Spackle, paint, glue, and... glitter?

Those are all things that covered my hands at some point today. And I broke a nail. Before you get scared, the glitter wasn't for a house project. I decided to multitask today. I spackled the nail holes in the door frames to prepare them for painting. I began painting the baseboards and did a first coat on one of the doors I just installed. See the difference!!!

The glue and glitter were for my new Christmas wreath. I started putting this wreath together in January using after-Christmas sale ornaments and a clothes hanger. The ornaments still needed to be glued or the balls would fall off. I must admit, the superglue didn't really cover my hands or I'd be in big trouble right now (nor would I be typing this blog), but I did have a few short moments of fingers being a little stuck together. The glitter on my hands came from the sparkly purple and red ornaments. I plan to get more silver ribbon so I can make a fuller bow, but this one works for now.

My broken fingernail happened when I was removing a screw from a drywall screw that I needed to reinstall for my curtain rod. What happened to my curtain rod, you ask? Well, my dog gets a little carried away when the mail carrier comes to my door and one day I came home to the rod, curtain, and one of the rod mounts on the ground. It would have been a good dog shaming post because he was super guilty-looking when I got home, but I didn't take a picture that time. Anyway, I spackled the hole, which had been stripped and let it dry/cure for a while. I finally got around to bringing my power drill upstairs to drill a new hole and my curtain is back up!

More Christmas decorating today and more painting tomorrow!

Fall Haul!

Those darn squirrels got to my butternut squash in the past few days. They were content eating everyone's decorative pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns in October, but have started scavenging again. They only got one of them, but it forced me to harvest the rest of them today. A few of them have splits in them and will need to be used soon. I'll freeze some butternut squash puree for making baked goods later. I'll probably make a Thai soup with one of them this weekend. The rest can last up to 6 months stored in my basement. Here are the 9 large squash of all different shapes hanging out with the pretty mums my neighbor gave me.

I also picked the rest of my jalapeños and dug up my sweet potatoes because it will likely get below freezing and stay cold for a while. I'll pickle the jalapeños because I can't use that many quickly enough. I'm going to try to cure the sweet potatoes for a week, which is supposed to make them sweeter.

I also dug up a small portion of my sunchoke crop. I probably have a ton, but they'll store better underground than if I harvest them so I'll just dig them up as I need them. Sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem Artichokes, are part of the sunflower family so the flowers added a little more yellow to my garden late in the summer. The tubers themselves are great to pan-fry and add to salads. They can also be used to make a hearty soup. I've only known about them for a few years and am having fun experimenting what to do with them.

The leaves didn't have a fighting chance...

One of my neighbors had a leaf shredder that she wasn't using... well, simply because she doesn't have any big trees. I, on the other hand, have a very large maple tree so she gave it to me and it's great! It's a fun fall yardwork toy. It's basically a plastic tub with a weedwacker inside of it that pulverizes the leaves like so:

My tree decided to drop the rest of its leaves this week. Many of the leaves fell into my next door neighbor's yard, which she bagged and then I snagged to turn into compost with the leaf shredder. I have a triple compost bin, so I may as well use it... I expanded the bin again since this post. Today, I shredded the 5 bags from my neighbor and the leaves that had accumulated on my deck. Despite looking like a really fast process above... it still took a while because I had to stop the shredding regularly in order to clear out twigs or to replace the trimmer line. I ended up bagging the leaves in my yard to shred later because I wanted to give the motor a break after an hour of use. Not only will I be shredding those leaves later, but my other next door neighbor's maple hasn't dropped many of its leaves yet. I'll be using the shredder a lot this fall.

this shredder

not this shredder

I will need to make sure I wear a face mask in the future to help keep the allergens down. I've been more sneezy than normal after all the leaf dust that got kicked up during that shredding process. It's worth it though to keep the leaves from blowing everywhere now and to have great soil next spring.

future compost

Just call me Urkel

One of the tips I saw for installing casing was to draw a line along the door frame about 3/16ths of an inch from the edge as a guide for where to secure each piece of casing.
I stopped by the hardware store on my way home from work last week to pick up a compass to help with that task. Right next to it was a pocket rule that I figured I could use to set the compass to the correct width.
It wasn't until a few days later that I realized I bought the nerdiest things possible from a hardware store. The only other thing I got was a wall plate to protect the bathroom from the door knob. The old door knob had already put a little dent in the wall. "Did I do that?"

Brightening up my home

I've had "installing doors" on the to-do list for a LONG time. I forgot to take pictures of the old ones but there's an example of the dated and unattractive doors in this old post. Somewhere I probably have pictures of the door frames that were in horrible shape, but I couldn't find them so I'll explain one of the problems. At some point before I moved in, the screws for the hinges had stripped the wood in the frames. Instead of replacing or even repairing the frames, they flipped the door and screwed the hinges into different places in the same frames. You could see the damaged areas of the frames... plus the frames had a ton of coats of paint on them (the house is 60 years old after all). I've been living with upside-down doors since I moved into my house... until now.
Today, I finished installing the brighter, white doors upstairs. I did the small closet door on my own a while ago, but had help from my brother and neighbor securing the two bedroom and the bathroom doors. Some of the installation was trial and error (story of my home repairs!) so here's what I learned.

First, secure the door knob side of door at top with shims.
Secondly, nail in frame with 2 or 3 nails on each side making sure the frame lines up with the drywall.

Then, shim the hinge side of door making sure it's plumb.

Shim the door knob side of door.

Finally, check the door closure and adjust as needed.


I did some of these steps out of order with one of the installations and it took way longer than it should have. I saved myself a lot of time and frustration installing the last two doors this weekend because I had typed up those steps. It wasn't frustration-free though because I did bend a few nails and smashed my thumb once (I have a nice fever blister to prove it). I need to pay more attention when I'm hammering and take breaks when I get tired. In my defense, twice the nails got caught in knots in the wood so they were going to bend regardless of one's skill.
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These doors look much better than the old ones and the bathroom even seems bigger with the white door. Next up, adding the casing. I was hoping to do that for some of the doors today, but am missing a tool that will make it much easier. Instead I filled in the nail holes with spackle and did a few other touch-up things. Guess I'll make another trip to a hardware store (story of my home repair life!) so I can add casing next weekend. If I'm super productive I may even paint everything a real white instead of just leaving them primed. I suspect that will be a project for a later weekend though.

Not that the doors aren't nice to look at, I'll leave you with these prettier flowers that I bought to brighten up my downstairs. Thanks for checking out my house progress after such a long delay between my posts! I have done more work in my yard and stained a lot of fence panels recently, but didn't have any big tips to share with those project.