new adventures in masochism

This fucking table is going to be the death of me. I toyed around with the idea of getting a piece of butcher block to fit this but it would be prohibitively expensive on my budget soo, I figured I'd try to make do with the original table top which was a disaster of mastic and random drilled holes. Removing mastic is the smelliest, nastiest process something that I'm sure, if I was a cat with nine lives I'm now on my ninth. I got all the darned gunk off but the main portion of the table top was not suitable for staining so I figured why not decoupage it with the nice pages from the amy butler scrapbook I'd gotten. Well I needed to buy another ($9.99) to have enough pages but I figured out a pattern I was pleased with and went to town decoupaging it one night. Much to my dismay in the morning I noticed that there were stains coming through the paper and that one of my damn cats had gotten on the table before it was dry so pieces of the paper had come up in paw sized sections. FUCK! I was heartbroken, I did not want to have to go back out and buy two more scrapbook packages to recreate this look. I was totally losing steam, my initial thought had been to try and sell this for a lot of money but who the hell was going to want it, it's too big for my kitchen. Agghh, I was overwhelmed with negative kitchen island thinking. But trooper that I am I'm going to push through. I'm thinking of putting kilz on the top (nothing like huffing kilz which will drop your IQ by 20 points a painting session) and then going with a new pattern I made from the paper I have left. Do you think anyone would pay good money, $300 or so, for this thing?!

mmmm! mastic! absolute nightmare to remove and, lucky me, it's on the stairs I'm working on right now.

looking lovely after many rounds to remove the mastic on the table top. don't even get me started on the inefficiency of my kitchen.

I've done it, at least I thought I had until I looked closer at the table top

back to square one, peeling off all that decoupaged paper was a lot of fun.


round two pattern I'm thinking of using, of course I'll have to do this somewhere the cats can't tiptoe on it.

Toby sent this image of Owen playing Oona's Barbie princess game on his leapster while relaxing? would that be the appropriate word for that position? And take a look at how ginormous his feet look, he's all angles my skinny son. Now I had commented on baffling children sitting positions just a few months ago but, honestly, I think this pose takes the cake

You can breathe easy, my obsession with the chipmunk bag has passed. I think a large bean tote, white with navy or black trim, is much more practical. Maybe I can find a chipmunk pin and put it on the plain tote if I'm so inclined. But I'm still obsessing about the Fox Chapel house, and my neighbors house which I'd like to buy and totally redo - it has such pretty bricks in need of cleaning and pointing and a big two door garage that I'd convert into a cabana style arts & crafts studio.
I just think it comes to having a personality where I'm a bit of a compulsive fixer. I'm quick to clean up, straighten rugs, pictures, repair lampshades that are slightly askew. Anywhere, not just my house. Waiting for a meeting today I couldn't help but stick out my foot to straighten the 5 x 8 rug that was at an angle in the waiting area. It's in my nature and I see so much darn potential in so many houses, they just need to be loved back into shape. Well that and I lot of money and sweat equity. Sweat equity I've got lots of, money not so much. For now I'm on to stripping the stairs, ugh there's so much paint and MASTIC which is horrible to remove and smells awful. Thank God the stripper I use has zeroVOCs because everything I'm removing has plenty to make up for it.
I plan on repainting the hallway, the bold two tone color is driving me batty. All the dark bold colors are driving me batty. I'm not a bold or dark colored person. Don't get me wrong I love seeing it in other peoples house or magazines but I can't live with it. I'm more of the light, calm, muted color type of person.Under the white paint is periwinkle (don't ask I'll show before and after and after pics when I'm done) then mastic, then godawful orange brown congealed faux bois varnish which stinks!

i blame my mother

Really, I do. Whenever I find myself attracted to something inordinately twee I think, dammit it's my mom in me. So when I saw that llbean.com had wildlife totes with little critters on them, I love the word critter which is unbearably cutesy in itself, for $39 I just had to check it out. And then when I saw the chipmunk, my mom calls them chippies, and she actually rescued one that fell into her watering can years ago, well I almost squealed with delight. For now I've restrained myself. Do I really need an olive, a color which sobers it up somewhat, takes the edge of the twee, chipmunk bag? Am I insane? Will I be 60 with three dogs, six cats, a chincilla and an inordinate number of cutesy poo decor in my home. Breathe, So for now, I hold off and look at the tote bag when I'm not cruising for houses in the Fox Chapel area, online of course.

my new pornography

It used to be fashion magazines. I'd flip through all the latest additions and crave, like an addict, the clothes and, even more so, how skinny those models were. I still probably have a case of low grade body dysmorphia but those fashion magazines no longer do it for me. Now it's all the home decorating magazines that get me going. How I lust for the latest issues as I linger in the magazine aisle at my local supermarket with the children safely ensconced in the daycare there - it is too good to be true. Ohh and hitting howardhanna.com after the kids have gone to bed and I can be a virtual voyeur and homes right close by, it makes me drool with envy. I know I posted the dream home that I discovered just a few short weeks ago but now I've really and truly found my dream home. It's in Fox Chapel and has a lovely shady, if somewhat sloping yard, with goregous moonflowers by the front door. It needs about $100,000 in renovations but once this place is done it would be to die for. I know it doesn't look like much but trust me this old style bungalow has so much potential. Now if only I could find a kindly contractor who'd be willing to take me on as an apprentice, and fund me all this money, while I start on this project

this old porch

I have been very busy stripping doors in my home, buffets, window ledges, basment doors, you get the idea. It's been an ongoing stripping summer of me slaving away, scraping off peelaway on my weekends when the kids are with Toby. I have a brick pointer coming to power wash and point three sides of the house (it desperately needs this and I can't wait to post before and after pics of the change) and he said that he'd be coming this week so I spent 9 hours saturday and 10 on Sunday scraping 100 plus years of paint off the front porch). Apparently no one thought to scrape the paint underneath before putting another coat on, so this porch was a textured, chippy wonder. When we moved in the porch was a lovely diarrhea brown which Toby quickly painted a soft green. It was great, until it started chipping off.


I do not exaggerate when I say there are A LOT of chippy layers on this porch

Before. Multiple layers of green, brown, light grey, darker grey, light blue, clear sealer, dark green, and yet another grey paint. Sort of like counting the rings on a tree but more toxic.

After. You might have to enlarge these to get the idea that the porch surface is now much smoother, it's various shades of grey (most likely lead based) paint which I'm hoping will come off more when they powerwash the bricks. The pointer is really friendly and said I'm welcome to powerwash whatever I want. I felt like Homer Simpson on seeing a donut, ahh powerwash.

Scraping the paint layers off the cement (baseboard? I don't know what to call the 6 inch lip of concrete that meets the brick on the front of the house) was the hardest part of this project, which consisted of two rounds of peel away and then two rounds of smartstrip on each section of the porch I did. Yep four steps per square inch, plus vigorous scraping after each step - ugh! No wonder my fingers felt like they were ready to break off at the top digit by Sunday night.

There are various shades of grey here but the porch is now smooth and I'm hoping the powerwash will even it out more to a uniform look. There's no way I'm painting this porch after scraping all that paint off.

And this is what my hands look like after wearing latex gloves for 19 hours in two days. Do enlarge to see it in all its flaky glory. Do you think this means I have a latex allergy? It happens whenever I wear the gloves for prolonged periods during my stripping weekends.

crimes against humanity

Well, to be fair, it's really more like crimes against parenting or being a mom worthy of punishment although that sounds vaguely S&M in a way I'm not intending it to be. Here are the recent offenses playing the guilt/exasperation ping pong in my head.

1. Gouged oona with a key to her armpit getting her out of the car today. At first it looked awful and I thought of making the trip to MedExpress and trying to explain that I impaled my daughter on my car key, How do you explain that exactly?! But after a ten minutes it just looked like a red scratch instead of the nasty puncture I first saw. Phew. I explained it was an accident as Oona bawled and she repeated that it was an accident, but she said it like I just accidently tossed her onto a bed of nails.

2. A couple weeks ago I made owen cry for putting a toy plane that was made in china in his mouth. He was on the couch avoiding going to bed because lately being on another floor is making him (and therefore Oona) scared. Since I worry this could be to the recent separation I don't want to push too hard fearing I could crush their psyches or bring up abandonment issues. He had the toy in his mouth and I told him not to do that, that if it says made in china it could be lead paint and that can make you dumb if you eat it. Of course I then went on to explain that I'm not trying to be xenophobic and have nothing against the Chinese that it's more a nasty thing businesses do to save money. Yeah I really went there with him. So I'm coming up from putting wash in the dryer and Owen tells me he's sorry and then starts bawling because he stuck the toy back in his mouth without thinking and I'm thinking there I go traumatizing my child again reinforcing a worry that clearly does not need reinforcing with my son who is a neurotic carbon copy of me.

3. Mealtime. If motherhood came with a badge mine would have a red slash through it because I'm horrible when it comes to cooking, making meals. They get a lot of whole wheat peanut butter and jelly (really fruit spread) and eggs and Oona eats greek yougurt and granola like there's no tomorrow. And they drink juice, mostly calcium enriched OJ, but juice it's the empty calories (which Owen needs, Oona not so much). I try to make myself feel better remembering a neighbor's Mom who said she's seen Moms put Mountain Dew in babies bottles.

4. I talk about their body types and now Oona will mimic me and tell Owen he's too skinny and that he needs to eat more and she does this scrunching up her nose with a tone thick of judgement and I cringe wodering if I really sound that bad. Then Owen told Oona she was a hippo, which made her proud and she ran around saying she was as big as a hippo and making hippo? noises. So I've nipped talking about their builds in the bud.