More Like My Home

Last night I had a few minutes so I hung up some picture frames in my room. It looks more like a finished room with my stuff up on the walls, so I'm really happy about that.

The wall by the door has a certificate that I received when I was initiated into my Fraternity and a cross that I got for my confirmation. It hangs a little crookedly, so I threw another nail inside the little dove to keep it level.There's a little wall next to my nightstand, made from where the closet sticks out a couple feet into the room, that you can't see from the room's doorway. I decided that would be a good place to hang the stuff that doesn't match anything but I still wanted to hang up. I have my medal and bib number from the half marathon I ran in May. Hopefully seeing it everyday will keep me motivated as I train for the full marathon this May! The plaque I received this past May as well. It recognized me as the 2006 NDSU Greek man of the year. I need to stay motivated this year since I took on a pretty big role on the Interfraternity Council, so seeing this everyday should help.
The big wall next to the bed turned out to be the perfect place to display my composites. For those of you who don't know much about Greek Life, a composite is a display of all of the members' pictures. A new one is printed each year, and I have three of them. I haven't put the most recent one in the frame yet. The redish one is from AGD Sorority who I was the sweetheart of in 2006. They gave me a copy of their composite so I put it in with the rest. The new blinds are from the elegant Walmart Mainstays collection. $4.Here's my mugshot from 2006, just to give you an example. Yes I blocked out my last name... stalkers! Below everyone's picture is the job title or position they held in the chapter. Eminent Commander is just our fancy name for President.
On the wall with the dresser I hung up a pencil drawing I did two years ago for one of my first art classes at NDSU. It's a copy of Vermeer's 'A Woman Weighing Pearls'. The dresser will be a few inches higher when I get around to painting the bun feet black and putting them on the bottom. Somehow they got separated from the dresser a while back. The boxes to the left need to be taken out. One of the boxes is completely packed with old clothes I have to donate. I organized my closet and there just isn't enough room to hold on to the old clothes I wouldn't wear out of the house anymore. I still have one load of laundry that I'll need to squeeze in, but just look at how great and ORGANIZED this closet looks! I need to hunt down my tie rack and put a shelf up over the hanging rod, but other than that everything looks pretty good. See?

Today's Special: Quick Projects.

Today was pretty productive considering how little time I had to be messing around with the house. After staying my first night in my bedroom (as opposed to the living room for the last 2 months) I went to my first class... a difficult feat for this sleeper-inner. Afterwards, I came home for a couple work hours before my second class.

During that two hour span I changed out the light fixture in my bedroom and replaced the lightswitch. The lightswitch was dirty and yellowed, so I replaced it with a nice new white one that looks ten times better with the crisp white trim and coverplates. The fixture that was hanging in the room was pretty small and generic; it looked like this:



I decided that I would prefer something more like this:The old one is still in usable condition so I'll donate it to the ReStore this week. I'm actually pretty excited about that because most of the things I've removed from the house are in such terrible condition that nobody could use them.
This little quick task also had one bonus; I know which breaker turns off the second floor now! It only took about four tries, but I got it! Is it weird that the whole second floor is on one breaker? I guess I don't know too much about electrical systems, but I think that's kind of unusual.

After my second class, but before my dinner engagement at 5:30pm I removed the thick plastic covering the exterior of a couple windows. This was found on the north window in the dining room, the window on the stairway landing, and the little window to the right of the fireplace. I'm sure the reason it was on the windows was because the storm windows leak cold air like crazy in the winter, so I removed them so I can re-glaze and repaint them before it gets too cold out.

I'm gunna bust out the 'flame thrower' tomorrow and take 'em down to bare wood and pull out the old glazing compound so I can redo the glazing after work tomorrow night. That's of course if I can hold off on firing up that heat gun that I love! Here are the two from the fireplace wall. When finished they'll be the new trim color, so I couldn't just do the bad one, they wouldn't match and I'd freak out. Anyhoo, here they are (can you spot the rot?):
THEN, after I finished supper I came back and installed a storm window I salvaged off a demolished house onto the window on the landing. I finished that before my 7:00 meeting! Woo hoo! Now you can actually see out of the window, whereas before the plastic was so thick all you could see was a blur. You can kind of make out the stained glass landing window of the neighboring house/apartment conversion. (which should be restored... another story altogether)Upon further thought, I think I might just start stripping paint tonight. Is it weird that I love it so much? I'm such a loser!