The Little Things

I have been sick. Coughing up a lung sick.

Not awesome.

I have also been a bit busy with my shop. Nothing horrific, it just takes up extra time that I could spend doing other things.

But there is something about sitting at home and seeing all of the little things that are not getting done. Things that no one else probably thinks twice about, but bug you endlessly.

My list:

1. The paint on the wall going down the stairs. The paint didn't go all the way down to the new stairs because there used to be carpet there. With the carpet gone there was still part of the wall that needed to be touched up. I finally did it this last week. Woot!

2. The main bathroom has a "window" at the top of the wall. It lets in light from the master bathroom and gives the bathroom daylight that it otherwise wouldn't have, because it is in the center of the house. Around the edges of the window was paint.

The previous painter was not especially careful. It bothers me every time that I look at it....and yet...here it is 7 months later.

Because our kids just had spring break, and because I believe in slave labor, I made the kids clean the bathroom while I got to scrape old paint off of a window.

It probably took about an hour or two to scrape all the paint off, and my fingers were screaming by the end. Old paint does not come off gracefully. It is mean, and sticks around, and really puts up a fight.

Good thing I was determined. Now our window doesn't look like I don't know how to paint.

3. Our front windows next to our doors.

In all honesty they weren't horrible, and I feel bad covering them up because the previous owner was so proud about how he "got them professionally etched." But roses...they ain't my thing.

I knew I was taking a risk that might not work. Luckily, the paint that I was using was removable with paint thinner and only cost $4 for the can.

At Home Depot I found the frosted glass spray paint, taped up my windows and got to spraying.

About 30 minutes later, I had frosted glass windows that had stripes going down them.

Surprisingly, it worked much better then I had thought that it would. The upside is, if I get tired of it I can just remove it.

I also have a lot of projects half started right now. You should see my laundry room...it is nuts.

At one point last week our living room looked like a furniture store. It had two extra dressers sitting in it, a new chair, our green bench, two nightstands, my white cabinet, and all of the regular furniture that belongs in it.

Here is a really quick breakdown of the madness:

Our dresser and nightstands were just too big for our bedroom. I have been looking for small dressers online to act as nightstands, in order to get rid of our current dresser and nightstands.

I found this dresser online and was excited because we had a dresser exactly like it that would match, so I bought it.

The dresser that matched it was in the downstairs bathroom.

So I moved our nightstands and dresser out of our room and moved these two dressers in to act as nightstands.

(This is how it is, for the moment. Although, there is still tweaking to do.)

Then came the problem of our missing dresser in the downstairs bathroom. The dresser in the bathroom acts as storage, but also blocks the ugliness that is our fuse box and water softener.

Insert this $15 dollar dresser that I found at the DI.

So...right now I am working on...

Striping off the paint from the dresser and then redoing it.

I also need to paint our bedroom dressers, and the boys new dresser, and the new laundry cart that I bought.

Now you understand why our laundry room looks like a war zone. Removing paint is a messy business.

Different

I have had a lot of people say a lot of things about our house. Most of them are very complimentary. There is one thing that I learned very long ago, I like things just a little different then everyone else.
That is OK.

I am OK with it.

Most of the things that are permanent, like tile for example, we try to be conservative about. When it comes to paint we kind of have a "no-holds-barred" approach. The wonderful thing about paint on walls is that if it turns out bad, or you grow tired of it you can just cover it up. Viola! Clean slate.

Before leaving on our cruise, I was determined to finish the stairs. I had done the stairs going up but had not done the ones going down.

After ripping up the carpet, sanding, and priming the stairs we were ready. I basically used the same process with the bottom stairs, the only difference was this time when doing the lines I would "seal" them with the contrasting paint. Doing this took extra time but it made all of my lines crisp and straight...no need to touch up later.

Typically people ask how I paint with kids around. On any given day my kids will avoid where I am painting, so there have been very few kid caused accidents. Blake on the other hand, he likes to mess stuff up. Not on purpose, mind you, he just does. Not 5 minutes after finishing painting the stairs...who would barrel down them at full speed? Blake.

(I told him to stay where he was on the floor so I could take a shame picture.)

He marked up 4 stairs before realizing that the paint was wet.

Luckily, I had just finished, so I took some paint thinner and just smoothed over those spots.

Another thing I painted, was the wall behind the door.

One day while going through Pinterest I came across a photo. It made me laugh. Then jokingly I showed it to Blake and told him I was going to paint it on the wall. He said "that would be awesome." I looked at the picture a couple more times and every time I would, I would giggle.

It was then and there that I decided, if you can't have a sense of humor about your home...it probably won't be a very fun place to live.

I had Blake print out the letters for me, then I patiently cut out each one. I placed the letters on the wall with a small bit of tape

and started to trace around them with a pencil.

Then with a little craft brush I began to paint in the letters using the same black paint I had used for the stars.

When I was done, I all of the sudden had any geeks paradise.

Our entry has inadvertently turned into a spacey paradise.

With stars,

and black holes...

 then I went and added a moon poster to the mix. How could I not?!

Most, are probably confused by my choice in painting a giant circle on our wall. Us? It makes us giggle...and that is what life is about.

Making choices that make you happy, but stump everyone else.

Seeing Stars

Remember how I was complaining about how I was hating our entry way?

Well I decided to go all 80's Madonna Lucky Star on the walls....and since I seem to have the attention span of a peanut...I may or may not have also changed the entry floor.

Oops. I could pretend that I am sorry, but I am not.

The entry was fine. Nothing to write home about. Except for maybe the fact that the tile in the entryway may have some elementary school bathroom nostalgia for you.

I had painted the stairs, but they were bumpy and not quite what I wanted so 

I repainted them. Much better.

I tried to talk Blake into possibly doing new tile in the entryway, but he very kindly pointed out that we should probably put our money elsewhere.

I even taped numbers on the floor to try and sway him...for when we finally did re-tile.

The only thing that taping the numbers did was spark my curiosity. 

"I wonder if I can paint my entry tile?"

So without another thought I got to it. I washed the tiles really good and then used TSP to wash it again. Then, using an oil based primer, I gave all those multicolored bathroom tiles a solid coat of white.

At this point, I was so happy that I couldn't see the mauve tiles that I was blissfully unaware that this might not work.

I thought that it would look the best if I could do what I had done with the fireplace and make the tiles still look like tiles, only repainted. 

Using a small brush I began to paint the grout lines with Grout Renew in Grey.

 Then I took a small brush and, using black oil based paint, started painting the squares. I painted three squares before I realized that A) this was going to take me an eternity to finish and B) it looked awful. I mean really really bad.

So I did what any discouraged DIYer would do. I threw a tantrum and started to paint the floor black.

It was immediately better. A little less "craft project" and a little more "shiny and new." You will not be surprised, however, that I can not leave well enough alone. It's not in my DNA.

I decided to tape out the numbers on the floor. Cutting all the little bits of tape to cover up the grout was time consuming, to say the least.

On a side note:

I know a lot of people have mentioned that they are surprised that I can do this stuff with kids around. Well, this is what it normally looks like:

Me, Penny (Canon half the time) and Ariel.

And my projects are not always without incident. I am sure this is not going to be the last time that one of our kids end up with paint on their feet.

Anywho...

Taping out the numbers worked...OK. But I wasn't completely happy with it. Some of the squares had bleed so I decided to just tape off those squares and paint them.

That didn't work either. So then I taped off the squares tried to "seal" them with paint and then paint over the top again. Still no luck. 

So then I surrendered. Somethings aren't meant to be...like mullets, lamé pants and my entryway numbers.

I was not deterred by my numbers fiasco. I was determined to make our entry fun! We all know nothing says "fun" like stars.

I started by touching up the paint on the wall and giving it a good wipe down. Then I used what I had on hand, which happened to be a cookie cutter for the star shape. I would hold the cookie cutter up to the wall then trace the star shape inside. I noticed early on that the star shapes were all a little different because I would turn the cookie cutter a little bit with each new star.

I randomly spaced the stars, and although it is hard to tell, if you look closely you can see the star shapes outlined in pencil.

I tried to freehand paint inside the stars but they didn't look sharp enough. So I taped off the stars, covered them with a light coat of the wall paint and then painted them black. I wasn't super particular about how I taped them because I wanted the shapes to be a little random. 

When taping sharp edges I have learned that using a putty knife as a blade is very handy. (Just like this)

As I was painting along I told Blake "There is a very good chance I am going to hate this and end up painting over it."

I was wrong.

It is fun, but not too busy.

The floor is shiny and, prior to what I would have previously thought, makes our entry look bigger.

 It gives our entry just what I felt it was lacking...

a personality.