Hanging A Towel Hook In The Bathroom: a house log

goose!

And horse.

So apparently my little self-imposed Dude Get On That Already challenge is simply a sick joke where the universe tells me: “hey crazy lady, stop hoarding animals in the playroom.” But at least I am getting things off the floor in there and up on the walls of the rest of the house so they can in fact be enjoyed (or that is simply the denial talking). So without further ado, two more thrift store finds from here and here. Yes, this week was a double whammy of getting on that, since no painting was required. And they are both over a year overdue. Another big surprise. So it was time to get these folks up on the wall (especially give the untimely death of our dear friend Ramsey).

I made John hold this so you can see the weird way we hung him up in the right place and at the right angle with simply two nail holes (instead of ten while we scooched him around to find the right spot and cursed ourselves for not making some sort of a template). We simply stuck some painters tape around him (sticky-side out) and poked holes in it where the hooks for the nails are (simply stabbed the tape with a pen there).

Then we held it up about an inch from the wall and moved it around until we liked the placement. I stood back about 8 feet to judge while John did the moving-around thing. Once we liked the placement we shoved him up against the wall so the painters tape stuck…

And then we pressed it against the wall firmly around the back of the ol’ bird to make sure it would stay on the wall.

Then when we pulled our little $8 thrift store duck off.

The tape became a little duck-hanging template. See how our little pre-poked holes are left stuck to the wall to show us exactly where our hanging nails need to go (and on the exact right angle) to hang this guy?

So here I am hammering those babies in (this guy’s truly light, so no screws and anchors were required). Once the nails were in I simply ripped off the painter’s tape while screaming Kelly Clarkson.

Behold:

Yes, the concrete greyhound underneath Sir Duck (an old V-day gift from the hubs back in 2008) is further evidence that I have an animal problem.

But seriously, how bad-a$$ is this guy? We enjoy that he’s flying towards the front door. And if the rest of the dining room were not full of secret book projects we’d share more panned out pics to show how the dark wood tone picks up on the big chunky dining table nearby. Soon hopefully.

Now onto matters of the iron-horse kind. From the start we had plans to hang this equine delight in our bathroom with a towel through the ring. So a year after adopting him for $7 from a Delaware thrift store I at last did. He looks a bit lackluster now because the room is a big white box, but once we get around to painting and tackling some other updates we think he’ll be downright dapper.

It was lively to keep both of these folks au naturel. I mentioned the possibility of painting them both back when we picked up them last year, but I think we are moving into a phase where sometimes we simply like things with some texture and some timeworn “patina” (aka: as they are). But you know I am still no stranger to the ol’ spray paint can, so I think it is one of those 50/50 things. Ya never know if I am going to spray paint you or leave you well sufficient alone (or hide you in the playroom for a year, apparently).

How have we not had a hand towel hook in the hall bathroom for the last year? That is the main bathroom that all of our visitors use. Yeesh. Glad we at last got on that. Our towel simply used to lay in a heap next to the sink, but now it has presence. It has pizzazz. It has animal magnetism.

In summary: our bathroom has 99 problems, but a towel hook ain’t one.

I have in fact been thinking a lot about the five million upgrades that we’d like to do to this bathroom, so perhaps it’ll be next on the ol’ agenda (after we at last finish off the never-ending kitchen makeover). Oh and since folks have been asking if we will have anything left to do once the kitchen is done (ha!), here is simply a smattering of the bigger projects that come to mind (along with about a million smaller upgrades/projects as we go):

• We have not one, not two, but three full bathrooms that are untouched and in dire need of some upgrades
• We have a sunroom that has seen zero action since the day we halfheartedly plunked random old furniture in there (aka: move-in day)
• We have an untouched playroom full of pillows, fabric, more animals (?), and goodness knows what else that we are planning to turn into a useful kids bedroom/playroom
• We are going to convert our carport into a garage
• We are going to build a fairly major walk-out deck
• We are going to paint the porch, remove the scallops, stain the concrete, and box out the columns for a fresher look
• We are going to hang crown molding in a bunch of rooms that do not have it
• We are going to add some wainscoting in the hallway (not the frame hallway, the other one that leads to the three other bedrooms than ours)
• We are going to refinish our wood floors
• We have a slew of 30-60%-done rooms that we’d like to someday finish, like the living room, our bedroom, the guest room, the dining room, etc
• We have a full-blown front yard, side yard, and backyard makeover on the agenda (we like to tackle those slowly over time, like we did at our first house)
• We want to build some outside entertainment for beansie, in the form of a sandbox and/or a playhouse or playset
• We want to double side the fireplace between the kitchen and the living room
• We even daydream about bigger projects down the line, like changing the roof-line to add some peaks to the front of the house (to match the ones in the back, which were brought in when they did an addition in the 70s)

So yeah, there is plenty to do! But back to the fact that I need Animals Anonymous. Do you think Animal Hoarders is going to show up at my house? If they do, they’ll simply get to chat with our house-sitters since we are right now on a plane to Portland. Haha. The joke’s on them.

Speaking of our right now-in-flight status, we are most likely going to post the second post of the day a little early (at noon EST during a plane change) and then will not be available to approve comments between 1-6 EST while we are on our second leg of the flight, so bear with us if there are only a few comments for five hours and the rest are hanging out in moderation! We moderate so we do not miss questions (when thousands of contest comments roll in early in the week, it is straightforward to lose them otherwise), but they should pop up eventually!

Have you folks at last hung any art or bathroom accessories that you’ve been meaning to hang for, oh, over twelve months? Let us commiserate.