Bathroom Cabinet
First up, we have the bathroom cabinet, a cheap little guy that I bought at Home Depot for $50. I don't think he'll last more than 3 years, but that's fine... anything sturdier would have been too heavy for me to install myself. The whole process took way too long, I think. It all started when I removed the old cabinet (or should I say had the landlord's husband pull it off the wall). A ghastly mark was left behind. Long story short, I spackled and painted, but wasn't pleased with the result (sanding the spackle had left obvious sanding marks and a porous surface). I think the intention for a lot of this spackling stuff is to just spread it on as smooth as possible and sand the edges... but it was very difficult for me to get a smooth layer down that was also thick enough to cover the obvious seam where the old cabinet's edge had been. Ugh. So I ended up starting over; respackling and then repainting. I had just enough paint (given to me by my landlord) to finish without the wall looking too bad. Another couple coats would have been great, but that's what I get for wasting paint with another try! Then I hackily measured where the holes in the wall/cabinet were supposed to go, and by holes, I mean big honkin' holes, because they had to be drilled for toggle bolts. Here's the spackled/painted wall with the holes drilled. Don't even ask how I centered the holes (*cough* taped string to the wall *cough*). Thank god I didn't drill into any electrical wiring (I checked using a stud finder, but the damn thing was practically ineffective).
Wow, that picture sure took up a lot of room. Anyway, it was a miracle that I was able to drill holes in both the cabinet and the wall and actually get them to line up. One trick that I used for marking hole locations was to "pin" the cabinet to the wall with a drill bit through an existing hole and then swivel it around until it was level... and then mark the other holes. Gah. As for the toggle bolts, I didn't quite... use them correctly... heh. You're supposed to jam the little toggle parts all the way through the wall and then tighten the screws into them, but I wasn't strong enough to hold the cabinet while also jamming the 4 toggles simultaneously through. So I'm pretty sure the cabinet is fastened to the wall by toggle bolts that have not toggled all the way out on the other side of the drywall, but are rather just jammed inside the drilled holes, still collapsed. But it's okay; I also used 2 straight screws and the cabinet is pretty light. I just wouldn't recommend grabbing onto it and swinging from it. Anyway, here he is! I had many more pictures of the whole drilling and mounting process, but I'm pretty sure no one really wants to see those (not even me).
Towel Shelf
The next project to highlight is a "towel shelf" that I mounted above the toilet. This guy came from Urban Outfitters (:|) and definitely makes up for the cheapo appearance of the medicine cabinet. Actually, I'm really glad both of them are hanging in the bathroom, since they cover up my terrible spackle/paint job perfectly. Do ho ho. Anyway, here's what the spot above the toilet used to look like (with that janky-ass plastic shelf). There are other parts of the bathroom in the picture too, including a spot on the wall where a towel rack used to be, until it randomly fell off (I guess a towel is just too heavy for some towel racks).
Spackling and painting over the holes from the old shelf was a breeze compared to spackling over the medicine cabinet area, so I didn't need to redo the job like 5 billion times to get it to look okay. Marking and drilling the holes was also pretty straight forward, except for the part when I drilled holes in the back of the towel shelf that I couldn't actually reach from the front side. No worries, I just re-drilled. Yes, the whole thing had holes all over the back of it; each hole an indication of how much I suck at this kind of stuff. But enough about holes; here's the result! That Hope Science Vet box is for my cats... not for me. :|
Honeycomb Light
This guy is probably my favorite so far. Installation was easy; I just drilled a hole in the livingroom ceiling and used an anchored ceiling hook. Then I used adhesive hooks to keep the cord clipped to the wall. There's really nothing more to say. XD
Tibetan Prayer Flags
I always thought Tibetan prayer flags were hella cool, so I decided to hang some in my kitchen (by just nailing the end flags to the doorway molding). Funny story is that a couple weeks later, I looked up and saw one of the end flags had a big chunk missing from it... this reminds me of how everything I buy/assemble will potentially be destroyed by my cats. It has happened before and will continue to happen (may the scratches on all my wooden furniture be a testament to that). Here are the flags from an angle where you can't see the missing chunk. ;-)
Those are all the projects I've been meaning to post about. I've assembled a couple other things in the bedroom, but I haven't taken any pictures (and I'm not sure if I will or not). Documenting these things was pretty fun at first, but downloading and cropping the pictures, as well as telling all about the process, has become kind of... I dunno, tedious I suppose. I'm still going to keep adding to my apartment to make it more like home, but I probably won't post about it (unless it's something really cool or something that was a real pain in the butt). I guess I've just fallen out of the whole "OH LOOK AT ME DOING HOME IMPROVEMENT STUFF" phase. If I can speak honestly here, I think that... no matter how much I add to my apartment or how much I clean it... it's still not going to be as beautiful or impressive as other peoples'. So yeah... Why don't I just post about some other stuff. :X
