Simple Pleasures: Sharpened Pencils

During my week's break from blogging, my first task was to do something about the pencil sharpener.  We have been through an assortment of electric and manual pencil sharpeners in the last 6 years, all the while having the perfectly good wall-mounted model we brought from our last house.  Sometimes we'd use it, free-style, trying to hold it still on the table while holding the pencil in the proper position and cranking the handle.  It was an interesting trick and often required four hands.


The problem was that I was at a loss of where to mount it.  I thought about putting it on the sewing room wall, pretty much out of public view, but since we do homeschooling in the dining room, that would be inconvenient.  But as dining room decor, it was sorely lacking style and panache, so I hesitated to install it there.  


But need of the function won out, and I decided it had to be in that room somewhere, but where?  I couldn't imagine the horror I'd see on Hubby's face if I screwed holes into the side of a new bookshelf, or into the doorway woodwork.  I wasn't keen on attaching it to a wall either.  This would be especially risky since the most convenient wall has the frames for the pocket doors inside.  A screw poking too far into the cavity could mean a severely damaged door finish, if the door scraped back and forth over the point of a screw...

Lower screw is sticking out a ways!

I finally decided to attach it to our temporary aquarium base.  That thing just can't be hurt, and we plan to replace it with a custom built-in anyway.  To keep it from being bumped, I tucked it underneath, pre-drilling, then screwing it in.  It was a tough angle with the tight clearances on the sharpener itself, so I didn't get one of the screws in all the way before I stripped the Phillips-shaped indent.  But where it is, and what it's in, it doesn't matter.




A little odd... And we have to squat down a bit to use it, but we're so thrilled to have it up and available, we don't care about the extra effort to reach it.  Again, not a particularly clever, and certainly not beautiful project, but one long-needed, and an improvement we appreciate.

Happy, Happy Birthday to Princess Bossy!  My beautiful 1st baby girl is now a beautiful, young, married woman with big plans... and is 24 today.  Siiiigh.  How DOES that happen so fast?!!