Returned & Renovated

After a whirlwind week with my favorite person visiting, and our contractor finishing up our bath renovation, I'm finally back to blogging. You remember the old shower, yes? Here's what it looks like now:

My guy has a bit of paint touch-up work to do on the walls and baseboards, and he'll be installing new towel hangars. We'll also be having custom glass doors added so we don't have to use shower curtains anymore, but otherwise it's ready. I took the inaugural shower in it last night, and having the room to move around and the light to see what I'm doing was amazing.

The tile is so much prettier than the prefabbed shell of the old shower (I feel safer with tile versus slippery fiberglass under my feet, too.)

We also discovered and fixed a water leak in the piping that we didn't know we had, so that was a big bonus.

Designing the new shower, picking out the tile and making sure it worked for both of us took time, but it was also worth it. We're both happy with the end result, which is all that matters.

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Gifts

This is a story that starts out very sadly, so if you're depressed by the holidays you might want to skip the first part. As far back as I can remember I've dreaded the holidays. Being poor, having constant family troubles and belonging to a strict religion made that time of year always pretty unhappy. I just hunkered down and hoped to get through without being yelled at or punished because I didn't do something I was expected to do, like sit in church for hours without moving or making a sound while a priest spoke mass in Latin. Gifts were uniformly disappointing, too. My mother usually gave me dolls or socks or underwear for Christmas. I understand now as an adult that she was doing the best she could, and trying to save money at the same time, but as a kid I'd been told good children got what they wanted for Christmas. I was a pretty good kid, but while my friends received new bikes and cool toys and lots of treats from Santa, I didn't. I thought San

We Have Backsplash!

Yesterday my guy and I decided to chose this natural stone as the backsplash tiles for our new kitchen counters (which will be in the same quartz I'm holding at the bottom of the photo.) Since all the bids for installing the backsplash came in very high my guy is going to put it in himself; he's done a bit of tile work in the past, too. I swear there is nothing this guy can't do. :)

Detoxing Results

For twenty-four hours I left these five vintage cigar boxes sit with detoxing agents (baking soda, coffee grinds, dryer sheets, vinegar and Febreze) inside them to see which worked best to remove the tobacco/storage odors that came with them. I then removed the agents and did a sniff test. Before we get into the results, a reminder: none of what I do is ever meant to be expert advice, as I am certainly not an expert at anything. Follow my methods at your own risk, and please first consult an actual antique expert conservator or restorer to detox items that have value for you. Okay, let's see how my experiment worked. Baking soda (left) did nothing to remove the odors. I think if I let it sit for a longer period of time it might have done something, but for a 24-hour test it was a complete fail. Coffee grinds (right) removed 100% of the odors, and left behind definite coffee scent. I like that and think it goes very well with wood, but if you don't like the smel

Rayen

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