{Post 1,291} Little Project Today

I asked my husband if he would please put up our baby gate brackets today.  They are going to be on the walls at "this" end of the ladder.  He agreed.  Then I got this hairbrained idea to paint the stairwell to match the living room before he put them up.  The gate is essential to my sanity.  Not only is my grandson coming later this month (and he is in the toddler/just learning to walk phase), but I can't relax when we have company with toddlers because I am sure they are going to tumble down the steps to their death.  We opted for wooden strips that are shaped on both edges like a fancy trim.  We painted them to match the walls and drilled holes for the gate bumpers to fit into to give it extra stability.

Here is a very recent picture of the pseudo intellectual.  He is only 9 months old.  He has always looked older than his age:

Wes rigged the ladder in the bottom picture and told me not to bounce around a lot while I did the cutting in along the ceiling edge and in the corners.  The piece of wood is only being held in place by the ladder.  There was not a whole lot of incline.  But the drop would only be about 12 feet.

I went out a couple ladder rungs, but then I couldn't do it.  You know how you hear people say "don't look down" when they are trying to get someone down from a height?  I looked down!  I froze.  I was the only one upstairs.  I literally could not move.  So I sweetly asked my dear husband to do the cutting in.  Here it is when he was finished.  You can see the color better here.

The back wall is two stories high.  That is NOT the same ladder as in the top pictures.  So I found our extension handle for the roller and away I went.  The top picture is the finished product.  I LOVE this color.

Now I'm off to paint the inside of my soon-to-move-in-with-us daughter's closet and wallbed cubby.

{Post 1,279} Finished Chest of Drawers

Here is the finished chest of drawers.  These are the original handles.  I used left over wall paint to paint the drawers.  The wicker-looking finish of the drawer fronts sorta scared me, but I guess once one paints brick, the sky is the limit.  I was really careful to avoid drips.  The parts of the chest I did not paint match the trim paint and the closet doors (to the left in the room) really well.  Definitely a good $30 investment.

{Post 1,278} Project of the Day

Project of the day is upgrading a chest of drawers I bought yesterday.  We are giving Isaac's room an update, and he has never had a chest of drawers.  

This was cream with mint green drawer fronts when I started.  I am looking for different drawer hardware as this is hard to grab.

All drawers are painted now.  Off to get stuff to line them and possibly new drawer pulls.  Finished picture later.

{Post 1,275} Two Long-Term Projects Finished

                             

This quilt is washed and dried, and ready for the next time we see Emily.

Here is the finally finished living room.  The new quilt is on a new hanger (a decorative curtain rod with faceted glass finials on the ends).  The quilt measures about 44" square.  Wes is going to trim down the weighted bar in the bottom sleeve.  Patience, patience!

Our fireplace works like new since it's been cleaned, the screen has been cleaned, and it looks mah-vel-ous!!

{Post 1,271} 4:30 PM Green Update

The new look (well, except for the fireplace logs and screen!  I like it!!  I will probably post one more pic of everything back in its place.  I am going to paint the inside of the fireplace yet.  I got two walls finished with trimming and rolling and am going to keep going!  Rachel is preparing the walls by wiping them down and taping.  I'm spackling, sanding, trimming, and rolling.  Teamwork rules!!

{Post 1,270} 1:40 PM Bricks

Now to start on the walls on both sides...and beyond!

{Post 1,269} Progress at 10:45 AM

This is going so much faster than the primer!  In the latest progress shot (the second one), I have everything under the mantle painted.  That does not include the hearth.  That's a sitting down job, and I won't easily recover from it.  My ancient hip bones can't take the sitting down for long.  I'll just paint as fast as I can.

{Post 1,268} Primer Finished!

{Post 1,267} Fireplace Progress At Noon

This project has been a humdinger.  Moving along v-e-r-y slowly, but it is getting done.  Decided this morning to paint the inside of the fireplace with heat-resistant paint while I have the logs out and all.  Will also clean the gas-log fire tube.  It has a lot of sand around it, so I'll clean it gently and vacuum it.  Hopefully if we use it ONCE this winter, it will fire better.  

I am doing laundry today, watching two children, and have to leave in 90 minutes for Good News Club, so my time is limited on this project.  But so far, so good.

I've surprisingly had a lot of questions about doing this from readers that have lurked heretofore.  How funny!

There was much to read online about "how" to paint a fire place or interior brick.  I was wondering how it would go for me because I chose the least aggressive approach.

Here's what I emailed a reader this AM:  I have changed my perspective on things.  I used to be go, go, go until it’s finished (which I paid for later with aching muscles and joints, etc.).  Last night I probably kept it up longer than I should have, but I wanted to work until a certain time.  I still left time enough for clean-up of brush, etc.  This is a very long-term project.  The color I’ll be painting the fireplace and rest of the room is a new one for the room.  It is also the color of our foyer, hallway, area going down steps, and part of the kitchen.  But I realized last night that I don’t need to keep going until all of that is finished.  I can just do the fireplace and living room.  There are no continuous walls between there and any other part of the house.  Then I can tackle the other rooms one section at a time.  I hope I can keep to that mindset.  This is a huge job, and no one else is going to be helping, unless I can rope my daughter, Rachel, into wielding a brush soon.  We’ll see.

On the positive side, I was unsure if what I was doing was going to work.  I had read so many different approaches to doing this.  I just scrubbed the bricks with a dry scrub brush, paying special attention to the top “ledge” of each brick.  I brushed off a ton of sandy debris (probably brick and mortar crumbles from over 40 years).  I am using the cheapest primer I could find, and it seems to be covering and sticking extremely well.  In fact, I don’t think I’m going to need to use another coat of primer, and one coat of paint should be fine!

Well, it's back to the paintbrush for me!  Going to get in another good hour of work at least.  TTFN!

{Post 1,266} Fireplace Progress

Well, it seems like I left out a bit of crucial information.  I am painting the bricks surrounding the fireplace and mantle to match the walls.  They will be the same color as my sewing room is now, a soft greenish gray.  I still have the edge of the bricks on the right to do all the way up and about half of the bricks facing the room on the hearth.  Then there's the 5/6ths of the top part.  

I think I'll get done priming tomorrow.  The primer has covered well, and I'm hoping to just put a coat or two or paint on top of this.  I think painting it to match the wall will make the room less dark as well as making the fireplace not stick out so much.  Never dreamed it would be so tedious.

{Post 1,265} What Was I Thinking?

No explanations needed.  Four pictures are worth 1,000 brush strokes!

{Post 1,228} New Caulk Around and Shirts Abound

Do you have home projects that you procrastinate about and procrastinate about...???  I do.  Did.  Thankfully I knocked 4 of them off my to-do list today while I was home alone.

1.  Sewed and hung a new everyday shower curtain.
2.  Arranged a new bathroom flower arrangement for my cone (replacing the Christmas one--embarrassed).
3.  Scrubbed the oil stains out of the carpet in my bedroom.
4.  Replaced the caulk in the master bathroom sinks.  Getting the old stuff out was a bear.  But so worth it!

Sinks before and after.

I also sewed ALL the dark sections of the remaining Shirts Abound blocks as well as sewing the light sections on about 12 units, trimming, and removing the papers.  Productive day!

{Post 1,080} Master Bathroom Face Lift

My husband is just THE best.  I have been asking him if we could take down a big, flat mirror in our bathroom (behind the double sinks) and put up some mirrored cabinets (for storage, you know).  He asked me if I wanted to go look at them (again) last night.  I had resigned myself to not getting them for at least a month (we are acting our wage, incidentally).  To my great surprise, we brought two new mirrored medicine cabinets home last night.

Another great surprise was the answer to the burning question..."did I paint behind the big, flat mirror when we moved in here, or did I go the easy route and leave it green?"  Wes (being the eager beaver that he is) took down the mirror while I was taking Rachel to the flea market to peddle her biscuits and coffee.  That explains why my "before" picture does not have the ugly, flat, too-small mirror in it.  Yes!  I HAD painted behind the mirror.

ANOTHER great surprise was that we had nearly a gallon of our original wall paint in the garage.  I had it re-shaken at Walmart while I was out this AM, and we were ready to go.

Here are before and after shots of "the wall":

The smoke signal in the middle is where I burned a candle and had it set too close to the back wall.  The smoke will not scrub off.  I tried every cleaner I had plus an extra-large dose of elbow grease, and no change.

Here is the after:

My sweetums also fixed a drawer in our bathroom that up until today never closed.  See second picture, second drawer down.  That's nearly 7 years of not closing.  

Instead of just standing around and waiting for the paint to dry (ha ha), I scrubbed the white window blinds that are to the right of the counter above.  One spot of cleanliness does surely lead to others.  

Future plans include painting the countertop and backsplash (yes, I am giving it a try), recaulking the sinks, and painting the cabinets in there.  Very ambitious, but I am loving the improvements already.

If I get my new red valances lined with light-blocking fabric today (and that's the plan), I am putting up my new valance and Christmas shower curtain today.  It will be our reward for working so hard on the bathroom!

~Joan

{Post #939}

Little work done on the flowerbeds today.  They dug down to level out the area and picked up the railroad ties that will be used to build the beds.  My husband put two vent wells together to put around the gas meter.  


This week I hope to fill and repaint the wood where our old railings were taken off.  I will also dig up more of the ivy as time allows.  

{Post #876} Under Sink Project

Even our cabinet floor is happy we are having a makeover...see the stain/smily face??

When I was finishing up the painting of the interior walls last night, my husband came home from a l-o-n-g day of work.  He had just driven over 90 minutes as well.  I pointed out how bad the condition of the side walls was...he changed clothes and went right down to the garage to cut some scraps of wood to recover the walls.  No wonder he is my hero!  He's always thinking of others.

So I painted the walls white last night.  While I was out today, he installed them.  He had to cut them in half to get them in there.  All the pipes, disposal, etc. have made this a cranky job.  As in...I was cranky when working on it!  But somehow I persevered (I'm sure it was only by God's grace).

In the above pic, I'm cutting out a rectangle to fit around one of the above-mentioned pipes.  I just used a paring knife to cut.  These are the cheap 12" self-adhesive floor tiles.  I don't actually adhere them to the base of the cabinet.  That way they are easy to remove and wipe off.  I just trim the paper away from the edges to make it look nice.

Above is the finished product from that little step.

Here is a close-up of the two-pipes-into-the-floor area.  I don't shoot for perfection here.  Just trying to use as few tile pieces as possible.

Here's the whole floor before putting things away.

Finally, with all our former stuff replaced...

Here is the before in case you forgot:

It sure is a lot of work to empty, declutter, clean, and reorganize, but the rewards are worth it!!

~Joan

{Post #873} Braided Bread and Project for Today (and Possibly Tomorrow)

OK--so upon further inspection (coming to you via pictures in a minute), this is a bigger job than I had thought.  I am going to paint the inside of the cabinet white (which I did on my upper cabinets and what a world of difference it made).  The first picture looks innocent enough, eh?  I did wipe the doors off AFTER taking the picture when I noticed the stuck-on food and drips.

This next picture is not for the faint-hearted, newly-married, or new homeowner.  Brace yourself.  This is the result of ten people jamming things into a large space.  It's not pretty.  Ready??

Yes...hideous.  I will need to check to see what paints I have available.  This past summer I completely repainted the face of the upper cabinets.  I did not start out intending to.  I used a 1" wide brush to touch up a few areas, and before I knew it, I had painted all the face with said 1" brush.  I can see from the above picture that I need to touch up the cabinet face after I paint the inside walls a nice bright white.  Then I'll put in the floor tiles and replace what will go back in there.  I'm nearly out of dishwasher detergent, so I'll have to mix up another batch of that as well.  'Twould be a shame to actually run out and have to face dishwasher detergent crisis.

Here IS something pretty.  I goofed a couple times, but I finally mastered the 6-strand bread braid.  Doesn't that look wonderful?  It's rising in the oven now, so I'll just stir my baking granola again and head down to see what supplies I need for this little project.

Off again!  BTW, I'm piddling around doing these little things mainly because I already cleaned up the kitchen, have the dishwasher going, mixed bread dough (and braided it!), and have granola baking.  The granola takes at least 90 minutes, sometimes more, so I am here for the long haul.

~Joan