Toxic Thoughts

Magnets...

2010-07-24T13:22:00.004-05:00

When I travel I tend to buy magnets as souvenirs. they are light and inexpensive and easily found in airports. I used to just stick them on the fridge, but on a recent trip to europe decided they deserved a more special display so I decided to paint my backsplash behind my sink with magnet paint and use that as a new display area.

I love how it turned out!

The House...thus far...

2010-03-27T11:55:00.002-05:00

I directed someone to my blog to show them my ikea kitchen and realized i never posted the finished product.

Here is a slide show of the house that I put together before the big birthousewarmoliday party i had in December. I'm happy with how it all turned out and do look forward to the next decorating project, but i'm taking a break from making it pretty to improving it's structure. next up, a new roof. fun.

I need help.

2009-11-04T20:09:00.003-05:00

I still can't figure out what to do with my entry way. I moved the shoe cabinet to between the tall cabinets and am thinking just a big sculpture of some sort on top. or i could put hooks across the top for hanging coats/bags. but then i thought i would get a cool coat rack for the other side of the door.

i need to decide if i'm keeping those book shelves there because if so i need to remove the baseboard so it can be pushed back closer to the wall...

ugh.

The almost finished kitchen...

2009-10-11T18:27:00.005-05:00

Believe it or not, it's almost done! There is some paint touch up to be done and I need to buy extra large outlet covers. Also left is the toe kick. But as you can see, there are two glaring items missing...the cabinets for my dishes. Ikea claims it now makes the horizontal cabinets compatible with the glass/aluminum framed doors, but it seems that although they advertise them, they aren't actually making them. or are making them, but they are not available in every market. or possibly any market. depends who you talk to. any who, for now the dishes live on the counters.

So, here are some pictures...

Still a bit left to go, but it's a functional space now, and i'm quite pleased about that!

it's so nice, i did it twice...

2009-08-06T19:20:00.003-05:00

or, why good plans go awry.

i decided to hang three rows of 15" horizontal wall cabinets on my sink wall. i also decided to hang the top one at ceiling height. i don't know what sort of funky math i was doing because i got two rows up and realized that the bottom of the bottom cabinet was going to be 29" off the countertops. normal height is around 18". this is too high, even for tallish me.

so, i had to remove the installed cabinets, move the hanging rail down, and reinstall the cabinets. not a huge deal, just some time i wasn't planning on spending.

BUT, now i see a bigger problem....can you see it too?

gaaah!

Oh the decisions????

2009-08-01T09:20:00.010-05:00

I though I was done with decisions. I picked out floors, doors, countertops, paint colors, door pulls, a sink, a faucet, splash back tile, appliances...everything was decided!

Then Ikea came out with this:

I am in love. i am now obsessed with having those beautiful shiny grey doors on my base cabinets. the upper cabinets will stay birch, and i'd have birch accents on the bottom (mainly the exposed cabinet sides).

The problem is two fold...price, those gray doors cost twice as much as the birch and design, i'm worried that the grays wont' all match. i've ordered up a sample door to see if it goes with the floor, which is already installed and unchangeable at this point. I'm also settled on the backsplash and need to find something that works with it.

So, what's the problem? countertops. i had picked out gray countertops, but now i fear it will be too many different grays. so, I have four choices in front of me and i'm open to other suggestions...

The current options are:

A)
B)C)
D)

So, what would you do?

Cabinet installation has begun!

2009-07-20T19:26:00.004-05:00

It was a slow start. It took three (maybe four) trips to lowes and home depot to finally have all the right hanging bar attachment hardware. But I have 5 (of 11) upper cabinets installed! The others should go easily since there are actually wood studs in the other wall.

As you can see, I painted the kitchen prior to beginning cabinet installation.

I just hope they stay up!

Before the cabinets went up:

and...after...

This is where the rest of the wall cabinets will go:

and you can see a bit of the ceiling, which is a lighter blue....just like the outside wall...

Guest Bedroom!

2009-07-03T12:49:00.004-05:00

So, I'm getting guests (in about 3 hours) so I had to clean out the guest room and make it guest worthy. I'm pleased with how it looks. I'll need to add artwork and such, but I think it's a nice place for people to place their head while visiting Philly!

note to guests: for your own safety, do not open the closet!

Stuff.

2009-04-25T13:59:00.004-05:00

i have a lot of it. the movers unloaded three Door to Door storage units in 2 hours. My dining table made it unharmed and looks TEENY in my new dining room! It seemed so big in the last house. By the way, i highly recommend door to door. the three units held my entire 3 bedroom house worth of stuff easily, storage was about $200 a month and when i was ready for it they brought it to my house in philly (from baltimore) for about $1500. Add in the $200 bucks i paid on each end for people to load and unload and it feels like a steal of a move (i hadn't planned on 7 months of storage, that part hurt).

so, my furniture is in and now i have to try to make it fit into my house. i bought a lovely new entertainment center right before i moved....never even installed it and there's no place for it in the new digs. ugh.

so, here's the current dilemna...

see that, that is my couch being too big.

since it is too big it doesn't quite fit in this layout, there is a gap behind the couch, not a huge deal really, but annoying:

so, i thought maybe I'd try something funky and move the couch to the middle of the room...., of course i didn't get a good picture of where it was positioned in the room, but here's the layout:

These pictures shows the rest of the room:

Right now the tv connection is on that wall where the tv stand lives so i have ot lave the TV there. i would have it moved and flip the room around, but i don't want to put the couch over the big 'ole vent.

the rabbit cage, which is admittedly unattractive will probably go in that corner where the paint cans currently live. that windowsill is nice and deep and I'd love to have it set up so the bunnies can hang out on it if they want...

so, that's the space, any brilliant ideas on how to arrange my furniture?

More floors...

2009-04-09T20:38:00.006-05:00

and i fear i dont' like them! in theory i liked the idea of the beveled edges. more realistic, right? but the actual boards on the selected floors are rather short and it doesn't help that my mostly fabulous but right now not making me happy contractor laid them in this sort of brick pattern.

first, some wide shots of the floor...looks pretty nice, i'm happy with the light color.
.

But then you look closer and see this:

See what i mean about the "Brick" pattern?

Oh well, guess i best learn to live with it, because it's done now!

Floors!!!!

2009-04-07T20:39:00.004-05:00

Renovating is dirty...

2009-04-05T16:29:00.008-05:00

and not in a good way.

So, progress is made daily. the kitchen and laundry room tile was installed, but i did not get a picture of it before spackling began. this is what it looks like now:

the grout was supposed to be dark gray, and obviously did not turn out that way. so once the spackling mess is cleaned up, i'll be dying the grout lines.

the walls are quite spackled now. but everything else is just DIRTY. here are some pictures to show just how dirty..

in other news, my floors spent a week in Baltimore. the shipping company repeatedly tried to deliver them to a random house in elkridge, MD. this would be great, except i dont' live in elkridge maryland! they finally made it though and are now stacked in the middle of the disaster awaiting installation..

in other renovation news, the upstairs isn't being completely ignored. the "second guest" room has this lovely popcorn wall which also contains glitter. yes, that is right, a glittery popcorn wall!

it seemed obvious that the only color choice to go with a glittery wall was pink! the ultimate little girl princess room! yes, i'm 34. so what? i can still love an ultimate little girl princess room! so, pink it is! think pepto. it's only two walls and one wall has 2 doors and the other 2 windows, but it still very very pink.

and apparently if you are going to have a pepto pink room, you have to offset it with a baby blue room. it wasn't supposed to be quite so baby blue. i am planning on doing a metallic top coat, so that should tone down the baby blueness.

A bit of advice to anyone who is planning on living in their house during renovations.

don't.

And more changes...

2009-03-15T13:45:00.002-05:00

Let's see...the second choice ceiling fan has been discontinued, so it is on to third choice:

in further kitchen lighting news, i've decided on gimbal style recessed lights with a brushed nickel trim.

And the cheap floor...also discontinued, so it's on to even cheaper floor....
In progress news, I have walls again! I also found a slightly dented laundry tub and a slightly busted base cabinet at ikea as-is for over half off the price of buying them new. the busted part of the cabinet is easily hid. i'm going to try to pound out the sink dent, but if i can't, it's a laundry tub...so what if it is a bit dented, it was cheap!

here are pictures of the newly walled house:

Design changes...

2009-03-01T15:16:00.003-05:00

So, I was going to install the same flooring throughout the house (with the exception of one bedroom which already has laminate) because the website where I found what I like has a minimum order. Today I found a website which sells the same floor in smaller quantities. I think I'm going to go with a cheaper floor upstair (probably Ikea laminate) like this (or a similar basic laminate from another big box store):

This will match what is already in the one room and, more importantly, free up a bit of cash for this bit of gorgeousness. This will be just a bit of back splash for the range wall. I've decided on teal for paint. a lighter color on the ceiling and outside walls, with a darker more intense color for the back splash areas of the other walls with cabinets.

The ceiling fan I had picked out got REALLY bad reviews. So now i'm thinking of this one:

I'll have to make the blades match the room better, either by covering them with a wood grain laminate that matches the cabinets or, more likely, painting them a dark gray color.

I need to decide if I want to do the same cabinets and countertop in the laundry area. I'm considering changing it up a bit and doing black doors with birch countertops.

Another day....more destruction!

2009-02-26T20:04:00.005-05:00

So, today was relatively stress free, though every time my contractor calls i hear "$KACHING$ instead of my regular (buffy the vampire slayer theme song) ring.

so, today the wall started to come down! and then there was this problem of a vent. stupid stupid vents!

BUT, contractor said vent moving should be doable, so i think more of the wall can come down tomorrow. here's a picture of the new view from the living room and the stupid vent.

The other big progress today was the movement of the door to the basement. well, the new hole, the current door is still in place and the new door is not yet installed...

Things are going pretty fast. I need to order my floors and start preparing for my job of the entire process..the kitchen install!

Demolition is underway!

2009-02-25T22:56:00.014-05:00

Demolition is very exciting, and very terrifying. My budget is tight, so I don't have a lot of room for unexpected surprises. So, naturally, on day 1, there were some not-completely unexpected, but still a problem, surprises. So, we'll start here:

This used to be the kitchen. It will eventually become the dining room.

Here is the first problem. See the exposed brick? that was supposed to be the new location for the basement door. However, see the big steel beam in the second picture? that is holding up my second floor. Now see the curvy duct thing. that meant problems too. Bottom line, to add the additional doorway would have involved high level engineering and much much money that I don't have.

So, what now? I still need a basement door and it's current location is inconvenient if i want, oh anything, in my kitchen. So i will be moving it around the corner from it's current spot.

Here's just a general shots of the rest of the room:

So, since i can't put the door where planned, i had to completely redo the kitchen layout. in one night. The contractor wants to run the new water and electrical tomorrow, so I needed to decide where to put everything.

So, here's the new plan.

An overhead shot-

And some 3D images:

I'm excited (and scared) to see what tomorrow will bring!

The Bathroom....

2008-12-28T16:06:00.002-05:00

The bathroom was the one room that had been renovated before I bought the house. I may have bought the house for the jet tub. All I did was paint it, add a new shower and window curtain and change out the cabinet hardware and it's done!

The room is long and narrow and thus hard to photograph, but here it is. The color is a bit darker than it shows on film. I call it "grape bubble yum" purple.

The plans....

2008-12-28T11:37:00.002-05:00

So, I have a new-to-me house, now I have to make it into my home. I've been "living" in it for 5 months. I have a bed, a tv, and some kitchen supplies. I decided to not move in my furniture until new floors are in, but I didn't expect it to take this long to get the loan I need to make that happen. Hopefully I'll have the money soon and can start the work.

So, here are the plans. Downstairs I will have all the walls re-rocked. Right now they have horrible texture in teh living and dining rooms and the soon-to-be kitchen/laundry area have painted paneling. i'm also going ot have that horrible weird arch between the living and dining rooms squared off.

The floors throughout will be replaced. The bedrooms (except 1, which already has laminate flooring), hallway, living and dining rooms will be done in this:

The kitchen and laundry area will be tiled. This is the tile, though it looks more grey in real life:

Here is the layout for the laundry/kitchen area. It involves removing the wall between the dining room and the soon-to-be kitchen. Also, the door to the basement will be relocated to the laundry area.

The cabinet doors will be slab front birch with glass cabinets on the bottom row over the sink.

The gap you see in the base cabinets will be filled with one of these:

I will also get new appliances. They will be all black. I think the black will look great with the very light cabinets. I loved the fridge I got for the last place, so I'll do the same one again. I haven't chosen a range or dishwasher yet. Hopefully I'll find a great deal at Sear's "pre-dented".

This is the fridge:

I also really liked the countertops I put in the last place, but i'm not set on them. Ikea has a "concrete look" laminate that is also nice, though I can't find a picture. And then I also found this bubbly look formica that is pretty cool.

So, either this:
Or this:There are of course a billion other little details to figure out, but that's the plan so far!

The New Dump, um, er, House

2008-12-27T19:50:00.005-05:00

I did it! I bought another house. It's a dump, but I have big plans which I will be sharing over time. For now I wanted to show everyone the "before" pictures so I can have a record of all the wonderful changes.

I don't have outside pictures, I'll have to take them tomorrow!

The finished kitchen...

2008-09-15T18:32:00.002-05:00

You may all be surprised to learn, I did finish the kitchen. The thing is, almost as soon as it was finished the house went on the market. I accepted a job in Philly and had to sell the B'more house.

But, everyone deserves to see the final product (and the rest of my house)...

Can you spot the problem?

2007-08-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

My countertops were delivered today! How exciting.

Can you see the problem i'm having?

Oh handles....

2007-06-29T20:04:00.001-05:00

I bought handles.

I installed handles.

I'm not sure I like the handles.

Crap.

I may have a working kitchen again...someday...

2007-06-24T19:42:00.000-05:00

I have been working on the kitchen, but progress has been slow. I had a big project at work, but i finished that and the past few weeks have been all kitchen all the time!

I have cabinets up! the kitchen is s smal it's hard to take picturses, but here's what's up...

first i installed the "Beverage center". it has two stacked cabinets with lift from doors. the bottom cabinet will hold glassware, the top, liquor. it is flanked by two narrow cabinets with places for wine and other bar essentials.

I also installed the wall cabinets on the other wall. This sink will be centered below the raised cabinet...

and here's the fridge, in it's final resting place.

This week i hope to finish the install of the dishwasher so that i can order countertops. I also need to buy a sink, which is proving to be much more difficult that i imagined.

What a difference a day (and $700) can make!

2007-04-29T19:26:00.000-05:00

wow! it was a budget buster, but my decision to hire someone to completely remove my floor the joists and reinstall new subfloor was the right one.

they arrived at nine and by 11 had the floor up. by 1, the room looked like this:

Next they showed me how to install the floor, and since i ordered pizza and they were waiting for it to arrive, helped me install most of it and hooked up my stove!

I was going to finish the floor but decided to install a new light switch first. unfortunately it got dark and i have something wired wrong because, um, the light won't turn on.

I was looking to put a wall sconce above the stove simply because there are wires there, but yesterday at ikea i saw, and bought this light...

wow, i have a stove again! i can cook! there is an end in sight!

When good floors go bad....

2007-04-25T18:40:00.000-05:00

Or.....

Aw, CRAP!

I was pulling up the floor and all was going well. Two layers of flooring coming up rather easily and leaving this behind...

looks nice, ey? so then a top layer of whatever the subfloor is made of started to come up, but it was still pretty easy to handle...

and then...i got to the sink area. apparently there is a bunch of water damage and suddenly i have from what seems to be a brazillion layers coming up. okay, at least feight....

1. wood subflooring of some sort
2. unidentifiable floor tile
3. another unidentifiable floor tile.
4. some black layer of something that has been nailed to the floor.
5. a layer of sheet flooring
6. another layer of subflooring, stapled down
7. sheet flooring
8. vinyl tile.

This doesn't even begin to truly capture the horror.

So now what? I'm either going to keep going and see if i can define "edges" to this disaster and then lay plywood subfloor to make it all level again, or, call someone and have them deal with this mess, budget be damned.

AURGH!

I'm just like my mother....

2007-04-17T19:57:00.000-05:00

My mother cleans for the cleaning lady and is always appalled by the state of her (always pretty immaculate) house.

I painted the kitchen months ago but have been putting off taking pictures because i thought i should clean up first. Tonight i realized that's rediculous. I'm renovating for crying out loud. It's a disaster!

So, its green. really really green.
See, green. Notice, i'm not painting any place that will have cabinets. I'm not taking down the wall paper either. Future owners be warned!

I installed the light fixture. The arms are currently taped to the ceiling because i don't want to screw it in place until the cabinets are installed so i can adjust the arms perfectly...

I've been working on the floor. it is alternatively difficut to pull up and really easy. it's easy when the top layer of subfloor pulls up with the floor. for the more difficult parts i've broken down and bought the heavy duty chemicas to eat through the glue. I'm hoping to get it done by the weekend but it may not happen. it's taken about four days to do this much....

I'm multitalented...

2007-04-08T08:39:00.000-05:00

So, in the middle of the kitchen work i decided i needed a new porch light. Found one i liked on sale and installed it last weekend. doesn't it look pretty?

I also made some kitchen progress. I finished moving around electrical. It may not look like much, but i needed electrical access higher on this wall for the future appliance garage. the wall is cinderblock so I had to run the wires using plugmold on the outside of the wall.

These two outlets were just moved. there used to be an outlet high on the wall and i dropped it ot the floor so the fridge can eventually be plugged in. The other outlet was just dropped by about 6" so that it would line up with the light switch on the same wall.

And finally, i took down the big flourescent light box. i was a bit scared of what i would find underneat, but the ceiling was in fine shape and the wires were even in a ceiling box!

This the light i will install, it is bendable so i can adust the angles:

I also primed the walls and then painted yesterday. Pictures of the painted kitchen to follow!

Do I really need a kitchen?

2007-03-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

Because, kitchen remodeling is apparently not for the lazy. It's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks and I've made very little kitchen progress. here are some pictures I took two weeks ago to show what the mostly demolished kitchen looks like....

Taking down the wallpaper has just about killed me. I think the PO (previous owner) used gorilla glue to put it up. Removing the paper left this yellow haze of glue on the walls that only comes off using scouring pads and a whole lot of elbow grease. I think I finally have the majority of it off though and I hope to paint this weekend.

Also on the agenda for the weekend is removal of the light. I don't have a picture of it but it's one of those industrial light box things. it's hideous and dirty and gross. I'm a bit terrified of what may be underneath it. I'm scared I'm going to take it down and discover a huge hole in my ceiling.

Okay, so what's the final product going to look like? Well, here's the plan:

And here's all the bits and pieces...

The cabinets:

Backsplash behind the stove:

Countertops:

Floors:

shelving above stove:

And this is what happens when you ignore the dog because you are busy in the kitchen...check out his belly, he had a so much fun!

Because I'm insane...

2007-03-17T14:20:00.000-05:00

I decided to renovate my kitchen. I started the process months ago and decided I shoud blog about it to keep a record of what I've done and how long it takes...

So, I'll start today with before pictures. This was my kitchen...

It's a teaser, I need to upload the pictures i took today and i'll be back with more fun details!

Oh! I do so hope!

2006-08-03T21:16:00.000-05:00

What a lovely way to die!

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Bra Eaters...

2006-07-31T19:52:00.000-05:00

i have two adorable pooches. Toxilabmix (aka, Bastian) is a wonderful pet. very well behaved and loving, as long as you are me. if you arent' me, he will very likely bite you. unfortunately i'm not joking. here's a picture, doesn't he look ferocious?

Then there is toxipittmix, aka Jewel. she's a total cupcake. a lovebug. likes nothing more than to be right on top of whomever is in the room. however, if you are a small dog, stay away. of course, she is a pittbull mix and is therefore very very dangerous and should be feared. doesn't she make you want to pass breed legislation?

i love my dogs. i really do. they bring me a lot of joy and many laughs. but jewel eats my clothing. she seems to especially love bras and things with straps. i've gotten better about not leaving things about where she may find them, but occasionally i slip. she's most infamous for eating a brand new beautiful purple bra. i was devastated because i never even got to wear it! she actually dug it out of the plastic shopping bag to eat it.

so i was out of town this weekend and got home late last night. this morning i dumped the contents of my backpack on my bed and forgot about it. i should
have known something was up when toxipitt was leaving me alone during my dinner. she wasn't sitting on my feet with her head in my lap watching every bite that went into my mouth. now i know why. those are two new tank tops. i've worn them once. i guess i should be happy i got to wear them once and that they were very much on sale when i bought them. notice the wet drooly look of the green tank. i HATE THAT DAMN DOG!

i should admit that i assume it was jewel. it could have been bastian, but that is doubtful. if i had one of those handy-dandy DNA-instomatics like they have on CSI i could use the slobber all over the destroyed top to provide irrefutable evidence, but since such an instrument doesn't actually exist i'll have to be content to convict jewel via circumstantial evidence only.

So, just who is Toxigal?

2006-07-29T19:29:00.000-05:00

it is always polite to start with introductions. i'm toxigal. 31 years old. single. happy. liberal. okay, let's be honest, damned near socialist. popcicle lover. tv addict. i live in baltimore with 2 toxidogs, 2 toxirabbits and 1 toxiroommate. i'm a chemist by education, forensic scientist by training and current doctoral student in forensic toxicology. so, you see, toxi- refers to my career choice, not my personality. mostly.

i created this blog long ago on a whim. then i never wrote anything. i'm a chemist, not a writer. when i do write it usually involves words like "buprenorphine" and formulas that i don't actually understand. you see, i'm not only a chemist studying to be a toxicologist, i'm also a fraud. any day now i'm going to go into work and they are going to realize that i don't have a clue what i'm doing. what makes it worse is i used to testify in court. as an expert. i would sit up there in the witness stand and talk about the mass spectra of drugs. i'd peer at the jury and they'd listening intently, taking in every word, weighing them carefully so they could use the information i was presenting ot come to an educated decision on the fate of the accused. okay, let's be honest, they were usually sleeping. which is good, because if they were awake they may have become accutely aware that i failed spectral chemistry. yup, that's right. i failed spectral chemisty. of course, you have to pass it to be given a degreein chemistry so i did manage to squeek by with a C the second time around.

wait, i got way off track there. this blog. i created it but then realize i haven't a clue what i should talk about. i don't have much to say.. but i do like to talk about myself. but i'm boring. so, i decided i should talk about something that seems to have captured the minds of the american tv viewing public...forensic science. CSI is really really popular, so as a forensic scientist people will hang on my every word if i talk about my job, right? unfortunately i don't have the creative minds of the writers of CSI. and i'm quite sure CSI does not have a technical advisor. i've never watched an entire episode because i get frustrated. i get so mad that my job was never ever anywhere near that exciting. i never once got to shoot a pig with an uzi! heck, i never even got to talk to a suspect! on the positive side, the labs i've worked in always had lights. and every forensic scientist i know works day shift.

so...what will toxic thoughts bring to the blogosphere? a little bit of this (fun forensic science talk) and a little bit of that (the softer side of me loves talking about things like shoes, pretty dresses, good food, and every now and then i work up a really good political rant). maybe in the fall i'll start watching CSI and offer my not-really-at-all-because-i'm-a-fraud-but-i-like-to-pretent-i'm-a-forensic-scientist expert opinion on the science in each weeks episode.

My first blog...

2006-07-12T15:58:00.000-05:00

It's all experimental....