Grouting PSA

PSA-Don't grout while hungover.

I still maintain that on January 1st I was just really feeling a little under the weather from the effects of a little cold that I'd fought off the previous day. My sitting on couch all afternoon eating pretzels and watching a Biggest Loser Marathon on Bravo (season 3, where Eric wins) had not much at all to do with the fact that I'd been out the night before.

In an effort to at least accomplish SOMETHING on New Years Day I went upstairs and worked on grouting the bathroom. It was horrible. My awesome grouting skills were on par with those of a trained monkey. Instead of finishing the bathroom I gave up when the bucket of grout ended and went to go get Mexican food instead.

Feeling so much better the next day I went into the bathroom and recoiled in horror. My one true DIY skill was staring back at me in a horrific display on the floor. Why oh why didn't I just stay on the couch?! Breaking out a screwdriver I diligently chipped away at the worst parts.

This would be my final and 3rd attempt at grouting the floor. And I was going to knock it out of the park. Fixing my grouting mistakes was the pits. Especially when Pete would come in and point out parts that I was already attempting to fix. I got a little defensive and kicked him out of the bathroom. What can I say, I was really sensitive about fubaring the grout the day before.

Our newly installed door, threshold and ungrouted floor.

The floors and threshold nicely grouted! Unfortunate the new door had to get taken off temporarily. In the end everything worked out well. The floor does look fantastic, if I do say so myself, and is such an improvement over the vinyl sheet that was there before. Now I can't wait to get back and finish up the rest of the work. Finding the time is proving harder than we thought, hopefully soon we'll get back there! At this point we think we're about three more weekends worth of work away from completion.

Bathroom Paint Color(s)

After pouring over countless color combos and paint chips we narrowed the selection down to four prospective bathroom colors. Sometimes the little chip just isn't enough to get a true idea of how the color will work in a room. In the past we've made a few wrong choices with picking paint colors, so we decided to learn from our old mistakes and got samples cans mixed up to make sure we got the exact right color for the bathroom. Thank you Behr for your adorable mini paint can samples that are oh so useful. I love them!

Right before I dipped the paint brush into the first sample can I remembered that the water was turned off. There was no way that I would be able to wash the brush off between samples or at the end of the trial. We usually try to spend a little bit more for a quality paint brush, so I really didn't want to ruin this one because of the lack of water. Plus I needed the brush for later, it was going to be the brush used for painting along the...trim.

Paper towels will work as a paint brush in a pinch! Would I recommend painting your entire room with a roll of Brawny? No. But a little touch up or sample coat it is fine to reach for the paper towel.

Looking at the colors on the wall I picked my choices right away. Without disclosing them to Pete I asked for his favorites. And they were the same as mine. I love when that happens! Can you guess which ones we both picked?

Don't worry- I'm not going to drag our color choices out.

We picked the middle ones. The lighter color is Vellum Parchment and will go on the wainscoting and trim. Darker is Toasted Mocha and will be the wall and ceiling color. Both by Behr!

That night we dragged our dirty selves to Home Depot and picked up a gallon of each color. As well as tube of wall patch to fill in all the holes that the old bathroom fixtures left behind. That giant hole in the wall was actually made by Pete to reach the shower plumbing. We're going to create an access panel there for future plumbing needs, instead of having to tear out the wall again.

You can see the ceiling in this picture, Pete painted it the same color as the walls to help the small room feel bigger. I love it! The ceiling looks awesome and blends so well with the walls now.

You like our fish decals? I know- how awesome and stylish right? They fit SO WELL with our plans for the bathroom. If it was opposite day.

Rough Start on the Bathroom

About five minutes into the bathroom renovation a slightly large snag happened. I wasn't there when said snag occurred, since I was busy toning my buns by running up and down the stairs for funsies. Just kidding, I was actually pretending I was a pack mule and was currently on my 10th trip up the stairs when Pete met me in the hall holding a funny bit a metal in his hand. Why, it was only the water shut off valve that snapped off when he tried to turn it.

Trip to the hardware store number uno. Thankfully there are two small, but well stocked, hardware stores a few minutes of the condo.

That night Pete attempted to get all the tile down on the bathroom floor, because it needed time to cure and then get grouted before the toilet could be put back in. So we figured overnight and morning curing would be best for the tile, and then I could grout in the afternoon while Pete fixed the shower plumbing. That would allow us to put the toilet in late that evening and get the shower back.

At 2 am, after slamming down a Red Bull, Pete saw the flaw in our plan.

We bought a box of tile in the wrong color.

1st attempt at painting furniture.

Eva = 90%.

What does that mean? It means that when I start a project I usually get about 90% through before I throw in the towel. There is something about completing the final home stretch that doesn't work for me. I'd sometimes like to blame my ineptitude to finish projects on my undiagnosed ADD.

The reality is I get bored or frustrated. Sometimes I even get all freaked out that my project is going to turn out like poop and scare myself into stopping before there is actual physical evidence out there of my failure. This is the part where I could launch into many lengthy paragraphs of my personal trials and recent life changing epiphanies. But that crap is boring. Moving on.

In storage at our other house is an old dark pine dining room set. There is a hutch, buffet and dry sink. Purchased about 5 years ago at a thrift store we had lofty goals of stripping the dark finish off and refinishing it. Stupid us forgot that we had an entire house to refinish, so that project got pushed to the wayside. For a few years the set sat in our dining room, accented by the salmon paneled walls, as an example of two 20-somethings who were trying to build a nice home with no money.


Then day came two summers ago when we gutted the living room and the set got sent over to storage. Storage is where the set has lived ever since. We've decided that in the next house to build in a china cabinet and that there will be no place for our dark pine set once everything is finished. I'd recently been obsessed with the idea of putting a small bar in our house. Mainly because I want to get more room in the kitchen cabinets and all the wine/martini/beer/maragita glasses take up a lot of space.

I convinced Pete that I should make a bar out of the dry sink. Since we had it on hand in storage with no plans to use it in the future (and I'd get about $5 selling it at a yard sale). Unfortunately the frigging dry sink doesn't fit by 3" where I really wanted it so location B, the dining room, came into effect.

This would one of the first bigger home decor projects I've taken on by myself, so I was pretty excited about it... good thing I had enthusiasm...

Forward and onward I went with my enthusiasm for creating the bar! To start I wiped the whole piece down with some warm soapy water and a rag. Off came the cobwebs, dust, debris and stain. That darn stain was going to give me problems already. Since I was planning to paint a dark color with crackle I wasn't that concerned with it really.

We've painted every room in our house at least once so it was only a matter of heading up to the attic and picking the right rust covered paint can for the project. Down came the primer and I got to work. Priming took longer than I imagined, about two hours. I did two very thin coats, just to make sure everything was adequately covered. Even the inside got coated. Sure enough the stain was a problem again and leached through the primer. Turning it from white to a very mellow yellow color.



The next day (I really barrel through projects at first) I went over the whole thing again with a coat of white ceiling paint. This was to be the under coat of the red crackle. Sometimes its pretty miraculous what a coat of paint can do, as this was when I started to see the potential of the dry sink really come out. I also started to notice the fact that this thrifty dry sink would make an excellent baby changing table.


Noted that little fact to myself for the future. From home bar to baby table!

After the white coat of paint I was really digging the way it looked! The sink was looking really fresh and updated. Even the interior went from dark to cheerful. Now you could look in and actually see if something is on the shelves. It should be noted that I could not remove the old shelf paper, so I painted on top of it. Some new, fun scrapbook paper will be modge-podged onto the shelves eventually.

There are no pictures of me scrubbing the floor with a sponge trying to get all those tiny paint flecks I splattered everywhere. I'm 90% sure I got them all.

Here is where my story takes a wrong turn. I'm going to gloss right over the horrible experience of painting the bar with the crackle finish. Short story, the red paint was sliding down the sides of the bar and puddling into a goopy mess near the bottom. The crackle never dried and I was stuck with this gluey bar where the red paint peeled off. Ugh.

A few hours outside on a nice Sunday was needed to get the bar cleaned up for a new coat of paint. What a pain in the rear it was to try and correct the crackle finish disaster. Good thing I still had my initial motivation keeping me going, because the dry sink was about 5 minutes away from becoming a bon fire.

In the driveway I washed off as much of the red paint crackle as possible. Then I sanded the entire piece down, Thank God for the sander! The doors were taken inside and I was able to wash off almost all the paint with some hot water. That night I re-primed everything with a coat of grey primer and was able to get on the first coat of the new red color I bought. Chianti by Behr. Which matches the kitchen back splash tiles a lot better than the previous used red color.


Another two coats of red paint and everything was ready for the antiquing. Hours later, tons of sandpaper and two t-shirts covered in wiped off glaze - It's done. Except I'm not sure if I like it...So once again I'm about 90% done and have almost thrown in the towel.

At this point in the project I’m remembering the exact reasons behind my 90% finishing attitude. The final details of any project suck. All your hard work gets put together and only then is it then when you see if the vision came though. Or if you earned a big fat fail. I spend another hour (or two) working on the final touches. This included another coat of the antique glaze and updating the hardware. I'm thrifty so instead of buying all new hardware the hinges and screws got a coat of brass spray paint. They ended up look pretty decent for the total $5 paint cost.


I love the knobs.

Since the old screw holes had been painted over it was not exactly easy going to get the hinges back on. That's when I bust out the drill, and subsequently its when Pete wandered downstairs because he heard power tools. Turns out I was using the drill wrong, but not really wrong, just a little wrong.

Praise the power tool gods, because the drill made putting the doors back on an almost painless process!Unfortunately I (Pete) realized that a piece of wood ended up getting warped. Because of that warping I couldn't finish everything as planned that night. Pete had to glue it down and we had to wait to put a finish nail on the other end to get everything squared away.

Now the bar is finished, living in the dining room just holding all our rarely used glassware. I'm still not 100% sold on how much I like it. I think in its next life I'm going to paint it some glossy, solid finish bright color (aqua?!) The lines of the ol' dry sink arn't lending themselves to the distressed look very well...

Things that we already had laying around the house:
The Dry Sink-part of a dining set we bought from a thrift store for $125 about 4 years ago. Since the dry sink is about 1/4 the size of the china hutch I'll use that reasoning to make it cost about $31.25. One fourth the total over all cost of the set.
Primer Gray
Primer White
paint-First Red Paint
Sandpaper

Items that I bought new:
Crackle- $14
New Brush ( That I ruined)- $7
New Paint- $14
Fancy Knobs from Anthropologie- $48
Bronze Spray Paint- $5

Adding together everything I bought new and the dry sink equals about $120.

Not too bad. Especially since I learned a ton while doing this.

Time....

I'm not going to even add that up. Maybe a total of 24 hours? It took me what felt like forever.

Mini Mudroom Improvement

In our mudroom we have a traditional bench and hook shelf set up. Which makes perfect place to stash our keys and drop off any items we're carrying. Not only does having that drop off point so close to the door help keep house clutter down, it also helps me quickly find my keys. If I don't stick my keys on the hook right away I'm sure to loose them and that means frantic moments of tearing the house apart during my search to find them.

The bench was a great Ikea purchase that does double duty because of the storage space inside. Which is where we place the pet food, one quick peak in lets us know if anything is running low before heading out.

It seems that we've placed a few things on the bench that have left their mark(s) on the cushion.
I felt like the stains took away from the clean feeling in the room, and might be distracting to buyers during showings. Also its really just gross to have such a grody stain on your furniture.

Buying a new cushion would be impossible, being as the bench is long since discontinued. I almost purchased a bit of fabric last night to make a cover, but then I remember that I have a few remnants of fabric laying around that would like really nice in the mudroom. They are leftovers from our Ikea curtains in the office.

Up into the attic I went to grab the fabric and my trusty sewing machine!

I put down the cushion in the middle of the fabric and played around with how I wanted wrap it up. I had to make a simple cover, leaving the bottom mostly open because of velcro attachments. Eventually I decided on a very simple folded over design. A little measuring, folding, refolding, pining with the only four pins I could find and then I'm ready to start sewing.
My trusty sewing machine was an awesome birthday present from mom during my teenage years. What teenager wants a sewing machine? Apparently I did! Although my sewing skills have not much improved over the years I'm so happy I have a machine in the house, it has proven itself invaluable over the years.

The whole project took a little less than an hour from start to finish and cost zero dollars and zero cents. Well worth the time and price in my opinion. Everything looks so much cleaner now!