Chez Larsson

Pez

Wille used to collect Pez dispensers and his collection has been tucked away in a box for a while. I love the little Pez dudes though and have wanted to display them somewhere around the house.

Our house has one floor and a basement. The stairs leading to the basement are pretty steep and there is an akward space at the top of where we built a cabinet for the fuse box, electric meters etc.  That's now Pez land.

 

Our Favorite Pez? Mr Bean. He didn't make it into the top photo, but can be spotted in the lower right corner.

Pantry Organizer My Way

Do you subscribe to any of Martha's daily tips? I get the Organizing Tip of the Day in my e-mail box and there's also Cookie of the Day and Craft of the Day and although they have all been in the magazines at one time or another I like the reminders.

One tip which came by e-mail a couple of weeks ago is one that I've adapted a little bit since I saw it in the magazine years ago. It's the Pantry Organizer.

I wasn't able to find the tension rods required here in Sweden at the time so I made my own version by drilling holes at the bottom of my cabinet.

 

I took the opportunity to show you because I've been updating the insides of the cabinets a little bit. The bottoms now have Martha sticky back plastic. The rest of the shelves are covered in white oil cloth as seen in the top photo.

In this photo you can see the metal sticks I used instead of the tension rods. They came from lanterns which you can stick into the ground. We'd had the lanterns for years but never used the sticks so I cut them to the right length (a bit of trial and error I have to admit but once one was the correct length the rest were easy).

 

The cut part of the stick sits in the hole and the top slightly pointy bit which used to go into the ground is now wedged into the under side of the shelf above.

It works really well and no more piles of heavy dishes. 

Longing for Spring

It's cold. Im sick of the cold. I'm sick of wearing my down jacket with a hood which makes me look like a cone head. I want spring to arrive. Now.

 

Before ~After

In hope to speed things up I cleared the mess in my garden locker this weekend. So when spring has finally sprung I'm prepared. You can click on the photos to see them larger. For your sanity I don't recommend clicking on the befores though.

   

Before ~After

The locker sits in the garage and we've customized it by adding shelves to hold all the not so pretty gardening paraphenalia.

You may think it's difficult to drill a hole in metal but with the right drill bit you can drill a hole in almost anything. True. So we screwed on these vertical thingys inside with the corresponding brackets and simply added the unfinished chip board shelves. 

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I had some questions yesterday in regards of building the valances/pelmets/cornices so I thought I'd answer them here while I'm at it:

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Q: How do you get a nice finish to MDF edges?

A: On the pelmet project we used a belt sander and the mouse sander but when working on projects with thicker MDF we use an electric plane. Then the edges still need sanding though. Another tip is to sand after priming before the top coat.

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Q: Can you show the metal brackets you use to hang the pelmet.

A: Sure can! They are the little shiny things with tiny screws.

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Q: How do you sink a nail?

A: You use use the yellow tool in the photo above. Hold the tip of the tool againts the nail and hit the back of the tool with a hammer so the nail gets pushed into the MDF or wood.

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Pelmet Valance Cornice

      

I don't know if they are called either when made out of solid material like MDF but any which way we built some this weekend.

 

Before ~After

I really like the simplicity of roller blinds but they can also look a bit unfinished especially in a livingroom so we decided to add some eyebrows to ours.

Quite simple to make out of 10 mm / 3/8" MDF. If you use thicker MDF the pelmet will become quite heavy. In the thin MDF even the longer of the two we made weighs next too nothing and is really easy to hang. Measure your window and if you want too, add an inch or so to either side.

I made this very crude sketch to figure out how best build them.

    

Cutting the pieces for two pelmets

Cut the pieces out of the MDF, the depth of the pelmet is determined by measuring how far out the blind protrudes and adding a little bit more. The height of ours is the same as the depth, 10x10 cm / 4"x4".

   

Gluing, nailing and sinking the nails

We used wood glue and nails for this project and to get a nice even surface you need to sink the nails and then fill the holes sand and then paint. I did two coats of primer and one semi glossy top coat. To hang we used small metal plates which are screwed on at the back.

 

Waiting for glue to dry

I like the way they turned out and yes, we're sticking with blinds in the livingroom as you have probably guessed. Ours need switching to new ones as I've mentioned before but they will have to do for now.

 

Clean

   

Here's another one of those posts where I fear you may all go -"So nothing new!" but I'll post it anyway because I love this microwave cleaning method.

For some reason or other we don't have one of those lids that you place over your food in the microwave. Don't recall ever having one actually.

The problem without a lid is only to obvious in the photo above. Yuck, someone heated Spaghetti Bolognese in there yesterday and it's now completely dried and sticks to the surface like cement.

Nemas problemas folks! Just put a microwave safe bowl of water in there and if it's really caked on like here add a drop of dishwashing liqud. Close the door and put on high for a few minutes until the water boils and it gets steamy like a sauna in there.

Open door, carefully remove bowl (which is very hot so use oven mittens!) and wipe the inside with a damp cloth. Clean! No elbow grease needed!