Pun alert: Vacuums suck

The Dust Buster I got for Christmas has been installed.

I say installed because it took a couple of prepackaged drywall anchors (cordless drill and hammer) and screws (regular screwdriver) to mount the charger to the wall. The job probably would have been easier if I hadn't picked one of the most cramped hideaways in my house, which left me no room to swing the proverbial drill.

On the plus side, the Dust Buster now hides perfectly in my pantry.

Christmas decorations

When do you take your Christmas decorations down? (Or DO you take your decorations down?)

I'm thinking I'll take mine down January 6, but have also heard December 25 and December 31 should be the last days to have lights. Of course, if I'm the last person in the neighborhood with lights on, it's probably a good indication I waited too long.

Christmas gifts

Some holiday additions to my new home, courtesy of my generous family and friends:

• Decorative items for my kitchen and some holiday decorations
  
• Tea light wall sconces and the necessary candles 
• A Dustbuster (watching me dance with my upright vacuum on my two flights of stairs might be humorous to observers, but isn't nearly as much fun for me)
• Some tools, including a nifty all-in-one socket wrench
• The over-the-toilet shelving that I've already wrestled
• Massive display cases for my collection of old Hess trucks

I'm sure I'll have more to say about many of these items in the coming weeks, especially as I continue to tackle my growing to-do list.

Should've read the directions, part 2

This is fixed now. But I had messed up more than one thing during the assembly so my revisions took a few extra minutes. I'm a college-educated, relatively intelligent person, so why was this so difficult?

Raleigh home improvement stores

I've spent a lot of time at Lowes and Home Depot recently -- and I'll continue to do so -- but two other hardware stores are climbing my list: the Ace Hardware store in North Raleigh and Briggs Hardware. For local history buffs, Briggs Hardware might sound familiar. Here's why.

Briggs has some cool stuff; they took a corner of their Atlantic Avenue store and turned it into a old-time country store. My local Ace store has offered great customer service each time I shopped there. Hopefully you can say the same about yours.

With both stores, it's nice to avoid the crush of traffic that invariably finds its way to a big-box store.

My inspiration

It's been around for a while, but this site makes me snort milk out my nose. The comments? Even better: http://thereifixedit.com/

I hope none of my "fixes" ever appear there.

Should've read the directions

I'm putting together one of those space-saving, over-the-toilet cabinets. I didn't read the directions because I was watching football. And, well, I thought I could handle it.

So nobody seeing this should be surprised that I installed a piece backward. A screw hole needed to tie the entire unit to the drywall faces forward.

Now I have to undo steps 3 through 9 in the instruction manual (which is actually quite simple to follow, much to my chagrin). It's only a 10-step assembly, so I'm basically starting over. At least it's an easy fix.

Or I could keep the cabinet freestanding, which means it WILL fall on someone's head at some point. But at least I'd then have more blog fodder.