Decorating

A Tale In Which The Beans Triumph Over That Which Does Not Belong Inside Their House

/ Ally Bean / 241 Comments

Here’s a story, a snippet of life, that’s never happened here before. Please join me while I say a quiet prayer that it doesn’t happen again.

THE BEST WAY TO TELL this tale is to start by telling you that we have a new Oxo food strainer in the kitchen. There’s a reason for this purchase that I will share, BUT first I must explain what was going on at this house a few Saturday mornings ago.

To wit, if you happened to be driving by around 8:00 a.m. and noticed that Zen-Den in his plaid flannel pajama bottoms and white v-neck undershirt was running out the front door holding a food strainer at arm’s length in front of him, you might have been curious.

Further because you’re a person who pays attention you’d have noticed that he was barefoot as he darted through the front yard, making a hasty retreat to the back of the property where there is the big ole forest primeval.

A place where certain critters, alive or dead, belong.

Unlike the place inside our house where he and I found a certain live critter that did not belong.

• • •

YOU SEE WE FOUND a garden snake, about a foot long, slithering around the baseboards in our walk-in closet. I’m not a fan of snakes, albeit I understand they’re useful in the whole scheme of things and I’m cool with that as long as they are nowhere near me.

Or my clothes and shoes.

Particularly the idea of my shoes.

Which this snake may or may not have been in prior to being discovered.

At this point, my gentle readers and kind lurkers, you’re probably asking yourself two things: 1) HOW did this snake get into the house; and 2) WHAT did the Beans do about the situation.

I shall address these questions in the order asked.

• • •

HOW THIS HAPPENED: Because nothing goes smoothly for me, after about two years of dithering around and being indecisive about, we bought a new mattress: a Stearns & Foster Lux Estate with an adjustable base.

It is swanky and ever so comfortable.

However it’s heavy, thus requiring that the front door be open for a long time, many times, while the delivery men carefully carried the new mattress and then the frame into the house. Not to mention that the old mattress + box springs and its frame were taken out of the house through the same open front door.

We think that during the time the door was open, a garden snake who we’d seen living under a bush by the front door, decided to visit. It was hot and humid outside, cool and dark inside, so he decided to go on an adventure.

Which he did by sneaking into our house unnoticed.

Eventually making his way upstairs to our bedroom closet.

[I refuse to entertain the idea that the snake came in with the new mattress and frame. If that is so I’d be too freaked out to sleep on the new bed, so don’t even go there with that idea.]

• • •

WHAT WE DID: Upon discovering the snake in the closet the Beans, who you may remember are no strangers to unwanted critters inside their house, sprung into action. He went to the basement to get a wooden mallet out of his tool bucket while I went into the kitchen to get our food strainer.

His idea, smash it to smush. My idea, capture it in the strainer.

In the end we both prevailed.

Z-D was able to subdue the snake using the mallet to whack it on its head a few times. Then using the strainer I handed to him, he scooped up the probably dazed [but maybe dead] snake. He ran downstairs, out the front door, to the back of the property where he threw it into the woods.

Where I believe snakes belong.

• • •

OF COURSE ALL THAT’S LEFT to tell is the denouement of this tale.

Quite simply, once a snake, alive or dead, touches anything I use in the kitchen, that object is no longer welcome in my kitchen. Or as in this case anywhere inside the house.

Hence we tossed the old food strainer into the recycling bin and promptly bought its replacement.

Lending credence to the wisdom implied in the saying: out with the old, in with the new. 

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

✅ What is the last largest purchase you made? What is the last smallest purchase you made? Was there a correlation between the two?

✅ When looking for a new mattress which of these variables have been or will be the most important to you:

  • price
  • comfort
  • brand name
  • immediate availability
  • free delivery of new mattress
  • free removal of old mattress
  • current frame will work
  • existing sheets will fit
  • warranty
  • other

✅ Had any unwanted guests lately? If so, how did you get them to leave? Was there DRAMA?

~ ~ • ~ ~

Repurposing Can Spark Joy: My *New* Standing Desk + 3 Nosy Blogging Questions For You

/ Ally Bean / 258 Comments

With a hat tip to Marie Kondo who probably wouldn’t approve of my approach to clutter but would be kind about not saying so, this post goes out to procrastinators and frugalistas everywhere.

~ ~ ❣️ ~ ~

Last week when I said nothing was going on here, I lied. In fact the story was staring me straight in the face, but I didn’t see it at the time.

You see, and the photos below will confirm, the story is that I’ve created a new better version of my homemade standing desk. The one on which my computer, Keyzia, sits while I write my posts.

In an effort to make my back love me again in the fall of 2022 I gave up sitting at a desk and thus began my quest to figure out a way to make my favorite current desk, a sturdy Pottery Barn number, into a modern-ish standing desk.

Granted I could buy an official real deal standing desk but I am frugal. And creative. And never sure how much longer I’ll be writing this blog, meaning that at some point I’ll no longer need a standing desk so why spend the money?

I got the idea for what you’ll see below from an Ikea hack website where someone had bought a small Ikea bench that they put on top of their Ikea desk to create a standing desk.

That is practical and cute as can be, thought I.

Then in a flash of money-saving insight I realized two things:

  1. We had a wooden bench [from Ballard Design] sitting in the garage waiting for me to get around to phoning St. Vincent de Paul for pickup [with other furniture of course];  and
  2. I’d kept that wooden bench stored in the basement for years, even though it never sparked joy within me, because it was sturdy and I bought it at the outlet store for a decent price.

Therefore instead of buying anything new, like from Ikea, I used what we already had here, repurposing the Ballard Design wooden bench by placing it on the sturdy Pottery Barn desk to make the perfect riser for my sweet Keyzia.

Thus Keyzia no longer rocks down to Electric Avenue while sitting precariously on a pile of World Book Encyclopedias covered in a tablecloth. We’re both happy about this improvement.

~ ~ • ~ ~

BEFORE: my messy desk-type situation

~ • ~

BEFORE: close up of where Keyzia sat

~ • ~

BEFORE: the stack of World Books hidden under the tablecloth

~ • ~

AFTER: a wooden bench soon to be turned into a standing desk component

~ • ~

AFTER: bench on top of desk elevating Keyzia to a comfortable height

~ • ~

AFTER: a standing desk with a tidy desktop because baskets sitting on lower shelf of bench encourage me to put my paper notes in one place

~ ~ • ~ ~

3 NOSY BLOGGING QUESTIONS

When it comes to writing blog posts do you use a desktop computer like I do? OR, more likely, do you use a laptop or a tablet or a phone? OR, quite possibly, a combination of all of the aforementioned?

When you’re at home working on your blog where do you write? Like at a desk? At a table? Plopped down on a comfy chair or bed? Standing at the kitchen counter? Other spot?

Thinking ahead, how much longer will you be writing your current blog? When you end it will you walk away from blogging entirely OR start a new blog, maybe on a different platform?

~ ~ ❣️ ~ ~

A Thursday Thirteen List: Stuff & Things I’m Waiting For, Late Winter Edition

/ Ally Bean / 256 Comments

Carpe diem? If only…

1. the kitchen table is in need of repainting [the pedestal part] and refinishing [the top part]. waiting for a bunch of sunny days in a row to do that.

2. an old diary written by my great-grandfather sits in a box in a closet in a spare bedroom. waiting to have the time to approach the historical society about it, hoping to donate it [and a bit more of his stuff] to them.

3. the last birch tree in the front yard has died and needs to be removed, stump included. waiting for dryer weather so the tree company can do that.

4. my desk is piled high with books, papers, stuff plus my normal pens, pencils, notepads. waiting for the muse of organization to move me to sort through the mess so I might feel less scattered.

5. the railing on the stairs between the first and second floors needs to be repainted. waiting for the gumption to do this tedious project whilst trying to decide which color to paint it this time.

6. the granite counters in the kitchen and laundry room are due for their annual sealing. waiting for a convenient time when we won’t need to use the kitchen for a few days to do that.

7. a few restaurant gift cards for places with lovely outdoor patios are taking up space in my wallet. waiting for the weather to get clear and warm, like into the 70s, so we can dine al fresco.

8. the posts that support the deck are going to be encased in the same Trex fascia that we used when we had the deck built. waiting for the product to come in and the exterior home improvement company to have the time to install it.

9. many old mirrors + framed art are sitting in the basement ready to go to Goodwill. waiting for the local donation center to reopen after its renovation is finished mid-March.

10. the husband is not really as unemployed as one might think he’d be after retiring. waiting until he gets his side hustles up and running to his satisfaction so that we might talk about going on vacation.

11. an ancient laptop sits uncharged in a guest bedroom that I hope to turn into my exercise | meditation | reading room. waiting to figure out the lighting in that room so that I can see the screen and start doing yoga daily in my own space.

12. our lumpy bed needs to be replaced. waiting to do a deep dive into information about and the expense involved in buying a new bed: mattress & frame + pillows & linens.

13. many paperback books that we read years ago are in need of being re-homed. waiting for sunny days so we can go for walks in city/county parks with little free libraries where I plan on leaving the aforementioned books, one at a time.

• 🤎 •

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

[Also any words of wisdom about any of my Thursday Thirteen items?]

• 🤎 •

A Bedroom Transformed: Goodbye Ceiling Fan, Hello Chandelier

/ Ally Bean / 150 Comments

THE CHIT CHAT PART

I enjoy looking at shelter magazines and interior design websites and home decorating projects on IG.  When I began to notice photos of bedrooms with chandeliers, instead of ceiling fans or ceiling lights, my curiosity was piqued.

Why, you ask?

Welp, after 20 years of looking up at a large white dusty boring ceiling fan in our bedroom, I was ready for a change.  I never liked using the thing, especially at night when rotating fan blades above my sleeping head worried me.

Made me fretful, they did.

So I decided that we’d replace our dodgy old ceiling fan with a pretty, useful chandelier that’d hang from the spot where the ceiling fan had been.  Here are a few things we learned along the way with this DIY project.

THE INFORMATION PART

√ A rule of thumb about the width of the chandelier: add the length of your room [in feet] to the width of your room [in feet], then use that number in inches to determine the size you need.

For example our bedroom is 17′ x 13′ so I added 17 + 13, which meant that we needed a chandelier around 30″ wide.

√ The chandelier we picked was 26″ wide, smaller than recommended, but for a good reason.  Keep reading.

√ We have a sloped ceiling in our bedroom.  We had to choose a light fixture that was sloped ceiling adaptable.  Not all light fixtures are.

√ A rule of thumb about how far down a chandelier should hang: the chandelier should be between 8′ to 9′ off the floor.  This is accomplished by allowing the light fixture to hang from a chain from the ceiling.

√  The trick here is that depending on the slope of your ceiling and the height of the chandelier, you have to allow for enough space above the top of the chandelier for it to hang down on a chain.

In our case because of where the junction box was in the ceiling we couldn’t have a chandelier that was taller than 25″ because there wouldn’t be any space for it to hang down from the ceiling.

√ Thus we picked a chandelier whose height allowed it to hang down from the junction box in the sloped ceiling, even though it meant that the width of the chandelier was a bit too small according to the rule of thumb.

In other words, we thumbed our noses at the rule of thumb.

THE GOOFY PART

As is the way with any home improvement project we tackle, there was a problem.  One of the globes for the chandelier arrived broken.  Thus we had to email the company and wait for a replacement globe, crossing our fingers that it’d be the same color as the other four.

It came within days, was the right color, and looks perfectly at home with the other shades so all is good.

However, keeping in mind that I can be a silly person, while waiting for the shade to arrive, whenever I walked into the bedroom I began singing the following lyrics to the tune of One Toke Over The Line:

One bulb over my head, sweet Jesus
One bulb over my head
Sittin’ down here on the bed I sees it
One bulb over my head.  

Awaitin’ for the shade that goes on, sweet Mary
Hopin’ that the shade is delivered on time
Sittin’ down here on the bed I sees it
One bulb over my head.

THE END