Category: home improvement

ADHD Kitchen Design

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My wife has ADHD. Amongst other issues, if she doesn’t see it, it ceases to exist in her memory. Sometimes this means she re-buys things she has in abundance, or puts things away in a fascinating way.

When we moved into this home, I wanted to make sure she could be as at home there as I was. She loves to bake and do cooking projects. She researches recipes, often historical, and makes them.

I wanted the kitchen to work for her. To this end I put in open shelves for the things we use day to day the most.

She would lose her coffee cups all the time, but now she always knows where they are. She can find everything, and doesn’t have to search.

I made sure the most used pans were visible, and I put a basket for the bread, and all the snacks. She has stopped losing the snacks now that I’ve set it up this way. She can find everything she wants more easily.

I also put a lot of the utensils she uses most on the countertop visibly, and so she can find them easily. She’s said having the utensils there has been so much easier to work with for her.

My latest effort is to make labels for the cupboards. This isn’t the most popping color right now, but I plan to paint the cabinets dark dusky orange. Then they will pop!

I created the labels in Affinity Design, and after the first label was done, I just used it to make the rest as a template. Then my wife printed them out and laminated them all. She’s got a whole side project with 5 x 7 ” cards for the game she is running. She hands them to the players as a mission card, so I figured I’d commandeer her process for kitchen labels.

This will look so much better when the cabinets are painted. They are very 1980s right now.

I can’t label everything in every cupboard, because she would be overloaded by it all. So instead I tried very big summaries, and specifics that she uses the most. We are also old, and wear glasses, so I used a HUGE font that she can see without glasses.

So far, it seems to be working. My wife can see what she needs, and it works with her ADHD.

I am interested to see how this works for her going forward, and I like to keep checking in with her to make sure there isn’t something better I can do to work for her.

The biggest challenge is to make it all look like a design choice? However, I don’t care much as long as it works for her, cute or not. I think we managed to make it cute though.

Unicorn Spit & Rough Wood Projects

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There is this gel stain finish called Unicorn Spit. (This is not a paid for spot, because nobody would ever pay me!) Its claim to fame is it’s near universal in what it covers, and it’s very vibrant. It comes in a rainbow of colors. If you want the official user’s handbook on their website, you will have to pay $27 for it. I’m not really up to paying someone $27 for how to use their product so I read the directions, and watched some clearly promotional YouTube videos.

I had two projects I was working on. One is a large wall mounted spice rack for my approximately 10 billion spices, and the other is a basic box for a coffee table made out of plywood.

After I finished making and sanding my projects, I used an old chip brush to paint on the Unicorn Spit. If you use it straight it doesn’t cover raw wood very well, and takes a lot of stain. However, I found using a spray bottle filled with water really worked well. I would dab a bit on the wood, spray spray spray, then brush it back and forth. It covered shockingly well. I was very impressed with that.

I did several coats, and put my brush in a ziplock bag and froze it between coats so I didn’t have to wash it out. The brush thaws right out, and it’s like you never stopped, when you have to take a break. This works with latex house paint as well, incidentally.

They actually recommend to dilute it and seems like you can dilute it with a lot of options per their directions. I wanted a super deep color so I went with my spray bottle technique and it worked out well.

There were spots that I had a hard time getting, but I just kept touching it up until I was satisfied. I used a rag to rub it around for maximum coverage after I did the first coat.

Yes I do use my can goods to prop up my projects when I paint them.

When it dries, it dries to a chalky texture. The website had some options for finishes, and I was going to use a wax sealant initially. I just wasn’t sure it would cut it. Just touching the wood would give me a light blue dusting on my skin, so I needed something more than that. I decided to use Minwax clear poly on it, and put on three coats, with light sanding between it.

You have to be careful if you use poly to seal, I did my second coat too soon, and smudged off the blue in some areas of my 1 x 4 spice rack. I fixed it by mixing some acrylic blue paint with some triple thick varnish and you can’t even tell. So nothing to worry about too much.

Here is the finished coffee table top. It’s hard to get a photo of the color. In this photo it looks like washed out patches, but in real life, it’s really stunning and nice. It’s like a sea of blue variegations.

This is all I wanted in a coffee table. It holds my crochet bag so the cat can’t get to my yarn, and my pot box, and soon to be home for my Arizer. No longer living in an apartment means I don’t have to hide everything in a closet anymore, so I wanted my coffee table to have space for it all.

I looked at all sorts of options for a coffee table, but I just didn’t like any. It had to be a bit tall because my couch was tall, so I just made a simple plywood box. The ones online seemed overpriced, and cheaply made, and weren’t the right height. Plus, I like to keep my feet on it, and eat off of it so it had to survive me.

For the spices, I have tried numerous organizational processes in the new house. The problem is, I have a lot of spices, and I make my own blends. I can’t digest garlic, it seems, so I do all my own blends for my most used items. Add to that, I cook a lot of different styles, so I need spices for Indian food, Chinese food, Japanese food, Italian food, you name it. My wife also bakes, so we need that too. What we have on hand is usually indicative of what we’ve been cooking in the last 6-9 months or so.

Even better, we can see them all. My wife has ADHD and if it’s out of site, it doesn’t exist. To a certain extent, having them all crammed back in a tiny cupboard meant I was over buying as well.

I will probably use the Unicorn Spit again. I have bedroom night stands I am making out of plywood, so I will probably use the same blue Unicorn Spit process for them.

While I sanded the coffee table, the plywood was still too rough. I think if I do it again, I am going to really sand the crap out of it. The spice rack was sanded 1 x 4’s and it was so glossy smooth and the color came out so great.

I am still learning to work with wood, so while this is a really rough beginners project, I am still super happy with it.

Changing Refrigerator Door Opening Direction

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The thing about moving into our own home is that we get to fix things that bother us. The downside is my list of fixit’s is so long that some items, like this morning’s fridge door fix we talked about, but just never made it to the physical list. My list is like a 5 year plan with marvel-esque phase roll outs.

This morning’s issue was the refrigerator door. For some reason, the way the fridge door opened was away from the cooking area in the kitchen. You’d have to walk around it, open it, then bring everything back to the counter.

It kind of breaks my heart that the little old lady that lived here before us had to shuffle around the fridge door every time she cooked. Someone should have fixed this for her.

My wife and I hated it from the day we moved in, but I while I had a hazy idea it was possible to flip them, I didn’t really know how, and honestly there were just so many more pressing things that needed done.

Last night, I had insomnia and was up at 3am, and for some reason when I got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the door irritated me again, and with nothing else to do, I started watching videos on it.

I found this video with my make and model fridge, mostly:

Video on how to reverse a refrigerator door.

It took me about a half hour to 45 minutes from gathering tools to putting them back in the shed and then it was fixed!

I had two white plastic door hole caps that were so old they broke, but they were decorative, and you can’t even see them on top the door. I could care less. I am so happy to have the fridge door facing the right direction now. My wife and I are both ecstatic.

Funnier to me, was when I popped out the bottom grill to move the bottom door post over a bunch of rice came out. That is my rice, from the day I moved in.

I dropped somewhere around 5 pounds of short grain rice in its plastic tub, which spilled literally all over the kitchen. You cannot appreciate how far 5lbs of rice will scatter until you drop it. I was so exhausted and sore from moving that I almost had a five star meltdown. I was in a hurry, and had to get so much else done as I was bringing it over before work that day, then I ended up sitting on the kitchen floor laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I told my wife, even after sweeping it all up, that rice was going to keep showing up for the rest of our lives. This bunch of it came out from inside the refrigerator grill. I guess I was right.

This is one less thing on my giant list, even thought it never made it to the list proper. I can stop thinking about it every time I open the door.

House Improvement Baby Steps & the Physical Impact of Projects

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I am in my 50s, and I have a degenerative joint condition. As a consequence I work 4 days a week at a sit down office job, not five, because sitting in an office chair is painful. This is in stark contrast to my younger years, when I would not only work 5 days a week as a floor nurse, but also do 12-16 hour project days on the weekends. This means that small projects can wreck me for a few days.

With this in mind, yesterday was a nice day, so I pulled out my saw horses and tools, and built a cabinet box for next to the dishwasher.

I haven’t put the trim molding back because we are contemplating putting some sort of panel on the wall there. Something more water resistant due to the dishwasher. We are waffling between a traditional bead board look, or just abandoning all sense and doing art under acrylic sheeting.

This was just a gaping hole under the unsupported butcher block counter tops that the shit contractor left. He was paid to make a slide out cabinet but didn’t do the work. This is an ugly cabinet box made of 3/4″ plywood. I plan to paint all the cabinets and I will edge band and paint it when I do the rest. I was mostly concerned about the unsupported heavy butcher block drooping onto my $600+ dishwasher. Now I feel my dishwasher investment is protected, and we will be fine.

While I did this, I also cut up two closet sliding doors that we had to get rid of, so I can slowly feed them into the garbage can.

It also was good practice for using a circular saw guide that you clamp onto the wood. I’d never used any kind of guide before and this is my first circular saw.

This is a Bora WTX clamp. I really like how it works, but the reviews are right. The sled was just a pain in the butt for my Dewalt saw, so it’s got no use for me. I got straight cuts without the sled just fine.

I don’t have the most experience with circular saws, because when I was a kid I looked like a girl and my father refused to let me use any tool you had to plug in. I’m mostly self taught with the help of online videos. The guide came with a saw sled, which pretty much all the reviews said was garbage, and they were right. I tossed the cheap plastic thing, and just did my thing without it.

Turns out circular saws are not as scary as I had originally thought. I feel pretty comfortable now. It’s definitely weird going from being treated like a girl, and disallowed all access to the tools to make my life easier, to now not only being given access, to being supported and having other men in stores get excited to walk me through it. If transitioning from female to male ever taught me anything, it’s that sexism around home improvement and gender rolls are pretty damn real.

Speaking of ignoring gender rolls, I also finished sewing the curtain for my work room.

The house came with these thick white blinds. They aren’t terrible, but the cat and I hate the blinds. We lost about 6-7 inches of window at the top of these like you see in my half thought out before picture below.

That cat tree is going to be replaced with a built in wall unit for our fat princess. It will take less space and be in less dire threat of being toppled by her antics.

Below here is an unfairly better taken after picture in which I opened both curtains, and also washed the windows because I noticed how filthy it was.

Ignore the potting bench that I am using for delivery drivers to hide packages behind, when they can be bothered. I am buying a bench to put there instead. Also, ignore the portable air conditioner. Getting mini splits for air conditioning is a few years off.

We will probably always keep the sheers closed because there is a lot of . . . activity across the street and we don’t necessarily need to live in a fishbowl.

I mean, The windows look so much bigger with that 6-7″ of space back. Also, look at that nice new window sill! I did that a few weeks ago, mostly because our cat is fat and can’t get up on there without it.

These projects are all a part of Phase 1 of the house plan. When I get all these little things done, I will deep dive into each room. That means better curtain rods, painted walls and cabinets, and finishing touches. Right now? I am just trying to get things functional and ready for a full launch into next year.

After all this, which I don’t think is much, I spent the rest of the day laying in bed sore as hell. I will probably not do much today either. I have to accept I am not 25 anymore, and pushing my body this hard has consequences. I’d be very kind to anyone else fighting with this, but I always feel like I could have done more.

After I finish writing this, I will probably make some breakfast for the wife and I, and go lay in bed again. Not a bad days plan, overall.

Most Underrated Kitchen Appliance – Instant Hot Water

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This picture is my homemade instant hot cocoa mix in front of my wife and my coffee and tea set up. The white jar is for loose sugar for my wife, the dark blue one is for instant coffee, and the teal one is for sugar cubes for me.

This is not a sponsored post. I don’t have affiliate links. This is just me, in my first home, marveling at the small upgrades I can make in order for my life to be a billion times better. I just like to document and link things.

My incinerator. Ignore the gap between the backsplash and the counter. I have to fix that. It’s relatively mild here, but is like a 1/4 inch as it creeps larger at the end of the counter. I haven’t sealed it yet because I am waiting to fix it.

This is an Insinkerator. That’s the brand name of my infant hot water system. What it does, is deliver water hot enough to make tea out of. You can increase of lower the temperature to fit your needs.

In my home, my wife prefers instant coffee. That is probably horrifying to folks, but she grew up on it, and prefers it. Over our 30+ years of marriage we have had normal coffee makers, high end espresso machines, you name it. She always goes back to instant. This actually frees up a lot of counter space, and reduces waste from Keurig and espresso machines, presses and coffee makers.

I am a hot cocoa and tea drinker because I am a very high energy person, and caffeine takes me into the arena of damn annoying real quick, so I stick to my caffeine-free tea, and my hot cocoa. What little caffeine I get from the cocoa is about all I should ever have.

In the apartments we have been in, we were in a constant hot water kettle search. We would burn through one every year or so, because between the two of us, we would have tea, cocoa, and coffee all day long. We just killed them from over use. I was even considering one of those massive zojirushi how water dispensers.

Add to this, my wife has ADHD, and she would always come start the kettle, then leave, and an hour later come back to start the process all over. Just waiting for the water to heat was enough time in ADHD for her to end up distracted and not get her coffee. Some mornings she would realize she’d have related the task endlessly and never gotten her morning coffee.

With this in mind, one of the first items I bought for the house was a hot water on demand system. It’s like a mini on demand system that holds a gallon or so of water for your use. The Amazon listing says 3 gallons, but that’s wrong. I think it’s closer to 2/3 of a gallon.

This is like a $250 luxury. I can get my cocoa in the morning instantly. My wife no longer circles the kitchen in a remember & forget coffee dance.

I think this is the single most amazing item we have in our home. I had no idea when we put it in that it would help my wife so much. This was worth every penny. When or if it dies, I am replacing it immediately.

Being able to modify my home in such a tiny way, to help make our lives easier? I really want this for everyone. We were so lucky to get out of the rental racket, and into a home, and I just really want this for everyone.

It’s just so shocking to me that with such a relatively small purchase I can make such a huge impact on my enjoyment of my home.

Garden, Grass, Squirrels, Clover, and salt

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My garden continues to grow, but I’ve never grown broccoli before, and did not stake them. We had some wind and they are all falling over and I will have to see if I can stake them this weekend.

It’s not terrible, but I need them to grow up due to my limited space.

I did tie up the jute twine for my tomatoes. I am using tomato clips. I think I got like 300 for a ridiculously cheap price on Amazon.

You just clip them on the twine and the tomato and you are done.

I am also fighting the animals. Squirrels dig a lot of holes in the dirt in my yard. Since it’s not full of grass, they really go to town.

I do it to myself because we have so many bird and squirrel feeders around.

We have several of those black basket peanut and corn feeders. We get a lot of crows with them. I love crows and they won’t eat out of a feeder, and honestly I love the squirrels too. We have an enormous number of squirrels all over.

When we redo the deck, I will make a more permanent set up for them. This is just until then.

Below is the disaster that is my front lawn.

My lawn is half dead because they got it green enough to see the house, and it’s just dying. That crap fill dirt is the same in the front of the house. It’s filled with rocks, glass and rusty nails. I don’t like grass anyways, so I am re-seeding with clover. It’s actually starting to work.

I think it’s doing better than the dying grass. I have seeded twice, and will do it again in July here. It doesn’t grow as tall, and is way greener.

Then I have this problem:

The driveway and front walks have a bare inch of gravel and no landscaping fabric was laid down. I had thought it was weird there was like a gallon of heavy duty weed killer in the shed when we moved in. I guess that was their solution. I am not so keen on that. I don’t want to put damaging chemicals in the ground.

Instead, I am trying rock salt. Just Morton’s rock salt. I have mixed it up in solution of 2 cups for a gallon of water, and sprayed it with a hand held sprayer, but this last time I got tired of carrying it so I just sprinkled rock salt all over. I got more salt in, and then watered it in. It’s working, but slowly.

You do have to be careful to not get it in your lawn. It will kill anything. I am hoping after several treatments, this will make the driveway and walk ways ungrowable. the walkway is kind of temporary?

We do plan to install a large fence when we do the decks, and change the walkway layouts. We will add another walkway straight to the road, and straighten out this one in the picture to the driveway. I will probably do like I am planning in the back, and make a wide gravel walk, done right this time, with big 2′ X 2′ pavers for stepping stones. It will carve out more grass out of my small lawn. The less grass the better. It’s not ecologically a good ground cover choice.

It’s just so novel for me to be able to work on these things and make a difference. I am not used to this, having been a renter for so long. I still feel grateful every day we managed to get into a house.

Everything is Planted & I hurt

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My normal work schedule is Monday through Friday. I took off Thursday, and my wife and I made three trips to Lowes. We got 24 bags of dirt, 12 at a time, and 5 huge bags of beauty bark. As you can see in the pictures the beauty bark filled out the rest of the hoop house aka the Squirrel Interdiction cage.

The problem with having a physical disability is you like to forget and think you can do things you used to do 30 years ago. I am in rough shape. I not only filled the raised beds, added the bark, but I mowed the lawn.

My lawn mower saga is now over. I had ordered that lawn mower from Lowes, and they no-called, no-showed me three times, so I canceled and ordered a Makita battery mower from Amazon.

I was just going to test it to make sure it worked, so I could break down the box, but it was so cool, I mowed the back yard. My grass is only in tufts becuase they used nasty glass and garbage and rock filled dirt to level the lot, so it’s a bumpy nasty yard to mow.

We also have an issue with the driveway as they only put a bare inch or so of gravel over the crappy fill dirt, and it is growing so many weeds now. We are opting to use 2 cups of rock salt in 1 galloon of water to kill the weeds. I have sympathy at trying to get a house ready for sale, but a lot of corners were cut all over.

So anyways, I have things set up in the garden finally, and I was starting to wonder if I had committed a bit of overkill on the hoop house and chicken wire, until the day after I planted it all.

The damn cat, which is lovely and beautiful and feral, had dug up my mint bed to pee in it. I had to drag out the chicken wire and wrap each of those small round beds to keep him out.

All this is to say, I am dead up against a wall of sore and exhuastion today. I spent the day in bed and watched Good Eats on Discovery+ with the wife. She made game maps next to me while I dozed.

I have so much more to do, that it’s nuts. I have 9 more curtains for the house, a kitchen cabinet box, and a coffee table. I’d have been done with this in a few days when I was healthier. Not so much now. I have to take each item day by day.

Like for instance, today I was going to sew one set of curtains, but I just can’t. I hurt. It’s really hard to be able to work with your hands, and be prevented because of your body’s failings.

I am trying to be patient with myself and happy that at least the garden is planted. I will need to top the beds with dirt in winter, and maybe transplant the strawberries to a fuller raised bed, but it’s in its final form. Now, even when I am hurt and sore, I can still do the little planting things. As this condition progresses, I am set up to continue with my garden which brings me a lot or joy.

I can put holes in my doors!

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I have rented pretty much my entire adult life, and having a house I own lets me do so much. Today I put up a hanging ceiling lamp, and punched three holes in the ceiling. Don’t ask, mistakes were made! However, when I was done, I just sparkled it back up and when I touch up the paint, you will never be able to tell. I’d have been terrified to do that in a rental.

Hell, I just put cat doors in my bedroom and living room doors. (Our layout has no real living room, so one of the bedrooms is a living room.)

My cat can now come and go as she pleases. I have always wanted this, but you certainly can’t do that in a rental. Being able to make my house weird is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Garden Progress

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-Originally posted to Tumblr

I got the gate on, and dirt in three of the five beds. It started really raining, so I gave up and it’s been raining all day today. I need to put my tomato cage in the back bed. I am just going to put a PVC frame in there and use twine to train them up. I need to make two because I have cucumbers as well I am planting.

The dirt looks amazing in the beds.

(Spoiler from future me: It was not enough dirt and settled down pretty low. I will have to amend and add to it next spring.)

I get the rest of my dirt on Tuesday. I’ll hopefully have my beds planted by Wednesday. This year’s last frost was super late, and I am later still because I was building this out. However, I am happy! Next year will be pretty easy.

After putting the dirt in the beds, I found some big ‘ol worms, which I put in my tomato beds.

My wife wanted nothing to do with them! I am finding some great ones as I am slowly moving Mt. Garbage Dirt out.

I am pretty grateful to my wife for helping me move the dirt. I am not as physically able as I once was, so her help really is appreciated.

I think the last thing I will need is some bark to lay down on the ground between the beds. I also have some mushroom compost I need to lay in when I plant, and some straw to use as mulch.

I have never been this excited for dirt before. I never thought I would get a home, and be able to have a garden. It still feels unreal.

More Garden Work

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-Originally published on Tumblr

Slowly but surely, I am working in the garden. It is definitely a bit frustrating taking so long on things because my body can’t keep up. I miss my 20s and 30s where my joint issues and pain were not as severe, and I could do all this in probably a solid weekend.

Anyway, I am proud of what I have going on.

I got both walls up, and all the long beds in. I ran out of chicken wire though. I won’t have that until Monday. Which is annoying!

My plan is to get the last two circle planters done, and the PVC door frame. I can chicken wire the damn thing when the wire comes in.

I have some dirt, but I don’t think it’s enough. I probably need like another $300ish dollars worth. I wish I had good dirt here, but nope. I don’t even have tree branches or wood to put in the bottom of the raised beds.

But wait. . . Whats’ the pile of dirt in the below picture?

I can’t use that lump of dirt in my beds. I pulled that out of my lawn, and it’s sod, dirt, rocks, glass, plastic, roofing shingles, oyster shells, playing cards, beer cans, and god knows what else. I don’t feel it’s safe to have it in with my vegetables.

Instead, since I don’t have a truck, I have been packing it into amazon boxes, and putting it in the garbage one box at a time.

This is besides feeding an entire disassembled TV console into the garbage, one or two boards at a time.

Who knew homeownership would also include patiently disposing of items you had no ability to get rid of any other way because you drive a KIA, and do not have a truck.

As always, work is dependent on my body’s ability to keep up.

I guess it’s good that spring just sort of started up this week, and was so late, because I had nothing done in time anyway. However, at least it will all be set up for next year, and all I’ll have to do is to amend the soil and plant.