This Week's Projects

Yesterday I was feeling burned out on school, work, and life in general so I took a couple of hours and finished up two projects that have been sitting around collecting dust. I'm a crappy photographer (which is why I always take a million pictures hoping that one will turn out), but you get the idea.

Project #1:

First, as you can see by my handy carpenter, there existed in our home a somewhat large, very blank wall. We firmly believe that the former owners of our home were cross-eyed and didn't own a level. There are holes in every wall, in every imaginable spot. It's like they never measured anything, just stuck a nail in, and then when it didn't work out, they started the whole process over again. So this wall has been hard to work with because it's in a weird spot (between the kitchen door and sink), it's fairly large for just a picture or something, and it's got holes in it everywhere (which I could patch, but I'm having issues matching the paint and don't want to repaint the whole kitchen, but that's an entirely different story).

So Calvin located the existing boards with a stud finder.

Then assessed the sturdiness of the shelving.

And then hammered at the screws as I drilled them into the wall.

I had originally purchased more traditional looking shelves, but then in a magazine I saw this more modern/industrial look and I loved the straight simple lines and the metal with the wood, so I took everything back and started over. These shelves were so simple and the longest part was just staining the wood. Here is the end result:

Overall, I think I like how it turned out.

Project #2:

I bought an ugly brass candelabra at a thrift store, some candles, and some cheesecloth, and here is the end result:

Spray painted the candle holder, burned holes in the cheesecloth, and melted red crayon for the blood.

Calvin was a huge help. He loved blowing out the candles over and over, and every time I would try to drip red wax, he would move everything around. Two of the candles turned out perfectly, the rest look pretty bad up close. Oh well, if I've learned anything from CSI it's that blood spatter isn't always a perfect science.

Happy October!