Painting a Concrete Floor

Ok, the floor in the music room is painted and I've been slowly chipping away at the final touches to call this room done, but in the meantime, it's habitable! Hooray!!

So about those floors.....here they are.

Well, the paint was still wet in this picture....it's not shiny at all now that it's dry!

So I already went over the crazy/scary part of painting concrete floors. The rest was easy (excepting maybe waiting 5 days to put anything on said floors while the paint cured).

The first thing I did was use a bonding primer so that the paint would really stick to the concrete. That had to dry for at least 24 hours before the first coat of paint went on. Here's a mid coat picture...

I used Behr's porch and floor paint for this because it was what they recommended at Home Depot. It's really thick and sludgy! And with the color I chose, it looked like (and was about the consistency of) chocolate cake batter coming out of the paint can.

I actually did two coats, because just one left a few spots that weren't completely covered, but since the second coat was so much thinner than the first, I got away with only using one gallon of paint.

Ready for the before and after? Here's the garage as it was when we moved in....

...and here it is (even with a little bit of furniture!)

While things look pretty decent in this pic (which I hurriedly took with my iphone, so it's not the greatest), there's still quite a bit to be done in here. I've still got to bring in a desk, more chairs, make another set of curtains (there's a window on the far wall), finishing touches on the paint....in short, I've still got plenty of work to do!

Well obviously my New Year's intention is a bust....but we'll try and hop back in the saddle.

My mother, who is an avid and gifted seamstress (she used to make my formals when I was in high school!) got a new sewing machine for Christmas this past year. Since her old (and very nice)sewing machine still works just fine, she decided to hand it down to me. Well, it sat in my guest-room-to-be for a few months, unused. I have to admit, sewing has always been pretty intimidating for me. This weekend, however, I finally worked up the nerve to try my hand at some (very) simple curtains.....as in, all I had to do was hem all four sides of the fabric haha.

I had seen this neato fabric online....

But didn't really fall in love with it until I decided to paint the guest-room-to-be (currently serving as my music room until we get the garage converted to living space) a dark, muted teal color (Martha Stewart's Plumage, for those of you who are wondering).

See how the color just begs for some more white, and maybe some dove grey, plus maybe some pattern? Don't worry....the rug is not staying in there.....

Anyways, I picked up eleven yards of the stuff for just under $8/yard at The Fabric House a couple months ago (yes...I really have been putting this off that long). This past weekend, I took a deep breath and dove in.

Bam....it's not a great picture. I'll be able to get better ones, I think, once I can move things to the new music room....or at least figure out how to shoot looking at a window without the photo getting washed out....maybe I'll try to get some pics when it's dark outside.

Breaking down the budget, the fabric cost me about $88, plus another $5 or so for thread. That works out to about $45 per window. In most stores, you would spend at least that much per panel, so I think I did pretty well!

Anyone else been making curtains lately?

Dressing out the Man Cave

I've been charged with a very special mission: making the man cave a functional and comfortable place to be. That in itself isn't that hard, but doing it to my husband's tastes has thus far been more challenging!

One of the things my husband really loved about this house when we bought it is the finished basement that runs under half the house. The idea was that if I get my own personal space (my music room), that he should get one too. That way he has a place to retreat, work out in and watch all the football he wants. He can decorate it anyway he wants and I don't get a say, so he can deck it out in all the Georgia Bulldogs gear he wants, and I don't have to look at it! Haha

So here's what it looked like when we moved in. Very cave-like, no?

Before he took of for the other side of the world, he put down some gym flooring for his workouts (he's big into weight lifting). I also found an arm chair and ottoman at a local thrift store (it was less than $10, and if he had hated it, I could have Craigslisted it). It's comfy and gave him a place to watch the fancypants TV he bought to go down there.

He mentioned he wanted our old couch down there once we got the new one (this happened back in November, and I bribed a couple of college kids from my church with a home cooked meal to come and move it for me).

He also asked me to find a rug so he could walk around barefoot without freezing his feet on the linoleum floor. I approached this with some caution, since I was going to have to guess what he would like. The way I got around this? I started by finding a couple rugs online (this one and this one) I thought he would like and sending him the links for his approval (or non-approval).

I was ready to order one of them, when I was walking through Home Depot and saw this...

Very similar to the others that Jacob had already approved, but less than half the price. Plus, I figured the indoor/outdoor design would be easier to clean/more durable for the situation. I snapped a quick picture with my phone and sent it off to Jacob for approval. Score one for the wifey. He loved it! So I went back a couple days later and purchased the 5'x7' version to fit the TV area. Here's a picture of it in place.

It's a little messy down there at the moment.....I've definitely taken advantage of the fact that he's not here to gripe about it to store artwork etc. while I paint other rooms (yes...I've been at it again) and decide where I want it all to end up.

Next up, figuring out how to get a little more light down there!

A Blank Slate

If you were starting with a completely blank slate of a room, what would you do with it?

This is what I am trying to figure out right now. We are in the process of converting our garage to living space and the finished room will be my music room/office. It has to serve as an office space, but also as a teaching space, a rehearsal space, a practice space, a generally creative space, a study space and as a space to house guests when we have more than will fit into our guest room.

Since it is such a large space, I have no doubt that it can serve all these purposes, and from a practical standpoint, I know what needs to go into the room:

• Desk
• At least four armless chairs (not slipper chairs....more like dining or side chairs)
• A sleeper sofa
• A large bookshelf
• Some sort of printer stand (this may be the previously mentioned bookshelf)
• My cello stand, keyboard (hopefully a real piano eventually), and other instruments

However, from a decorating standpoint,  I'm kind of stuck. And I'm not just stuck on curtains or a desk....I don't even know what color I want to paint the walls! or the floor! I've contemplated several colors: mint green, peach, pale pink, white.....I just can't seem to decide....or find the shade that I really want.

Boo hoo....waaaahhh!!!

So who has a favorite paint color?? And, to repeat my earlier question, if you had a blank slate of a room, what would you do with it?

Mr. Blue Chair

All along, the hubs and I have planned to have two seating areas for the living room (one facing the TV, one not, to deal with the large, long room). However, we didn't have anything to make that second seating arrangement out of! You see, our apartment only fit one tiny loveseat, so we didn't own any chairs that weren't dining chairs.

Well, I've taken the first step.

This blue guy came from here, and while I tend to be pretty skeptical of World Market's furniture (I've had some issues in the past with things not going together the way they ought to), I convinced them to sell me the floor model so I knew exactly what I was leaving with.

Oh, and I bought it during their furniture sale, so the $330 price tag was down to $270....and the lovely people there let me use a coupon on top of the sale for an additional perk. When all was said and done, the $330 price tag had dropped to around $230. Woo hoo!

Here's a closer look...

I love how the blue color coordinates with the red stuff we have in the living room, and with the navy backs of the shelves (that I still need to finish and write a post about....consider this your sneak peak!).

And one more shot....see how there's still a ton of empty space? Mr. Blue Eyes will eventually have friends, but for now, we're content to save our pennies. In general, we would rather deal with the empty space than put a "place holder" item there. It turns out to be more expensive in the end and you end up living with something you don't really love in the mean time!

Have you been adding furniture and filling spaces in your home? What are your thoughts on "place holders"?

Console Possibility?

Sometimes you just have to try something on for size. I'm finding this holds true to things that go in your home as well as for clothing. I saw a red console table the other day while I was wandering through Home Goods. I was so enchanted with it I decided to bring it home, knowing that if it didn't look right by the front door, I could return it.

Charming, yes? I love the shape, but felt like I wanted it to be a little bit wider and beefier to fit the space. I also think it would look better as stained wood instead of painted.

For comparison sake, here is the wood table I already had.

 

Slightly more substantial looking, though it's actually smaller, and lacking drawers to hold things like gloves and hats. I definitely like the warm look of the stained wood under the Dali painting though.

Oh, and you'll have to excuse the pile of stuff in the basket. The stuff inside it is headed to Goodwill soon.

For the record, I did end up returning the red table. While there were things about it that I preferred relative to what I already had, I would rather save my money for the right thing!

Have you ever gotten something home before realizing it didn't look as good as you thought?

Painting a Thrift Store Find

I have a seriously embarrassing lack of seating in my house. One of the things about moving from a 900 sq ft apartment to a 1450 sq ft house....you can't fit many chairs in 900 sq ft, but it starts to get embarrassing when I try to have people over now. I shuffle chairs from the dining room to my music room so I and my cello students can have a place to sit. I thought about it the other day....I only had 5 dining-ish chairs. I'm not really sure how I ended up with that odd number, but I decided to remedy the situation.

There is a thrift store not far from the house called Southern Thrift that I've taken to wandering through every so often. Sometimes I don't find anything, sometimes I find something really cool....like this guy.

Now, I know it looks a little worse for wear in this picture, but I figured that for $3 (thanks to the fact that Southern Thrift gives 50% off all furniture every Monday), I could scrape off the K-Swiss sticker, sand it down and give it a fresh coat of paint.

I chose a basic glossy white. The other chairs in the dining room are stained wood, but they were significantly darker stained wood with upholstery (and don't match), and I liked the idea of a little variance. The other thing I chose to do was use spray paint with primer already in it. I'm all about saving work where I can. Some people call it lazy....I like to call it efficient.

I dragged the chair outside, sanded it down and then wiped it down with a damp rag. Once it was dry, I started spraying in thin and even coats (to avoid drips). Here's a picture after the first coat.

It took two full coats, plus a few touch ups. I let it cure for a few days in the garage before bringing it into the house to let the paint harden and to give the paint stink a chance to dissipate. Here's the finished product.

I like the contrast of the white with the darker wood tones and the aqua color on the walls. Have you been painting furniture lately? Tackling other projects? I'd love to hear about them!

Painting My Drop Cloth Curtains

Ok, I've shared how I went about making curtains from drop cloths from the hardware store here and here. I actually made them a couple months ago and lived with them plain for a while to make sure I wanted to go to the extra effort of painting them. Finally, I decided to jump in.

I actually got the idea of using a stencil to paint curtains at this Apartment Therapy post, so I picked up an inexpensive stencil at a craft store, dug out some leftover red paint I had leftover from a painting project at our old apartment, and grabbed some roller covers and a paint tray from the hardware store.

Before I could get to work, I had to clear a large-ish spot in the garage, sweep it (so I didn't get my curtains dirty), and tape down some builders paper left over from this gardening project. Once that was done, I brought my curtains out to the garage (with the door open for ventilation) and got to work.

I lined up and taped down my stencil over the fabric so it wouldn't move around and started rolling. Here's a mid-process shot:

Every so often, I'd have to take the stencil out to the back yard and hose it off so I didn't get smears (got a few of those anyway, but it would have been way worse if I hadn't done this). Oh, and I also tried using an old rag instead of a roller.....the roller works way better, and is much faster.

In total, this probably took an hour. I decided to only do the bottom portion of the curtains instead of the entire thing. My best guess is that it would have taken 3 or 4 hours to do an all-over stencil like this. Anyway, here they are drying.

You can see where I had a little bit of smudging at the top of the pattern. Here's a closeup of the stenciled pattern. I have to say I'm impressed by how cleanly it came out on the whole.

And here they are in all their glory...I'm giving myself mental high fives all over the place. I'm usually not a craft person!

Oh, and the reason I only did the bottom of the curtains? There were a couple. First, there is a convenient seam at bottom-of-window-height that made it a natural choice, but I was also trying to avoid an overload of red. You see, I love red....it definitely qualifies as my favorite color, but the giant area rug under the couch is red, the doormat is red, the front door is red, the toss pillows are red....you see my meaning? There are plenty of other colors in the room to balance this right now, but I am acutely aware that red is one of those colors that is easy to over-do.

Making Canvas Drop Cloth Curtains Part II

Ok, I promised more details and pictures regarding my process for making drop cloth curtains, so here we go!

I got my giant (9'x12') drop cloth home from the hardware store and spread it out on the floor.....or at least as spread out as I could get it.

Then I marked the middle of the long side (on each long side) so I could make my first cut

Once I had found the middle, I used a plumb line stretched between my two marks so I could make sure my cuts were straight.

And made myself a cut line before removing the plumb line.

Oh, and to make sure the fabric didn't scoot around on me, I put some heavy books and painters tape on the drop cloth. Gotta work with whatcha got right?

With my cut line marked, I broke out my scissors, held my breath, and started snipping. Once that was done, I repeated the process in the other direction to get the proper length. Then I borrowed a friend's sewing machine to hem the two raw edges on each curtain. Easy as pie. Here's the finished (but unpainted) product. Seger photo-bombed.

The curtains actually are painted now. Stay tuned!

Making Canvas Drop Cloth Curtains, Part I

My living room has a whopping huge set of windows. There are three of them, reaching nearly floor to ceiling, and the whole set of windows stretches 11 feet. Figuring out a window treatment for this bad boy was not an easy task!

First of all, I'm really not a fan of blinds. I know they are imminently practical, but I just don't like them. Plus, these windows aren't really recessed enough for blinds. They would stick out from the windows.

I looked for pre-made curtains, but it turns out curtain panels (that are not custom made) are almost always 48" wide.....not even close unless I wanted to spend lots of time futzing with the curtains every time I wanted them open or closed. I am really not a futz-er.

So I went and priced out fabric, thinking to myself "Ok, I'll just make my own, and then I can just sew panels together to create something wider." Then I added up how much fabric I would need and nearly died of sticker shock. I would have needed 11 yards of fabric to make curtains to fit my windows. Even if I got fabric that was $10/yard (and most of the drapery fabric I really liked was more in the $20/yard range), that's $110 just for the fabric. Then I would still have to get thread, and some sort of curtain rod, plus whatever other random hardware, trim, etc. Yikes. This was starting to look like an expensive endeavor.

I considered just leaving the windows bare. They have some reasonably attractive trim around them, and leaving them bare would fit into the style of out mid-century brick ranch. However, this is the room where we hang out in the evenings, which means we are back-lit after the sun goes down. It also looks right out into the street, and I find it a little awkward and unnerving that our neighbors could see our every movement once the sun goes down.

After nearly two weeks of indecision and racking my brain for a solution, I was reading Better Homes & Gardens and happened on a story in which a woman used canvas drop cloths (from the hardware store) to make her curtains. THAT was my solution!

So off to the hardware store I went to find the largest drop cloth I could possibly find (15' x 12'), knowing that I would need to cut it in half and hem it. This cost me approximately $30 (not bad, as opposed to the $100+ I could have spent). I then thought to myself "What if I found a stencil and painted a pattern on them?" And the plan was hatched. Stay tuned. This was a lot of text! Next post about this will have more pictures....promise!

Have you ever had a decorating puzzle like this? What creative solution did you come up with? Do you purchase pre-made window treatments or do you make your own?

Kitchen To-do's

Now that I've shared my kitchen painting expedition, I figure it's time to let you know what else is in store for this room. There is a fair amount of work to be done in here, but at this point, we aren't planning a major overhaul.

SO, in no particular order, here's the plan....

1. Replace the stove with a glass top, energy efficient model. The stove was the only appliance in the kitchen when we moved in and while the oven works great, some of the burners don't (namely the two larger ones). Plus, we'd love to eventually have a sleek stainless model instead of what I'll call "aged bisque" for now.

2. Replace and extend the countertops. The large space where the fridge is supposed to go (ours doesn't fit....my husband eats too much haha) would be much more useable if our counter went all the way to the wall, especially since our kitchen is rather lacking in actual work space. This is pretty far in the future, but we're thinking quartz or possibly granite.

3. Once the counters are installed, we can install a dishwasher (and I'll have a dance party)! I survived three years in Boston without one, and it's really not THAT bad to wash all of our dishes by hand, but dishwashers are just so darned convenient. Also, we already have a dishwasher (gifted to us by some friends who found out they were moving mid-kitchen renovation), so we don't even have to buy one!

4. Install a shelf or two in the extra vertical space left in the fridge nook. This will give us a nominal amount of pantry space in the kitchen that currently does not exist (our pantry is in the basement. I love it. It's huge!).

5. Figure out a better situation for the fridge.

It's huge...it may mean closing up the pass through into the living room(that may have been intended as a dining area) and widening the door to make up for the loss of natural light, though we only get part of that natural light right now because the fridge blocks it anyway. We shall see.

 

 Any big plans for your kitchen? Hope everyone has had a good week!

Painting the Kitchen

Our kitchen seems to be the one room in the house (besides the basement) that doesn't get a ton of natural light. I am sure the dead-body-beige paint that was there when we moved in didn't help. Here's what it looked like when we moved in (and until yesterday)....is it just me?

I don't have anything against the color beige, but this specific color combined with the fact that it is flat paint seemed to just suck in all the light. Yesterday, I decided to do something about it.

I had nearly a full gallon of paint left from painting the dining room, and since one of the dining room walls extends into the kitchen, it seemed like a natural move to paint the kitchen the same aqua color as the dining room.

I already had all the painting tools I needed leftover from other painting projects, so this was a buy-nothing project (my favorite kind). Satin paint (to reflect light, rather than suck it in), paint brushes, edger, roller, paint tray and painters tape were the only supplies I needed, and they were sitting in the garage waiting for me, and since I didn't have anything else to do yesterday afternoon, I decided to get to work.

I started by removing all the light and outlet covers, the knife rack, clock, etc. from the walls, plus doing some general rearranging so I had easy access to the two-plus-a-tiny-section walls that needed painting. Oh...and remember the lime green I found under the outlet covers when I painted the bedroom? I think the paint I found under the outlet covers in the kitchen might beat it.

Oh....and the ceiling was once painted yellow also. How do I know? I made the mistake of looking up behind the cornice over the sink.

With my nominal amount of prep work done, I started painting. I like to start with edging because I think roller over brush stroke makes a smoother texture transition than the other way around. Once that was done, I started in with the roller.

Also, I thought I was going to have to call in reinforcements to move the refrigerator away from the wall, but it's actually on wheels, so it's pretty easy to move by myself.

Anyway, here's the end result. I think the aqua really makes my red kitchen stuff pop.

It also makes the cabinets look brighter.

So what do you think? Not so bad for a free project and about an hour and a half of my time! What did you tackle this weekend?

Just Call Me DaVinci, Part III

Ok, I think I officially deserve a break from painting for a little while. My latest project: the master bedroom.

The bedroom was painted tan, just like the rest of the house. I discovered why the house was painted right before being put on the market. When I removed the light switch and outlet covers, this is what I discovered.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, that is lime green. Almost neon. Yikes.

My goal in this room is to create a light, airy, soothing feel, so I decided to go with a lighter shade of the aqua that is in the dining room...almost white with a very slight aqua tint. I also decided to tackle this two walls at a time, mostly because it was way easier to move the stuff away from two adjacent walls (an L, if you will), take down curtains, remove outlet covers, paint, and edge and then repeat on the other side of the room. Here are things halfway done. Observe the chaos.

Actually, it was more chaotic when I moved the furniture on the other side of the room, since there was more furniture there, but that's ok. You get the idea.

After dealing with all the tape in the dining room, and not really wanting to have to tape off this whole room, I broke down and bought an edger to do the tops and bottoms of the walls as well as around doors and windows. Can I just say.....sooooo much easier than taping! This wouldn't have worked with the panels in the dining room, but made things go way faster this time around.

Anyway, here's the finished product.

 

That first picture made me realize I really need to do something to cover the box spring. It's pretty hideous. Also, I have quite a list of to-do's for this room. Not that there's really all that many to-do's, they just seem like big ones!

• Find a place to put some closet space (the original owner turned the closet in this bedroom into the stairwell to the basement after he dug it out of the crawlspace...a story for another day). These will probably be Ikea wardrobes, but we shall see.
• Get a new (queen-sized) bed.
• Move the current bed and my dresser into the guest room (which is currently my music room until we can get the garage renovated).

Have you tackled any painting projects lately? I'd love to hear about them!