Cooling off the house

I love how many windows my house has (over 40 if you’re interested) but I loathe how hot my house is because of the windows. I love the natural light though and how a room looks when it has no curtains (the better to show off my windows!). I’ve had enough though. Today I hung up a tapestry Cody and I purchased at Target several years ago. It’s been in many rooms and this probably won’t be the last room it sees, but I like it for now. It’s just barely big enough to cover the window and the light showing through it makes it look kind of dreaming. I totally need to iron that thing though.

I’m still loving the color of my candelabra and my refinished wood table is looking pretty despite the wear marks on it or maybe because of them? Idk. I like this room though, it’s making me smile

Edited: August 6th, 2010

Spray painting a candle holder

I went to the Salvation Army the other day to buy a small table I had my eye one. I found this candle stick and snatched it up. It reminded me of the one on Rachel’s blog and I loved what she did with her’s. Mind did not disappoint me!

I debated online with my good friend Susan (the one that moved to England) about what color to paint it and how to paint it. I finally decided on yellow (for now). I think I might want it white but I’m not sure. This color thing is so hard sometimes! I don’t want my house to be plain but I don’t want it to be difficult to move things around either.

I absolutely do not want one of those houses where the rooms are lovely shades of neutrals with a small (very small) punch of color here and there. I also don’t want that house were it looks like a circus. I’ll take circus over plain any day though.

I keep glancing at this candle holder though and I like it. I think I’ll keep it yellow for a while. I’ll also be redoing my pink lamp this color.

Okay, so I tried. Pretty hard too actually. I wanted to like the yellow, and I did, but not in my house. It was too… something. IDK what, but it was too something. So I sprayed part of it blue and didn’t like that color either. I tried purple and didn’t like that one. I decided I had no colors in the house that I liked so I went shopping. Cody had said the color of some pillows, our bedroom curtains, and the shower curtain would look good if I could find it. My youngest helped me looked and we didn’t find a color so we settled on something else. Once more glance down the aisle and something caught my eye! It was the color!

YAY! I bought it and brought it home and it pretty much matches perfectly! YAY! It’s this sagey gray color and I heart it. THIS one makes me happy!

I can’t get a photo of it that is true to color though. This looks whiter than the color actually is. It’s more of a postage stamp gray green color. It looks like the color of this room

I heart it now. The little table I bought today is also getting a coat of paint and then I’m putting fabric under the glass top. I think it’ll look great!

Edited: July 28th, 2010

Recovering a chair

I have some chairs I bought at the Salvation Army a while back. They were a whole $1 each and while the lines were good, the colors were fugly. Like so:

The wood color was meh. It didn’t really go well with the house and it was a little too 1970s for my taste. No fear though, it was nothing a can of spray paint couldn’t fix. I went with oil rubbed bronze but I think next time I’d do a hammered metal like the chandelier in the dining room. I may redo them even since I like the hammered metal better.

I needed to recover my chairs though and wasn’t finding the right fabric. Then I read on a guy’s blog about how he recovered a bed using Army Surplus blankets. How cool is that? Pretty cool, and cheap. So I headed back to the Salvation Army and bought a $3 blanket. It’s really soft gray woolish something or other and was perfect. I brought it home, cut it up, and this is the result:

I like it. I have to do the other chair today, but that’ll be easy. Apparently Anni (my westie) likes this chair too. It’s covered in blanket though so that’s to be expected. Really easy to do and not too terribly expensive either. I had dreams of painting these chairs a BRIGHT sunny yellow or perhaps a robin’s egg blue, but I don’t think the guys would like it.

Edited: July 28th, 2010

Before and After contest Entry

There’s a before and after contest over on “One Project Closer” and I decided to enter my dining room. It could be fun right?

You submit pictures and a story from a renovation you* worked sometime over the past year. Every Sunday throughout the Summer (starting June 20, 2010) , we pick the best of the submissions we’ve received so far and we run the story on our site. If your submission is picked, you get a $50 gift card to either Lowes, Home Depot, or Amazon. And, the best part – we make a donation of $100 to Habitat for Humanity in your honor!

At the end of the Summer, we post all of the entries together, and the community votes for the best project. The winner gets a bonus $150 gift card to one of the three stores above.

I entered my dining room in the contest and thought I’d share the photos here too. It’s come a long way since last year when we purchased the house.

That was the dining room before and the furniture is not mine. The wall paper had small stamped images of some sort on it with a border of people drinking. The floor has scratched and chipped parts and looks meh. The color looks better on photo than in person and the chandelier was tacky brass. So the first step was painting the chandelier.

It took a whole $20 to make that change (light bulbs included) and we left the room alone for a little while. We then purchased paintable wallpaper, dark teal paint, and some wood for trim. It was time to make the room pretty.

Next up was redoing the floors. That was loads of fun!… yeah…

Which leads us to the way the room is now.

Going through the old posts about this room, my total is far lower than I thought it would be. Under $400 for the room which seems to be about the average we’re spending per room to reno them. Now if only I could actually do the kitchen for that much. HA!

Edited: June 8th, 2010

The Finished Floors

The floors are finished and the furniture is now put in place. It was a pain in the butt for  couple weeks, but I think the floors were worth it. What do you think?

I also refinished our table. I had to scrap off that yucky rustoleum whiteboard paint (good idea, bad product) and we decided to just stain it instead of painting or anything. I like it. I’m still working on the windows in this room and I’m waiting on some vinyl jamb liners I ordered online. They’ll apparently help weather seal my old windows and make it easier for the windows to slide up and down.

Today I’m going to finish painting the mirror frame of a mirror I took off of our front fireplace. It was too small in that spot but it was perfect in another area of the house. I’m also on the look out for a new lamp shade for this lamp because I don’t like the cheapy one that is on there right now.

I moved some art from the other parts of the house in to this room. I like the mermaid picture and think it goes well with the room colors. I need to purchase a frame for it still though. The flower specimen is awaiting face paint and it’s something I’m working on. The other piece is from “acageybee” on etsy. Lamp is from the salvation army as is the butterfly card. The bar is still in its same spot.

This next photo makes me twitchy. There’s simply too much stuff on the bookcase. I’ve been working on going through it and finding other places for this stuff and/or selling it. It’s also slow going I also need some tie backs for the curtains. The mantel for the fireplace that tried to kill me will be changed soon too (it’s poorly made and bothers me since it’s an add on to the house). We have plans though and we’re using knock off wood’s site to help us figure out how to build what we want to build. More on that later. I should note that NONE of the furniture in this room is mine. It belongs to my roomie and will be gone by the end of the year.

We’re slowly repainting the trim in this room so it’s white like the rest of the house. I’ll also be doing something to the window trim as I fix the windows. Never a dull moment!

These typewriters are mine though. I love them. I find them at various places and just love the look of old manual typewriters. I plan on listing a couple of them in my store though because I have too many.

Edited: May 26th, 2010

The Final Coat

The dining room is done, the living room needs one more coat. I’m thrilled with how the floors look though. I just went in to the dining room to let the dogs out and the floors feel wonderful under my feet. Did I mention thrilled?

Don’t they look amazing? Just enough sheen to look pretty but not too much sheen that it looks like it doesn’t belong with the house. I debated what kind of finish to put on the floors (gloss, semi-gloss or matte) and after talking with online people and then the Lowe’s guy, I went with the matte finish. It’ll apparently show scratches from life a lot less easily. I like that.

I used a water based polyurethane over an oil based stain. It didn’t react horribly the way we thought it might. I was originally going to do an oil based poly but the Lowe’s paint people recommended I not do that due to weather and smell. We discussed polyurethane for a while and they answered all of my questions. I like my local Lowe’s Anyway, due to weather it would be WEEKS before the floor cured enough to put anything on it. With water based, it’ll be done in three days. thank god! The rest of the downstairs looks like this blurry photo from the other night

I couldn’t handle too much more of living like that! I don’t think my pups could either. My floors look AMAZING though so it was worth it!

Edited: May 18th, 2010

Staining hardwood Floors

Yesterday’s post ended with the application of the stain. Today’s post begins with the removal of the stain. It’s a pia. Seriously. It looks lovely right now though. We decided on a Matte oil based polyurethane for the finish. I get to go pick that up soon. I look like someone beat the snot out of me due to all the stain that splashed on my skin. It’ll be okay though, it comes off eventually. And my floors look like this!

It’s an overcast day (again) so the lighting is pretty yucky but you get the idea. It’s not nearly as dark as it was with the stain on it which is a good thing to everyone except me. I loved those inky black floors from yesterday!

I linked this over at A Soft Place to Land. She has a DIY linky party thing every week and you can see it here.

Edited: May 17th, 2010

Stripping and staining a wood floor

/sigh When will I learn?

Okay, so we hated the floors of the house once we moved in. The stain was chipping and they looked awful. A quick fix was to paint them. So I did. It looked great! for a little while anyway. Then it wasn’t what I wanted it to be but was better than the previous floor. I’ve been living with it, but it’s been bugging me. It’s been bugging Cody and the roomies too. We were supposed to work on the basement this weekend but didn’t due to rain. So what did Amanda think would be a great idea? Let’s strip, sand, and stain the floors!

dumb ass. /sigh

So we did. I rented a floor sander from Lowe’s and it was surprisingly easy to redo the floor. Well easy in terms of, it’s not rocket science. It’s back breaking work though.

First we had to strip the paint off the floor because it was gumming up the sander. Then we had to sand the floor with the rented sander three different times with three different grits of sandpaper. We also had to go along the very edge of the floor with our hand sander to make sure we got all the corners.

Then we had to wipe it all down with a tack cloth soaked in mineral spirits.

Then I had to apply stain in this lovely oil based “Kona” color.

Then we had to wipe off the stain

Then we have to poly the floor.

It’s not complicated, it’s just labor intensive. I’m so glad the roomies were here to help because as a two person job, it would have sucked! My floors feel so much nicer and I really wish I hadn’t tried to paint the floors. I think painting would have worked if I had used an oil based paint instead of latex porch paint. In the end though, there is no comparison for me between the painted floors and the stained and polyed floors.

This is what the floors look like as of right now.

I like them! And… it was relatively cheap to do. We spent:

$40 for 24 hour sander rental

$36 on 6 $6 packs of 36 grit sanding pads

$6 on 1 pack of $6 50 grit sanding pads

$6 on 1 pack of $6 80 grit sanding pads

$15 on three quarts of Kona colored oil based wood stain

$15 on incidentals

$50 on polyurethane for the floor.

Which means we spent $168 on all supplies. Actually less than that because Jordan or Udom were with us when we purchased things and Lowe’s gives military members a 10% discount which puts us closer to $150 for two rooms of lovely dark hardwood floor goodness. We started at 7 pm yesterday so that puts this project at something you could do in a day if you get started on it in the morning and have all of your supplies.

I do wish I had originally gone this route instead of painting it because it does look nicer but I didn’t think it was something my floors could handle and I didn’t think it was something we could do ourselves. I knew it wasn’t something we could afford to pay someone to do right now. I’m really really glad I didn’t paint all the floors in the entire house though…

Now I just have to figure out if we’re doing gloss, semi-gloss, or matte poly for the topcoat. Which would you recommend?

And can i just say how much I HATE that fan in the back living room? Ugh! The damn thing isn’t even wired properly. There’s a hole in the masterbedroom floor where that light plug comes up and is plugged in. Ridiculous! I want a new one that is properly wired and not fugly.

************ UPDATE***************

And now the floors are completely done. You can see them in all their glory, here. Now I just have to wait a little bit longer to add furniture

Edited: May 16th, 2010

Sanding the table pt 2

My table is finished today and looking lovely. I stripped the paint off. There was a bit of paint residue but it was okay. You can see the difference here between the stained section and the not sanded section

then I sanded it down with three different grits of sandpaper until it felt incredibly smooth. After I was done sanding it, I wiped it down to remove the sanding dust and then I coated it with Danish Oil in a dark walnut finish. I had to wait 30 min and then put another coat on in it. After 15 min, I wiped off the second coat and the table will be read for use in 8 to 10 hours. It looks lovely.

More photos later when it’s back where it should be. I still need to repaint the legs, but I don’t know what color to use. Eventually it’s going in to a room that will have white cabinets, dark wood counter tops, white windows and white walls. I’m unsure of what color the floor will be. I have red pots and pans and a red kitchenaid but I don’t think red would look good with this table. I was thinking about doing it dark teal to match the dining room or dark blue to match the living room. IDK though. What say you?

Edited: May 10th, 2010

Rustoleum Whiteboard Paint Sucks – A review

Yes, I’m saying it again. Worst product ever. It was an absolute bitch to put on and you have a limited amount of time to do it in too. Ugh. THEN THEN OMG THEN It didn’t even work like it should. You should be able to erase things from it (which was the point) and instead everything we wrote stayed on the table top. Further more (in case you missed my other update on this table), it crackled after only a short while and stained really easily. The whole table just looked trashy. It sucked! I have been trying to remove this crap from my table and actually almost threw out the whole table on Sunday. We finally removed this crap and it was not fun.

I was trying to sand it off and my friend ended up breaking my sander while removing this paint. Awesome! We let the table set for awhile because the whole thing just ticked me off. We realized we had a paint stripping heat gun and so Udom and I spent part of my Mother’s Day removing paint from my table.

After we stripped all the paint off the table, it was time to sand. Our friends let us borrow a sander but neither Cody nor I liked that style. Cody ended up buying a sander today and I was joking it was my Mother’s Day present. Anyway, we sanded and sanded with three different grits of sandpaper. That table feels so smooth right now. It’s amazing.

It’s not done yet. I still have to finish sanding part of it and then I can stain it. It’s looking better and better though and I’ll be finishing it up tomorrow. I’m glad that my table that whiteboard paint made ugly will finally be pretty again. I won’t have to hide it under table cloths anymore!

Edited: May 9th, 2010