DIY Earring Holder

I have a lot of earrings and I had these two earring holder tower that was really bulky and that I was always too lazy to put my earrings back on. What ended up happening was that I had earrings lying all over the place; on my dresser, my bathroom counter, the kitchen island, my coffee table, EVERYWHERE but where it’s supposed to be.

I finally got tired of it and started to look for some ideas for how I could better keep my earrings and I found a couple of ideas that I liked. So off to Michael’s I went and picked up a 30″ x 20″ frame (on sale!!) and some burlap cloth. Here’s the full thing: 

It took me maybe an hour to cut the burlap to size and then taking a glue gun to glue the cloth onto the frame backing. My favourite thing is that the burlap is sparkly – don’t know if you can really see it in the close up below. It’s not too plain and not too flashy. I can see all my earrings at once in one place and I found some earrings that I thought I had lost or that I hadn’t seen in awhile. Plus there’s less clutter on my dresser now that the towers are gone. I hung this in an easier and more convenient place for me so as soon as I take it off, I hang them back on right away. I am so happy with the results of this little project!!

Minor Home Renovations Part 2

So phase two of my home renovations happened today. I meant to go out and  get some other things done, but then I got too lazy to put on my face and everything. Instead, I did other things and I’m entirely pleased with the results. The two main things I wanted to do was to put up my bathroom shelving unit so that I could clear everything off of my sink as it’s quite small.

It took me a little while to figure how to hang it up because of the steel thing in the wall. So if you look really closely at the bottom section near the top, you can see the multiple holes I drilled before I got it worked out. It’s still slightly crooked, but it’s  straight enough you can’t really tell and nothing is rolling off! I don’t like the brushes up at the top like that, it’s too out of reach for me, so I need to buy another brush holder and re-organize.

Then, I finally put my painting up! I have this giant ugly panel thing right outside of my closet and I hate it. So I did a painting a little while ago that I had planned on putting on hinges, but was too lazy to put it up. Since I was already drilling holes in my wall today and had all the tools out, I ended up putting the painting up, so now I see this:

instead of the ugly boring panel behind it. But if I need to get to it, I just open the painting and have instant access to it.

Working on little bits and pieces of the condo and slowly making it my home.

Ikea Assembly Day – Part 2

So today was not as relaxed as I thought it would be, but my nail polish project is done!! It was harder work than I thought it would be. I wanted to first take down the closet door since I never use it and it’s just in the way. Now it’s kind of just hanging out against another wall until I can figure out what to do with it. Then I had to figure out the spacing of them, and making sure they were straight – I didn’t have a leveler. I thought I had it figured out but I was so wrong and had to start from scratch. Then when I actually started to drill I realized half of my closet is concrete and the other is not and had to switch to smaller anchors and nails. It seems to be holding so far. I’ll see if I wake up to a deafening crash and nail polish all over my floor.

But I love this so much!! It doesn’t look as great in this picture, it was really hard to take the full thing, but I can’t stop walking by it to look at the collection. I have been looking for a way to display my polishes and I keep seeing these really nice displays from other polish bloggers. I finally figured out my shelving situation and I love it so much. I just need to re-organize the colours I no longer want, plus the cruelty-free and nontoxic ones from the non-cruelty-free and toxic ones. THEN I’ll want to organize by colour.

 

 

Ikea Assembly Day

I have been replanning my condo for a very long time! After a lot of research and a lot of pinterest inspirations, I finally just sucked it up and got my stuff, planned the delivery, booked the elevator, and booked my time off of work. I actually thought that the delivery would come late afternoon, but they surprised me and came first thing in the morning and I was able to start almost right away!

I thought that it might be best start with the step ladder. Which was annoying because something so small, I had expected it to come assembled. It was annoying. It sadly took me two hours. There was a slight hiccup that took me a bit to work out where I went wrong and get it straightened up.

Next I thought I would tackle the tv stand. This was complicated in that there were lots of steps, and one part of the instructions said to use the large holes to screw the pieces into place, not the small holes. Except if I didn’t use the small holes, it wouldn’t fit properly. That was the most frustrating part. I finally said screw it and used the small holes and everything worked out. So that took longer than I had anticipated. I think this took me almost two and a half hours.

Broke for lunch and then Mia curled up in my lap and was all comfy and snoring and I didn’t have the heart to wake her up. Which happens often…I’ve held going to the bathroom or getting water even though I’m dying of thirst…but she woke up soon afterwards so the next part commenced!

I bought four of these, I wanted wall to wall bookshelves. It has been what I have always wanted and I finally figured a way to do it, so I’m excited. Putting these together were a pain in the ass though. Plus I made a mistake with one of them so that the holes I needed were facing the outside instead of the inside and I had already taken the thing apart once and reassembled so I was like eff it. I took a drill and drilled a hole in to the other side. It’s at the bottom, so unless you know to look for it, you can’t really see it. But the four bookshelves took me until 1am to finish!! To be fair, I had dinner in between, but still it was pretty brutal.

I had left the backings of the shelves off except for one of them. I had just painted my walls turquoise and I wanted that to show through. The only problem with that is that without the backing, there’s nothing from keeping the shelves from sliding back and falling off. Once I got the books on it though, it weighted it down pretty well. Slowly working on filling up the shelves and de-cluttering my condo!
I had to put the backing on one of them cause it had some fragile things on it, so that one had to have a backing. It’s the one that have as my corner shelf, so it’s on a plain wall, so it doesn’t look weird.

It would have been more brutal without the new Nick Carter album to keep me company!! I am loving the album so freaking much. I think it might be his best album yet. But more on that later!
After several repeats of his new album, minimally chipped nails (surprisingly), breaking my back (nothing a good sleep on my orthopedic mattress didn’t fix), and some sore bum and slightly blistered hands, I have the living room somewhat assembled. I just have a lot of extra furniture hanging out that I need to do something about and soon! But once I donate it to the Furniture Bank, everything will look spacious again!
Anyway, just wanted to document my work before I get to the nail polish stuff that I have wanted to do for forever!! Hope this works out! Lots of drill work involved!

Water Leaking Issues

I seem to have the worst luck when it comes to water leakage and the almost total destruction of my property.

At my old condo where I lived for about five years, from the moment we moved in, there was a water leak in the ceiling by my solarium window. The problem was that the condo manager kept changing every few months for some reason and no one would pass anything on and I would have to start all over. When we had moved in, we were re-doing everything in the place and the last piece left was to get the ceiling done, which we couldn’t do until the leak was fixed. finally after three years, it got fixed.

THEN towards the last year or so, there was this major leak in my guest bathroom. At first I tried to fix it myself with my roommate. Her dad is a total DIY-er and told her and we fixed it together. That lasted for a few months when I out of the blue one day, I heard this drip drip dripping sound. At first I thought it was just the cats playing with their toys. The drip then became this steady rush of water and I thought, well, that’s strange. I never leave the water running. So I go to investigate and my whole bathroom ceiling had collapsed and fell (luckily) into the tub. They fixed it quickly. And then a month later, I heard the rush of water again and again my ceiling collapsed, though not as bad as the first time. It got fixed and then it happened again for a third time. It got fixed and it was about to start again for the fourth time, but by then, I was moving out, not my problem anymore.

Now that I am in my new place, I can see a water stain building in my guest bathroom, although this time it’s around my exhaust fan area. So if I am misfortunate enough to have a leakage, I am basically screwed. I should remember to keep the door shut before I leave in case it does happen just so the cats don’t try to eat the plaster. I can’t imagine that being any good for them! I reported it to the condo maintenance guy, but he said that without there being a leak, he can’t do anything about it. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I have to wait for it to happen before you can do anything about it?? WTF??? Why is there no preventative work being done?

But fine. Ok. Whatever. So because I had to go and buy tickets today and basically run out right afterwards for my car tire change to winter tires, I decided that I would get the tires into the car the night before. Yesterday. I go and get them from my storage locker and when the ex had helped me move stuff down, the moron shoved all my winter tires to the back, which meant I had to move a bunch of boxes and empty bins out of the way to get them and then move them all back. WTF? But whatever. So I go to remove the empty plastic bins. Except that they were FULL OF WATER!!! There were smaller bins half tonne bins, in larger one tonne bins so I basically had 1 1/2 tonnes of water weighing down on my other boxes and they were pressing against the metal cage, the bottom plastic bin was cracking open and worst of all, they contained my photographs!! I couldn’t even move the bins and had to get maintenance to look into this for me.
He basically had no reason to give to me as to how this happened. I asked if it could be the giant metal pipe that was running over head right on top of where my bins were and he said absolutely not! There were no water stains on his piping. His suggestion was to pay attention to it often and when I see it happen again, call him asap. I don’t know how that is supposed to help me when all my stuff will already be destroyed

You know my dad was pretty smart and knew that this would be a possibility. At our old place, before placing things into the storage locker, we had some extra tilings we used for the foyer and he laid them down first so that if there was a mini flood, our items would have been somewhat protected. There are going to be a bunch of people going down to the storage locker and finding that a bunch of their stuff has been destroyed.

I can just hope that this was a freak accident and it never happens again. Also pretty grateful that it wasn’t worse. I realized that the bin right on top my bin with the photo albums were my old bsb stuff that I didn’t have room for!