Getting Real About DIY: Painting the Kitchen Part I

The before: the navy blue light-sucking interiors must go.
Zoom in if you love chips and peeling paint!

Today is my last day of a week of vacation, but it felt more like time served for bad behavior. My crime? I decided to repaint my kitchen cabinets, a critically-needed step in the world’s longest kitchen reno.

This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I’ve hated the navy blue insides of these cabinets since I first saw them when touring the house. They just suck all the light out of the room and are hideous. But worse than that, is that the white paint covering the outside of the cabinets was chipping and wearing off -- not a good look.

So the big paint job started on Monday. In retrospect, I should have started earlier and done more over the weekend. I did some packing and removed some of the shelf liners, but there was much, much more prep to be done.

Here’s the thing about DIY. Most TV shows and blogs gloss over the gory details. I mean sure, we all know projects take longer than the 30-60 minute show, and way longer than you plan for them to take, but who talks about just how horrid they can be at times? For the amount of work involved, I think there is far too little whining going on. Cause kids, this stuff can really suck. Taking painting kitchen cabinets for instance. I’ve been working on my kitchen about as much as I do at my regular job each day, only the kitchen work is much more physically demanding. It’s also messy, disruptive and causes you to need to bend in weird ways for long periods of time, which for me equals a lot of soreness. Which calls for a lot of booze, purely for medicinal purposes of course.

Here’s the breakdown of the work so far:

What chu doin to my kitchen, Willis?

Monday - Finished packing and emptied pantry. Have various kitchen crap stashed throughout house. Removed all hardware (by hand cause I can't find the darn drill!), doors, latches, drawers, and shelf liners (the adhesive kinds of shelf liners are the devil!). Used half a bottle of Goo Gone trying to remove the adhesive from those devilish shelf liners. Can we all just agree to never use those again? Finally, hung plastic and started sanding in the afternoon. After work the boyfriend removed some molding, filled holes and gaps and made a couple trips to the home improvement store while I continued sanding.

Tuesday - Spent five more hours sanding and scraping cabinets! That’s a helluva lotta sanding people - I ended up looking rather smurf like and was covered in blue dust. This included an inordinate amount of time spent trying to sand off remaining adhesive from those blasted shelf liners. Stop the insanity with the shelf liners! Started cleaning around four in the afternoon and finished wiping every cabinet, surface, appliance and mopping floor around 7:30 p.m. before hobbling to the shower.

Wednesday - Scrubbed cabinets with TSP for FIVE HOURS. Spent a ton MORE time scrubbing off remaining #%$(^U*(!!! adhesive. Dreamed of ways to kill whomever put down the damn shelf liner in the first place. Used de-glosser liquid to de-gloss a few more spots that I couldn’t reach with sander. Finally started painting around 4:30. Boyfriend came home and helped me paint for a few hours, and thanks to that we got a primer coat on everything but two cabinets. The carpal tunnel is really kicking in tonight, hoo boy.

This is also when the cats really started to rebel at being trapped in the basement. I don't understand it, there is an entire other living room down there, it's hardly Alcatraz, but they scream bloody murder half the day. At one point I thought someone had broken in and was dismantling the basement, but no it's just a pissed-off cat apparently attempting to shake the door of its hinges. Door wins, for now.

We's exhausted!

Thursday - Took the morning to recoop, but still managed to get a second coat of primer on all the cabinet boxes. Was starting to feel better about things, but then I remembered I haven't even touched the 14 doors and 4 drawers that need to be painted before kitchen is really back to normal. Beg boyfriend to go get more booze so I have beer to cry into.

Friday - Sanded and scraped a few drips from priming (oops). Time for the real paint which is exciting, but my motivation is at an all time low. Tried out a new roller cover and the results almost made me cry they were so horrid. The thought of two more days of painting is almost more than I can take. Finish getting coat of paint on cabinets thanks to help from boyfriend but am dismayed that vacation is officially over and I have at least another solid day of painting left. Dear god let it end soon.

----to be continued....if I make it.....

Stop the Insanity: Stuff Pushing Parties

1960s Tupperware Party, Wikipedia

It starts out innocently enough. A friend invites you over for a party. There will be snacks, lots of friends and family and, oh yeah, the opportunity to try some really great products!

There's always a catch.

Maybe I've just been sheltered, but it feels like the stuff pushing party circuit is picking up steam again. First it was Tupperware starting in the '50s, today it's Pampered Chef, Longaberger, Thirty-One, IT Works body wraps (I shit you not, that's a real thing)...the list goes on. Different brands that all rely on the same model: guilt your friends and family to come over and buy crap, so the hostess can get some free crap or a little extra cash. It all smacks of socially-acceptable peer-pressure drug-dealing parties, only the drug of choice is overpriced crap you don't need.

The whole scheme is dripping with guilt. Some of my friends feel they must absolutely accept any invitation they get, unless they have a conflict. And if you go, well, then everyone knows you must buy something, and it's not likely to be cheap. Out of guilt, I've browsed the stuff catalogs and have yet to see one things I would want to buy. In the Pampered Chef catalog and was unable to find a single kitchen gadget for less than $15, which is kind of pricey in my book for a vegetable peeler. Or take Thirty One, where you can get a monogrammed plastic lunch bag for double to triple the price you would pay at your local Target. Or maybe you need a not-so-stylish purse for $140. I'm gonna repeat that: ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY DOLLARS. I felt guilty last week when I paid $20 for a purse I really liked after weeks of fruitless purse hunting trips at the thrift store. But hey, if you wanna be organized and trendy, you're going to have to shell out the cash.

We're supposedly in an economic downturn, with budgets slashed to the core, and we feel it's perfect okay to ask our friends and family to buy extremely overpriced (mostly useless) crap so we can make a few bucks? Sometimes I just want to ask if I can give the host $20, keep my Saturday afternoon and we call it even.

I'd love to know how much money people really make in these ventures. I've never hosted any of these parties, so maybe it's a lot more than I think. But even so, aren't there better ways to make extra money than  direct-selling stuff to your friends and family? Do freelance, work overtime, slash some luxury items from your budget, sell some clutter, cut cable, anything, anything seems preferably to joining the home-party circuit.

Maybe it's just me, because I hear a lot of people waxing ecstatic about how awesome these products are. Some people gladly line up to fork over their hard-earned cash for a $20 flat iron cover. Don't get me wrong, if you absolutely love any of these brands and are dying for the latest and greatest, then by all means, shop til you drop. But I personally wish people would re-think the "guilt-the-people-you-love" business model.

Does the entire concept of stuff-pushing parties bother anyone else?

Getting My Kitchen Organize On

If you thought organizing the medicine cabinet was fun, and who didn't, then this is going to blow your mind. Today I give you two words: cutlery drawer.

Did someone order a hot mess?

I've hated this over ten-year-old cutlery organizer for awhile, but I didn't find anything that seemed any better. Until my magical shopping trip a few weeks ago where I spotted something different that I thought my help.

Not only does it just look a lot prettier, it also functions better. No more pushing the blue cutlery drawer back into place everytime I open the drawer. Ahhh... it makes my little OCD heart proud. Although I initially balked at the $17 price tag of this item, I think it's worth it. Especially if it lasts 10 years!

The blue beast didn't die though, it got repurposed to help me organize an even bigger mess.

I give you: the utensil drawer

We actually still use this all this stuff, so I stored some seldom used items, like the cookie cutters, in a different place and reorganized what was left. It's not perfect, but it's a vast improvement, no?

Medicine Cabinet Makeover

  

Once upon a time my medicine cabinet looked liked this. It's a small cabinet inside an even smaller bathroom that lacks storage. Still, it usually wasn't too cluttered, as you can see, but what you can't see unless you click on the picture and view it in a larger size, is that the white finish/veneer on this cheapie cabinet was worn and discolored. It was actually starting to creep me out.

I wasn't sure how well a coat of paint would hold up to the moisture of toothbrushes and whatnot, so I decided to cover it with contact paper instead.

I found this paper at Big Lots and thought it looked cheerful. Putting it up was easier than I thought, and I'm terrible at cutting or hanging things in a straight line.

It looked pretty good even when filled, but it wasn't perfect. Things would fall out frequently and you had to move some things to get to others. Still, I didn't give it much thought until we happened to see a medicine cabinet organizer while shopping this weekend. I didn't buy it when I first saw it. I hated the thought of spending $8 on a big hunk of plastic. But I thought about it all night and the more I thought about it and searched for other options online the more I thought this one was perfect for our needs. So I went and bought it this afternoon.

Now not only is more stuff than ever officially stored in there, but things are easier to get to than ever. And it makes me happy just to look inside the cabinet now. I just love organized spaces!


What's the last thing you organized?

Green Hypocrisy

After today's trip to the grocery store I'm left wondering if I am just a big, giant hypocrite? The short answer is yes, of course I am. Most of us are hypocrites to some extent. Religious zealots who preach love and kindness, yet kill in the name of religion or treat homosexuals like murderers. Wannabe greenies like myself who claim to care for the environment yet drive and use central air con. You get the idea.

I thought I was on-board with small, green changes at least, but now now I'm not so sure. When we walked into Kroger for our quick weekly shopping trip, I was dismayed that half the lights were out. It was also almost as warm inside the store as it was outside. Great, I thought, they must be running on a generator. I jumped to this conclusion because following a freak storm a week ago Friday, more than one million Ohioans were without power and our neighborhood was hit pretty hard. Some still lack the magic juice. But everyone seemed to be shopping normally, and I wanted food, dammit. So onward we went. 

I was a bit apprehensive about the perishable foods, like dairy items. The coolers seemed to be running normally, however, and I was pretty sure they wouldn't be if the store was on generator power. But that's when we noticed another strange event; the shelves were mighty bare. There was a giant hole on the shelf where the Chobani yogurt usually sat. The boy wanted Gatorade, but there was nary a bottle to be found. Same thing with our usual brand of lunch meat, my beloved feta cheese, and hummus. The fruit that was on the shelf was past its prime. I began to wonder if the stock crew was on strike.

By this point we were in produce and I was getting irritated. I asked an employee what the deal was, and he said the store was trying to conserve power because of the recent outages. He had no idea why they were out of so much stock, however.

Now, there was at least one day last week where our local electric provider, AEP, asked customers to conserve energy to prevent rolling blackouts as they brought more storm victims back online while some equipment was still out. If we didn't conserve, they warned, they would have to shut off some customers to keep the equipment from being overwhelmed. So I thought maybe there had been another call for conservation, but I hadn't heard a thing about it despite being online most of the day. After searching the issue online when I got home, I found absolutely no mention from our power company of further immediate needs to conserve power. So was this really a move to conserve energy, or was it a move to cut the company's costs?

Some of Kroger's conservation methods seemed better than others. Unplugging the extra displays of cold items that were set up in secondary locations to promote sales made perfect sense. These were no big loss since you could still find the items in their primary location.

At this point the boyfriend asked if I wanted to abandon cart and head to another Kroger, but I hate grocery shopping and we'd already invested time in that store. So I voted for pressing on.

By the time we checked out I was grumpy enough to think about shopping at a competitor in the future if the conservation program was going to stay in effect. Maybe it was the bare shelves that pushed me over the edge, but I didn't enjoy shopping in a hot, dark store either. Which made me wonder, am I being unreasonably grumpy about a change in the status quo? Is it really that big of a deal to be a little warm for our 45 minute weekly shop if it saves energy? And what about the employees who had to work all day in a warmer than normal store? Our cashier had a red face and looked even more grumpy than I felt.

We left with less than half of our normal groceries and I was in a bit of a huff, with a head full of questions. What do you think, do we need to start giving up some of our comforts today so we don't lose all of them in the future? In other words, am I being a giant baby who just needs to suck it up, or are there other ways my local Kroger could implement to conserve energy? I'm really interested in your thoughts.

Review: A Year Without Made in China

I spotted A Year Without Made in China by Sara Bongiorni while browsing at the library. It immediately caught my interest as another pick to help satisfy the green/sustainable/simple living kick I've been on for months now.

Bongiorni is a journalist, so it comes as no surprise that her writing style is enjoyable, humorous, and easy to read. I took the book home and quickly starting flying through the pages.

The concept is pretty simple. After seeing how many gifts and items in her home come from China during one holiday season, Bongiorni decides to kick the Made in China habit and on January 1, 2005 starts a year-long experiment to not purchase any items that are made in China. The main goal of the experiment isn't really to make a political statement, but rather to see if it can be done.

There are some caveats, of course. Gifts, trash and hand-me-downs are an exception to the made in China rule. Nor is the author going to rid her life of previously purchased Chinese goods; the project applies only to future purchases. All of which makes total sense.

Anyone who notices the "made in" labels on products will know this won't be an easy undertaking. China has the market in electronics, toys, and cheap crap in general entirely corned. It isn't long into the first chapter when the first purchase trouble strikes as the author's husband tries to find pegboard hooks so he can organize his workshop. But, alas, all the hooks are made in China. The next troublesome purchase slash mini project is when the author's son outgrows his shoes. Apparently China has the market cornered on shoes too. So the author details her exhausting search for a new, non-Chinese pair, which takes two weeks.

We make it until page 34 until the project starts to really wear on the author's three-year-old son. He wants a new, Chinese of course, game, but Bongiorni manages to distract him with the toys they already own. But on the very next page, after a weekend filled with the zoo and the circus, there is another toy standoff. This one is over a $15 plastic sword for sale at the circus. This time she says her son can buy the sword with his own money, or he can skip it, save his money, and she will buy him a new, non-Chinese toy.

I think it was around chapter four that the project began to wear on me. The books feels like it devolves into a chronicle of one purchase after another and the struggles to make sure those purchases are China-free. Many of these purchases are toys. In fact, it may have been the author's standoff with her husband over their "need" to buy their kids a new plastic pool for the summer that made me question their project entirely. What is the value of not purchasing items from China over, say, just making a few less purchases. What difference does it really make if one buys more plastic crap from Taiwan and less from China?

At this point, my reading speed slowed considerably. The book lingered on the shelf as I started and finished first one, then two other books. The family's purchases start to become more grating. Why are their choices to either break their rules and buy Chinese holiday decorations, or go without decorating altogether? Haven't they decorated in the past and, if so, couldn't they simply reuse those items? Or could they make their own decorations? Using a bit of creativity outside of shopping skills might have helped them make it through the project and make for a better book.

In fact I only finished this book in order to be able to write a review and return it to the library before the due date (after many renewals, natch).

In summary, A Year Without Made in China isn't a book I can recommend. Even if you're just borrowing it from the library, I would leave this one on the shelf. Sorry, Sara.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

YMOYL Book Club: Managing Your Finances (Step 9)

This is the ninth and final week of the Your Money or Your Life Online Book Club, where we are tackling the nine steps of the YMOYL program. Get more background info. and a complete list of the steps here.

We made it people! This is the ninth and final week of YMOYL. Well, more accurately, some of you made it, not me so much.

Step Nine

Step nine is about becoming knowledgeable about long-term, income-producing investments. It's also about learning how to manage your finances in order to create a consistent income sufficient to cover your needs over the long term.

The final chapter of Your Money or Your Life is intended to provide advice for those who arrive at the crossover point. Since I'm using the updated version of the book, the advice given in this chapter is different than Joe Dominguez's original advice to invest just in US Treasury bonds. The updated chapter includes the very basics of other investment vehicles including mutual and index funds.


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For me, step nine raises more questions than it provides answers. Investing is the area of finances where I'm the weakest. I know how to save money. I know how to evaluate my wants and needs and find a good deal, but investing? There I'm pretty lost. So I have more questions than answers for those of you who are still with me.
Do you have a long-term investment strategy that you're confident about? If so, care to share the basics? (e.g. do you invest in stocks, index funds, bonds, etc.)

Overall, do you feel the YMOYL program has helped you financially?

What are your favorite and least favorite pieces of advice in the book?
Thanks to the handful of regulars who stuck with me throughout this online book club, and especially those who stuck around even after the long hiatus between chapters 6 and 7. Ya'll rock!