Cover your ears

Hello
It's me
I was wondering if after all these reno's, you'd like to see..
To go over...
Everything
They say that tile's supposed to be heated
But we ain't agreeing

HELLO FROM THE BATHROOM TIIIIILE
I think we've flushed a million tiiiiimes
We try and we try butt we just can't win
This house is old and makes me chug gin

Well, I do have lots of updates for you and at the moment, I cannot publish them as they are filled with expletives. It has been a challenging month of January. Our newest project is the upstairs bathroom... And inadvertently, possibly the downstairs one too if our lovely plumbing issues continue.

Kiss your plumber today and stay tuned for a more calm and collected post.....

Me. Today.

Project Parlor

I like to swear.  A lot.  I can't help it.

So, now that we have that out of the way.....

In one of our previous episodes, I stated that I wouldn't want to disappoint you in regards to just finishing a plain old foyer.  So, we decided to go a little crazy with it.  Well, that was a bit of an understatement.  Bat-shit crazy would be more like it.

Let's review....

The Game Plan was to:

• Use the buckboard as inspiration for the decor
• Put up a faux copper tin ceiling
• Build some built-in lockers
• Install heated pinstriped wood flooring
• Swear
• Tape and texture as little as possible
• Install a barn wood wall
• Drink alcohol
• Get a Tetanus shot
• Have a chandelier or 2
• Resurrect the stain glass windows from the original front door that Grandpa George made

We've done almost all of it... In addition to the list above, we had a few other chores to accomplish that I think we deliberately blocked from our minds.  Like.... Trim work, crown molding, staining and sealing all of it.  That was not my most favorite and I'm still trying to get the stain out of the cracks of my fingernails.

The Buckboard 

The inspiration for the room in which we have now come to refer to as The Parlor

I purchased this at a "Junkin Sale" and have been skipping about it ever since.  What a find!

 Let's take a moment to reflect why......

"Old stuff" is really hot right now.  It looks cool, to those who like it.  But what I personally love most about it is the nostalgia.  I love to just stare at these little pieces of history and wonder what has it seen and heard over the last century?  They're relics of days gone by and they made it through time to now!  Amazing!

The Ceiling 

This was a "drink and try again" project.  It also involved some swearing.

 

We used these ceiling tiles - same ones we used in the kitchen:

 

We wanted to do a copper ceiling but then do some kind of a distress to it.  Well, that didn't really pan out.  (Refer to my previous post for a refresher.)

We bought a gallon of the copper metallic paint.. This is paint that you have to special order.  We bought ours from Sherwin Williams.  It's about a $100 a can so pretty spendy but it covers really well and goes a long way.... Unlike the beer in the background.

We painted the ceiling with copper metallic paint and....

 

Hated it!  Of course!  Why would we like something the first time around? 

It was just too orange-y.  And the way it reflected on the beige walls made our walls look like they were pink.  Gross.

(BTW, these photos do not do it justice.  I'm realizing as I'm posting these pics, they don't look much different from each other but trust me, they were.  And I remember taking the first set of photos so that means I was sober for BOTH photo shoots.)

Now what do we do? 

We're idiots and so we took some black paint and dumped it into our $100 can of copper paint to darken it up, of course.

But guess what?!?!? It worked! 

ORANGE you glad we did that?

 

Ryan & Milissa - 1   Ceiling - 0

 

 

The Flooring

After a shitshow of installing floor heat, we got the flooring installed and surprisingly, this was a project that actually went smooth for us and had great results.

 Tah-dah!

This is tongue & groove engineered hardwood flooring.  It's what's called a floating hardwood floor as it is not nailed or glued down.  In order to have the heated floor, this was the route we had to go.

 

I love this flooring and how it turned out.  The only thing I don't love is that the dark stripes show EVERYTHING.  But, I have solved this problem by teaching my boys to "only walk on the light stripes."  It's ok, it's fun for them.  Feel free to do the same when you come to visit..... ;)

 

 

The Barnwood Wall

Ugh - what a bitch it was getting the wood to complete this project.  Only Ryan and Milissa would venture out in the middle of winter, sober, and harvest old wood off of a building. 

Yes, I just used the word 'harvest'.

 

Before:

 

 

After!

Hey Patsy.  Why ya lookin at me that way?  Oh, you're mad they don't have a channel on Sirius Satellite radio dedicated to Patsy Cline?  ME TOO.  What is up with that?!?!?  If Pearl Jam can have one, Patsy Cline sure as hell should.  We need to make some calls.

 

We were a little nervous as to how the little light stripes where the wood was nailed to each other would look but after sanding the wood down and making sure the stripes were staggered, I think it looks pretty bitchin' !

 

 

 

Built-in lockers

Before:

 

 

 

And... After!

 

 

Super Hubby built this all by his lonesome.  I painted it.  A few times.  Tried the whole "chalk paint" thing and sucked at it so reverted to good ol' latex paint.  The hanger and bench are leftover barnwood from the wall and the floor of the shoe cubbies are vinyl placemats I bought at Pier One and stuck some of those 3M velcro thingies on the bottom to make cleaning easier.  And no, that was not an idea I got from Pinterest.  I thought of that one all by myself  *pats self on back*

 

The Trim and Crown Molding

Out of everything in this room, this is my 2nd favorite thing.  I don't know if it's because it was one of those situations, like so many others, that started out, "oh crap, now what do we do?" and went to "Hot damn!  It turned out!"

The tricky part about all of this was that all of our doors in this room - there's SIX of them - count them, SIX... Front door, 2 closet doors, a set of french doors and the illegal door to the garage.  The exterior doors were special ordered fiberglass doors that we bought in a dark brown color.  We need our WOOD trim to match our brown FIBERGLASS doors.  No problem - we'll just buy the same color stain that the doors are.  WRONG.  The Dark Walnut color that would supposedly work, WAS NOT THE SAME COLOR. Grrrrrrrr!!!  Someone get me a beer. 

To make this long story short, for the hell of it, we tried using black stain.  Yes - black.  Minwax Ebony to be exact.  And in the famous words of The Olsons, well hoooolllyyy shit, it worked!

Oak was used for the trim and crown molding.  Also, Ryan MADE all of the trim and crown molding himself and it could not have turned out better.  It is absolutely amazing and I am so in love with it....  And him :)

Awwwwwwww

 

 

I have to show you lots of before pics because it really shows you the look of the trim.  It's harder to see in photos after it was stained.

See the paper surrounding the trim?  That's wax paper that he put up the same time as the trim so that when we stained and sealed the wood, the clean up would be easy-peasy.  Genius!

 

 

Done!

 

 

 

 

Last but not least...

The Stain Glass Windows

My favorite.

Thanks Grandpa :)

 

Befores and Afters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little hidden treasure for later on...Now you see them...

Now you don't :D

 

Project Parlor complete!

 

An update before the update

 

A few little updates for you since we last visited about the foyer and The Game Plan.

Our plans were:

1.  Flooring - pinstripe the floor with TWO different types of wood.  We also threw down some floor heat first since we're always up for a challenge.  I know, I make it sound like it's so easy.

The floor heat we went with was in the form of a mat that you install under the flooring.  Easier and cleaner than the kind that you mortar the wire into the flooring.... So we thought.

 

 

This floor heat deal was a major pain in the ass.  In order for the floor heat to conduct the most heat, we needed to lay a sub flooring down over the cement.  Husband bolted the sheets of plywood down with one of those crazy bolt injector thingys you use bullets in and it makes you jump 10 feet in the air every time you whack it.  Know what I'm talkin' bout Willis?  Yeah, well, he did that on the ENTIRE floor and then decided that it wasn't good enough, ripped them all up, then WE - yes WE - slathered self-leveling adhesive all of the G-damn floor and put the wood back down again.  I swear, we are our own worst enemies at times.  I would show you pictures, but I was covered in what looked like cement puke.

Feel it - it's warm.  Ooooooooo! 

2. Barn Wood Wall - as I type this post from my hospital bed, all I can think about is that it was so worth it. 

We ripped this baby down in 10 degree weather. My fayth and handths wath reewey reewey cold when we were done.

We went from this:

 

 

 To this:

(Patsy has that really crabby look on her face because she caught me trying to take a photo without her in it.  What a bitch.  Literally.)

3.  Faux Tin Ceiling - Copper paint with a dark stain distress/wash over it..... FAIL.

(There's a Shock Top beer in the background... Shocker)

You might be thinking, "well that doesn't look bad" and I agree - it doesn't. BUT, it wouldn't dry.  The stain over the top of the paint never dried completely so I was forced to abandon yet another dream.  Drink and try again.


4.  Built-in lockers  - I recently divulged I had hopped on the re-purpose wagon.  This also includes the chalk paint, milk paint rage.  Another big FAIL:

Milissa no likey white chalk paint with dark wax.  Milissa sucked at it and threw a pretty good tantrum.  Drink and try again.

5.  Chandelier - Still TBD.  Do we build one or buy one?  And, what precautions need to be taken with having a large, swinging object hanging from our ceiling?  I get kind of a weird, exciting urge just thinking about it.... TMI?  It's ok, we're all friends here.


We did have 2 new helpers join us for this project, Walt & Penyo!  Let me introduce you:

Walt

And Penyo

 

They weren't a ton of help but they sure made the work more tolerable.

 

 

Confession:

So, I started this blog post a few months ago and then forgot that I started it so I actually have the finished product (mostly) to show you but I can't waste a blog post so there's that.  Another update to follow this one SOON!



 

The Game Plan

Evan, our 5 year old, asked us this weekend:
"Do you know what my favorite part of pre-school is?"

Us: "What?"

Evan: "Leaving."

Good stuff....  What does this have to do with this blog post?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing. 

On with it!

We now have a foyer.  Hallelujah!  You can come to our house and walk in more than one step and not have to worry about taking a swan dive down the basement stairs.  Life is good.

I'll admit that I've struggled with this room as to what to do.  Do we texture, paint the walls, throw down some tile and call it good?  After all, it's just a foyer where dirt, backpacks and smelly shoes gather.  Or, do we go ape sh*! and have fun with it?

Well, I'd hate to disappoint you......

Another admission by yours truly: I have totally jumped on the re-purpose, old barn wood,
get-a-tetanus-shot-before-you-hang-that-thing-on-your-wall bandwagon.

Look, I even have my own bandwagon!

Well, part of one, anyways.  Remember my little preview from my earlier post? Click here if you need a refresher.

This is what became of it.  For those of you who are still wondering 'what in the hell is it?', this is a buckboard aka the seat of a wagon.  We bought it and repurposed it into a bench for the foyer.  Super hubby added the wood to the bottom and wah-lah!  I would also like to add a horse to it.  Hubby won't let me though. Dag nab-it.

The inspiration.  That's what we will call this.  This was the inspiration for the "theme" of the new foyer.  I'm all about themes.  Themes are FUN!  I love themes.

Let me ask you this... Have you ever taped and textured?  Have you ever taped and textured while under the influence?  Well let me tell you, it doesn't matter what your answer is to either of these questions because regardless, IT SUCKS! 

So, the less that we can do of it, the better.  Covering up things is kinda fun so we're gonna run with that.  We're gonna cover up the ceiling with tile and cover up the biggest wall with wood.  The latter hasn't actually happened yet and for me to state in a roundabout way that it's easier than taping and texturing is premature but I'm pretty confident in the fact that I'm wrong a lot and admitting that, is the first step.  Wait.  What are we talking about, again?

 Starting with the floor.... what to do... Tile or wood?  Wood or tile?  Tile.  No, wood!!  Ok, wood.  What kind of wood?  Isn't it strange how when you look at a word for a long time it starts to look weird and wrong?  I digress.  Hickory.  No, Maple.  No, Walnut.  How about oak?  Ugh.  Compromise.  Pick two.  Ok - Maple and Oak.  Natural Maple and Midnight Oak to be exact.  I totally just had an argument with myself.

 

We're gonna do what I will call "pinstriping" the floor by alternating the 2 different types of wood every 2 rows: 2 rows maple-2 rows oak-2 rows maple-2 rows oak now bow to your partner, promenade.

 

Next up, the ceiling. 

Remember this?

Le faux tin ceiling.

  We're gonna do this again but try a copper color this time.  And I may just ruin it when I try to do a dark color distress over the top of it.  We'll see what happens. 

I'm sure I'll swear you'll hear, all about it.

 

 

Built-in lockers for all of our crap.....

 

 

Annnnd, a wood wall.

Wood you?

Could you?

I like to paint,

I do for sure!

But I can't,

I won't,

I refuse,

TO TEXTURE!

We got ourselves a big ol' pile of barn wood and we're gonna cover this baby with it.

 

 

And while we're at it, let's throw in a chandelier. 

Why the hell not, weez all classy folk..... Right?  

 

 

Oh yes, and let's not forget:

Any guesses yet as to what's gonna go in these 3 perfectly framed out spaces???

 

 

Hint:

Yeah, that's not a hint.

My wine is kicking in and I'm all of a sudden in a very giving mood.

 

 

Ready.... Set..... Go!!