Chez Larsson

Skippy Lids

 
One of the most used items in our garage workshop is a Skippy lid. Well, it’s not actually A single lid but a whole bunch of them. We’ve stopped saving the jars but the lids we treasure. Here’s how we use them.

• For touch up painting.

• Screwed under the shelf above the worktop with jars for storage.

• For corralling screws and other little bits during projects.  

Technically not Skippy but other lids work well too!

• For raising stuff when painting to prevent it to stick to the surface.

I’ve shown this one before but it’s one of my favorite uses;

• To prevent my locker on wheels from rolling away on the sloping floor in the basement.

Yay for peanut butter!

~

Ps. Here's my second contribution to the Get Organized blog

So How Did I Do?

  
Remember my to-do list from back in May? I promised I’d repost at the end of summer and over here I’d say this is it. Summer, at least in my mind, is over. So how did I do?

* Scrape west facing side of house

* Prime west facing side of house

* Paint west facing side of house

*Scrape south facing side of house

* Prime south facing side of house

* Paint south facing side of house

* Paint fascia boards south, west, east, north

* Scrape south window

* Paint south window

* Scrape patio door

* Paint patio door

* Paint white trim outside

* Clean trim in hallway

* Paint trim in hallway

* Paint interior doors to bathroom and stairwell

* Paint stairs

* Paint trim downstairs

* Paint doors downstairs

* Craft new house number

* Cut boards for botanical prints

* Paint boards for botanical prints

* Mend stucco on west side of house

* Sort out papers from hanging files

* Order fly strips for windows

* Clean shower head

* Sort Wille's stuff in basement with him

* Sort Wille's stuff in his room with him

* Continue scanning negatives

* Assemble travel scrapbook pages

* Add photos to albums

* Prep for gravel in back yard

* Order gravel for back yard

* Buy and plant summer flowers in pots

* Weed, weed, weed

* Plant Dahlia's

* Sow swiss chard

* Paint bedroom walls

* Prune roses

* Sew patchwork pillow

* Bake more

* Top dress lawn

* Mend rotting corner by patio **

* Trim lawn edges

* Adjust leaky kitchen faucet **

* Paint livingroom walls

* Sort out water pressure and temperature in shower

* Add wheels to ottomans

* Paint stairwell

* Change fabric in stairwell

* Trim hedges

* Rebuild craft corner desk **

* Move and reorganize dresser **

* Do a kitchen drawer switcharoo

* Add wheels to antique arm chair

* Add shelves in bedrom closet

* Figure out a way to hang longboard **

* Add wheels to ottoman in bedroom

* Reinvent large cans

* Sort out downstairs pantry

* Paint parts of front steps

* Turn garden composts

* Change lock on patio door **

* Change locks on two doors upstairs

* Change handles on four doors upstairs

* Refinish edges of bathroom shelves

* Paint bathroom shelves and brackets

* Touch up fuse box door

* Staple new fabric on fuse box door

* Sew patchwork quilt

* Fix chipped ladder bar in stairwell

* Caulk gaps in top of stairwell

** Martin helped

 
I have to say I’m pretty proud of all I did do. I haven’t been lazy. I’m pooped though so I look forward to doing the more fun and crafty bits this fall and winter and the yard things which are still on the list next spring. And I’m sure I’ll be adding to the list next year…

* Paint fascia boards south, west, east, north (Couldn’t face another race up and down the ladder)

* Paint white trim outside (To few hours in the day!)

* Cut boards for botanical prints (Not sure I’m into this any more…)

* Paint boards for botanical prints (… I’m not loving the yellowed paper of the prints.)

* Sort Wille's stuff in basement with him (Still to do)

* Order fly strips for windows (I NEED these next summer, I used some other type and they sucked!)

* Continue scanning negatives (Cozy fall project…)

* Assemble travel scrapbook pages (… another cosy one…)

* Add photos to albums ( … and one more!)

* Prep for gravel in back yard (Next spring, I promise!)

* Order gravel for back yard (Definitely next spring!)

* Sew patchwork pillow (Fabric and supplies have been ordered…)

* Paint livingroom walls (Paint has been bought!) 

* Sew patchwork quilt (… and there’s enough for this one too!)

 

Yay!

Or-la-la!

I actually agree with some of you who thought there was too much white downstairs. So I introduced a little bit of color. Ahem… grey. I’ve loved the Orla Kiely Stem motif since she launched it but I haven’t found any on yardage until I went on Ebay and there it was. Actually I got two versions, promise to show the other one another day.

 
We have this very weird space in the staircase which is where all the electrical breakers are. When we moved in they were all out in the open but I couldn’t have that obviously so we built the shelves above and built in a bunch of ugly below. We happened to have the old door frame onto which I’ve stapled white fabric. Until now.

 
Or-la-la!

Stairwell Ladder Bar

Stairwell ladder bar? What is that? Well, it’s an essential for raising a ladder in our tall and narrow stairwell. The ladder takes me into the little hatch at the top and allows me to get into the attic. There’s almost nothing up there but I need to go there once in a while to spray the wasps nests and I also need the ladder to change the display on the shelves above the fuse box door.

Can you imagine me getting a huge long outdoor ladder in there from the garage (the door to the left at the bottom) without scratching every single surface? After the new coat of paint I asked Martin to hold the door for me and help me steer and I taped towels on the ends to protect the stairs.

Anyway the steel bar has been bugging me for ever. I’ve painted it countless times and every time I raised the ladder the paint chipped off and then I’d be staring at the black marks every single day when going downstairs. Another thing that bugged me was that I didn’t fill the gaps in the corners at the back when I last painted. Those black shadows needed to be fixed too while I was at it.

After a fair bit of brainstorming I came up with this solution to the first problem. A 30 meter / 33 yard roll of polyester cord.

 
What I did was simply to cover the bar with the cord by winding it around to hide the ugliness of those black marks. It took a while and the way the ladder was leaning against the bar wasn’t super convenient…

 
… but in the end I was done and that itty bitty piece of cord was all there was left. I used the Super Attak glue at the end and also at regular intervals along the way to make the cord stay put.

  
I love how it looks. Clean, fresh and polyester! I considered a white paper string which I also bought a roll of but realized it would get dirty fast. The polyester I can at least wipe off if needed. 

 Necessity is the mother of invention. So true! And can you see I filled those ugly gaps at the back? Aaaah! May I say hats off to my new and improved bar?!

Fresh Coat Basement

After I won all that paint before Christmas it sort of turned into a marathon painting session all spring and summer. Here are some before and afters of our basement.

Staircase from above ~ Before

Staircase from above ~ After

Staircase from below ~ Before

Staircase from below ~ After

Door from garage into house ~ Before

 
Door from garage into house ~ After

And one more just because I’m so happy it’s no longer green ~ Yay!

 

So I was asked if I have any advice on painting stairs. Not really, it's just like painting any other wood in my book. Do plan an escape route though, mine was to leave through the garage after I was done painting and then to enter the house again from outside upstairs. If that's not an option for you you can paint every other step first so you can walk on the unpainted ones and then once the painted ones are dry you step on those and paint the rest.

 

As for the paint itself, I ended up choosing ordinary indoor oil based paint, the kind I used on all the trim and doors too. It's not a special floor paint but I used this the last time too and it held up well for over ten years. We don't wear shoes indoors though so if you do you will probably want a more hardwearing floor paint or maybe painting the stairs or floor for that matter isn't a great idea for you.

About the shoes indoor thing btw, do you wear shoes inside your home? To most of us Swedes it's very weird to do so. We take our shoes off after entering a house and walk around barefoot, in our socks or put slippers on. Personally I'm a slipper wearer. If you do wear shoes indoors, don't your floors get really dirty and scratched? I'm always amazed when I see photos of people wearing sneakers or even boots indoors. All I can think is that they must get very sweaty feet and wonder if there are separate indoors shoes and outdoor shoes and how they keep their carpet clean.