Category Archives: How-To

How To: Change a Shower Head

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As you will soon find out, this is more a post as to how NOT to change your shower head. As I mentioned before, now that I own my own place, I’m trying to be handier (since you just can’t call the landlord anymore).

And well, I noticed my dog often came home from being out with the dog walker looking like this:

Muddy Paws

Notice the Muddy Paws

Although really, I can’t complain about the dog walker since this how he looks after a hike with me:

Muddier Paws

Notice the Muddier Paws

So this is all to say, my dog often needs a bath, which is a problem because I don’t have a bathtub and he no longer can fit in the sink.

SOLUTION: A Hand-Held Shower head!!

Easy right?!? I had changed a shower head in a previous apartment and thought it would simply just twist off… So here is my latest how-to…

STEP 1: Assemble your supplies.

Shower Head Supplies

Shower Head and Pliers

STEP 2: Try with all your might to twist off the old shower head.

Old Shower Head

Old Shower Head

STEP 3: Get really frustrated because the thing won’t move, throw the pliers down and make a Bloody Mary (because you are doing this in the morning and it would be socially frowned upon if you went straight to wine).

Bloody Mary

Try this recipe from Pinterest!

STEP 4: Knock on the strong, strapping, FBI agent’s door (the one guy that lives in the building). And ask to borrow his muscles.

Muscles

Picture has been changed to protect the innocent.

STEP 5: Find out that he can’t budge it either.

STEP 6: Repeat step 3 (possibly with the muscle man…wish I had thought of that one).

STEP 7: Muscle Man redeems himself and shows up with CLR and a bigger wrench. Soaks shower head for an hour and it’s easily able to be removed with the bigger “manly-man” wrench.

STEP 8: Let muscle man install new shower head since he’s already on a roll. Bake cookies as a thank-you.

Finished Product

Ta-Da!

Gatsby got his first shower the next day:

Pitiful Puppy

Pitiful Wet Puppy

STEP 9: Get annoyed by constant dripping and call property manager who hires a plumber because some valve is broken.

(As I said this is really how not to install a shower head.)

Favorites: Swirly Designs

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I am a long time fan of Swirly Designs. Today they launched their Easter/Spring collection. I’ve already purchased these:

Nest Photo

Blue Eggs in a Nest

Garden Photo

Veggie Garden Quartet

Paul and Lianne Stoddard make these wonderful “hand-sculpted, hand-painted polymer clay ornaments.” The  husband and wife duo release their collections around each holiday season.

I hang my ornaments off my kitchen cabinet knobs and switch them out based on the time of year. I can’t wait to add these to my previous Spring time purchases! I think I have about 15 right now that I switch out all year long. It about the only holiday decorating I do…

If you are interested in polymer clay, Swirly Designs also offer how-to’s on their blog. But word to the wise, they make it look a LOT easier than it really is. Here’s my attempt at simple ornaments for Christmas:

Christams Ornamaents

Ornament gone wrong!

Notice the  all the bumpiness :(

Trust me, after trying to make your own, you’ll definitely appreciate Swirly Designs so much more!!! Each design is sketched, sculpted (including etching every single signature swirl), painted, and varnished. (Check out the process!)

Act quickly, the most popular designs sell out fast! Make sure to sign up for Swirly Designs mailing list to get alerts of when the collections go on sale.

Pinterest Project: Storage Baskets

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I have a very tiny condo. When I say tiny, I mean itty bitty — 425 square feet. For all those New Yorker’s out there that may seem large, but for me, it’s small. So I’ve had to be creative with storage. One thing that’s great about my place is that it has very tall ceilings, so I’ve been able to utilize the vertical space.

I was super excited when I found this storage idea on Pinterest.

Basket Storage

From "I'm Busy Procrastinating"

I had been storing extra towels under my bed and I wanted to use that space for my crafting supplies. My mom was in town for a weekend and so we tackled this project. I should warn you, I make simple tasks very hard and this project was no different. Below is a the saga of the basket storage…

First, I bought three nesting baskets at Christmas Tree Shop. For those who haven’t experienced the Christmas Tree Shop experience, well all I can say is it’s an experience. It’s not Christmas supplies as one would expect by the name, but more like a discount home goods store.

When my mom got into town, I sent her with a basket to the hardware store to find the best way to hang them. She decided on whatever these are in the picture below, after ruling out picture hangers and decorative hooks.

Thing-a-ma-jig

Thing-a-ma-jig

I had originally thought I would put thee baskets over my toilet and quickly realized that was not going to happen — I would have hit my head on the bottom basket. So I had to put them on the only other available wall space in my bathroom, where I currently had decorative shelves. (Hence why this turned into a saga rather than a simple project.)

The shelves were secured with mollies/wall anchors, so I needed to take those out and repair the holes. I did have a stroke of genius at this point, and determined my baskets’ locations based on being able to use the wall anchors already in the wall. I now also needed to hang the shelves over toilet, which meant putting in more wall anchors there.

(Helpful Hint: When ever hanging something that will have weight on it and be jostled, it’s best to use mollies or wall anchors. I usually buy the kind that can be screwed in or out since they are the easiest to remove. There are also ones that you can just hammer in.)

Walls

Prepping the Walls

So after I filled in the holes and repainted, I went to work putting in the rest of the wall anchors. This is what took me so long. I’m in a bathroom, and what’s in the walls of a bathroom? Pipes. Don’t worry, I didn’t go through one. I might just have tapped them a bit. I had marked where I wanted the shelves and baskets to go, and started drilling and hammering and hit tapped a few pipes. This meant re-patching holes and changing my locations.

After doing this a few times, my AMAZING mother had a brilliant idea! SHORTER ANCHORS! Why didn’t we think of this before all the spackling! So after about a day and half of wall repairing, we finally finished!

Finished Product

Yeah! Bathroom storage!

Now I just need more towels…

Handy How-To: Installing a Cable Cord

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I’m admittedly not a handy person, but I live alone and so need to do some basics. These might be easy for most people, but I figured there are others out there like me. My latest project was to replace my cable cord that was conveniently stapled along the baseboard. This was done when the cable was installed, very easily by the amazing Verizon Fios rep — he even helped me pick out paint colors! Talk about full service.

So why am I having to replace the cord? No, I didn’t move my TV. I came home one day from work and found that my puppy Gatsby had chewed on the baseboard, pulled out the cable (including some of the staples), and then chewed on the cable itself.

Chewed Cable

After checking his mouth for cuts, I looked to see if the cable was still working. Thankfully — for Gatsby — it did. So I covered the cord with a towel and proceeded over the next week to collect supplies.

Step 1: Assemble supplies.

Wine Supplies

OOOoops… I mean these supplies:

Cable Install Supplies

Cable Install Supplies
Shown here: hammer, needle-nose pliers, 50-ft. cable cord, and cable clips.

When I went to the hardware store I was looking for a staple gun and brought one of the plastic covered staples as an example of what I wanted. After talking to a few of the  people there, I selected the cable clips that could be hammered in. (I had used a staple gun  before — a whole other story — and really didn’t have enough hand strength to get the staples in correctly).

Step 2: Remove staples

Plastic Covered Staples

Picture of the how the cord was installed by Verizon with plastic covered staples.

I used the needle nose pliers to pull out the staples.

Step 3: Wipe down baseboard.

There was a lot of dust collected under the cord, so I took the opportunity to clean everything with a damp cloth.

Step 4: Hammer down clips.

Final Cable

I started on one end, clipped on the cable clips and hammered them into the top of the baseboard. The direction on the box showed to hammer the cord to the side, but I wanted to cover the staple holes.* I found it easiest to pull the cord on the loose side while hammering the clip down from the side (that way you are less likely to hit the wall).

Helpful Hints

1. Drink the wine after you’re done using the hammer.

2. Repair any damages to the baseboard before you install the cord. I didn’t have the supplies to repair where Gatsby ate the baseboard, so didn’t do this. I will have to remove a few of the clips to do this in the future. Also, I didn’t fill in the staples holes. If I did this over again, I think just a little paint would cover them up.*

3. MAKE SURE THE CABLE CORD IS LONG ENOUGH! I had a cord leftover from a previous apartment and had planned to use it. Thankfully last minute I tested to see if it was long enough. I wasn’t. What I didn’t do was measure how long that cord was or what length I needed. I guesstimated it was 20-ft. long. I bought a 50-ft. cord. I originally had a 25-ft. cord in my cart, but was worried enough that it might not be long enough that I got the next size up. I figured it didn’t hurt to have the extra wound up behind my TV stand.

4. Be ready to make “other” repairs. I hit the wall a couple times and took off a bit of paint, so I need to touch that up.

I’m writing this post while watching the TV, which seems a bit clear now that the copper cord isn’t exposed!

UPDATE: At 8:31 am the next morning, I heard an interesting sound from the living room. I caught Gatsby in the act!!! He was going after the new cord – the little shit! I thankfully had bought a new bone that said it was for “powerful chewers” and it was bacon flavored–yummmmm. So I got that out and so far it’s distracted him. I  sprayed the new cord down with Bitter Apple. Hopefully one of these days I can write a “How-To” for stopping your dog from chewing!