Showing posts with label home repair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home repair. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Now You See It. Now You Don't.

The view of my yard yesterday morning:


and this morning:


What a difference a day makes.  If only grass could be grown this quickly! 

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Summer Projects 4-6 FINALLY Finished

Summer projects bled well into autumn, but here they are!

Laundry room:
Finished! (Except for the covers for the hampers and something to cover up that ugly plumbing thing on the far wall.)

Man Cave:
Finished! (Except for the pillows I need to sew and the television that needs to be put in and the pictures I need to put up and the mat for under the office chair.  Is anything ever really done???)  I did get the stairs finished.  They are painted with carpet stair treads rather than completely carpeted.

I won that battle when Brian found out it would cost $400 more to carpet the stairs. No, wait.  They are not completely finished.  I still need to put in a piece of molding on the top step.

Exercise Room:
Finished.  Okay, I also need to get mats for under the exercise equipment and move said equipment  downstairs, and hang pictures.  I'm never gonna finish this stuff am I.  Well, it's so much better than this:


and this:
Kiefer's mess
 and this:

I wanted to paint the wood paneling, but Brian did not.  We've waited so long he may be right anyway.  It should be coming back in style soon.
 and this:

Kyle's mess. 
Yup, it's looking so much better.  I was going to write that this week's goal would be to finish all the little things, but I know that won't be happening.  Realistic goals are finished pillows, mats for the exercise equipment and the office chair, some of the equipment downstairs, and maybe that piece of molding.  We shall see!

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Back to the Summer Projects List: #3 Empty Nest Bedroom to Office

The empty nest has some good points.  A few years ago a deserted bedroom became my yoga and meditation room, and now the newest empty bedroom is my office.

At this particular point in the process, however,
Under the plastic is the old desk that is about to get a make-over.
I would have been visiting my drug dealer if I had one.  FIVE coats of paint.  I thought I had bought Pratt and Lambert paint which I wanted to try.  Somehow I ended up with Benjamin Moore. I've never used it before and never will again.  Three coats of paint is the most I've ever done with any other paint.  The third coat is, more often than not, just to be sure I haven't missed anything.  In the end, though, I won the paint battle!  I have an office.

  It also has a nice sitting area for hand sewing or reading.
The desk is a crappy old desk left behind by the youngest child that got a paint job (NOT Benjamin Moore) and new hardware.

I put a piece of glass on the desk with black and white photos of the kids taken by my sister back when they were sweet and loving and listened to me without rolling their eyes. 

Kiefer says Keegan looks as though she's trying out for Nirvana.

Brian put in the new ceiling fan and light.  I don't care what the people at HGTV say, ceiling fans are not ugly!

I've already started project 4--the laundry room.  I'm at the wallpaper removal stage. In additional to the usual problems with wallpaper removal, this room turns out to have two layers of wallpaper.  It could be worse I guess.  I've heard that some people actually paint over wallpaper.  I cannot even begin to imagine how nasty it would be to get painted wallpaper off.   As it is, I sometimes dream of hunting down the former owners to verbally pummel them for some of their half-assed home improvements.

Twelve room down--five to go!

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Fixing a Painting Mistake at Last

About ten years ago, I painted my mantel brown.  You can see just a bit of that "brown" mantel in this old photo of my son and grandson.  It would be the bilious green strip at the top of the pic.

I swear it looked brown in the store! Somehow, in my house it looked like a pea soup green . By the time I accepted that it was not going to somehow turn brown if I just put enough coats of paint on, I didn't want to deal with it anymore.  I have spent the ensuing years telling people I thought it looked just fine, thank you.

Well, it may have taken ten years to get up the courage to try again, but I do love it this time. It's Behr's Dark Cavern. It's a deep gray with a brown tint, not blue.

I should have done this ten years ago.  Another job off the list!


Friday, October 18, 2013

Have You Ever Refinished Kitchen Chairs?

I knew this wouldn't be much fun, but I had no idea how hard it would be to refinish chairs with lots of grooved spindles.  I HAD to do it because this is my idea of a new kitchen set

--lots of metal and very little wood, and this is Brian's idea for the new kitchen set

--no metal and lots of wood. 

Rather than spend money on something I didn't want, I decided to refinish the chairs to our kitchen set that came as a package deal with my husband thirty years ago.  That would be thirty-plus years of grubby hands wearing off the finish


and seat cushions.


After four horrific days of trying to strip and sand spindled chairs, they are finished.
Had I any idea how hard sanding spindles was going to be, I'd have gone along with Brian's choice.  I will never, ever refinish another piece of furniture.  On the other hand, I do really like the fabric for the cushions.  It an indoor-outdoor fabric from Joann's. 


Thursday, September 6, 2012

Mudding and Taping and Painting, Oh, My!

Don't you just hate it when life interferes with sewing?   First, we had this nasty leak from the upstairs pipes. It ruined the kitchen ceiling and wallpaper.  No big loss on the wallpaper, although I do miss the perfect ceiling.
Fixing the leak required making a big hole in the ceiling, removing wallpaper and, even worse, the nasty wallpaper glue residue, taping, mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding, mudding and more sanding, and painting. 

We hired a plumber to fix the leak, but I am the repairer of walls and painting here.   It has taken me a week, but I did it!  Note Kiefer applauding the practically-finished job below.  Yes, it's an awful photo.  Since it is past 7 o'clock and I'm covered in spatters of ceiling and "Coconut Milk" paints, it will have to do.     Did you notice that I also got supper on the table--Lasagna no less?  I'm accepting virtual applause in addition to Kiefer's, thank you.    Frankly, though, I'd rather be sewing.  Must start buying lottery tickets so I can hire this crap out.



Monday, July 18, 2011

Shed Redo

I should entitle this, "How I Won a Sweet Little Giveaway and Had to Paint My Shed."  Here are before and after pics of the shed.

This before picture is of the "good" side of the shed, but you can still see the wood rotting out on the lower right.
After!
So, how did winning a giveaway require redoing the shed?   You can see the answer  between the windows on the "after" photo.  Part of the prize from the A Creative Princess giveaway was a gift card to Michael's.   I found this beautiful enameled metal piece there that I just KNEW would look great between the windows of my shed.

Unfortunately the shed was in terrible shape.   The door was rotted at the bottom.  The metal roof edging was peeling and rusting in spots.  Wood in the back needing  replacement as you can see here.

Redoing the shed was not anywhere near the top of my to-do list for the summer.  In fact, I thought we would have to tear it down and rebuild.  After I found that enameled metal piece, the shed was not looking so bad after all and had miraculously worked its way to the top of the to-do list.  As it turned out, the shed was a pretty easy and inexpensive fix.  We needed a new door, one large piece of wood to replace the one holding the back gutter, lots of wood filler, and paint.

So, after replacing the wood, digging out soft spots and putting in wood filler, lots of scraping and painting, it is done!

A quick note on my experience with wood filler.  The Minwax filler was a disaster.  It requires mixing with a hardener,  is hard to work with, and smells awful.  In the end, I scraped off all the Minwax filler and used the much less expensive and easy-to-use Elmer's wood filler.  Elmer's even worked great on large holes such as this one.
Elmer's dried to a hard finish, sanded easily, and took the paint beautifully  Just in case you're wondering, Elmer's is not paying me to review their product.  You surely know that Minwax isn't;-)

The gutters that looked so bad I thought I'd have to replace them actually only needed to be washed with dish detergent and a little bleach.  Last, my lovely husband took on replacing the door.

So here it is again!  The finished product.
Thanks to Terri of A Creative Princess for getting me motivated.  I think all the neighbors are also thanking you.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

How to Remove Moss and Algae from the Roof

I've not stopped blogging.  I've just been REALLY busy with outside and inside projects.  With nice weather, it's been mostly outside work such as fixing up the pool shed.  That job had to start with getting the moss and algae off the roof.  Half the roof looked like this:
After wetting,  scrapping, and rinsing with the garden hose for a few hours,  it looks like this:
It's a rainy day here!  How nice of nature to wash off any of the residue of the Brand X version of Clorox 2 that I used on it yesterday.  I tried just scraping it off--didn't work at all. Then I Googled and found that oxygenated bleach would help.   Actually I think just getting it wet helped.

Not being a fan of walking around on a roof let alone a wet one, I tried doing this by moving a tall ladder around and scraping with a long-handle brush.   The ladder worked but the brush didn't.  I finally took the brush off and just used the plastic piece on the end of the pole to gently loosen the moss and algae and the garden hose to wash the mess off.   Success!

This is a short-term solution, though.  According to the internet, I can get rid of the problem permanently by cutting down my neighbor's tree (no, he will not like that) or putting copper or zinc strips under the top rows of shingle.   Oh, wait a minute!   I could also spray Wet and Forget once a year.  What?  Yes, after all that work, I find rave reviews for this product on Amazon.  I could have sprayed the roof with Wet and Forget and not only would the moss and algae have washed off by itself in the rain, BUT it would have prevented further buildup for a year. The Wet and Forget 10587  is a moss, mold, and mildew remover while Wet and Forget 800003 is for moss, mold, mildew, and algae.You should see the reviews for these products! I can't get it locally, but I have placed an order on Amazon. No more hours of scrapping for me.

As soon as it stops raining, I get to start painting this in a lovely shade of gray.

Just in case you're wondering what happened with my sewing room, it's almost finished!  I'm waiting for a couple of things that are on order including some vinyl wall decals! I've never used them before.   Can't wait to brag  or rather blog about it.  It has been a LOT of work, but I'm lovin' the results.