What 22 Drill Holes Gets You

Over the course of the last year, I've become fairly handy. I've stripped and replaced caulk in the bathtub, replaced a kitchen faucet, painted, cleared a faulty AC drain, and other home improvement tasks. For the bigger, more challenging things, I enlisted the help of my fantastic (and incredibly handy) dad. He grew up on a farm. He built an entire bathroom in our house in Iowa. So, I figured asking him to patch the holes Jack put in the drywall and putting a couple of sliding doors back on their tracks was cake for him. So while Mom and I finished all our last minute wedding details, he was here in our condo making it more of a home for us.

He's also the one who I consistently call when I'm starting or in the middle of a project and can't figure it out myself. I can't count the number of times during the kitchen faucet install that I called or sent a picture message as an SOS while on my back underneath our sink and completely stumped on what to do. It's also fairly handy when I'm in the middle of the plumbing aisle at Home Depot and I can't find any of those guys in the orange aprons around to figure out which one of the 132,209 plumbing pieces I need.

Today happens to be his birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MITCH!! I love you, and I appreciate every single time you offer advice or fix something for me. PS, I may have a few things for you when you visit next month. :)

I distinctly remember one of the first times my parents visited after I'd moved to DC permanently after college. We went to Sears (and I can't even remember why now). I decided while killing time that I should probably buy a drill. Just because. So, after walking through the drill aisle and analyzing the pros and cons of all of them, he helped me select my drill, my first and only power tool. As we were walking out of the store, he put his arm around me and told me it was the proudest moment of his life.

I have put that drill to lots of good work. Well, I've put it to work. Not always good. I may have been able to successfully switch out a kitchen faucet, but I am terrible when it comes to hanging curtains. Last weekend, I decided I was finally going to switch out the ugly 80s curtain in our bedroom and replace it with one I'd purchased about a year ago (not kidding). I also wanted to do something to help out another part of our bedroom.

The curtains were relatively painless. I only had to redrill once after I realized that I'd measured incorrectly. Four drill holes necessary, six put in the wall. Not too bad.

This is a terrible picture, I know. The lighting in our bedroom is attrocious, and this was taken after 5PM.

Then I turned my focus to the other side of the room. Our master suite has what I like to call a hotel bathroom in it. The sink is outside of the little room that houses the toilet and shower in a little nook off of the bedroom. If we were going to be here long term, I'd want to rip out the wall between them and close the whole thing off for a bigger bathroom. But alas, we're hoping to give the beagles a yard in the not terribly distant future, so we just needed something to make it functional while we're here. The problem with our little hotel bathroom is if one of us gets up earlier than the other and starts getting ready, the bathroom light shines through the bedroom reducing the chance you'll actually be able to fall back to sleep. I decided that a think curtain hung from the outside of the nook would serve as a light barrier.

This all seemed well and good until I went to actually hang the curtains and the rod came crashing down. There isn't a single stud on the wall that I could find and trying to hang the rod without anchors to the screws was not working. But I sure did try. Before I gave up on the first rod, I drilled a few more holes to see if maybe I could just anchor it a little better. None of those new holes worked. After a few not nice words, I gave up. I patched all the screw holes and set my mind to go to Target the next day for a new rod. At the time, I figured the problem was just that my current curtain rod was too heavy. It was, but it probably could have been saved if I'd just used the anchors. So, the next day, with a new curtain rod acquired (which had anchors included in the package), I put my mind back to hanging the hotel bathroom separator. After sanding the patched holes down, I measured, redrilled and hung the new rod. Voila. Success!

I don't love it, but it's functional and I think an upgrade. What I'd really like to do is paint the nook and bathroom a different color from the main bedroom to create the illusion of a separate room. One day. When I pick back up my paint brush. And yes, that's Jack chewing a bone on the bottom of the photo.

Here's a look from the side into the nook. The picture hanging is an old map of Virginia that I picked up at a local farmer's market.

There you have it. Just don't ask me to hang your curtains for you.