diwhynot

[diwhynot]

Blotto Botany

I wanted to share a mini diy I did recently (and that Yann and I have been enjoying in the July heat). I knew that I wanted to do a bar cart from the moment we moved in; it’s the first time I’ve ever had a formal dining room (ie, not just part of the kitchen) and I had dreams of a cozy, laid back space where we’d entertain. Covid has unfortunately put a pause on any dinner parties I might have imagined, but that’s no reason to not have the space ready for when we can!

The problem is, bar carts are expensive. Like, minimum $100, and the ones I really liked (ie, not the ones on Amazon) were around $3-400. I love this one from West Elm:

and I knew I wanted a similar look, but the price tag was impossible! I promised Yann after buying the couch that I wouldn’t make any more big purchases for a while, and if I was going to go all out it sure as hell wasn’t going to be for a cart that holds booze.

My first impulse (as always) was to thrift one. I love the magic of finding a hidden gem on FB marketplace or at the Restore, but after looking for a few weeks I hadn’t come across anything I liked and I was starting to consider shelling out for one of those cheap Amazon bar carts after all.

Enter: Target. I was picking up a few groceries (protip: they always have Oatly in stock, and it’s cheaper than it is at Whole Foods) and I thought to check their home section while I was there. It’s dorm furniture season, and I found this little storage cart:

It’s... not cute, I know. But it had potential!

I put together the frame of it, and spray-painted it gold with some I had left from another project. I knew that I wanted it to be longer than it was tall, like the West Elm one, so I measured some spare wood I had (from the 10,000 shelves the former owners had put up around the house) to around 3′ and painted them this lovely peacock blue. Now the challenge was to figure out how to put it all together. 

I had an old shoe rack that we don’t use anymore, one of those expanding metal/plastic things. It was really useful in the apartment, when we had it hidden in a coat closet, but since we have a mudroom/sunroom rather than a closet now it was out in the open and became an eyesore. I hid all of our shoes in some baskets and saved the shoe rack for a diy rainy day: and here it was!

I used parts of the frame of the shoe rack to hold the cart frame together; because they expanded, I was able to make it bigger or smaller as I needed. I then took some little gold brackets and drilled one side into my makeshift shelves, and attached the other where the metal shelves would have gone on the storage cart. And voilà! Bar cart!

(This is the only in-progress shot I took. Sorry!)

Now came the fun part: styling it. Most of the items on the cart are thrifted (Like that AMAZING terracotta oil/wine jar on the bottom), with the exception of the booze of course. We’ve been lucky to have an abundance of wildflowers pop up in our garden this month: echinacea (also drying some for tea), black-eye susans, and daisies, so it’s been easy to keep fresh flowers in the house. 

(A collection of beverages, some thrifted knick knacks, and the excellent book that inspired this post as well as most of my cocktail adventures)

(Bottom shelf: basket, jar, and highball glasses are all thrifted and wine glasses are from the Dollar Tree. Don’t tell!)

Total cost: around $40 (not including the booze!)

[diwhynot]

A year ago, I would have told you that I had a brown thumb. Although I was already practicing herbalism daily, every time I tried to nurture a baby plant it always seemed to end in disaster (for the plant) and heartbreak (for me). Then, Yann gave me some very sage (ha) advice: “You stress them out; just stop worrying about them so much!”

Today, our home is full of green, and in large part that’s thanks to that piece of advice. It started with some herb seeds in mason jars (not the best pot, but they worked! Many of those seedlings are now taking root in our garden), then a spider plant gifted by a friend (seen on the shelf above) and now I’m growing, nurturing, and propagating a happy plant family. There’s still the occasional disaster--like the cilantro, which I can just never quite seem to get to survive--but mostly I just pay attention to when they need me and leave them alone when they don’t and that seems to work pretty well.

And while I tend to prefer edible and medicinal plants outdoors (side note: did you know you can eat hostas?) I’ve also collected several hardy (read: impossible to kill) ornamentals whose only utility is to bring some green inside. Our snake plant, Edgar, for example, who should really be named something like “Brutus” because he’s basically indestructible, the sprawl of succulents in every sunny space, the pothos trailing its leaves towards my bathtub. I even had a happy accident the other day: chia sprouts growing from the seeds I’d used in a drink, right on a sponge in my kitchen! 

The point of this is to say, having a “green thumb” is not something you’re just gifted with at birth. Plants have pretty basic needs, and once you understand those and choose the right kind for you (ie, don’t invest in a root rot prone plant if you’re an over-waterer or one that will die after the first missed water if you’re forgetful like me), you will find they start to accumulate pretty quickly, and the disasters will become less frequent. Name them, talk to them--they really do hear you!--and they’ll thank you with new growth and a green home.

[diwhynot]

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky to have my mom and my aunt come to visit, and it was really timely. Because of all the garbage going on in the outside world, I really needed to have some time to just hang out, reflect, and be with family (and drink beer. LOTS of beer, oops). They came and brightened up the (mostly) empty house and I took kind of a break on the decorating/renovating. 

Right before they got here though, our couch arrived! I’d spent hours and hours looking for the ***perfect*** grown-up couch for our space. I really loved the aesthetic of this one from Article:

but it was SO expensive!!! How do so many Youtubers have this couch? Am I in the wrong career???

In the end, I found one that I was really happy with that had a similar look, but cost WAAAYY less. I think I actually like it better than the one from Article, and although Yann was shocked by what I did spend he forgave me for it as soon as he sat down.

(pillows are thrifted and the throw is, believe it or not, from Amazon!)

When my mom and aunt got here, there were definitely tears. I’ve wanted so badly to be with family since we bought the house, and it was amazing to host them in our home. No more shoebox apartments! They graciously brought champagne, which we happily dispatched that night, and we spent the week hanging out, chatting, healing, and doing a little backyard magic ;)

(The patio space, looking peaceful and serene: firepit was a gift from Mamaw and Papaw, lights are from Aunt T)

(The patio, being used as a space for righteous binding magic. They’re burning pages of Gary’s book. We might have gotten a little fired up after the third beer, lol.)

In all, it was an amazing time and I was sad to see them go home but I know they’ll be back soon; after all, we have the space now!

[diwhynot]

I know that it’s been dark on this blog for a while

but it’s because I’ve felt conflicted about posting something so self-indulgent while the world is suffering so much. Police brutality against black Americans and the resulting protests (and the cyclical militant response by those who are supposed to serve and protect) kind of take priority over my home made pillows right now, you know? I don’t want to take space away from the important conversation our country is having. 

On top of that, my department is reeling from this article which has aired a lot of the problems with sexism, sexual harassment, abuse, and racism that are endemic in archaeology and in our program in particular. I’ve cried more in the last month than I have in the entire last two years, and that’s really saying something. It has been a mire of revelations, release, frustration, empathy, and ultimately the discovery of an amazing bond that our small cohort of women share and have been systematically denied until now. I personally had to face a complicated situation from my past, one that I’ve carried with me for the last three years, and it was a terrifying and cathartic moment that was a long time coming.

All of this is to say, it’s been exhausting.

So for today, I won’t post about the things I’ve made or bought. I just wanted to update to say “I’m still here,” and to remind myself that this moment is shitty, and necessary, and only the beginning. After this breaking point, we have to continue to be outraged and to resist, whether it’s in the streets or in the quiet day-to-day moments of rebellion: literally just existing in the spaces we’ve been excluded from.

I will get back to posting diys soon, but for today I’ll just share some pictures of the yard and our cats. Honestly, they’re the things that give me the most peace right now, and maybe they will do the same for you.

Gizmo being the ultimate Mama’s boy

Ziggy crashed out after a long day of eating and napping

Our little patio area with lights from Aunt Tracie

A baby jalepeño, radishes, and zuchinni in our raised bed

(A whole mess of potatoes)

[diwhynot]

A busy week..

We are getting ever-closer to finishing the attic bedroom. Our flooring was delivered Monday afternoon, and by that night I had finished it! I was pretty sad about going with the LVP over the wood floors, but honestly, seeing the final result, I think it was the right call. It looks nice, right? And it was SUPER easy to install. I would definitely recommend if you’re looking at updating your flooring, especially if you’re willing to diy it to avoid installation costs.

With all this going on in the bedroom, I actually still had time to do a couple of smaller projects I’d wanted to for a while. After finishing my grading last Friday, I had an actual weekend! I had some lemons that were about past their prime, so I decided to make some marmalade (orange marmalade is one of my childhood favorites; Mamaw always seemed to have some on hand). The first picture is the result: I used 3 lemons, 4 oranges, 3 cups of sugar, and about two tablespoons of hibiscus petals for added flavor (and color!). No pectin or gelatin needed: the piths of citrus are FULL of natural pectin, so I just let them sit in my peel/fruit mixture overnight before boiling and it gooped up nicely.

I also baked a couple of loaves of bread, and I was really excited about how they turned out! Since we’ve been social distancing, I’ve been baking pretty regularly because we tend to go through bread pretty quickly (Yann has a morning ritual of bread and Nutella) but with everything going on, this is the first time I’ve done it in the new house. The recipe is my Mama’s, with a few little alterations. I like to make mine with whole wheat flour and honey instead of sugar, and rather than doing an egg wash for the crispy crust, I bake in a cast iron dutch oven that traps the steam nicely. This one is my most beautiful loaf so far! (Although it is made with white flour, because I’m starting to run low of my normal flour)

And finally, the garden. We inherited an absolutely beautiful yard from the former owners, but it’s a little bit wild! I actually enjoy a kind of natural, sprawling garden, but we had lots of dead leaves, old chunks of cement and brick, and COMPLETELY out of control weeds. It’s definitely a huge project, but we’ve made little steps of progress. We have beautiful flowers right now; lilacs, white poppies, and whatever those gorgeous red ones are (if you know, please tell me!). We’ve planted potatoes, a blueberry bush, some herbs (of course. Couldn’t call myself a proper hedge witch without them), and a salsa garden, and we have a raised bed in the works. I think working in the garden is my favorite thing about the house so far; there’s something really meditative about hands deep in soil, watching those first little green sprouts shoot up into something lush and beautiful. I can’t wait until we can start to harvest our own food. My dad is really into gardening, and my favorite summers in California always involved pulling fresh fruits and veggies off the stalk and eating them raw. Snow peas, tomatoes, zucchini, MMM!

I’ll keep you posted on our progress. In the meantime, miss you all.

[diwhynot]

Just a little nightmare fuel

This isn’t a typical diy post, but I wanted to share the absolutely horrifying and hilarious things I found in the attic crawlspace when I was cleaning it out yesterday. I think the archaeologist in me is craving a little fieldwork, because I actually lined these up to proudly show to Yann.

First up, we have inexplicably upsetting wall hanging, dated to roughly 1970 CE. It’s debated by scholars whether the eyes actually follow you, or if it’s the pure hollowness of its ever-smiling gaze that creates the illusion of life.

Next, we have creepily discarded baby doll. I listen to way too many true crime podcasts, because when my flashlight swooped over this I actually screamed.

Onto our next artifact, what is actually a set: Abraham Lincoln peevishly watches happy young couple, circa 1982 (I actually know that’s how old they are because it’s written on the bottom).

What should I do with this stuff? I feel like throwing it away would invite some kind of curse. Should I give them a proper burial, or just leave them for the next homeowner to find?

[diwhynot]

Living amongst the boxes...

(Thanks @traciesblog​ for the title <3 )

I think it’s been about a week since my last post, and I thought I’d share an update on the attic situation. We started tearing out the plywood, and the rotted wall, and I had a moment of sheer panic when I saw what we had done. 

Oh, lord. We have made a mistake.

In addition, the floor on the window side of the attic looks pretty good, but when we got to the other end of the room, they were completely wrecked. Cracked, stained, some boards had been replaced with a different kind of wood. My dream of refinishing them was suddenly much more complicated. This led to the first disagreement Yann and I had over the house, when I rushed to him with what I’m sure was a crazy look in my eyes saying “I HAVE A PLAN. WE CAN FIX THIS,” and he (very correctly) just answered “No.”

So we caved. Our renovation budget being small as it is, we couldn’t afford to hire an expert like we would need to in order to save those floors, so we opted to put all the plywood back over it (crying) and go with LVP after all.

I was at a pretty low moment there, thinking we had gotten way in over our heads, and it was going to be a disaster when it was done, and all of the self-doubting/catastrophism that comes with garden variety depression was kicking in full gear.

And then, a single piece of drywall saved me.

(Btw, not only did I haul two ~25 lb slabs of drywall out of Lowes BY MYSELF, I drove home with them sticking out of the sunroof of the Fiat. I do not recommend!!!)

Just drilling in that first piece made such a difference, I swear. I could suddenly picture better what the room would look like when it was finished, and the whole thing didn’t seem quite so scary and impossible. And now...

WE MADE A WALL! LOOK AT IT, IT’S LIKE IT WAS ALWAYS THERE!

I’m clearly a little over-impressed with our skills at the moment. It’s obviously not a professional job, but to remind you what we began with:

[diwhynot]

Pillow Talk

Let’s talk about bedrooms. The place where you fall into your blankets at the end of the day, where you cozy up with a book, have your coffee. My bedroom has always been a kind of oasis, an “even if the rest of the house is a disaster, this space is under control” kind of place.

Right now, we don’t really have one. Our one complaint about the new house is that the bedrooms are... really weird. There’s two on the main floor, a little 10x10 shoebox and a ~10x20 which is supposed to be the master with like 50 DOORS, including one that opens straight into the kitchen. 

The problem? In the apartment, we had a really nice bedroom setup. I scored a 1960s dresser and nightstand set off of Facebook for like $50 and refinished it, and we are in love with it. But it doesn’t fit anywhere! The master is long but so narrow, and with all the doors (okay, there’s only 3, not 50, but STILL) there’s not a single space of wall where we could feasibly cram our bedroom. Right now, this is the room we’re sleeping in, amidst a mountain of boxes and the strange yellow-brown color scheme the previous owners chose. It’s not ideal.

Then, Yann had the idea that we should turn the attic into our master bedroom. I loved this idea, because there’s a finished room in the attic that’s actually the biggest space in the house and immediately started pinning like crazy coming up with ideas. But there were inevitably a bunch of unexpected problems and surprises: so buckle in, because this is the story of the renovation that turned out way bigger than we planned.

For some background, this is what we were starting with:

Not exactly a clean slate! The room had wood panelling for the walls, which was not in great shape, and the very first thing we wanted to do was rip up the old carpet, because ew.

This was easily the room that needed the most work in the entire house, so OF COURSE we decided this was going to be our bedroom.

At first, our plan was just to repaint the walls, tear up the carpet, and lay some luxury vinyl plank (LVP) flooring in its place. With a fresh coat of paint, it actually started to look a lot better!

This is where the adventure really began. You see, this room turned out to be full of surprises. After painting, we started to take up that gross carpet, the carpet padding, the tack strips, and the baseboards so we could see what shape the subfloor was. Instead of subfloor though, we found... linoleum??? 

Like the kind that would have been in a hardware store bathroom in the 80s. That got pulled up stat. My hand is still blistered from getting the putty knife in under all those tile pieces. (It’s remarkably similar to the way my hands get beat up in a more normal summer when I’m on excavation; though it’s usually from using a Marshaltown trowel on hard soil, not peeling up 30+ year old linoleum. I guess this is a kind of archaeology too!)

Finally, we were down to the plywood subfloor. That was that, we were exhausted, and I think I slept around 10 hours at this point.

EXCEPT.

Underneath the plywood was another surprise. Peeking around the edges where the plywood didn’t quite meet up with the wall I saw WOOD FLOORS. I could have danced. I was secretly hoping the whole time we would find some kind of beautiful original hardwood under all these layers, and here it was!!! 

Okay, so maybe it’s not beautiful, but it’s original. They’re tongue-and-groove boards, about 6″x1″ nailed straight into the beams and OH BOY are they solid. This is the point where Yann began to think I was crazy, because now I couldn’t dream of putting down LVP, I wanted those wood floors.

And now here we are, almost two weeks into the new home, and we’re still sleeping in a temporary bedroom which is essentially a bed and boxes of clothes. The plan is to remove the rest of the plywood and sand down those wood planks before refinishing them, which should take... like two days, right?

Right???

There’s also the issue of the paneling though. After we got the other flooring up, we realized that the bottom edge of the wall with the window was completely rotted out, and so we’re going to have to replace that too. After all that painting, lol. That was a lesson in not getting ahead of ourselves I guess.

So, there you have it. What was supposed to just be a cosmetic change ended in us basically un-finishing the attic so that we could refinish it.

But by god, I have a hammer and a dream.

Inspiration for the final look: