The Small Project Roundup
Okay, taking on a challenge to do a job a day (on average) should mean a month of doing small, easy projects. As you know, I had a large, relatively skilled job that I was hell bent on finishing and ended up calling it like 6 of my 30 projects. But I decided to finish off the month with actual small jobs.
To start, I was anxious to get the car cleaned after spilling cement in it. After all, I should TRY to keep my brand new car looking decent, right? (This is why without my family’s influences I would have driven beaters forever.)
So, I rounded up all the unused Home Depot stuff that was lying around and returned it (Project 18) including more cement. Then I cleaned my car (Project 19).
Then my parents came over to help rescue the living room from the project aftermath (Project 20). There was a happy hour in the neighborhood that night with free food and free wine. Somehow, we started at 8 after that and managed to get a lot done. I’ll call that a win. Sorry, I usually like to show you what tools, materials, and apathy do to my living room at the end of a big project but forgot to take a photo this time.
Then I took down all the upper cabinet doors that weren’t acceptably painted on the back sides and finished that job (Project 21).
Then since I had started going through drawers and stuff in my bedroom when I was cleaning out the closet, I finished that job and decluttered the room (Project 22). This means that the whole house is relatively tidy! Except the basement.
Not that I’ve eliminated all weirdness. Like, my grandmother held onto certain things just because they’re old, and now I have an entire drawer of antique straight razors next to my bed. This is extremely creepy but I’m not sure what to do about it.
Then, it’s rude to talk about money but I’m going to anyway. I rolled all my loose change (Project 23). It came to about $60! And more exciting still, remember how I was hiring the Irishman all the time to get my finish carpentry done 2 years ago? Well, I’ve been carrying a credit card balance ever since. I’ve managed to move it around to keep it interest free but last week I did one better and finally paid it off (Project 24)!
And this brings us to Saturday, and I wanted to see if I could come up with 6 more projects to finish in one day. Unfortunately, my dad got caught up in other work and wasn’t able to come. Without solid wall anchors or caulking skills, I substituted in even smaller jobs.
And I’ve been improvising places to hang my bath towel (the bar in the bathroom holds towels that aren’t rags that I don’t use) and meanwhile had 3 robe hooks in my basement hoard. So now this has been rectified and both closets have a place to hang a towel (Project 25).
The power has been off out back and I’ve missed having a working light. Now that I’m finished my 5 days of curing the stucco by spraying it with a hose twice a day, I was anxious to get the outlet back up (Project 26). Shockingly (or maybe predictably), I had to replace the screws that came with the box extension because they weren’t long enough, but luckily I have a 370-pack of assorted electrician’s machine screws. I assume the electrician left it behind and I didn’t say a word.
I stumbled upon a mini-hoard of non-sexy, non-vintage hardware in the basement and now my bathroom has a door stop. Yes, Project 27 took like 1 minute. Womp.
Along with the straight razors I found pieces of my bedroom furniture that had broken off.
Now it’s all glued back together and the fancy topper is screwed down to the mirror (Project 28). Note that it’s still not intact, but what’s missing now has been gone for about 50 years.
Aaaaaaand that leaves me 2 projects short. I was gonna finish the challenge off on Sunday, but my mom asked me to help with yard work again and the jobs were things that I already gave myself credit for finishing last week. So… I laundered the shower curtain and cleaned the bathroom, including the tile, which had a lot of scale on it since I’ve only cleaned the tub as long as I can remember. Basic maintenance? Nah, I’ll call it Project 29. My roommate had a cockatiel and I think washing the shower curtain took care of the last of the bird shit, so that’s a permanent-ish thing. And yeah, I said I had to mist the stucco 10 times while it was curing? That’s Project 30.
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Wonderful — you inspire me!
Yes!!! You did it. I love your recap too. 🙂 Thank you for joining in the challenge.
Well done!
Love this! Although I think you might have given yourself small-project credit for helping Mom with the yard work. About the antique razors. 1) Do not invited Sweeny Todd or any similarly deranged person to your house to see them. 2) You could be on the look-out in flea markets or antique fairs for a glass-front wall cabinet/shadow box in which to mount and display them. Or you could make one. 3) Referring back to #1, maybe you should make sure the box has a key and install plexiglass rather than glass.
By the way, I have a collection of old shaving mugs and so on, some of which are in one of my bathrooms and the rest are in my attic. Don’t think I’ll ever display them all, but maybe I can switch them around from time to time. Or maybe I could give one or two away.
On Sunday I pulled up pachysandra and prepped some spots for grass seed, then laid the pachysandra down like sod in other spots to refine the shape of the bed that we planted last week. I decided not to call this another project because it seemed like I was just taking care of unfinished business on something I had already marked complete. Plus, I came up with 30 things that I actually did in September.
My grandmother had tons of old things everywhere, especially piled up in her basement. Although I loved this craziness when I was little, we OD’ed on it 8 years ago while we were working to move her into the condo and dealing with her obstructionism. I don’t know if I can see myself having sharp knives randomly on display like that… really, they would be less creepy in my view if they were somewhere other than a night table drawer. I had mentioned in other blog posts that I kept things that she had on display only if I was actually going to use them, though I do have a handful of unused things on my bookshelves and will probably introduce more when I add shelving to the bedroom, hopefully next year.
wow, a fun read and very inspiring! good job getting so much done – omg! it’s so satisfying to get all the small shit done that literally takes minutes but we put off for years. you got an amazing amount of small and large stuff done!