Miss Famine - Brightening Up the Hovel Part Two

Welcome back friends! I've been carefully allowing my perfectly even coats of paint to dry on my little hovel brightening project for several days now. Usually paint only takes 24 to 48 hours to dry completely, but we had a little giant blood sucking cockroach problem that we needed to take care of. I'll tell you, there is nothing like gassing a few thousand two foot high roaches to put your problems in perspective. Besides, I find bio hazard suits slimming.

But that is rather beside the point.

Once the newly painted piece of furniture is fully dry, its ready to be reassembled. As long as you're sure to replace hinges, latches and handles in the same pre-drilled holes you removed them from, you'll be sure everything is properly aligned. Just to be extra sure that you're not replacing anything in a crooked fashion, screw all of your parts in loosely first, then tighten each screw so that you can be sure they are all square to each other.

I did, and just LOOK how beautifully it turned out:




Next time on Brightening the Hovel -- creating your own kitchen garden. So useful now that the local farmers market is run by the Umbrella Corporation!

Miss Famine: Brightening up the Hovel, Part One

Miss Famine here. Living in a hovel at the end of the world seems like it would be quite depressing, but really, it's just another opportunity to exercise ones creativity. So Ikea got totally infested with zombie's last month. So what? That doesn't mean a civilized person can't have a lovely home. I started out this particular project by pillaging the burned out apartment building across the street. We all need to recycle in this, our hour of need.

Take a look at what I found:



A bit rough around the edges, and little love it will be ADORABLE!

So, I took a little walk, okay a four mile walk, but its the apocalypse people, sometimes even a lady has to hoof it, down to my local hardware store. In between the gas masks and the machetes (we'll talk about how to make an adorable home made zombie killing machine soon, it's SO much fun) I found the paint department and had them mix up a pretty pale yellow.

Then, I used a simple phillips-head screw driver (yes, the one with the X shaped head, an innovation dreamed up by Henry F. Phillips) and removed the handles, hinges and everything else that didn't need a good coat of paint.

I applied one coat:




Then two more, just to make sure the paint is sold and even:



Drying time is extremely important. If you don't let your beautiful paint job get chipped, or, heaven forbid, get paint on your jeans, cuz, there are only so many perfect pairs of jeans in this Apocalypse.

Come back tomorrow for Brightening up the Hovel, Part Two - Reassembly!