Turning Tables

A friend recently offered us a plastic picnic tables his girls had outgrown, and we were pretty excited because we have been on the lookout for a kids table for the patio. The only downside was that it was pink. And purple. A little too girly for our little men.

Lest you think color would deter us from accepting a freebie, we had a remedy for that. Keith was off to the hardware store to pick up some spray paint for plastic in some tamer tones, and had that table painted in no time. So fast I never got before pictures.

Ok, not quite that fast. I just didn't take them. Colter and I scrubbed everything down really well, and the following weekend Keith got to painting.

The can recommended letting it sit seven days to fully cure and prevent chipping, so we waited a week to put it back together. It isn't totally chip-proof, so we'll see how it holds up in the long run.

For now though, we have seating for the little folks. Even if one of them refuses to look at the camera.

Well, C, if that's the way you are going to be, we'll bring in the second string.

When did E get so big?

Laundry Room Update

Hmmm....where did we leave off with the laundry room? I think the last you saw it, the trim had been painted and we were making a final decision on a red for the walls.

Well, the room is red now. Pretty darn close to 49ers red. Maybe Keith will be inspired to do some laundry now? (Actually, laundry is the one household chore I really don't mind at all. Of course, I have had a nice break from cloth diapers so that might be why...) This actually all got done pre-baby, but getting a post together somehow got pushed off. Huh.

We swapped out the mismatched, off-white outlets and light switches for new, clean white ones and what a difference a couple dollar fix makes! We also added new hooks under the shelf and a larger hook to hold the towel above the sink.

Obviously still in need of a shoe solution...but don't they look almost artsy against that bright red wall?

We are planning on adding a shelf above the washer and dryer, though not as high as the other shelf. I want to be able to reach it easily while standing in front of the washer.

Other finishing touches involve the trim around the ceiling, blinds, a better solution for our recycling bins, a mirror above the sink and sewing a "skirt" for around the utility sink. Oh, and the storage bench I desperately want. And eventually a new floor, though that is barely even on our project radar at the moment. I, for one, am just happy to have this room fully functional and seriously spruced up, even though it has a ways to go yet.

A Little Trimming

It's been a busy week around here, with appointments and playdates, a garage sale, and a certain pregnant lady who feels the need for a daily nap more than ever these days. So, when the going gets tough, it is pretty evident that it's the blog that loses out. I'm guessing that over the next couple of months, posts will be rather irregular, so I hope you can find something else to fill in on your rotation of procrastination. (Thanks Farah, for that phrase that cracks me up whenever I think of it.)

At any rate, we did get a little farther in the laundry room. Rather, Keith did. My only direct contribution was taping off the windows as he got ready to paint the trim.

First step was popping of the trim around the the ceiling. This room, with an approximately 50' perimeter, had about six different styles of trim going on. Obviously an afterthought on the part of whoever built it. We opted to buy new and replace it all rather than put time and effort into painting something that looked wonky to begin with.

Then you saw the debacle of sanding down every square inch of the room.

After that, all the walls and surfaces had to be wiped down twice to get rid of all the dust. Actually, I did help with that part too, cleaning anything I could reach without getting on the ladder. Next Keith spackled and caulked any holes from old hardware or gaps in the trim. I thought I had photos of all that, but I guess I was toddler-wrangling and didn't take any.

After that, I taped off the windows, and Keith got to work painting the trim and the new door, which only had a primer coat. Three coats later, and the room already looks much fresher. We just went with off-the-shelf Designer White in semi-gloss from Ace's Clark + Kensington line to keep it simple. 

You can see on either side of the doorsill where Keith had to sand it down. There had been blue paint there, just continued in a straight line as if it were part of the trim. Very strange in our opinion. So our plan is to stain the wood since it won't show wear like painting it would.

If you look at some of the photos, you can see we played around with a couple of paint swatches for the walls. We started by looking at a blue, a green, and a red and narrowed it down to red, though we weren't set on the first one. So Keith picked up a few more, and we picked one of these two, which look pretty similar in the photo. Guess you'll have to stay tuned to see which one we picked!

We are aiming to get this wrapped up before the new baby arrives, but since he could be here any day, I don't know if that will happen. At any rate, as long as I can continue to use the washer and dryer throughout the process, I can live with a bit of mayhem back there.

The Splurge and the Save

When we were having the new doors and windows installed in the laundry room, I got it in my head that I wanted new hardware with a keypad for the back door. I figured there were lots of times it would come in handy to press a couple buttons rather than fumble with keys, and Keith agreed, so we went for it. We chose a pretty basic model that could handle several different codes, but it was still pricy at $125. We are really happy with it and it has been useful (for instance, when Bert has shut the door and locked me out when I run out for something in the garden), so we aren't crying over spent dollars.

The thing was, our door also had a deadbolt. Keypad sets with a deadbolt got much more expensive, and we didn't want a new deadbolt as the key for the front door and the deadbolt on the back are the same. So it was either reuse the deadbolt, or call a locksmith to rekey things to avoid having loads of keys rattling on our key rings. Since we'd already splurged on the keypad, we opted to keep our existing deadbolt. The man who did the doors and windows was nice enough to install all the hardware, and very politely asked me if I was sure I wanted to keep the deadbolt. And I understand his position, because this is what it looked like paired with that swanky new keypad:

Um, yuck. And the situation at the front storm door wasn't much better, with a grimy doorbell plate, brassy handle, and big brass kick plate at the bottom (which I forgot to take a "before" picture of).

So, what to do? Enter the ever-thrifty John and Sherry from Young House Love and their fantastic directions for painting your grimy hardware (click here for the instructions).

I feel like such a copycat, because we even went for the same oil-rubbed bronze color, which was the closest match to the aged bronze available in the new hardware.

And we even have the same door bell plate they have at their new house...though they were a little more careful with getting the ring around the bell painted and not scratching it up while reinstalling.

My favorite part is probably how nice the kick plate looks now, much more subtle and suited to us than that brass color.

I'm still considering painting the mailbox, but can't decide if it should match the other hardware (and I've got plenty of paint leftover) or if I want it a bright, fun color. Also, we hate those gold and black decal numbers I blurred out on the door, but are pretty sure we would make a mess of the door trying to get them off. We are on the lookout for an idea to cover them up, and we have some nice house numbers we bought a couple years ago that we really like and just haven't put up yet. So the keypad cost $125, but upgrading the rest of the hardware came to about $20 (and we still have paint left) and a few hours of my time in taking it off, prepping and painting, and reinstalling. I even had to traipse down to the basement to find the circuit for the doorbell so I wouldn't get shocked when I disconnected the wires. When I told Keith about it, he said, "Huh. I've been wondering since we moved in what 'DB' meant on the living room circuit." And now we know.

The front and back storm doors each got one more little upgrade, since a certain toddler around here has figured out the locks, making my heart skip a beat one afternoon when I heard the front door slam shut behind him. A simple hook and eye latch, placed far out of his reach does the trick to keep him where he should be.

On a sort of related note, writing this post got me thinking about another blogger's post about money and spending versus saving that I read recently (you can read it here). It seemed very in line with the way Keith and I think about our money, and the way we choose to spend (or not spend) it, whether it be on our home improvements, gifts for family and friends, or even our groceries. There are some splurges, but only after careful weighing of the options. And all the daily little saves add up to a life that makes us feel more secure and comfortable in our ability to take care of our growing family.

Riding the Rails

As we anticipate the arrival of Baby 2, most of the prep work involves getting Bert into his big boy room and making the nursery available for his little brother. We already had the furniture (it was mine as a kid), and the room had been functioning as a guest room. Because the furniture is dark green, we opted to work with what he had and go for a woodland/rustic look. We aren't totally finished, but Bert has already moved in.

The first step was replacing this beauty of a light fixture. Not only was it ugly, it only operated by the pull chain. Not the most ideal function in a child's room.

So after much cutting, climbing in and out of the attic crawlspace, and grumbling,

we had a light switch,

This is what happens when Keith does home decor shopping at Cabela's.

 and a working light.

The new fixture looks kind of funky here, but it actually has a really nice aged copper look in person.

Now, on to painting. We went back and forth on color a bit, but finally settled on a light tan called "Blonde Wood." I washed the walls and taped off the room one day while Keith was at work, then we edged the room together and he rolled it on a weekend. For the second coat, I edged during the day and he rolled it in the evening when he got home.

Next up was blinds. Like almost every other room in the house, the were old roller blinds that were really grimy and brittle. I found some room-darkening cordless blinds online from JC Penney, and they were really simple to install: just screw two brackets into the window frame, and snap the blinds in.

They really do darken the room and the color almost exactly matches the walls.

Here's a sneak peek at the art that will go on the walls. It is all in frames but we haven't hung them yet. Keith and I are in agreement that we both really hate hanging pictures, mostly because of our old plaster walls. That and one of us must have one leg shorter than the other because we can't agree on what looks level.

All of that leads me to my now-it's-funny story. We had everything done in the room that needed to be done prior to Bert moving in, except for one thing: bed rails. Since the bed doesn't push up tight against the wall, we wanted a set that had a rail for each side. So last weekend, we headed off on a shopping trip for a bunch of things, one of which was the rails. We found a double-rail at Babies R Us and though I was a bit vexed that I couldn't find the 20% coupon that I knew came in the mail just days before, we went ahead and got them. We planned on putting Bert in the bed that night so later that afternoon, we opened up the box and deciphered the confusing assembly instructions, only to find that they wouldn't work on the bed. Because it is a "captain's" bed, with drawers underneath, there is no box spring. Which means sandwiching the rails between the mattress and box spring is impossible. We tried every configuration we could think of, contemplated buying a box spring or building something to allow the rails to fit below the mattress before finally calling it a day and putting Bert to bed in the crib.

After the little man was settled in for the night, I started searching online for a different bed rail option. On Amazon, I saw some foam bumpers that went under the fitted sheet. Then a lightbulb went off: in one of those forwarded emails about household tricks you wished you had thought of, I had seen pool noodles used as bed bumpers. I told Keith and he looked a bit skeptical at first, concerned that a single pool noodle wouldn't be enough to keep Bert from rolling out of bed. Then we hit on the idea of putting three together in a sort of pyramid formation to create a higher bumper. At this point, it was after 9:00, but we were so anxious to see if this would work. Keith called the first of our town's two grocery stores to see if they had pool noodles. We were cracking up as he waited on hold, picturing the guy who answered the phone searching the pasta aisle for pool noodles. Strike one, they didn't have any. So he called the next store. Yes, the girl said, the did have them, 2 for $4. Score. So Keith went out and got an armload of them. He said the women working were very intrigued as to what kind of fun he was going to have that late at night with a bunch of pool noodles, and the bed rail idea was kind of a let down.

But here's the thing: they absolutely work. A little duct tape, a half dozen pool noodles, 5 minutes, and we had bed bumpers for a fraction of the cost.

Bert has two nights and three naps under his belt and they stay put just fine and he hasn't rolled out. He has climbed out, but that's to be expected. The only disappointing thing is this morning on our walk, I saw pool noodles out front of the dollar store. It could have been a $6 project instead of $12.

All that's left for this room is painting the inside of the closet, hanging art, figuring out some curtains, and putting his quilt on the bed.

I got a little teary on Monday afternoon, laying him down in his big bed for the first time. He's our baby, and he's growing up.

Stairway to Heaven

Ok, ok, the post title is exaggerating a bit. I don't think any part of our home could be described as heavenly. Especially not in this heat. But at least the reference to a stairway is accurate.

A couple of months ago, I spotted a coupon for a free quart of paint at Ace Hardware. You had to go on a certain date (it was a Saturday), and the flyer stressed that quantities were limited. A quart of paint isn't a lot, but Keith and I had been talking about painting the stairwell to our basement and figured a free can of paint would be just the thing to jump start our project. When Saturday morning rolled around, I hustled Keith out of bed and dressed and fed Bert and made sure we were out the door so that we could get to Ace shortly after they opened at 8:00. I was getting my free can of paint, darn it.

When we arrived, there were a number of people already nabbing cans and choosing colors. We didn't have a problem getting one though because there had to have been about 400 quarts of free paint. Keith rolled his eyes at me and asked why he had to be woken up so early. It didn't get any better when they ran the same add in their flyers every week for the next month. If we had another room we were ready to paint, I would have gone back for a quart every week and done a whole room.

At any rate, we had our free paint. I wish I could say we came home and got right to it, but we actually didn't get anything done until Memorial Day weekend. The free paint was actually a paint and primer in one, but our stairwell was really grungy, so after we  washed it down and taped it off, we used up some primer we had left over from painting Bert's room to do two coats, then we squeezed two coats out of our quart of paint.

I swear we took turns painting, but Keith doesn't take pictures of me working. I think it is on purpose, to give all of you the impression that he is the only one who gets anything done.

On to the grand reveal! 

So it isn't super exciting, but it looks clean. Ahhhhh... We thought the paint color we had picked was a little more on the yellow, creamy side, but it pretty much looks white. Oh well. We are ok with that.

What we needed next was a curtain to hide all our junk on that shelf. It's where we throw our farmers' market baskets, cooler, and other random things so it's better if we don't have to see it. And if you are wondering why we don't just close the basement door and not look at any of this, it is because the cat's litter box is in the basement so she needs to be able to go up and down freely.

The curtain was the big hold up on getting this post done. Which I guess means it was my fault, because I am the sole employee of the sewing department. Keith's only input was that I should pick a fabric he would like (duh) and no ruffles. So when my mom and I went to the fabric store, I finally made a decision on fabric, and bought a yard and a half. A yard would have easily done it, but I forgot to measure the space beforehand and wasn't taking any chances. When I did measure the opening, I had a space of 30" x 27" that I needed to cover. I very scientifically decided to cut a 34" square, figuring I would use up an inch on each side for the hem (leaving a 32" square) and then I needed to make a casing for the curtain rod.

I measured and cut 34" in one direction, and then just folded my left edge to my bottom edge like a triangle, and cut off the excess so that when I opened it, I had my 34" square.

Then I used my hem gauge, measure half an inch and ironed, folded it over again and ironed it, and pinned it in place to give me a nice finished edge. I did this on opposite sides, sewed them, and then did it to the remaining sides, giving me what appeared to be a giant hankie.

Then I (very scientifically) held it over my curtain rod and played with it until I figured out where I needed to fold it to make the casing and have the right length, which ended up being about 5". I folded that over and ironed it, and then sewed one last seam.

Then I hung it up and I was done.

It feels good to finally have that project finished (to the tune of about $15 since only had to buy fabric and a curtain rod), and even better to have the grimiest spot in our house that we look at all the time looking cleaner and brighter. Just don't go all the way down to the basement.