Off Topic: Pinterest

Oh, Pinterest.  How I love and loathe thee.  You open my mind to so many new and wonderful ideas, but you also suck out my soul and all my spare time.

But to the point...

Most Pinners have a craft board.  I have 13 : Art, Cosplay, Craft Flowers & Bows, Craft Ideas, Craft Organization & Materials, DIY Clothing, Holiday Crafts, Jewelry, Make Little Boxes, Printable & Lettering, Quilting & Blankets, Sewing Crafts,and Yarn.  These boards have a combination of 590 pins as of this writing.  I have a compulsion where I don't like for my boards to have more than 100 pins - hence the many specific boards.

I was just looking through another Pinner's "Craft" board, and she had over 700 pins on that single board.  How can you possibly find anything on a board with that many pins?!?!  Not to mention, I noticed that she had several duplicates through the board.

So maybe it's ridiculous for me to have my 2600 pins spread over almost 60 boards, but hey, I can find stuff.

Okay.  Random tangent finished.  I'll be back to posting about the house next time, promise!

My New Favorite Home Improvement Product

Seriously.

If you are using any sort of oil-based paint or stain, you MUST have some Vicks on hand.  I'm a somewhat messy painter, and a very messy stainer, so I inevitably get some on my hands.  Turpentine is nasty and horrible for your skin.  But you know what is also oil-based and gets oily stuff off your hands?  Vicks VapoRub (and the comparable off-brand).

We now have a bottle of Vicks sitting beside the brush washing sink.  And one by the shower.  An absolute must have when working with oil based mediums!


Oh.  And the house stuff is going well, too.  Tomorrow is going to be a big work day - my parents are going to come help us do things like laying tile and re-routing plumbing.

I will take my camera tomorrow.  I will take my camera tomorrow.  I will take my camera tomorrow...

Dumb Things I Did Today

This was a really "off" day for me.  Let's go through the list, shall we?

1) Forgot my camera.  Twice.  Therefore, no pics today.  Sorry

2) Stood on the Idiot Step of the ladder.  I did do this intentionally.  I was so tired of not being able to finish the bedroom paint because I'm short, so I gripped all available molding and hauled myself up.  Interestingly, though - the Idiot Step on my parents ladder felt more secure than any of the steps on my wooden ladder.

3) Missed Lowes by fifteen minutes.  Apparently they close at seven on Sundays.  No new paint until tomorrow...

4) Set off the security alarm.  I forgot that I had it on and took out the garbage - a few minutes later, Casey called and asked if I was ok.  Can we pretend I did that one on purpose as a test?

5) Played with lead paint.  This one is hard to avoid when you buy a house that's over a hundred years old.  The future kitchen had some pretty bumpy baseboards, so I took the heat gun and a little sandpaper to smooth it out.  Yes, I did wear a dust mask and glasses, and I also wiped the areas down with a damp cloth.

I think that's it.  Maybe I can be safer now...

Carpet, Linoleum and Plywood - Oh My!

When we finally closed on our house last week, one of the first things we tackled was the Master Bedroom flooring.  The previous owners had several dogs who spent a little too much time in there, so the lovely carpet tiles in the room had to go.  Casey and I had hoped to find beautiful hardwoods underneath the carpet, but alas...

Three layers - none of which I wanted...

The somewhat good news was that neither the carpet or equally lovely blue linoleum were really glued down, so they came up quickly.  We still detected the faint smell of dog, so the next pic is of the subfloor coated with a layer of Kilz.

We could leave it like this, right?

 And yes, that is a hole in the left side of the pic.  We're still not sure exactly where it came from, as it looked partially cut and partially broken, but it is now patched.  During the process of cutting out the damage, we did manage to find the original hardwoods - in poor condition under the plywood.  Someday you will read a post about how we rip everything in there up and re-do the original floors.  But that will be a few years...

The nail was stronger than my hammer.

Casey was here.

 We decided to go with a really dark, chocolate brown, leaving the trim the existing white.  The molding has about 17 layers of paint on it, obscuring the detail in the routing and leaving what should be sharp corners incredibly rounded, so someday I'm hoping to take it all down and strip it.  But again... That's another post for another time.

If these were normal ceilings, we wouldn't need a ladder.  As it is, they are ten feet tall, so a little extra help is required.

Speaking of ladders... I am now accepting donations to replace this scary, rickety ladder.

Chocolate!

 We've gotten a little further since I took this picture, but it gives you a good idea of what it'll look like when finished.  The wood laminate flooring for this room should come in this weekend!

The dog ate my blog post...

Whoops.  So much for "I'm going to post every day!"

Why have I not been posting, you may ask?  Many reasons.  We're trying to buy a house (I would think that being old and having stood the test of time would be a good thing, but apparently, the insurance company doesn't think so...), I just started a new job (come shop at my store!), my brother got married (the older brother), and after seeing the new Star Trek movie, I had to watch The Wrath of Kahn (and The Search for Spock).

Why is this not in the movie?!?!?!

Now, I shamefully point out that I did not say I re-watched The Wrath of Kahn (and The Search for Spock).  Somehow, despite my nerd-a-licious upbringing, I had never seen it (at least, that I remember).  How did this happen?  I really don't know.  It may be partially due to the fact that I didn't embrace my inner nerd until high-school, and by that point, I was far too busy with rehearsals, school, and other such things to delve into nerd history.

I also haven't seen Office Space, 28 Days Later, Battle Royale, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Crow, Shaun of the Dead, Hellboy, War Games (though this one I have tried so hard to find!), Seven Samuri, Dune, Revenge of the Nerds, the Alien movies, Robocop, Ghost in the Shell, Tron (the orginal (I haven't seen the new one either, but it doesn't count)), Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odessey, and at least half of the Star Trek movies - these are apparently are some of the top 50 geek movies - a list I don't totally agree with, but hey - it was the first Google result for "classic nerd movies."


Back to the Future was strangely not on that list.

Does this make me a bad nerd?  I don't think so.  I think it just means I'm a modern nerd.  I heart heart David Tennant.  I play MMOs.  We're putting a D&D room and a library into our new house.  I'm comfortable with my level of nerd-dom.