The dressing room light

Of course if you are going to take down the light in the dressing room to use in the powder room you have to put something in its place. Luckily (or part of my devious master plan to drive The Guy crazy) I had a spare halogen light fixture from the master closet light improvement project. Unfortunately when The Guy removed the fixture he revealed a circle of Navajo white that didn't match the surrounding super white paint. But luckily again, I had a can of that left over, so all we had to do was give the circle a quick coat of paint and voila. Right?
I'll spare you the photos because here's how it went down.
"What's the quickest way to do this, we don't want to go get a roller do we?"
"I've got a touch-up sponge you can use, but it could get messy so just strip off your shirt and jeans and I'll get it"
That was the luckiest thing that happened all day because you'd be surprised how much paint those sponges can hold. When The Guy jumped on the chair dressed only in underpants and socks and pressed that sponge to the ceiling there was....
Let's just say the clean-up took far longer than the touch-up.

Dressing made easy

Ever since we moved in I've had difficulty getting dressed. No, not with the buttons or zippers, it's colours that have been the problem. I can't tell you the number of times I've left the house thinking I was dressed head to toe in basic Soho black and found out I had on a brown shirt, black trousers and navy boots. While Stacey and Clinton may tell you navy and brown are neutrals and you can wear any neutral with anything else, this is a BIG FAT LIE. You just look like you have no sense of style, or you got dressed in the dark. Which is pretty much what I've been doing since June 2004.
I'm feeling much better after the recent bout of sickness. And a little restless (nothing done on our 2008 House Resolution List) so I went to Ikea to get a $5 lampshade to go on the recent ebay purchase. $5 I figured wouldn't break the bank and it would only take me 5 minutes as I knew exactly what wanted. Ha, I was cursed by the Ikea fairy as I walked in the door. Actually not fairies but two "greeters" a la Walmart. Normally this would scare me but they weren't too cheery, and were quite young and fit and while I was wondering when Ikea Long Island started to employ people to smile at you as you entered, in fact when they started to have enough employees they could afford to station two at the entrance, and whether they were expecting a riot? Or someone taking up residence in the store without permission, that I was unexpectedly pulled deeper into the lighting department by some really bright halogen ceiling lights.
Really bright lights that would fit in our master closet. So that I could see what I was pulling on in the morning. So I wouldn't leave the house looking like I didn't care what I looked like. And they were only $35 each. I bought two.


It took Steven 30 seconds to take down the old lights and put one of the new ones up. They've changed the fittings on the Ikea ceiling lights and they are a joy to fix. Could have done it myself it was so easy. No fiddling twisting wires together - it's a push/pull system. All lights should be this easy. Then it took an hour to fix the second one because the electrical box is buried in the ceiling and we had to devise a system of spacers and screws to get it to the correct depth (thank you original electrician, I wish only good things for you) but I wasn't about to give up on this.


Eventually though we made it work and turned the lights on. Oh my god! So this is what my clothes look like. I had no idea.


I was so impressed that I will be going back to Ikea next week to get another fixture to go in the laundry room. So I can see if the clothes coming out of the washing room really are clean.


Oh, yes, the lampshade I went to Ikea to get. That fitted, too.

Closet Envy

Writing the post or the definition of a bedroom got me searching for closet doors, wardrobes and other stylish places to hang one's clothes.


First there was this beauty, from Spaceslide via wikipedia.


This Shoji screen inspired wardobe from Yarra Valley.


Traditional painted wardrobes from Joshua Jones.


And finally this lightbox wardrobe from architect Pierce Tynan.
Unfortunately, the first three are all UK designs and Pierce Tynan is from Dublin, Ireland. Isn't that just the way things go?