While Brandon's Away, Barb Will Paint!

Brandon was able to make a trip back to Washington to celebrate his mom's birthday. With Barb home alone for the weekend, she decided to surprise Brandon by getting some "big" things done.

She decided that, once again, the most logical thing to do was to paint something. The only spaces still in need of a fresh coat were the upstairs hallway/stairway and the laundry closet. Of course, to accomplish either, she'd need to move major appliances alone and/or find, move, set up, and climb the ladder to reach the tops of the walls in the stairway. Either would be a challenge. Both sounded like the perfect plan!

Of course, the upstairs hallway wasn't even prepped for paint yet. Remember that project where we widened the doorway downstairs? Remember how we had to move the pipes leading to the upstairs bathroom? Remember how we had to cut a big hole in the wall upstairs to access those pipes? Well, so far we'd only installed drywall and taped the seam. We had put one coat of mud atop the tape, but it hadn't been a thick enough coat, as we could still see the tape through it. So, in preparation for Barb's Weekend Challenge, she secretly spent some time every day after school the prior week re-mudding and sanding the patched wall. Looks like new!

So, once Barb dropped Brandon off at the airport, everything was ready to be primed. One thing, however still stood in her way: the laundry closet was still full of, well, laundry. Not only did the washer and dryer need to move, but she also had to remove the shelves (and all their contents). So, first she dragged the dryer to the center of the dining room and (not wanting to mess with water lines) shimmied the washer to the center of the closet. With some brute strength she was able to lift out the shelves and lie them in the middle of the living room. Brandon wasn't gone for two hours and already the house looked like a war zone. Now just a quick coat of primer and everything would be ready. Not bad for a Thursday night!

Hoping to get two coats of paint in each space AND to have enough time to put everything back in place before Brandon returned Sunday afternoon, Barb got right to work when she got home from school on Friday. First, everything upstairs had to be taped off.

Now, painting itself is relatively easy, especially since Barb's already painted most surfaces in this house. Painting a stairwell, however, requires a little more effort. The funny thing about stairways is that they keep going up. And those walls get pretty tall. So, before she could paint, Barb had to figure out how in the world she was going to reach that high. Obviously, she'd need the ladder, but the question was how to finagle it on the stairs. After about a half an hour, this is what she came up with:

Thank goodness for Brandon's super nifty foldable, multi-height, amazing ladder! Now all that remained was some very careful balance and a couple gallons of paint (not to mention a weekend's worth of man hours) and voila! Painted spaces!

(Sorry, these pictures were taken at night....the paint's not that dark, we promise!)

 When Brandon got home, he was dumbfounded at the work his amazing wife accomplished while he was gone. Barb's just hoping that doesn't mean he'll keep finding reasons to leave for the weekend.... ;)

February Fiasco

After a slow January, we decided it was time to tackle some of those little projects we've been talking about doing for forever. Keyword: "little" projects. This month, Brandon was gone almost daily at rehearsals and performances for the local production of Annie (he played piano in the pit), so if we wanted to get anything done on the house at all, it would need to be little things we could do whenever we could spare the time.

While Brandon was at rehearsal, Barb did the home improvement project she can do best: paint. She painted the little rectangle behind the new pendant light, as well as the areas behind the stove and fridge green to match the dining room (we won't bother tiling there).

With the green carried over into the kitchen, the two rooms finally started to feel like one big space. Of course, as soon as we moved the appliances back, you couldn't see most of the green that Barb painted. But we know it's there, so it's ok.

Now, for the past couple years....well, ever since we got our HDTV (thanks, Dad!), that TV has lived mostly on HGTV. We've watched home improvement shows about pretty much everything, but one of the things that always stood out was some of the unique combinations of accent colors in a room. One of our favorites has always been a nice green, earthy room popped with small pieces of intense pink. Ya know, one wild orchid here, one throw pillow there, just a nice pop to define the space. Well, after seeing it done on TV for so long, we decided we were ready to try it at home.

Once Brandon finished installing the new pendant light, we started brainstorming what kind of shade we wanted. The old one we stuck on there temporarily just wasn't cutting it.

Well, now THAT would be the perfect spot for a pop of pink! (Especially since Barb just painted green on the wall behind it). Ok, seems easy enough, we'll just start looking for pink glass pendant shades. HAH! As if those exist. Apparently, most people don't want a pop of pink above their kitchen sinks. So, now it was time to figure out how to make our own.

After looking everywhere we could think of, and spending countless hours perusing the internet, we had one particularly successful trip to Ross. We found some cheap candle holders that, in our minds, they were the PERFECT pieces of our new pendant light. Just the right hue of pink, a perfect grate we could put around the pink glass to tie in the feel of the chandelier we have in the dining room...it would be perfect!

All we'd need is a little spray paint and a hole saw drill bit to cut through glass. Well, both of those things are easily acquired, and we're ready to put this thing together. But first thing's first, we better make sure we can drill through glass before we break the one thing we could find in the right color. So, we spray painted the grate and practiced drilling through the bottom of a Starbucks frapuccino glass bottle. Both worked perfectly!

Ok, so here goes...

Crack and shatter, there goes THAT plan. So, now what? Where are we going to find another piece of glass that's the right size, color, and shape and that's thick enough to be drilled through. Well, when it doubt, make it yourself! We went to Michael's, found a clear glass vase that was the right size and shape, and we decided to paint it ourselves. We found some glass stain...one that was a little too Barbie pink and another that was a little to candy apple red, so we bought both and mixed them. This time, we had no trouble drilling through. Now we just needed to find the right color. As before, we did a trial run on our favorite frapuccino bottle.

 Once we found a color combo we liked, we went to town on our new vase-turned-pendant.

A few coats later, we were happy. Once we assembled the grate around the new shade, we hung the new pendant light. Beautiful! 

Now we can add a few more pops of pink around the kitchen--ya know,  hand towels, a few carefully positioned spatulas, and it'll look as if it were on TV!

In the meantime...

Ever since we framed in the fireplace wall with the built-ins (for those avid followers, you'll remember that was the very FIRST thing we ever did to the house), we knew something needed to happen with the mantle. With the starkness of the white bookshelves and the solid brick fireplace, the mantle was just getting lost. We debated on painting it: white would match the bookshelves and trim, but might feel too stark and modern; dark brown would match the paneling below the chair rail in the room, but somehow painting wood dark brown felt wrong. So, we bit the bullet and decided that stripping and staining the wood to match our new floating shelves was the way to go.

First step: remove the old finish. We got Formby's poly remover, painted it on, waited a while, and scraped away the now gummy finish.

Step two: After scraping away the old poly, we sanded away all the remaining stain and finish, leaving us with raw wood. Already, it seemed SO much better.

Step three: the fun part! After covering or taping the nearby brick and bookshelves, we were ready to apply the new stain. We wanted something dark with a hint of red, so we ended up with Black Cherry. At first, we were nervous--in the can it almost seemed purple. But once we started brushing it on, we LOVED it!

Step four: poly. To seal in the new stain and give us a nice, shiny mantle, we applied several coats of polyurethane. Once dry, we removed all the temporary wall covers, stepped back, and admired the new look.

Then we noticed how much the brass fireplace cover stood out as out of place. Oh well, a project for another day.