Projects Archives - Somewhat Awry

Projects and more projects 05.12.20

Published on May 13, 2020 by TracieLeave a comment

Projects and more projects 05.12.20

Are you working on long overdue projects at your house? When I can motivate myself, I am. This extra room in our house has had many, many purposes over the past twelve years that we’ve lived here. I had thought that I would turn it into an extra bedroom, which is probably what we will make it before we ever sell our house sometime in the nebulous future. But right now, I am giving it over to Liv as a studio space.

As you can see: it needs some help. For the past six months I have been cramming Christmas stuff here. I didn’t want all of my Christmas stuff to go back into the attic, because Denton and I have many “conversations” over it when I need it around Christmas time. Our attic access isn’t one of those handy dandy, pull down jobs. Oh no, the builders of our house, along with all of the others in our neighborhood thought it would be better to have to drag a giant ladder from the garage every time you needed to find something you have stored up there. Sigh.

This past Christmas I informed Denton that he didn’t need to cart everything back up into the attic, which he was very pleased about. Instead, I am taking over our Harry Potter closet. Which has been a black hole of random things for more than a decade. I have been putting this task off for MONTHS. Would you like to guess how long it took me to empty the Harry Potter closet? Thirty nine minutes. My life if ridiculous. I just knew it was going to take me days, to pull everything out of there and find a new home for it.

In actuality, it took a mere 39 minutes. Crazy town. That’s where I live. The shelves are going to go serve their purpose in my laundry room, which will be another project, the guitar cases went to live in the den. Denton hasn’t notice yet. 🙂 Most of the other things just needed to be recycled. Do you keep your boxes from things you’ve bought, just in case you need to move and you’ll need the box? Example: Our router and a drum kit seat. I called Denton at work and asked him that if we needed to move tomorrow would we need the box that our two year old router came in? No and no. Problem solved.

I love my vacuum. Another inanimate object that has my devotion, because it does what it is supposed to do. After emptying out the Harry Potter closet, I vacuumed it out and declared it sufficient. You will see later that I should have mopped it too, but I will tackle that task at Christmas when I take all of this stuff out to determine what I am keeping and what is going to grace someone else’s home. I would have decluttered it now, but my Salvation Army isn’t taking anything right now, so I decided if it all fit, it would be decluttered at Christmas this year.

Then I started on the extra room. I started making piles of like things. Such as: 478 empty boxes. I have been keeping them so that when I finally get up the energy to list things in my Etsy shop I won’t have to shell out money for them at the post office. But they can’t live in this room anymore.

I started carting Christmas stuff into the closet…..

And it all fit! With room to grow! hahahaha. Now that the Christmas stuff is out of the spare room, Liv and I can start assembling her studio, which will free up a LOT of room in her bedroom. Does your house go through transformations like mine does? When one space isn’t working anymore, we just shift and change and make it into what works for us at the time. I wish I could go with the flow in my everyday life, like I do with shifting my furniture around!

I hope that your projects are going smoothly! Stay safe and healthy! You can see all of the other projects I’ve worked on here.

What are you working on right now?

Projects and more projects

Published on April 23, 2020April 24, 2020 by TracieLeave a comment

Projects and more projects

When I can motivate myself these days, I am slowly going through my giant list of “to-do’s” and crossing some of them off. Simple things that don’t actually take much of my brain power, because, I need all of my brain power to get from waking up to bedtime. You understand. Everyones new normal. So here’s what I have accomplished lately.

I dragged a shelf that I had in the garage out and put a couple of couple of screws in my laundry room wall and – VOILA! Now my laundry detergent can stop falling off of the dryer each time I do laundry.

Don’t you love my Clorox bottle? I found that little gem at a thrift store for $0.95 about a century ago. Sigh. I miss finding gems at the thrift stores.

I also found this lovely basket there too at some point in the past and it holds my wool dryer balls. I love those things. The basket is hand painted and adorable. Please ignore the hair. My hair is everywhere. I’m sorry that you have to see that. But, it’s a reality here in my house. Sorry again.

I have been in the process of switching out Liv’s dresser in her bedroom for what feels like 700 years. It’s almost ready.

I had to look back in my phone to see when I bought this beauty. It was February 10th. Long, long ago. As I normally do, when I spotted this gorgeous specimen, I immediately sent a photo to Liv and said “Yes or no”. She immediately said “Yes.” And then I called Denton and said I need you to meet me at the Salvation Army…..He was not pleased. As usual. Hahahaha. $30.00 for a solid wood, lovely dresser that has beautiful handles, that she and I loved at first sight. Oh yes. He came right over. It is missing a small piece of veneer that you can see below, that I will replace later when I can actually go into a store and find some that will match. In the meantime, we don’t care that it’s missing.

I also replaced another light fixture in my downstairs hallway.

I had found the one I wanted to put up down there a couple of years ago for $3.99 and just put it in the garage until I had a few minutes to take the other one down. And then I forgot about it. The other one worked, I just liked the new to me linen one that I found on one of my hunts a lot more.

Man, I need to take the vacuum to my ceiling downstairs…..Or we can just call it “Antique lace” like Hayden and Liv’s Aunty Crystal does and move on…… And that’s what I’ve actually gotten accomplished over the last couple of weeks. I have other projects I’m working on right now, and as soon as I get them completed I’ll show you here!

Stay safe and healthy! You can see all of the other projects I’ve worked on here.

What are you working on right now?

Projects and more projects

Published on April 9, 2020April 24, 2020 by Tracie1 Comment

How are you passing the gift of all of this time? That’s how I am choosing to look at this. A gift. A gift that I should use to get all of the un-done projects completed at my house that have been waiting in the wings for way too long.

When I can keep my mind from wandering that is. That happens a LOT. I’ll start one teeny tiny project, see something else that needs to be done right NOW, and switch over to that. So, I am making lists for myself.

It works sometimes. 😀 Here are some of the ones that I have actually gotten done so far!

I decided that I needed to get that one last piece of the landing in place so that I could put the trim back up. There was a reason I had been putting it off….It took me almost two and a half hours to get that last piece cut to the proper width. The length wasn’t a problem. But its done! Yay! Don’t look at the stairs, just don’t. It’s on the list. While I had the paint out, I thought to myself, I should get that small bookcase painted. I had bought it ages, and ages ago. I think I may have paid around $3 for it, more than likely because it looked so bad. Liv wandered through about the time I started to paint and asked, Don’t you need to clean that thing first? And I told her, This has been cleaned! Pitiful little thing.

I had the perfect spot for it outside my kitchen where I had been piling my number one “to be read” stack of books, a la Martha Stewart style. It always looks so much better at her house, doesn’t it? It’s amazing what a coat of paint can do.I’ve had one hook outside my shower for years now. And I constantly put way too many things on it.I’ve also had these two cute ostrich head hooks floating around my house for a couple of years now with no real purpose. Now they have a purpose…And my shower hook isn’t overloaded anymore. This project took approximately 49 seconds to accomplish. Sigh.

Last but not least.My dresser. You’ll have to use your imagination and “see” this poor thing piled as high as the sky with clothes, random bits of things that did not even belong in our bedroom, because either I forgot to take a before or I deleted it by accident. It wasn’t pretty.I have been resisting doing this project, because I knew I needed to take EVERYTHING out and do a major purge of all the things. I hesitate to do things KonMari style because I get so overwhelmed with how much stuff I still have. And probably do NOT need. But I set aside an entire day and worked drawer by drawer.I LOVE having my t-shirts folded this way. It’s so easy to see what I have and what I don’t. I’m also going to try this with my pajamas too and I’ll let you know how it goes.I took out everything, and anything that said NO way am I ever putting you on my body again, went into a bag to dealt with another day. Everything else needed a designated drawer or things like swimsuits that I only wear once a year went into a basket to live on the top shelf of my closet. Why in the world I was letting them take up space in my drawers is beyond my comprehension. It was a long, tedious day, with many, many breaks for my mental health, but at the end of it all my bed was clear and everything was put away where it belongs. Also yes, that IS another “to be read” pile of books! Which is another project to add to my ever expanding list, because this pile drives me bonkers. It was a great idea at the time, but I constantly knock them off and have to pick them up again.Another project I need to check with my Mama about. I want to change out the pulls on this dresser, but I don’t know which ones are the originals on this piece. It was my Mama’s Mother’s dresser and it has two different styles of pulls. Wooden ones and metal pulls on the bottom drawer.

Another side note: don’t you love my monkey? He is quite ancient. My cousin who is almost twenty years older than I am gave it to me when I was about two years old. Thank you Johnny Ray for that sweet gift, he has been well loved.

Well, that’s it for my week and the projects. The best part about all of these projects is that I had everything on hand to get them done. Mostly my time. Are you working on projects during this time of isolation? If I can just stay on track, I may get quite a lot more accomplished! Good luck to us all.

You can see all of the other projects I’ve worked on here.

Stay safe. Tracie

Five Frugal Things

Published on November 20, 2019 by TracieLeave a comment

Every week I do certain frugal things that I know will save our family money. But it’s always surprising to me when I mention one of them to a friend and they are shocked. So let’s talk about some of those things and you can decide if they are completely bonkers or if I am an absolute genius. And then you can tell me what you do to save money every week and we will all win. Right? Right.

I cut everyone’s hair at home. This is something that I’ve done for YEARS now. I learned to cut Denton’s hair when we first got married, but he usually cuts his own hair now. I’ve done Hayden’s since he was around seven and wouldn’t stop crying because none of the hairstylists could cut his hair they way he wanted. For the past decade I’ve given him a “Peaky Blinders” haircut. Long before we even knew who the peaky blinders were….Liv gets pretty much the same haircut, but with slight alterations. How much is a haircut now anyway? I use these scissors and these clippers. Both are awesome.
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We gutted the kids bathroom ourselves instead of hiring it out. This has been on our to-do list for a few years now. But we were in crisis mode now, the vanity needs to be replaced pronto. The builders of our house are crazy people. I need to do a completely separate post about this, but just a couple of the weirdo things we found when we started ripping out the old bathroom: the return air vent in our house is open. Just…..open. Not in ducting through this room at all. I suppose they assumed the bathtub surround would suffice? Also when they installed the tub they put one of those twist up renuzit air fresheners underneath the tub. Open. Crazytown.
Aldi Pizzas. When Liva and I went into the city for the second time last week, we stopped at Aldi (remember it’s a three hour round trip from our house) to get cheap yummy veggies, cheese and other delicious things and we bought two of Aldi’s pizzas to take home for supper. Instead of swinging by Papa John’s which is normal for us and would have cost four times as much. We actually really liked the five cheese pizza, but we thought that the pepperoni and sausage was waaaay too salty.
Makeup pouch. I needed a small zippered pouch to keep my planner supplies in that wouldn’t take up much room in my car bag, so I immediately started looking for one at one of my local thrift stores. They sell small makeup bags for $1.00. I bought the one below because it had multiple zippered sections that I could put different things in and when I got it home I discovered that it had a surprise inside. This little lovely is not a makeup pouch. It’s a portable power bank: IE a portable phone charger. So not only did I get the perfect sized pouch for my pens and washi tape for a $1.00, but now we have a portable iPhone charger to boot. WIN!
I didn’t buy this house. I wanted to, but I restrained myself. Houses are my weakness. If Denton would let me, I would buy a new one every week….Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here.

What did you do to save money last week? It may be something that I’ve never thought of so please share!

Clean and Organize the….. Unknown Kitchen Drawer

Published on October 16, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

I call this the Unknown Kitchen Drawer for a reason. It’s invisible. No one knows it’s there. No one uses it. This is valuable real estate in my kitchen and it is completely going to waste. I whine to myself all the time that I need more storage space in my kitchen, when the truth is, I have at least one space that is being completely squandered at the moment.

This is another perfect example of my blindness when it comes to my kitchen drawers. Remember my spice drawer? I LOVE my spice drawer now and I use it every day. It’s the perfect setup and a wonderful use of space in my kitchen.

However, this is not a wonderful use of prime square footage in my kitchen. I suppose you could call this a junk drawer, because it IS filled with junk. Or rather, things that are never used.

The first thing I did was to empty everything out and clean, clean, clean. It was absolutely filthy. That, I have discovered, is what happens when you never clean something. Even if you don’t use it. Imagine that.

I bought this lovely liner paper at Wal-Mart, because my Dollar Tree doesn’t carry the stuff anymore. WHY, Dollar Tree, Why? It’s padded and non-slip, so whatever I place in here should stay put. Anywho, this one is a lovely pattern, if I do say so myself.

Gorgeous. Not perfect, but I never actually expect things to be perfect in my house.

The first thing I loaded up were the homeless k-cups that have been living on my dining room table for the past, oh, three months. Also, the ground coffee from Aldi. Have you tried it? We like it.

Next, I put in the vitamins that various people in my house take. I love having it all in one central location. Make a coffee, take your vitamins. By the way, if you have a vegetarian in your house, make sure they are getting enough Vitamin B. Last year when we had our yearly physical’s, we discovered that Liv was dangerously low on Vitamin B and Vitamin D. I suppose we shouldn’t live like vampires and avoid the sun completely, huh?

The crazy thing about this entire process, is that this project took less than 20 minutes from start to finish. I have been putting it off for a small eternity. I always build things up in my mind to gargantuan proportions when I just need to buckle down and get it done.

I’m so pleased with how this turned out. Are you procrastinating a small, doable task? I know that I can name at least 14 more projects that need my attention right now……

You can find all of my other projects here, here, here and here.

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An Update on the Spice Drawer

Published on August 9, 2018 by Tracie2 Comments

I love it when a plan for a project actually works. When I created the spice drawer in my kitchen I didn’t know that it would turn out to be one of my better ideas.

It has worked so well for us. If you have the space I HIGHLY recommend this method. I still keep all of the overflow in the cabinet – which is a disaster. I truly wish that I didn’t have any cabinets in my kitchen. I think that they should all be pull out drawers. You pull out the drawer, you can clearly see what you have, and there is NO chaos.

While this system has been working for us for the past five months, I have tweaked it slightly. I added a spring drawer divider to help keep things from shifting too much. I love the padded vinyl liner that I added originally, but everything was still shifting about.

Another thing that I am changing out are the canning lids. The two piece lids are a pain in the keister. They are fine for canning, but not so great for the spice drawer. My first thought was to go to Amazon. That’s usually my first stop for most everything. Anything to keep me out of a real store and in my yoga pants.

I found these little beauties right off the bat. You can get 16 for $10.95. And then my frugal brain kicked in. I would need at least two sets just for the spices I have in my drawer now. That’s almost $22 for lids my brain said to me. Because in the back of my mind, I knew that I was taking lids to the recycle center each week from my Classico jars, Almond butter jars, etc.

So I decided to go the cheap route and reuse those lids instead.

Wash them and stick on the handy dandy labels that I still have a plethora of, and voila!

One piece lids that don’t come apart every time I open one of my spices. No, they are not as pretty as the lovely red ones, but they function exactly the way I want them to. And that $22.00 will go into the “Let’s go places” fund. Twenty-two dollars will buy hot dogs on a corner in New York, right? We’ll see.

Maybe this winter I’ll paint the lids I have, but I doubt it. 😀 Do you have a spice drawer yet?

DIY: New Front Entrance Lighting

Published on July 19, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

You know my love of finding new to me items at yard sales and thrift stores. Well, sometimes it just isn’t going to happen. I have actively looked for a matching set of sconces for the front of the house, for a couple of YEARS. (FYI: You know I’m going to find a pair now that I’ve actually bought these!) They didn’t have to match the fixture in the back, because, I just didn’t care if they matched that one. It’s on the back of the house where almost no one except us will ever see it, and I like the one I found for that area.

The ones on the front of the house had to go. They were originally brass and the previous owners spray painted them black. You know I love a good spray paint job on anything, but these had seen better days.

They were also not in proportion to the entryway.

I searched and hemmed and hawed for quite a while. When I am actually going to be giving our hard-earned money away for something I deem expensive, it can take an eternity for me to make a decision about what to actually purchase. Just wait until I tell you about our new washer and dryer.

Finally, I narrowed it down to just a few and I dumped the entire thing into Denton’s lap. He never has a problem deciding on something. This is the one we chose. Or rather, that Denton chose from the hundreds I had culled out for him to choose from.

I bought them from Lowe’s with the App I have downloaded on my phone and my very nice delivery man placed them on my porch two days later. I love that. I also didn’t have to pay shipping, which is also lovely.

Here is how I changed them over:

First things first. Turn off the power. Then you can unscrew the small screws holding the fixture on. This is all that holds them up there.

Unless you count the wiring. Notice how white wires are with white wires, black wires are with black wires, and copper wires (ground) are paired up with copper wires? That’s what you want to do too.

You’ll be left with this when you remove the old fixture.

I just noticed that the old fixture has a sticker inside telling you which way is up, to mount it. Hahaha!

The new one does too!

Put your ground wires together…..

Then, put on your wire nut…….And then do the exact same thing with your white wires and the black wires.

Place your lovely new fixture over the threaded screws that align with your fixture and screw your nuts onto them to hold everything in place.

Isn’t she a beauty?

Getting her glow on. By the way, have you ever heard that yellow light bulbs keep away more bugs than white ones? I have no idea if it’s true or not, but mosquito’s love me so much, I’m willing to try just about anything. So yellow light bulbs it is.

Look how lovely.

Don’t mind the clutter, it’s going away instantly. Also, don’t mind the fact that the front porch needs pressure washing. AGAIN. Or the evidence that I need to finish painting the front door, with a color I am not happy with – hence the reason that it’s still not finished. And the fact that I need to paint all of the trim? Along with replacing my broken doorbell. Did you notice all of those things? Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything…..

Have you ever noticed that every time you finish a project another one is right there waiting for you to tackle it too?

Never mind all that. We’ll just stand here for a little while and enjoy my new light fixtures.

DIY: New (to me!) Ceiling Fan in the Kitchen

Published on May 25, 2018May 25, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

As always, I feel like I have to tell you: I am NOT an electrician. If you do not feel comfortable working with electricity – DON’T. If you do, turn off the electricity at the breaker box for the room you are working with and test the area with a voltmeter before you begin. Safety people! It will keep you alive.

Remember when I told you that my kitchen was the temperature of the sun? Every single time I turn on my new oven lately it immediately becomes as hot as a crematorium in my kitchen. When I was little, one of my grandmother’s cooked on a wood stove. Have you ever been around a cooking wood stove? It was absolutely unbearable in the summer – without air conditioning. Can you even imagine? I honestly don’t know how she just didn’t die from the heat. My family would have starved. Or they would have eaten nothing but watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumbers until October.

Anyway, that’s what my kitchen reminds me of right now. Never mind that I have central air that cools my house to whatever digital temperature I want to set it on. In case you are wondering – I CANNOT STAND TO BE HOT. Sorry for the yelling. One of the reasons and they are many, is that my face doesn’t sweat. Isn’t that weird? Denton and I worked out in the yard last weekend and I thought that my head was just going to crack open.

Sweating is one of our bodies ways of releasing heat, just in case you came here to get a health lesson, and when your face and head do not sweat, all of that heat has nowhere to go. Which makes Tracie a very crabby person. Soooooo, now that I’ve had my squirrel moment…….Let’s get on to the DIY!

I found this little beauty at my local goodwill. I have to tell you that I balked at the $20.00 price tag.

Yes, yes, I know that you think I’m cheap. But, as I tell Denton all of my actions have reasons behind them. Those reasons may or may not be relevant to him or you, but still. When we bought this house we spent almost $1,000.00 to upgrade all of the lighting in it. Our house is almost 3,000 square feet and that’s a lot of light fixtures.

In the first year alone, we replaced the living room ceiling fan THREE times. These were not yard sale fixtures people. They were all brand new from Lowe’s. So I decided that I would not buy another new ceiling fan after I found a 52 inch Hunter ceiling fan at a yard sale for $10.00. It’s still in my living room whirling away, NINE years later.

The first thing I did was remove everything from the box and take out all of the things that I knew I wouldn’t need. Although it’s pretty, I don’t need this cover because I am using the light fixture that came with the fan. I also didn’t need the drop bar. I removed the old fixture, which entailed unscrewing one screw in the middle. Admire my manicure skills, while you are here! Actually, I never paint my fingernails, my toenails yes, but not my fingernails. Liva and I were testing colors and my thumbnail was conveniently right there.

Remove the wiring nuts and unhook the wires from one another……

Hold up the new mounting hardware and realize that you are going to have to remove the old one first so that the new one will stay up on the ceiling……

Tada! And this is the point that I forgot all about you guys! I’ll try to walk you through the rest of what I did. On each side of the mounting hardware there are two smiling faces – see them? Two round holes with a rectangular hole beside it, on each side? Those are the slots for the ceiling fan motor and light kit to hang from. You slide them, carefully into those slots and then you can wire everything without having to hold the whole shebang in the air the whole time. Genius.

Once you’ve wired everything together correctly – white with white wires and black with black wires – slide the cover over it all, use the screws to attach the cover to the motor, make sure everything is secure, attach the fan blades with your handy dandy screws and you are done!

This has been one of my most helpful DIYs to date. It has already made a difference in how hot or cool it is in my kitchen. I highly recommend it. It may not be haute couture in the world of light fixtures, but it is keeping the levels of heat down to something that is bearable!One thing I will have to add is a longer pull chain for the light fixture. Liv cannot reach this one. Another detriment to being a flat five feet tall, but it’s easily remedied.

Do you have a ceiling fan in your kitchen? I’m always curious about these things, do tell!

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Declutter With Me: My Nightstand

Published on April 21, 2018April 21, 2018 by Tracie2 Comments

As we have already established over here in Tracie-land, I am a piler. If it’s a flat surface, my brain takes that as an opportunity to find something to put on it. My nightstand is a perfect example. I have things on it that I actually want on there and that are useful to me. My lamp, an art piece that Liva did for me, a book that I’m currently reading as my go to sleep book, you get the idea. But I also have deposited things that have no business being there because all they are doing is calling to other things that have no business being there either.

By the way, if you know where you can buy antique keys (the metal piece that hold the mirror onto the dresser) please let me know. I bought this little dresser at my Goodwill about three years ago for $7.00. Can you believe that? If it was for sale today they would put $50.00 on it. When they loaded it into my car, they lost one of the keys, so for the past three years, it’s had a screw in it. I’ve already checked my local mom and pop places, my True Value and all of the antique stores around here. Never mind! I asked Mr. Google as my uncle Wyatt says and found a place that I think might have one!

Isn’t this great? Liv did this for one of her watercolor projects in Art this year and she gifted it to me when she got it back.

I also love this guy. I have no idea how he survived the kid’s childhoods, but he did. I think we found him at a flea market years and years ago. It reminded me of the one that we had when I was in Kindergarten. I cannot imagine making something like that with 25 five-year-olds, can you? My Kindergarten teacher was the best. Love you, Mrs. Crabtree!

Yes, that’s a baseball bat in the corner of my bedroom. Don’t you keep a baseball bat by your bed?

You all know my love of baskets, especially baskets that have lids. One of the downfalls about them though is that you can close it and forget about it. Well. I closed this one before Christmas. Let’s see what I haven’t missed.

Good grief. I have looked everywhere for my change purse. Except in this basket.

A shoehorn, candy, purse-sized hand sanitizers, a bookmark, a shell that belongs in Liv’s room and Barbie accessories which haven’t been played with in – oh – eight or so years. Oh, and a string, since that really belongs there.

My missing change purse, pens, my fake leather pen holder that holds my pens so they are not lost in the abyss, tissues that belong in my purse, a flashlight I’ve been searching for and the screws to hold my footboard onto my bed frame. Yet another project that needs to be completed.

The sleeping mask that I obviously haven’t missed, two different body lotions that I thought Liv had confiscated, my cocoa butter petroleum jelly I use as lip balm that I have turned the house upside down looking for and a reed diffuser that I bought in July 2017!

Last but not least, my flashlight that has a dual purpose that I thought was gone forever and a one hundred dollar bill. Do places where you shop take $100 dollar bills? Even our McDonald’s won’t take them – actually I don’t think they will take $50’s either. I’ve had this one lurking around since before Christmas, needing to take it to the bank and have it changed out for smaller bills because we literally can’t spend it. Isn’t that crazy? I could spend it at our Wal-mart, since they are the ones who gave it to me in the first place as cash back, but it’s just not worth the hassle I would go through. You would think I was trying to use a coupon! Heaven forbid. But that’s a completely different story. * FYI – don’t try to use coupons at Wal-mart. *

So I’m sorry basket, but you’ll have to go live at someone else’s house now. Have you decluttered anything lately? Did you find something that you thought was gone forever? Do tell!

Here are the books that are part of my To Be Read pile in no particular order:

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe

Ask Suze….About Wills and Trusts by Suze Orman

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

Calamities & Catastrophes by Derek Wilson

Yes, Please by Amy Poehler

Beautiful Creatures by Garcia & Stohl

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Have you read any of these? What should I hurry to read next?

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DIY Project: Back Porch Light Fixture

Published on April 21, 2018 by TracieLeave a comment

NOTE: I am NOT an electrician. I’m sure there is an electrician somewhere on earth reading this right now and cringing. I just like to do things myself. If you do not feel comfortable working with electricity – don’t.

I love when I find things at yard sales or thrift stores for a great price.

I found this beauty at my local goodwill for $4.99. In 2016. Good grief.

See the date above the price? Do you want to know how long it took me to change out the fixture? Three minutes. Or it would have taken me three minutes if the stupid mounting plate that was in the original fixture matched the new one. So in actuality, it took me twelve minutes to completely change the mounting plate and the fixture. This is another example of my brain convincing me that “that’s going to take forever“. Light fixtures are easy people!

Here’s what we started with. I know. That’s gross and disgusting and I should clean it. There was nothing wrong with it other than the fact that it is 23 years old – I just don’t like it.

I do like this, however. Isn’t it pretty?

Like I said, light fixtures are easy. First things first. Before you begin dismantling your original light fixture, make sure that your breaker is off. Even if you know you turned off the correct breaker, test it out by trying to turn the light on. This is usually a quick way to make sure you turned off the correct breaker. However, for safety’s sake, you should still use a voltmeter to test the wires when you remove your original fixture before you touch them.

Then assess if your original fixture plate will fit the new fixture. Mine didn’t. To remove it, unscrew the two screws holding it to the wall. Easy. Screw the new plate to the wall in the exact same place and run the wires through and connect like with like.