so many clothes.
“What happened to Ben?”, you ask.
Funny story.
He didn’t have the same luck that we had changing our flight, and as I write this he is still in Miami waiting for a 7 am flight back to Dallas. Rainstorm Issac isn’t hitting Miami nearly as badly as expected….so we know he’ll be fine.
Maybe that isn’t that funny…….
How cool is this little guy? Aged just perfectly.
VERY vintage Tom Thumb toy cash register….I picked him up for $12. Tom Thumb toys were made by the Western Stamping Co.Inc., in Jackson MI. That’s about all I could find out about him.
He even came with a “Lucky Penny”.
I’m not an electronic person.
Jamie is. He always has the smartest phone, newest I-pad, satellitest radio, most universal remote…yadda, yadda, yadda. You get the picture.
I could care less.
When we first met, about 6 years ago, I had a flip phone (that I think took pictures) and a (possibly designed for children) camera that took 3 megapixel pictures. My only television had a giant picture tube that weighed (insert huge weight here) and was connected to a rabbit-ear antenna box that I bought at Radio Shack. And yes, there were tin foil flags crushed to the ends of the antenna. I really only needed the channel that had Family Guy. When we finally did go shopping for a new slim TV for me, my only criteria was that it fit in the 17 inch distance between my bookshelves because I didn’t want it to be a focal point in my living room. Took us 8 stores to find one that small.
Because I live with a “High Tech” guy now, I know that the electronics in our house will always be the latest and greatest. I now have a towerless PC with a touchscreen, several Apple devices that I couldn’t imagine life without (God bless you Steve Jobs), a camera that takes unbelievable pictures, and a thousand plus U-verse channels for me to find Family Guy on. I know that someday our entire house will be wired with zoned speakers connected to our Itunes libraries and controlled with our Ipads. We’ve dreamt of this happening…….AAAhhhhh, Someday.
None of those modern conveniences would be available to me without Jamie. (He also patiently explains how to make them work)
So when I came home and found a television in our den big enough to be a “dramatic” headboard. I panicked.
It’s a focal point. No way around it. But Jamie lives here too, and anyone will tell you that I steamroll usually make all some of the design decisions.
So big TV it is. 55 inch high-def screen to be exact. It’s measured diagonally. (I never knew that until Jamie)
It’s hard to tell from the large black box in the middle of the picture, but there is actually art and books and other assorted goodness happening around it.
I had always planned on making the console stretch across the entire wall, but when we moved in our friend Doubting-Thomas said , “Don’t ya think that’s a little big?”
and I started doubting myself. So much in fact that I stashed the third piece in Jamie’s office……and settled on just 2 cabinets.
Here is that missing Ikea Expedit bookcase with the relocated TV from our den…..also a little big for the piece it is currently on.
SO……… I reclaimed it for the Den. Like it was always meant to be.
Don’t worry about Jamie’s office. He made a quick trip to Ikea and returned with a Besta cabinet. Harley helped him assemble it to the best-a her abilities.
Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?
Now to fix the console in the den with that monolith sitting on it. I should just slip the new piece onto the end right? Well it’s not that easy. Remember that a couple of months ago we built a base for our 2 sideways Expedit bookcases to rest on so it looks more like a piece of furniture…..and not like…..ummm, say…..2 Expedit bookcases laying on their sides. Y’all can read all about that brilliance here.
I don’t want to rebuild the entire platform, just to add this little piece….
Check this out. I keep all my drawings for projects on a clipboard by my workbench, and this was still there. All the measurements for the first console base.
All the 2X4 cuts , and the mitered pine trim on the outside. I didn’t need to remeasure anything. Just trim the length down to .Sometimes hoarding = rewarding.
So I whipped up a little platform attachment to connect to my current base. Used some left over 2 X 4s and pine boards in the garage. Because I am butting it up against the bigger one I only needed to do Ebony stained pine on 2 sides..
I drilled pilot holes on the side and screwed it into the longer base with drywall screws…..
Then we slid the big bookcase over and inserted the small one into the middle, just so the whole cabinet is “balanced” looking.
Here’s what she looks like all complete…….like she was meant to look like a few years ago.
The bigger flag also helps to “size down” the look of the TV. We certainly Love a flag tacked on the wall, but I miss the 48 star one already. Maybe it will reappear in the garage. Now there is room for even more stuff. And y’all know that we like to see organized clutter.
Note also that I finally found just the right home for the stacked ball lamp. He’s on the very end next to Cary Grant. My custom shade arrived yesterday and I couldn’t be happier with it. I’ve never had to design a shade before and I was honestly a little nervous. But it is PERFECT. The price was pretty good too. $40. On a free lamp (Dumpster find, remember?)…that’s not really that bad.
Check this out. Fenchel Shades, where I ordered my black bad boy from, will give all you gentle readers 10% off your next custom lamp shade order if you use the code: UG86.
So give them a shot. They will make exactly what you need.
Combining the households of 2 grown men is not an easy task. Like we did a little over 2 years ago.
Our garage, just like yours I’m sure, was a total dumping ground for everything that didn’t have a place in the house.
Get this, we actually piled all our crap to the ceiling in there.
To
The
Ceiling.
It’s almost too embarrassing to show…but I’m gunna show you anyway.
Told ya, pretty awful.
But where else are we supposed to keep our taxidermy bass? or “See Rock City” bird house? or the old theater seats?
We did manage to keep a small (someone call for a Hoarders intervention)path from the door to the outside world.
After just about 2 years of sorting, …….and adding shelves, …….and donation trips to Goodwill,…….. and putting stuff on the curb……….we managed to get to this point…
Not too bad, but not something we are particularly proud of either. We still can’t fit a car in there. I don’t even have a picture of all the “stuff” pushed to the side out of camera range. The mess is mostly contained, but the whole place is still so…… unfinished. The walls and ceiling are just plain 1970’s sheet rock. They never even did a tape-and-bed job.
We had to do something to make it feel like a “room”…..and we needed a jumping off point. Like this peacefulness…
Mixed with this anal-retentive organization….(like I even have to tell you that it’s from Martha Stewart Living)
A little modern, a little vintage, a little wooden, a little functional garage……that’s where we were headed.
And what did we like the most about our 2 inspiration photos? The wood, that’s right.
Fencing cedar is pretty cheap. About 3 bucks for an 8 foot board. Every time I made a trip to H-Depot I picked up 10 boards. 30 bucks a pop, not much of a bite. We used it before on the front of our house to make thick columns and cover the ceiling of the patio. Both projects we are still just Ga-Ga about.
To this, in a few hours….We still need to trim the door in white moulding. And add the cedar crown moulding. (Crown moulding in the garage, aren’t we fancy?) And Jamie has something planned for that door to the kitchen too. The wood tone distracts too much from our B-U-T-ful cedar.
I can not live without my air compressor and brad gun…. Best Investments Ever..
After the kitchen remodel, we saved the old upper cabinets (in the garage natch’) to wrangle in some of the clutter. 2 of them went over the washer/dryer (y’all can see that amazingness here)…..and the others we hung along the foundation at a perfect counter height. They are shallow, because these are upper cabinets and only 11 inches deep, but that will keep the garage looking more open.
Here’s the upcycled kitchen cabinets hung along the base of the left side wall….
And after taking the cedar along that whole wall and adding the cabinet doors. Notice how the sprinkler control and electrical panel were painted khaki to blend in with the cedar….Pretty clever, an I right? Who wants to see things like that? Not us. That’s for darn sure.
This is just the beginning of this “Mind Blower”. Wait till y’all see everything we have been working on out there.
THE CAVENDER DIARY 