Category: DIY Projects (Page 3 of 5)

First of all, thanks to all of you for your comments on that last post. Sometimes I just need to know that someone out there is reading, and might actually care about my ramblings.

I finally finished the bathroom redo last night.

We started the paint job back when Marie was here and Ryan was not.

I just got antsy and really wanted to start that project, even though it probably wasn’t the best time to be painting.

That bathroom was all green and white with grapevines, and while I really liked that design when I did it (eleven years ago when we moved in), I didn’t love it anymore.
Even though that bathroom is tiny, I let everyone who wanted a turn painting have a turn. One at a time, because there seriously wasn’t even hardly room for a ladder in there.

Can you see how it is SMASHED up against the wall between the toilet and sink? Not the greatest way to paint, I tell you. I really picked the LEAST convenient wall to try to do an accent wall. What was I thinking? Maybe because visually it was what I wanted. So, I taped it off, and I had to just be brave and start the stenciling.

Sadly, there’s quite a learning curve with stenciling, and my practice on a piece of posterboard wasn’t really enough to get a good feel of it. Let’s just say it’s not perfect.

But, if you will remember, I am not a perfectionist.

Good thing, right?

I did some touch-up work in both colors and decided I liked it.

The mirror and towel racks that I had in there were also grapevine (and green), and while I originally thought I could just paint them black, I took a trip to Hobby Lobby and found this cool mirror ON SALE and knew it was for me. Here’s the old mirror sitting in the hall, and there’s Popcorn, our bird, admiring himself in the mirror.

I also found a towel rack and tp holder thing that I thought went with the new design of the room. I’m so pleased with how it turned out!

Is it perfect? No. But hopefully anyone who goes in to use my bathroom is going in there for other reasons than to criticize my paint job, right?

I had to wait for Ryan to hang the towel rack, TP holder and mirror. We have a little discrepancy over what color that bathroom actually is, but that’s not important (Grey.. It’s GREY! The color is called “Dover Grey” so it’s Grey, not blue. Ahem.)

I borrowed that little shelf unit from the living room, and I think it fits nicely in there. My favorite thing, however, is the chandelier. “What?” you say? What chandelier?

I had bought this vinyl stick on chandelier a year or so ago at a yard sale, and I’ve just been waiting for a place to use it. It even has little crystals, but you can’t really see that from a picture. I LOVE IT!

So, there it is. Since it’s a tiny room I can’t get a picture of the whole thing, but I am pleased with how it all turned out. Yes, stenciling is scary, but I would definitely try it again. Now I just need to find some cool towels to go in there. The old green ones won’t look so nice. Ryan says BLUE, but I think maybe purple or black would look good. I’ll have to keep my eyes open for towels. So, if you come over, be sure to look inside that bathroom. I’m pleased with it.

My husband likes to automate things. We have remotes for the garage, the sprinkler systems, even the lights and fans. A lot of that comes from working for a home automation company, I”m sure. But I think it’s just in his nature. This year, his latest fascination has been building a new gardening “system”. I guess the garden boxes he built me a few years back aren’t good enough.

First, he had to find enough buckets. He eventually settled on 3 gallon ice cream buckets from the BYU creamery. So our little veggies have yummy names on their buckets, like Pralines and Caramel, Chocolate Vanilla Swirl, and bubble gum.

Without getting too technical (ME? Technical? Don’t make me laugh!), the buckets sit on a trough made from a raingutter, and they each have a little basket on the bottom of them, which sucks up water from the trough (that’s the technical term, you know) and is supposed to give the plant all the water it needs.

But when I planted a bunch of seeds in the buckets, I was disappointed when nothing sprouted for about two weeks. That was when we realized that they need more moisture at the top in the initial weeks, and then he covered them with plastic wrap to keep the water in. And look at how many little sprouts we have now! Not those tomato plants, mind you. I bought them as plants. I did, however, plant some tomato SEEDS in my other garden, and it looks like they are actually starting to grow! Probably not grow fast enough to yield any tomatoes, but a girl can hope.

The idea is that your garden should just water itself. And you would never even have to get up off the couch or leave your air conditioned house. Ever! Except to pick the lovely vegetables from the plants come August.

Right.

But if it gets my hubby excited about the garden, then that’s a good thing. In the past, he’s just let me pretty much plant what I want and take over.

Now if I could just find a way to get him excited about finishing the basement.
(Love you, Honey!)

I’ll have to post pictures later on and let you know how this method compares to our PLAIN old fashioned garden boxes. But we have planted about 12 tomato plants, a couple of giant pumpkin plants, chard, spinach, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, zucchini, chives, mint, lettuce, watermelon, honeydew melon, and peas. So something better grow besides sunflowers, right?

Instant gratification.

It’s what we all want, right?
There are not many things in my life that really offer instant gratification. Except for chocolate, of course.

Gardening takes a long time, and even if I plant the seeds at the right time, there is no guarantee that things aren’t going to freeze and I’ll have to plant again.

I have ZERO will power and can’t stick to a diet plan for more than 5 minutes, so trying and failing over and over at losing weight is a pitiful, depressing experience all around. And there’s chocolate.

While I love my chickens, we won’t be getting eggs from these new girls until they are 5-6 months old. That’s a long time to wait for an omelet, if you ask me.

But you know what does provide almost instant results? Paint!

Yes, paint. You pick a color, and once your surface it prepped, you can start immediately, and see the color that it’s going to be.

I bought this vanity at a garage sale a few weeks ago. I loved it immediately. I had one like this when I was a kid. It had a HUGE heavy mirror attached to it, and I think it came from some great aunt or something. I wonder where it is now. (Mom? What happened to that vanity, by the way?) Anyway, since it was made of real wood and I already loved the shape of it, I bought it and brought it home.

Then, when Ryan and I were walking through Lowe’s looking for other stuff for his new GARDEN SySTEM –that we will go into more about later, and I thought, “Oh, I should get some paint.” They had some little Valspar sample colors right on the desk for under $3. I pretty much said, “Ohh, this is so pretty!” and grabbed a little pot of paint. Yes, I spend THAT much time picking out my paint color. I decided that just to be safe, I would get two little pots, so I wouldn’t have to come back.

And then, when I had a couple of hours that were unscheduled, I started. I did do some light sanding and cleaned the dirt off, and then got started. That old piece of furniture seemed to be just SUCKING in the paint. I went over each surface a couple of times, and wasn’t really pleasde with how it was looking. Kind of streaky, if you ask me. Well, I soon ran out of time, and had pretty much used up the whole sample pot of paint, so I left my project and jumped in the shower. One of the kids saw my project and said, “Mom! I love that blue dresser! Is if for me?” I don’t actually know who it is for, but I’m sure we’ll find a use and a place for it once the basement is finished.

After our Mother’s day celebration, I took my friend Robin and my sister-in-law Julene downstairs to show off my project. I said that I wasn’t done yet, that I really needed to do another coat and fix some places, and they both said they wouldn’t do another coat. “You don’t want it to be too perfect,” one of them said. Too Perfect? Do you know me? Nothing I do is even remotely close to perfect, in fact, my motto is “good enough”, so I was happy to hear the encouragement to keep it a little rough. After all, I was just going to sand it and distress it a little bit.

So, I went over the spots I thought needed some work, then sanded it a bit, then did a little wash with payne’s gray to give it that “old” look. And then I put on a coat of poly to protect it and keep it shiny. John helped me with the poly coat.

Here it is now. It just took a couple of hours, a tiny amount of paint, and there we have it. Nearly instant gratification!

Don’t you love how nice it looks up next to the unfinished walls of our unfinished basement? That would NOT be an example of instant gratification right there, but we won’t go into that. Maybe some other post…when it’s finished.