Boundless DIY - Mid September Update

There's not much outside of our DIY for me to blog about these days. It's pretty much all our household does outside of work hours. We do spend some time eating and occasionally (crap! F's only got one pair of undies left!) some laundry. Otherwise it's either house fixing or procuring supplies to complete another stage of house fixing.

The bathroom is done. It's been done for a few weeks now. It's still got some blue tape on the walls marking spots where the painter needs to do some touch-up, but we've moved back in and it's fully functional. And wonderful. So wonderful! I can't wait for it to get cold enough to turn on the heated floor.  Pictures of completion soon, but here's a narrow angle shot with an annoying reflection of my arms and phone.

Remember a couple weekends ago (facebook/instagram followers) when I posted popcorn removal in the hall and dining room? Those two spaces are finally repaired, textured and painted. Travis spent last weekend cutting holes for new wiring and new lighting. Sunday we took the day off to go to football (GO BRONCOS!) but he's back at it late tonight and will wrap it up tomorrow.

The family room isn't un-popcorned yet and it's a really easy place to see the makeover. We're noticing our house get lighter and brighter the more popcorn disappears.

This is a pretty typical scene around here these days. Rooms with no lights, holes in the ceiling, wires dangling everywhere, furniture smashed up as far away from the mess as possible.

We still have entire rooms encased in plastic, awaiting their next step.... No lights in this room right now, either, or on the landing which is where I'm standing to take this picture.

 There used to be a light there in this ceiling and now it's just a foil covered hole. FFM totally freaked out yesterday - I had a window open upstairs and the gusting air pressure changes between upstairs and the attic were making the tin foil covering the hole "breathe." He was 100% convinced there was some terrible thing living in the attic.

The giant hole is the attic fan and the tiny hole was an ancient hard wired smoke alarm. The two little holes are going to get patched up and a single smaller hole for a new light will go in. This ceiling is still popcorned, but it is on the schedule for removal this weekend. The stairs are still an intentional catastrophe and are slowly coming apart even more since Travis cut down their supports. It was necessary to do this demo early so we have time make drywall repairs (next week) and adjust the stair treads prior to the new stair railing getting installed (by us, hopefully early October).

The hardest part about all this isn't the mess in the house, although that is hard. The hard part is that we have to empty furniture out of so many rooms at once. Our poor basement has been overflowing with upstairs furniture and items since May. As soon as the bathroom finished we cleared out a little basement space which promptly got filled with guest room furniture, FFM's non-essential furniture, and more! Once we move out of a room we don't move much back in because any carpeted room will need to be empty when the new carpet comes in about three weeks.

Our bedroom, which has been mostly empty since May, is the transitional dumping ground for anything that doesn't go to the basement. Right now it's full of art from the rooms currently undergoing ceiling work, which isn't so bad. Last week F had to be totally out of his room while scraping, repair, texture, and many many many coats of ceiling paint went up so he moved in with us (the guest room is torn up, so he couldn't move in there). In this space below were all the items you see here plus his trundle bed, a few special stuffed animals that aren't in a box in the basement, two laundry baskets of his stuff, lamps, a handful of books (again, those not boxed in the basement) and his giant GIANT GIANT  dresser. No pictures because I could hardly walk without stepping on stuff or our child, but trust me, it was cozy. I was tempted to send Travis to get the camper and park it on the street so we could all have a little more elbow room.

 Ie you noticed, that is a pile of tools, hardware, and plastic in our bedroom (plastic everywhere, we have plastic everywhere!) over in the corner. The garage is pretty crowded and it's handy to have quick and easy access to your tools anytime! You know, for those middle of the night electrical or drywall emergencies.

We've started to joke that we live in one of those sliding puzzles...

We keep shuffling pieces/furniture around so we've got an empty slot or two to work in. The dining room table is in the kitchen. The kitchen table is in the garage. All the bedroom furniture is mostly in the basement...you get the picture. The last couple weeks F has had to go through an obstacle course to get to his piano and this past week we were blocked out of the kitchen, office, and basement for most of the week. It feels like we've hit the tipping point, though. We're slowly, day by day, getting out of the chaos and into the phase where rooms can get put back together. We won't move back in to most rooms until after carpet is done, but this week enough progress was made that once the carpet does arrive we'll be ready to wrap up this renovation adventure and put stuff back where it belongs.

Bathroom and Whole House Update - August

The bathroom paused for about a month after our contractor (and we) fired our tile guy. This time of year it takes about a month to get on the schedule for anyone new, so next weekend we should have 100% photos.

View from the window ledge.

I love my new bathtub!

View from the new doorway. More tile going up on the wall with the light on it. The 2nd light will get installed, the medicine cabinets will go up, and the shower enclosure will go in.

New look in bedroom, clean ceiling, white doors, and a bed on floor b/c we're waiting for carpet and so aren't moving all our furniture back in yet.

Why is the carpet taking so long you ask? Why, because we added more to our little construction project. This phase is DIY so will take longer since it'll get done on weekends. See that stair railing? Very early 80's. Slightly better after I painted it a few years ago. It's bolted to the drywall and notches were cut out of each stair tread to allow for the post to be flush to the wall going up the stairs.

All those cut notches in the treads make it look pretty crummy from the side. With brand new carpet on the horizon we decided we didn't want it to look like this anymore.

 Yesterday FFM and I made ourselves scarce so Travis could work without distractions. He was BUSY! He cut back the carpet a few days ago, and yesterday started by taking out the pickets which were bolted, nailed, AND glued to the wall.

Then he worked on the 'balcony' area and took out as much as he could while still leaving a handrail.

Our new railing plan calls for the treads to be flush with the wall, so then Travis started on cutting off the protruding bits of stair tread. Hard to see, but the 3rd stair up in this picture has the excess cut off.

 That all wrapped up on Saturday afternoon, leaving Sunday to start a new project. Popcorn ceilings called...so we started in on our dining room ceiling. After watching the pros do it in our bathroom and bedroom we thought we'd tackle a room ourselves to see how it turned out. We've heard horror stories about the challenges, so weren't sure how things would turn out.

Right off the bat I'll admit it's pretty awesome to be married to a tall man! I sprayed water and he followed me with the scraper. We have an old paint power roller/sprayer that we used to spray with water - stuck the hose in a 5 gallon bucket of water and sprayed and sprayed and sprayed.

 After about 30 minutes of prep, and hour of spraying and scraping, and 30 minutes of clean up we had this! Next weekend we'll attempt to mud it, then perhaps on to more rooms.

I would like to take a moment here to tell readers that nearly all of the ads on this little bathroom job have been from my darling husband. The stair rail is kind of my fault (I pointed out the nice new carpet would still look icky going up the stairs) but everything else was his idea. We're happier now that most of the trades are out of our house (still have tile and finish trim to go next week) and the railing parts take a month to come so we're not under too much of a time crunch with our DIY add ons.  Projects done and cleaned up before dinner are way easier than those that are still going strong at 11pm!

The Before for Before and After

We've lived in our house 5.5 years now (the longest I've ever lived in one place) and our 35 year old house has some parts that are just wearing out. Like this:

That's my super disgusting rusting master bath sink. Note the painted over tile surrounding it.

The bathroom wasn't bad when we moved in, the tile paint update had been done recently so it was still in good shape and the previous owners had updated the plumbing and light fixtures with big box grade items. But over time the sinks are rusting, the tile finish is cracking, the big box fixtures are failing, and the non-functioning jetted tub is just too darn small for a decent soak.  After my sink took a turn for the worse we decided to push back our planned kitchen remodel and instead of patching up the bath just tear the whole thing out and do it the way we want it. 

We started getting bids early this year, picked out fixtures and finishes, drew up a plan, and this week we finally kick off demo.  Already all the lights are gone (Travis is our electrical contractor).

 The door on the right leads to the master bedroom. It's going to shift toward where the bath/shower are now to make room for a soaking tub. Where the shower walls are now will shrink to just shower size (now it's shower and tub together) and we'll have a vanity in between where the sink is in the above photo.

See that nasty tub? That's sort of almond colored? That's because the whole bathroom used to be almond colored until they painted over the tile and added white vinyl wainscot. You can see the almond tile in the places where the coating is cracking off.

We've moved into the guest room for the time being. Next week is demo and framing, week 1 of a nearly 2 month project.

Almost Weekly Science and Crafts

Before the holiday weekend the kiddos opted to do some crafts and activities instead of a new science project. First up, Sharpie Tie Dye.

We used several patriotic colors and the kiddos drew "fireworks" on the front of their shirts. We stuck a piece of cardboard inside so the colors wouldn't run through. We quickly learned that lots of small dots work better than large colors splotches. I sprayed/dropped rubbing alcohol on them to make them bleed, and then ironed over with a cloth to help set the colors. F had so much blue on his that it did bleed a little, but not enough to blur the designs. I washed them once in warm water with vinegar to make sure they wouldn't bleed too much and the kids wore them almost immediately.

One of the things I loved as a kid was building forts out of blankets, sheets, and couch cushions. My mother frowned upon this practice, I think because we tore apart beds and couches to make the forts. FFM hasn't really gotten into the whole fort thing yet, so to spur his creative juices T and I put together a fort kit and gave it to him for his birthday. I made a medium sized drawstring fabric bag and put: 2 full + sheets, small clamps, clothespins, rope, stretchy rope, flashlights, and a string of LED lights. It took about 7.2 seconds for the kids to figure out what I was doing before they took over and I was relegated to reaching things too high for them.

View from outside, the light blue thing on the lower right is tunnel fort access.

 FFM hauled floor pillows from his bedroom and they read by flashlight and twinkly star light.

Any More Parents?

Every night FFM chooses who will put him to bed. It's usually Travis since F spends a big chunk of time with me during the day. We all say our goodnights and the selected parent does the tucking in and last little snuggles. After this F regularly asks, "Are any more parents coming up tonight?" Yes, that back up pair of parents we keep in the guest room closet will be in momentarily for one last goodnight.

DIY Season

In the summer and winter we don't get much work done around the house. I'm lucky if I manage to even get any cleaning done. Fall and Spring we make a concerted effort to work on the "stuff around the house that needs work" list. It's not all DIY, but the DIY is the only stuff that is fun to blog about (who really wants to see a picture of Travis working on taxes?).

Project #1 - Fireplace screen.
I saw this screen in a copy of This Old House magazine and decided it was just what we needed to cover up our drafty fireplace. We enjoy having a fireplace, but it is so leaky that on cold winter days that whole end of the room is chilly. My biggest hurdle, finding the wood. A friend suggested craigslist, and the next weekend we found someone advertising free wood, help yourself from the pile in the driveway.

Travis got me a board and a can of matte black spray paint, I painted the back board, he cut the logs into discs, and we both glued them on. We ended up with a nice variety of colors and sizes, and they stacked pretty easily.

 Voila! It's a great addition to our family room.

Project #2 - Deck Landing
Like most lots in this part of town ours slopes. When we built our deck that meant that the step down on the east side is nice and manageable, but on the west side really only Travis could step up or down easily. We thought for a long, long, long time about how we wanted to address this corner of the deck and finally landed on this plan - an oversized landing step big enough to put our hose on.

Travis painstakingly leveled, framed, leveled, backfilled, adjusted the downspout until it was exactly right. He used the same stones that run along the border of our deck so it coordinates nicely. Now I can store the sometimes leaky hose reel on stone instead of the wood deck. It's also nice that FFM and I can now step down easily.

Project #3 - Bathroom update
When we moved in to this house FOUR years ago (yipes!) the paint colors were nice, but all a little on the gray side. The upstairs shared bathroom was a shade of green gray that grated on my nerves. Late one night as I was getting ready for bed I decided enough was enough and I pulled out a can of paint leftover from painting FFM's room (it had been blue gray) and painted the bathroom until the wee hours of the morning. I decided as soon as my achy joints could take it I was going to repaint. Four years later I finally get around to it, and FFM gives me his design input. He requested a blue bathroom with a guy theme. Rock and Roll baby!
Before - malfunctioning light fixture, outdated mirror (it's already gone here) and lots of wall patching. We repainted the medicine cabinet instead of replacing it after we discovered it's a bizarre size that isn't available at Lowe's or Home Depot.

 We decided to replace the towel bars with hooksto make it easier to hang up all the towels FFM uses for swimming. The previous owners used interesting hardware to attach the bars, when removed it left gaping holes in the drywall. Lots and lots of patching.

New mirror, shiny metallic royal blue medicine cabinet, and new light fixture. The mirror is my favorite part, it's etched all around with a pattern reminiscent of a bar code. 

The blue color looks weird in the photos, it's a cheery turquoise blue from Benjamin Moore. We all get happy whenever we walk into this bathroom now!

The opposite wall is where we replaced the bars with hooks. After searching high and low FFM and I finally found GUY hooks. Goodness, there are a million fun hooks if you do something feminine. The mirror discs are still in progress, I put the first few up before the paint was fully cured and they didn't stick well. When finished it will be a wave pattern swooping down to below the sign.

That's about it on our list of fall projects, after we pack in all our garden stuff we'll be ready for ski season!

Wet Hands

This is what I'm talking about when I say F is "on all the time." He runs at 110% during all waking hours. There's no downtime, no break, no mellow bits. It's full tilt boogie from 7am to 7pm.  Drying hands on a towel is just so BORING!

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Two completely unrelated, amazing things disappeared recently.

1. The Lunch Battle
Since my surgery F's been eating school lunches on the days he's at school for a full day.  While our school lunch program is decent, with a fairly "healthy" offering pretty much every day, they also offer a total kid meal every day.  There isn't one day a week when you can't get chicken nuggets, pizza, or a hot dog. It's hard for chef's salad, pasta, or teriyaki chicken bowl to compete with pizza.  While I was down for the count I think F ate pizza for about four meals in a row. When I bounced back I suggested that he think about which thing was the best for his body and pick that.

Today, for the first time since spring break, I managed to move fast enough in the morning to pack him a lunch.  I literally squealed with glee when it came home looking like this:

not a speck left!

Guess Mom's lunches are edible after all.  Perhaps this is the beginning of a long, healthy relationship with the lunch box.

2.  We took out the spruce tree that was taking over the front of our house.  Now, we LOVE our trees. They are all about 30 years old, huge, mature, beautiful but SO SO big. As soon as we moved in I had the 6 dead and dying Aspen trees cut down.  When the wind blew they'd knock the eaves and roof.  It was freaky.  A previous owner planted the two spruce in the front and they are stunning trees,  BUT HUGE.  We trim the one closest to the house twice a year. You can't tell from this angle, but when you'd look out our front window all you'd see was tree from 2/3 of the window.  It constantly bumps against the house and windows ( we've been trying to keep it hacked back).

The crew arrived just as F and I were headed out the door for school drop off.  We made sure they were working on the right tree and I dashed off to school.  When I came back 30 minutes later (must have time to chat with the other moms!) The tree was GONE. 

The guys hopped in their bucket and shaped the remaining blue spruce, it's a nice cone shape now and the twin tips at the top are gone.  Poor F missed the whole thing.  Luckily the stump remover came later in the day and F got to watch him grind the stump to nothing.

We see a lot more of the side of our neighbor's house now, our 3 year plan includes some large shrubs and a new smaller tree for the space.  We'll also put in a walkway from our back yard to the front.

On the surgery front I'm still pretty swollen (it's really hard to elevate your hip) and I'm barely limping. I still can't put all my weight on my right leg going up/down stairs.  It's getting stronger every day, but PT says it'll take a while to get it back.  I told her she's got until the start of ski season to get me up and kicking at 110%.

Annual Tree Lighting

When you come to our house for the first time we will give you directions that sound like this: "it's the house just past the two giant spruce trees."  We love our big trees, even the one that will have to go soon b/c it's taking over the house. The other one, however, is prime for Christmas decorating.  It just looks like a giant Christmas tree.

The 2nd Christmas we were in this house Travis managed to get a few lights up on the tree.  Each subsequent year we've honed our technique (the tree is 30ft+ tall and on a slope) and added more lights.  I also found some large sparkly 'balls' to trim the tree so it's Christmasy even during the day when the lights are off.

Travis just left for a week long business trip, but before he left he managed to get the big tree trimmed. The rest of the holiday decorating was up to FFM and I.  We trimmed the tree, decked the halls, and sang some tunes today.  We had such a good time, even without Travis, that we were nearly late for FFM's advent pageant at church.

Not What We Planned for Our Weekend

October is a fickle month.  We never know if we are going to have warm, balmy sun or a blizzard. This weekend we had a little of everything except the blizzard. We tried to go to our favorite pumpkin patch, open only this weekend, and were thwarted twice by lashing rain and gusting wind.

Saturday we planned on early breakfast followed by pumpkin hunting and fall festival.  We ended up spending a lovely morning with extended family, then browsed for new light fixtures indoors out of the pouring rain, and hung out at home. Travis changed out our front and back door hardware while Finn and I worked on our own project.

 Since Daddy was busy taking lots of measurements FFM really wanted to help.  He was getting a little in the way so we made our own plan.  He had a Mission Notebook and two pages of measurements to take. His mission was so much fun! He measured all kinds of things, a chair, a phone, an animal, a window, it went on and on.

Saturday night I headed out to girls night out downtown and the boys stayed in and had pizza leftovers for dinner and read lots of books.

Sunday, ah lazy Sunday, the sun finally came out.  We opted to wrap up some of our outdoor chores that have been lingering. We had some exterior trim to paint after gutter work a couple of weeks ago, winterize the lawn, cut back some of the perennials, and hack back the cobwebs that pop up everywhere.  FFM mucked out his playhouse and got it ready for winter.

We had a few moments of panic when FFM disappeared and neither Travis or I could find him anywhere. After the recent Jessica Ridgeway news we JUST had a chat with him about stranger danger and not taking off without permission. No kid in house, front yard, or backyard. There weren't any other neighbor kids out and about so we were at a loss. We finally found him camped out in our car. We got our new one on Monday and he's still very excited about it. When he found it unlocked he climbed in to play in and 'clean' it. Another stranger danger chat and a few tears later we were all calmed down. Now I just hope the car is OK!

We wrapped up early, had early dinner, and had time leftover for family game night. We love game night! Add in cheesy caramel corn and Dots and it's one great time.

Pinterest Project

I enjoy Pinterest.  It clicks with my style of visual organization and I like stashing project ideas for later.  Like most people I have way more ideas than I have time to follow through on but I do manage to do a few of my Pinterest projects and this latest is one of my favorites.

Our 30 year old house came equipped with 30 year old shiny brass hardware.  All of the light fixtures, towel bars, and even the floor registers have been updated, but the door hardware screams early 1980s.  Hello Pinterest idea.  I stumbled across this idea and there are about a million websites that give you specific instructions but I'll tell you what I did to change shiny brass to a more updated look.

 First I took all the hardware off, including the latch and strike plates.  Hinges will come later, I only had so much stamina.  I cleaned them all with TSP so that the paint would stick really well.  Travis picked up some primer and spray paint for me on one of his regular Home Depot trips.  Even though the paint said it had primer our past experience tells us things last longer and have a smoother finish with a real coat of primer under them.

Then I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed.  I should have worn a mask.  Some pieces needed to be flipped for even coverage and to make sure all visible parts were covered.  The tp rolls helped me get the undersides of the knobs.  24 hours after the last coat we put it all back up.

The color paint we used was Rustoleum oil rubbed bronze.  I ended up using just more than 1 can for 2+ coats on all the interior hardware in a 2 story house.  It's great!  For less than $20 and an easy few hours of work (more in waiting to dry time - I waited at least 1 hour between each coat) we have all new hardware.

What's next?  Maybe this!

glitterize your shoes!