Last Saturday was a good intentions day that took a bit of a detour. Originally, I had planned to finish up the half bath and then proceed to touch ups in the master suite. But it was turning into such a beautiful day that after I laid on the first coat of trim, we headed outside to see what we could do.
Mike took on the garage. It had been pretty clean when we moved in ... but then we moved in. Many things just got shoved into the back to be dealt with later, and of course, our cars had tracked in salt and sand. So Mike put everything in order and gave the garage a bath.
We've decided we're going to rip up the gross carpet on the stairs and paint them sometime this summer.
After wandering around the house, I decided to take on the task of cleaning up leaves and random muck that has gotten into all of the flower beds. The first task was tackling the front hedge/bush thingies. I don't have a before picture on the very front, but I ripped up some dead bushes and leaves from the brick half-circle portion.
We'll plant some perennial flowers there, and now we think we'll rip out the hedges and plant rose bushes further back. These hedges have a weird, huge gap behind them that you can't see straight on, but you can from other angles. Behind it is this:
Someone was going for the most impact at the cheapest rate.
As I worked, I also got to enjoy my birthday present from Mike: Bluetooth speakers. Tired of lugging my big, corded speakers around, I asked for some wireless speakers, so whenever we're doing projects, I just have a little box (and laptop, tablet, or phone) to work around. This has already made life wonderful, and I have to say this is a safety purchase, not a luxury buy, because there are no cords to trip over. Totally practical.
So, while Mike slaved away in the garage, I rocked out in the flower beds. I have to admit I had very Walden Pond-esque (yes, that's a real English major term) thoughts and was very philosophical while getting snagged on vines and bushes.
The west side of our patio. Note the pile of leaves. I don't think they are ours, but I think we got lucky, judging from all the bags everyone had piled on their driveways during trash day. You can see the overturned hull of Old Blue between the two trellises.
We are still trying to figure out our garden placement, since the sunlight doesn't hit all day except for way in the back by the service boxes. We're thinking of doing an herb garden on the northeast corner.
There are a lot of rocks in this bed and plants starting to poke up, so it'd definitely need an overhaul. Mike's thinking of extending the bottom of the L out (so, not an L anymore), but we need to start tracking how light falls throughout the day. After midday, I think this area is completely in shadow. Hmm ...
Oh, and our sidewalk heaved over winter, so we couldn't open the patio door. Mike took it off and ground it down until it could swing freely. Our patio furniture has been wintering on the sidewalk, because the boats called dibs on the covered shelter. We'll be throwing them on the trailer soon and putting the chairs where they belong.
The east side of the house aka the garage exterior is full of rocks, chips, and hostas. We also need to take paint along the bottom edge of the siding to reseal it from moisture.
The back of our house also has some siding issues we'll need to start dealing with. The back/north wall is softening at the bottom, and we even have a chipped away spot that I think we should protect, even if we aren't replacing siding this summer. It's not bad yet, but I'd like to slow the progression down while we save up for new siding.
Mike read that some people with this hardboard siding gradually replace it, especially at the bottom, with fiber cement siding, because 1) it's the best thing ever (we had it on the first house), and 2) it blends well with hardboard, so once the paint's on, you wouldn't know one from the other. Many people in our neighborhood have replaced their siding with vinyl, but I've seen some fiber cement, so we know there isn't going to be any HoA issues there. We tried to use the siding issues in negotiations to get our ideal price, but the sellers wouldn't have it. Oh well. We still got a good price (under appraisal!) and our brains are popping right now on how much other two stories are going for in this neighborhood with some basic updates. We got in at the right time! And we have a brand new roof, so I guess we'll just have to deal with a siding issue that we'd probably have in just about any other house we could've bought other than something brand new.
It's okay, house, we still love you.
She looks a bit imposing at this angle. I blame the front yard's slope.
We are still in the decorating stage of the half bath, and we don't know if we'll get it done this weekend, because we have to roll out the docks at the lake on Saturday and help a friend move. So, we'll see. But I figured maybe one or two family/friends out there might be wondering how things are going.
First of all, a trip down memory lane:
Where we left off, the wallpaper and its evil adhesive had finally been completely removed and we had primed the walls and trim. In doing so, we also had to replace our toilet valve.
We had to choose a color and both agreed we liked green in here, but we threw up some other colors just to make sure before narrowing it down to four colors for test swatches. Ante Meridian became our final choice. The color is by Valspar, but we used Olympic Icon for our paint.
Mike removed the old light fixture and replaced it with a $25 find from Lowe's. Along with getting his first taste of plumbing, he also got to play with electric wires. But, of course, we had figured out which breaker the half bath lived on and shut that down. We're total idiots here.
Success!
The trim was only primed at this point.
We used the pendants we'd grabbed at ReStore for a couple bucks, but Mike wants to find something else, because these bother him. I think they're fine, but to each their own. Eventually we'll replace the counter top and vanity, but that's a ways off yet.
The paint looked mintier than we were hoping for and a shade or two lighter than we preferred, but it does feel nice and fresh in there. When you put swatches up against a primed wall, they tend to look darker than they will once fully applied. Oops.
And the light totally yellows out the camera, but it doesn't look that yellow in real life. We do want to change the bulbs, since they are a weird shape and stick out from the pendant, but we'll let these burn out first.
The hardware was a fantastic find from CostCo and for under $30, we got a six piece set that included 2 towel racks, a towel ring, toilet paper holder, a glass shelf rack, and a towel hook. We split the hardware between the upstairs bathroom and the half bath - perfect!
The hand towel is another awesome find from Home Goods. I managed to grab two of them on clearance (would've bought more if they'd had'em!) for $3/each, and they are the best hand towels we've ever touched. Soft, thick, and absorbent. I'm a dork. These have officially made me a towel snob.
On the glass shelf, we put a mixture of coral and shells we'd found on our honeymoon and some decorative whatever that was left over from staging the first house. It's not crooked, that's just my mad camera skillz on display.
We also replaced the floor vent, which was gray-brown, chipped, and grotty.
And we upgraded the pulls on the cabinet.
The room isn't Pinterest ready yet, but it feels a little less dated. I'm debating between painting the cabinet or gel staining it espresso, just to add some contrast to the room, but if we do manage to find a steal on a vanity, do I want to go through the effort? Plus, it'd be nice to have full access to the only main floor bath for awhile. Of course, the upside of painting or staining these is that it'll be practice for the kitchen cabinets and maybe we'll decide we don't need to update the vanity, aside from a better counter top and sink.
What's left, besides the vanity?
Caulk the gaps in the trim
Paint and reattach the footer piece that popped off
So, last Friday, some of our friends were milling around the kitchen and we showed them one of our tinker projects, which is spray painting dated fixtures. At one point, I misheard my friend say, "You could Lebron James it," while gesturing at our fridge.
totalsports.com
Yeah, I misheard. The rough translation was painting the fridge with something like the bronze spray (not spraying the basketball player on our fridge, or even oil-rubbed bronze, just Rustoleum spray paint). Confused yet?
Basically, if you believe everything you see on Pinterest and DIY blogs, Rustoleum's oil rubbed bronze is the Jesus of spray paints. Got a brass fixture but can't afford a new a chandelier? ORB IT!
People have even ORB'd their sink and tub faucets and shower stalls.
Style with Cents does a nice breakdown of what has staying power and what you're better off just replacing.
We have a long ways to go before we even consider ORBing faucets, so we started with some basics: Our laundry room & kitchen pulls. Our original pulls are dated, though they do feel nice and solid in your hand.
The funny thing is, we've seen these pulls in stores while looking for "contemporary" pieces. But I guess if you're going for the antique look, that'd be the way to go. Since our kitchen updates will be gradually phased in (unless Kitchen Crasherswants to jump in here), we figured orbing these suckers might make for a nice holdover until we suck it up and buy 30 pulls at $2-5 a pop.
Our poor laundry room is actually the DIY lab. It's often a disaster staging ground, but it's also where we first tried painting trim, and we figured it would also be the first cabinets we paint. There's less heartache when you mess up in the laundry room, because our machines Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum sing happy little tunes, which would perk any cabinet up. Seriously, our washer and dryer are the happiest appliances we've ever met!
So, I removed the pulls from the laundry, since they were the same, and when a warm enough day hit, I put them in a box, went out to the patio, and sprayed away. The can said to wait an hour between coats. Even after they dry, you need to let them cure, or you'll nick the paint off.
Btw, how not awesome is the counter top? It looks better here than in real life.
I'd read in a few different blogs that you're best off using a primer or sealer coat, even though Rustoleum's metallic line is supposed to adhere to any surface (except, you know, liquids). I grabbed a can of Valspar's clear sealer, but it made the pieces look more like iron than oil rubbed bronze.
To test things out, we put some of the sprayed pulls onto the kitchen cabinets to compare.
We weren't thrilled with the results. It's definitely a shape issue, though I feel like the orb'd pulls darken the space. Here's a comparison shot for you, with the orb around the microwave and original pulls to the left and on the lower cabinets.
What do you think? Is it even worth going through this holdover step?
In the half bath, which we have not fully revealed yet, since we have some trim work left to do, and we're hoping to do a couple more tweaks, we managed to snag a really nice hardware set from CostCo. The old brass light just wasn't going to work with the new brushed nickel set, so since we liked how the orb had turned out, even if we weren't sure if we liked it with this shape and cabinet stain, we decided to spray a couple pulls and see how it looked.
The photo is a first coat, but even with additional coats, we said NOPE. The nickel just looked odd, since it was speckled and not brushed. The orb paint could get away with it, but not the nickel. The NO element was evident on the half bath's light fixture. It might look cool black, but since we already found a cool replacement, we're not exploring that route.
Because the spray nickel pulls didn't work, we decided to go ahead and get some nice ones for the half bath vanity, since it only needed two.
For giggles, we put one on a kitchen cabinet and immediately decided that the nickel pulls aren't going to work with our stain. They might work down the road, but as we are still debating what to do with the cabinets, we aren't ready to buy 30 pulls. We do, however, really like the form and feel of this one, since it strikes a nice balance between modern and traditional details. We're hoping to score a pack of similar ones with a different finish. We like orb, it just seemed to make the stain darker. But was it the form or the color? And should we just wait until we figure out what the heck to do with the cabinets?
The other conundrum is starting to surface, too. Once you get two new pulls on one set of cabinets, suddenly your other ones feel weird. Mike figured it out first: We really dislike the feel of pulls that are hollowed out in the back. We want solid pulls. Our current ones are solid, feel good to grip, they just aren't our style. I'm going to orb the pulls in the master bath, but they are hollowed out and now starting to bug us even more.
It's easy to see why home ownership spurs the economy, even if you're dragged down in debt. It's not roofs, furnaces, plumbing, all that maintenance drudgery. It's the silly things like the feel of a handle on a door you really could open without it.
You think you’ve got the task figured out … and then it laughs at you. Hard. The shrill cackles in this case came from our half bath. It’s been next on our to-do list, but we’d had a tendency to just pick at it. With the Super Wallpaper Bowl, we were lulled into thinking the hard part was over. So it kind of just sat there, with Mike periodically having a go at the adhesive backing. There was no sense of urgency.
Then my mom asked if we’d like to host Easter the following weekend (now this Sunday).
Urgency, you have arrived.
So last weekend we decided to give our semi-nude half bath a makeover. All we needed to do was remove that last bit of glue, scrub down the walls, and slap on some paint. Spray paint the dated brass light and cabinet pulls. Great weekend project with lots of satisfaction but less heartache than the master bath.
Right?
… right? Hey, are you laughing?
Saturday morning dawned, we rolled out of bed, sipped some coffee, and started the fun. This began with a breaker box adventure. Since Mike didn’t feel like electrocuting himself when he removed the light fixture, we had to shut that circuit off. This was our first clue our proposed schedule was going to need adjustment.
Mike headed to the basement while I stood at the top of the stairs, my eyes on the bathroom light. There was a muffled swear and then he appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
“The switches aren’t labeled.” I’m sure he wanted to insert another word in there. “I need a pen and paper.”
So, then we turned on all the lights in the house and proceeded through a baffling 20 minutes that consisted of Mike throwing switches and me running around the house to see which lights had gone out. We concluded our house was wired by a mad man, because the oddest things seemed to be on the same circuit. Maybe it would make sense to electricians. Eventually we discovered that our half bath, laundry room, garage, and radon system all run on the same circuit. They are all on that side of the house, so it makes sense by location, but we have no idea if we’ve messed up the radon system or not. I guess you don’t know until it slowly kills you?
With the light removed and the switch fun complete, it was on to scraping off wallpaper glue. Which, we swear, had reproduced, because there was more than we remembered (and it had developed a stubborn streak). I had been assigned to prep and spray paint duty (for fixtures), but I had to wait for the outside temperature to warm up, and it became clear that Mike needed help if we were going to stay relatively on schedule.
While Mike stood on the vanity, scraping away, I got close and personal with Mr. Toilet. Like really close.
Obviously the toilet had yet to be installed when the wallpaper went up (or had been temporarily removed), but we just aren’t at the comfort level yet of removing toilets. It doesn’t leak, things seem to be holding up, minus its tendency to run, so we were just going to have to deal. The trouble with this, however, was that no matter how soaked things got in that tiny, tiny space between the tank and wall, you didn’t have a good angle with the putty knife. The wall behind there started to resemble a fuzzy sweater that had been through the wash too many times.
We’d grabbed some stir sticks at Lowe’s when we were getting paint swatches, so Mike had the idea to use those. This worked much better, though there was a definitive lack of angels singing. But I discovered something a little funny. Once I had most of the glue shreds off, it was just bare wallboard behind it. Everywhere else, once the wallpaper was removed, we had white paint. But not behind the central part of the toilet tank. So, that makes us think the wallpaper isn’t original and the toilet was originally installed before painting began, and it’s perfectly normal to miss spots back there, thank you very much.
A some point in my toilet contortions, I bumped the supply valve and some water dribbled out. I tightened it back up and put a towel under it, just in case, but then we moved on.
Sometime in the afternoon, when we were already weary and somewhat discouraged, it was time to whip out the Kilz Premium and get our prime on. We debated whether or not to paint the trim and eventually decided on it, because while the window and door trim is in great shape, the baseboards were pretty beat up. Mike wants to re-trim the house someday, but that’s in far off future dreamland.
I’m the cutter, Mike’s the roller. On the trim, I decided to try out a foam brush, just to see how it would work. I love my Purdy edger, but the Valspar paint we use on the trim really shows the brush strokes. I’d love to switch to something more friendly, but we have SO MUCH of it left from doing the master, it just seems wasteful. Verdict? Not a big fan of foam brushes, but it’s just primer.
I also tried the foam brush for cutting in on the walls and I started to worry if I’d lost my touch or something. I switched back to the Purdy and sighed with relief. With the angle and stiff control, I can cut me a pretty good line, if I do say so myself.
It took us Ghostbusters II to prime. Then we called it a night.
Sunday
Sunday came. I rolled out of bed (Mike grunted and went back to sleep), padded downstairs, and got the coffee going. While it brewed, I painted each swatch on each wall to see how they looked in different light. Especially in this small space, each color looks different on each wall. Fun.
Then, coffee in hand, I hopped online to revisit the problem we always get stuck with: do you paint the walls or the trim first? In the master, we had painted the walls first, and a few days later put up painters tape to then do the trim. But the fresh wall paint had flaked a little, so we quickly stopped that and risked some freehand (which was fine, because we were freshening paint that was already there, so I could cheat just a bit below the edge, then caulk the gaps).
Should I slap on a second coat of primer and just hope it’s dry enough by the time we choose our color and run to Lowe’s for the bucket to not be a nuisance when I cut in with the paint? Is it easier to paint trims or walls first? I’d looked up this question up, but the answer seemed all fuzzy.
When Mike woke up, I posed the question and walked through the pros and cons. He said to wait on the trim, the wall was the big thing, and if we didn’t have the final coat on by next weekend, it would be okay. Any chips the kiddos might put in the trim could be touched up on the final coat. No Big Deal.
Whew.
On to the next thing: Paint swatches. Originally we’d started with a couple dozen swatches on the wall and whittled it down. We’d chosen what looked like subtle greens on the little chip cards and then one greige with a green undertone. That one, Plantation Moss, got an instant veto because it looked poopy in some lights. The other three, Ante Meridian, Sage Morsel, and Portico, looked much greener on the wall than the swatch. Initially we loved Portico but thought would it be too saturated for the small space.
Ante Meridian, Sage Morsel, Portico, and Plantation Moss
So it came down to Meridian and Sage. Back and forth, back and forth. We wanted some warmth in our color and Meridian might be a little too cool, but Sage would get a weird yellow tone on some walls that didn’t appeal. We worried about a green hay effect once it was all on the walls, so we went with Meridian. Which is funny, because it originally was just a middle runner in our selection.
But before we could paint, Mike had another task: the toilet supply valve. The towel we’d put under it the night before was slightly damp, so it was still dripping. My heart sank. This is what I saw happening to The Plan:
I did not disagree that fixing the valve was important. But was it urgent? Couldn’t we fix it after the Easter bash? Or at least later in the week, after the paint had fully dried? Paaaaint. Paaaaaint!
But sometimes as the wife, you have to recognize that your man is going to Do This Thing and he will not be deterred. And other than The Plan, The Schedule, I really didn’t have a good reason to argue against it.
So I did this to the plan.
Then our half bath makeover took another turn. To make sure we had all the right bits, Mike wanted to remove the valve and take it with us. So we had to turn the water off in the house. After revisiting the London Underground that is our water closet, we turned off the house supply and ran the faucets until the water ceased to come out.
Then Mike put a bucket under the toilet valve and started to loosen it.
Gushing is probably overdramatic, but the bucket was filling fast! We turned on the basement sink faucet again, just to check, and sure enough, some procrastinating water came out. Did it get lost earlier? Take a wrong turn? I don’t know. Once it ran dry again, the toilet supply valve sputtered to a trickle and then finally stopped.
Mike removed the valve, but we would still need to cut the pipe to get to the plate and a nut. Boo. So we schlepped off to Lowe’s with our fingers crossed this would be a simple, cheap fix and not become a disaster. Because we’d like to turn the water back on and shower. And flush toilets.
We grabbed a new supply valve, plate, and pipe cutter. The valve supplies cost around $25, and we hoped this wouldn’t lead to a $300 plumbing bill. We actually had the luck of bumping into a Lowe’s worker who knew what he was talking about and got us all the right bits, including pointing us to a different valve that will make future fixes easier (pops off with a release instead of requiring the chop).
Back home, Mike set to work. The cutter was funny to watch, because it just looked so loose and easy to cut the pipe.
Once the pipe was cut, Mike popped off the nut and grotty plate. He put the new shiny plate and valve on ...
... and then the supply line didn't actually fit with the valve. The sizes matched, yet it didn't work. I suggested he check the ridges in the line's end for gunk. In doing so, he realized there was an extra middle ring in there, and that was what seemed to be making the parts fit together. Hmm. How important was this ring? he wondered. Was it actually an adaption piece and this valve had been replaced before?
Mike took the gamble and removed the parts that just seemed to be in the way. And guess what?
It worked.
Old valve, plate, some random leftover bits, and the handy lil cutter
New valve, bucket ready just in case.
I marched down to the basement to turn the water on and Mike stood at the valve, ready to holler if water started leaking. To ease pressure, we turned on a couple of faucets, so if there was a leak, we wouldn't have all the water come shooting from one point. But lo and behold - NO LEAK!
And there was much rejoicing.
So, what did we learn? - Label your breaker boxes ASAP. - Water hides in the pipes, so be ready. - Changing a toilet valve is pretty easy. - The schedule is merely a suggestion. Next up? Paintin' time!
