Ding Dong. The Red Is Gone.

(almost)

The weekend after our new windows were installed, the exterior of our house got a mini-makeover that we are so excited about! It had occurred to me that though it seemed like the outside of our house had a ton of red, it was actually only on the shutters (just 6 of them), the front door, and the trim around the garage. That's so manageable.

I keep using this old picture from last year and feeling like a fraud, but in this case, it's the one that shows the red looking the "reddest"

The window guys had to take down our old shutters to put in the windows anyway, so I ordered some new ones and pinned some fun repurposed shutter-craft ideas for the surplus that was headed my way. Well, let me tell you, as soon as the first shutter hit the front yard in a mangled twisted mess of rotten wood and cobwebs I knew I would not be needing those pins. Pity...I had the spots for a shutter-mail-holder and a shutter-console-table all picked out. The window guys also wouldn't put up our new shutters because they weren't exactly the same size, so we couldn't reuse the existing holes. Lame. Even though the dirt left from under the old shutters was so thick it almost looked like they were still up, we really couldn't leave the house looking like that, so there was only one thing doing.

Oh, but look at those pretty windows...

Husband had to go up on the roof. Actually, I suppose I could have done it, but come on. It was not easy going-up there (not as bad as The Worst Ever, but close). The plastic nail-like fasteners bent and broke off if they got snagged on the siding and weren't reusable.  Husband was so frustrated with the things, and I was showing my support by passing him supplies through the window and endlessly nagging things like "Are you sliding?" "Why aren't you holding on?" "Don't get cocky!" or, the one I'm most proud of: "No whistling on the roof!!" Don't judge, I know what happens when you fall off a roof, I was really nervous.
It all turned out mostly well in the end.  The new shutters went up. They are very slightly bowed, and didn't quite cover the holes in the siding from the old ones, but I don't think either of those things would be noticeable if you didn't already know.
The house looked totally confused until the next afternoon when Husband switched out the downstairs shutters to match.  I wasn't around, but it apparently went much more smoothly.  I'm not saying those two things are related, but I'm not saying they're not. I can't get over how good they look against the brick! And how the brick looks prettier with the brown to play off of!

So next, we turned our attention to the trim around the garage. Husband took one of the shutter fasteners to the store and matched it to a couple of paint samples, and once we tried them up on the trim there was an obvious winner. I scrubbed down the trim, siding, and garage doors (man, was that satisfying!)...

and then we filled and sanded as many of the imperfections as possible and slapped up two coats of Behr's French Roast in Exterior Satin (that name!), and we LOVE it.

The dark brown is so crisp, and I can't get over how much more I like the color of the brick now than when it was next to the burgundy.

Unfortunately, those rusty gold light fixtures have become even more painfully, painful.

I'm also taking suggestions on what color to paint the front door, the last remaining spot of red - I'm thinking green or yellow.

Spray Paint Diaries

Sometimes our front porch really bums me out. Obviously, it's the first part of our home that anyone sees, and I feel like they're seeing the entrance to someone else's house. It's just wrong. It says "someone else used to live here" to me every time I look at it, and I really don't care to be reminded of that fact. I wish it would just shut up, and I want to change everything about it. We'll replace the whole door sometime in the next few years, but it's seriously not in the budget right now. I could paint the door, but it seems pointless to change the color when we're thinking about having the house painted next year anyway.

So, it's bad, but the biggest offender is actually even worse up close.

Whoa, that is one ugly mailbox.  I did some brief searching for a new one, but quickly determined that there is actually no such thing as an attractive mailbox, and there's pretty much nothing better in the world for a cheap fix than spray paint. I had it off the brick, scrubbed, primed, painted, and rehung in the 24 hour gap between mail deliveries.

Oh good lord, it's so much better - and since I already had everything leftover from other projects, it was gloriously FREE. Oil-Rubbed Bronze for the win. Yet again.

I plopped some planters full of annuals on that side, too (HomeGoods apparently has the cheapest planters ever).

Next, unable to look at that awful red chair for one more second, I went on the hunt for a replacement to match my fabulously updated mailbox. I pretty much hated them all except one at World Market which was on sale (plus coupon!). Turns out it disappears into the brick pattern a little, but it doesn't bother me.  The still-too-small-welcome-mat does, though.

So - success! Now all you see are the horrible ugly light fixtures! This was not my intended outcome, but of course it must be now addressed. Fortunately, I've discovered that I find all outdoor light fixtures to be ugly and overpriced, so it's clearly going to be an enjoyable-stress-free project...

Also, I'm undecided about the gold hardware and footplate on the storm door. They're going to look totally out of place once we replace the lights, but I'm kind of nervous about giving them the old ORB treatment (even though YHL did it, and I believe pretty much anything they tell me). Oh well, I'm not going to mess with that for now.

Finally, I know you're on the edge of your seat wondering what happened to the weird old milk can, but I'll bet you can guess. Obviously, it got it's own spray paint makeover, and now lives (slightly less weirdly) on the patio.

...And It Only Cost Me My Sight & My Sanity

It feels like forever ago that I rambled for an entire post about my lust for patterned walls. Specifically, the one pattern that I loved most but was afraid of committing to because of it's popularity.  Well you'll be happy to know (or probably you don't give a hoot either way), that I faced my fear like the renovating daredevil I aspire to be.

HOW TO RUIN YOUR EYESIGHT AND LOSE YOUR MIND IN 5 EASY STEPS

Step 1: Pick a wall - preferably one in your own home.

Step 2: Print out a template (mine came from here).  Enlarge it to your desired scale, or don't (I didn't.)

Step 3: Trace the shape onto cardboard - anything sturdy enough.  I read a good suggestion somewhere to use the back of a cereal box or, if you happen to have a scary basement full of packing materials and moving boxes, that'll work too.

Step 4: Trace the template in a repeating pattern across the wall with chalk. I would recommend taking your time and being relatively precise with this step.  I wasn't, and have a lot more errant chalk lines to touch up than I would have liked.

Step 5: Paint over the lines with a small craft brush. If, like me, you don't have a steady hand you'll probably realize quickly that this project is going to take you a very long time. I figured it out around this point:

(not a diaper)

...and then keep going.

On the first evening, I did all the outlining, and got this far with the painting:

On day 2, I pushed myself really hard and didn't quit until I spilled paint out of the can all over the floor and my feet - which was probably a sign I should've stopped earlier. I was almost seeing double after a few hours of focusing on the wall at the same distance, which made everything look a little crazy and is probably the reason for this wonky photo.

On day 3, I tried to finish up between work and having company over (you know, to show off...) but failed.

After work on day 4 I just couldn't bring myself to stand on the step-ladder to finish up, so I gave myself the day off.  

Refreshed on day 5, I was done in no time an hour and a half.

I am unbelievably glad that I chose such a small wall.  This project took much longer, and was much more taxing than I thought it would be.  Despite that, I love the way it turned out and can't wait to keep working on the room. I'm also kind of tempted to do another pattern (with straight lines so I can use painters tape - I'm not totally insane) somewhere else in the house.

The next step towards creating a girly crafting haven is, of course, furnishing the room. I've been pinning inspiration for months, and right now my favorite setup is this one:

source

I love the cubbies along the wall, the frosted wall mounted cabinets, and wouldn't a couple of eclectic chairs look cute around such a simple table?

I'll be back with an update when I work some extra shifts to pay for those goodies.  Isn't it a shame that furniture is so expensive!?

It's the Little Things

Sometimes, it's the projects that are (relatively) small, that make me smile the most when they are completed.

BASEMENT DOOR

After replacing the garage door and the pantry door, the door to the basement was painfully, obviously, begging to be scrapped. All three are in a line in the kitchen, so the ugly hardware and dirty door stuck out like crazy.  Also, it didn't close - that's kind of a theme around here apparently.

The above photo was taken before we moved in, while we were working on painting the downstairs, so the pantry is still in its original state as well. Those old window treatments from the living room sat in the hallway like that for an embarrassingly long time, by the way.

It makes me a lot happier to look at those doors now that they are shiny and new.

The unmatching hardware is totally my fault.  A long time ago, I decided that the pantry door should have a different handle to distinguish it as a closet, not an entrance.  Then, when we worked on the pantry, I decided I liked the way the knob looked more than the handle.  Then, I refused to buy new (matching) hardware for the basement door, because it seemed like a waste.

I'm a crazy person.  Moving on...

ENTRY TABLE

This may seem like a very minor change, but I searched for weeks and weeks for a table to sit next to our front door.  We made-do with a moving box for a while, but it just wasn't the "look" we were going for.

There is a 16" vent on the baseboard, and an outlet that I didn't want to cover just above it. This spot is also right at the foot of the stairs, so the table couldn't protrude too far from the wall. I didn't think it would be an especially tall order to find an appropriate little table, but weeks of searching my usual favorite haunts and two returned purchases later (darn vent!!) showed me otherwise. Then, one fateful afternoon in World Market, Mum spotted this gem in a corner back by the rugs.

I ended up getting 10% off the sale price because it was a floor model and slightly scratched (nothing a little stain pen didn't fix), and they let me use a coupon on top of that so I paid $32 out the door.  After looking at wobbly, not-even-real-wood, crappy pieces that were upward of $100 it was such a steal!
I know it's just a table, but I love her so much. Of course she's a she. Look how pretty and perfect she is - she was made for that spot.

LINEN CLOSET

Before we could put away all our sheets & towels, we desperately had to do something about this:

Why do the closets in this house give me the creeps so much?! Why do the shelves look like they're melting?!

So, after a couple of cut-to-size shelves and 2 coats of paint, I no longer feel the need to hold my breath when I open the door to the linen closet.  The paint was just leftover from the dining room, so this transformation was totally on the cheap.

If only I could make it look as neat now that there is linen spilling out of it...

I might be a towel hoarder.

These projects were by no means the most thrilling or grand, but they make a huge difference in ridding the house of that "we just moved in last week" look, that we're so good at.

On The Border

Way back before the great blog-hiatus of late 2011, we were preparing the house for our first overnight guests. Unfortunately, even after moving/hiding the boxes which were being stored in it, our guest room was looking like this:

It was better than making our visitors sleep in the ghost room in the basement (a story for another day), but not by much.

Here are the things I don't like about this room:

Wall color - it's indescribably bleak

Baseboards lazily painted same color as wall

Old windows

Weird window shutters

Wallpaper border

Light fixture

Brass headboard/footboard (but we scored them for $20 off craigslist, so they have to live somewhere)

Severely too-small rug (but we scored it for $13, so it has to live somewhere)

Here are the things I do like about this room:

It's huge.  And that's about it.

A lot of the wallpaper was peeling up at the edges already, so I went for broke and just yanked at it. Probably two-thirds of the border just fell off the wall.  Yippee!  Then this happened:

Uh oh.
The paper that didn't pull off easily was seriously stuck down. Seriously. Like it seemed to really enjoy being one with the wall.

I doused the paper in a water-vinegar solution and scraped with a putty knife - no idea if this is an appropriate wallpaper removal technique, but I refused to spend a cent buying anything special/toxic to do it.  It didn't really work, took FOREVER, and there was still a thin layer of paper stuck to the wall in some places.

After two, two hour sessions I thanked my lucky stars that the whole room wasn't stuck, and then took an oath never to install wallpaper in any house I inhabit now or in the future.  You can hold me to that.

I attacked the paper mess with our ShopVac, which was a bad idea since it immediately clogged up the hose. Obviously. I've no idea why I didn't sweep it - sometimes these decisions boggle even my own mind.

I had already put one coat on the baseboards before starting on the wallpaper, so you can see above how much better they looked already.  I also painted the trim around the windows even though they are still wood. It just seems like the right thing to do, you know?

The wall color is Crocodile Tears by Olympic, and I am completely lacking an opinion about it at the moment.  Once there is some real furniture in the room, some appropriate bedding, and a less wonky looking window, I'll pass judgement.

We also threw up some wall art that was lying around the house about 45 minutes before leaving to pick up our first guest from the airport.

I hope you noticed our most elegant piece of furniture in the above picture. Yes, it's 4 (still full) moving boxes covered with a bed sheet. See what I mean about mind-boggling choices? Oh well, at least it coordinates.

There is no story behind the empty frame, I just have nothing to put inside at the moment.

There's obviously still a lot to be done in this room, but it's not exactly a high priority. I have already spray-painted the brass headboard seen in the first picture, but haven't yet figured out how to attach it to the bed or wall (whichever you're supposed to). I also have a few fabric samples that might work for window treatments, but the ugly shutters are probably staying put until we replace our upstairs windows entirely (hopefully by this summer!!!).

Anyone else have experience with stubborn wallpaper? How should I have tackled it? How will I eventually feel about that alligator-y wall color? How does one install a headboard to a frame-less bed?

Chalky Chairs

When I finally got around to starting this project, it felt as though it had been in the works for months and months.  First, we acquired the dining room furniture, and starting thinking about how to make over the chairs.  After seeing them in the dining room, I desperately wanted to lighten them up.

Enter Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.  I've been reading about this magical stuff for ages all over the blogosphere, but at almost $40 for a liter and shipping on top of that, I really needed to have a plan before ordering some.

It took a while to get my ducks in a row but, eventually, the day arrived!!

You can always tell that I'm REALLY excited about something when I take a photo of the packaging

I decided to go with a distressed white look on the chairs, so I ordered ASCP in Old White and the dark wax from a stockist of the Annie Sloan line.  Oh boy, was it exciting!

With the first chair, I put the paint on pretty thick hoping that it would just need one coat.  The coverage was pretty good, but not quite good enough.

So, after finding out that I would need two coats, I thinned the paint down a little with some water (yes, I'm telling you, this stuff is magical) to hopefully make it last as long as possible.

It took a few sittings to get all six chairs painted. They have a lot of edges!  When the paint dries, it has a lovely super-matte finish - chalky like its namesake! - and the brush strokes completely smooth out.

I kind of loved the brightness of the chairs at this point; there's something so happy to me about the color white.  Ultimately though, I wanted the set to have a more established and expensive look, so I pressed on...

First up, a coat of clear hard wax over every surface of the chair.  I applied this with an old t-shirt and let it absorb into the paint until it was no longer tacky.

The clear wax I used has a very pungent odor.  It didn't bother me initially (actually, it was kind of weirdly enjoyable), but as time went on and I used more and more of the stuff, I started to think my house was smelling of gas.  Clearly, the fumes were affecting my brain somehow because I didn't attribute the smell to the wax, and kept going in the kitchen to smell the stove.  And we have an electric stove.
Anyway, I definitely opened some windows the next time I worked on the chairs.

Next up was the distressing with the dark wax.

I know, it's scary-looking at first.  I learned that it's okay to put the dark wax on heavier than you ultimately want it to look though, because it'll lighten again with the final step.  I'm admittedly not an expert distress-er, but it's pretty hard to screw this up.  Just wipe the dark wax onto the chair, especially around edges, textures, and where the chair would naturally get "worn." If it's too dark, just keep wiping over that area to spread it around.  It's hard for me, but there is no point being finicky about this - it's all about the big picture.
Next, gently use sandpaper to distress a few edges and surfaces.  Go slowly here, because it's much harder to undo if you go too far.

Finally, I did another coat of clear wax over the entire chair.  This significantly lightened the dark wax and made the whole look more subtle.  It's also an extra coat of protection against damage to the paint.

Blurry picture apologies

Next up, a few hours of quality time with the staple gun makes these chairs sit-able for the first time since we bought them!

Has anyone else used (and loved!) Chalk Paint? I'm addicted already.

Just 16 Hours and a Can of Paint

When last we spoke about the kitchen it was looking like this:

But messier in real life.

Painting the cabinets had been our plan all along, but somewhere along the way I realized that it would be a big, agonizing, pain in the butt and, as it turns out, I really didn't want to do it.  So we bought some backsplash tile (which then sat in the garage for two months), and painstakingly chose a paint color for the walls that we hoped would compliment the gray cabinets as they were.  Well, we know how that theory worked out...with me deciding to paint the cabinets after all.

I walked past that intimidating can of paint every day for weeks and weeks until one Thursday afternoon when very suddenly, around 4:30pm, motivation struck like lightning.  I slapped some paint on the inside of one of the doors "just to see" , but never really stopped to "see" - which is probably a good thing, because the color of the paint while wet was less than appealing...

  

I kept painting into that night, slept, then painted all day and into the next night without stopping (I honestly don't know if I even used the restroom - it was like one of those times you pull into your driveway and can't even remember driving home).  When there was nothing left to paint, the kitchen looked like this:

A total warzone.

We lived like that without closing the doors and drawers for almost a week to try and avoid the thick paint sticking to itself and chipping, but it did anyway.  Now, I can't seem to get the motivation back to do the touch ups.

My fresh shelf liners look even better now

I would really be remiss if I didn't mention our relic of a dishwasher here, since it adds such a lovely touch to the kitchen.  The inspector found a stamp that dates it to 1972 (!!), and the repairman sent from the home warranty company when it broke immediately after we moved in told us that it's the Cadillac of dishwashers.  Great.  I was really hoping it would break beyond repair before our year warranty is up.

So, what's the verdict?  Ultimately, the cabinets are just old fashioned.  There isn't much I can do about that.  I don't know if painting them is an "update", but it's a huge change and we are really happy with it.

Yay!