My Favorite Place...In this House Part II

Anyone ready to see the actual completed front porch? Say I. I. 

In case you forgot the "chocolate" brown sill from "before", here it is again...

And (insert drumroll) is the finished paint job. 

Here's the east end "before" complete with toddler photobomb.

And here (drumroll again if you please) is the east end, all pretty and cream.

We have fourteen windows on the front porch. FOURTEEN. We have screens for the warm months and glass for the colder months. Since fall decided to show up, we swapped out the screens for the windows after the paint dried and the backs of those windows are white/cream so it blended right in. 

In addition to taking on the full weekend project, I figured why not add a sub-project? So while the paint dried, I packed up my little helper and headed to Menards for some spray paint bringing the grand total for this whole front porch project to a whopping $6-7 bucks. The white paint on the wicker rocker was chipping and Chris had decided it was time for the metal star to be red. My dad informed me that some years down the road someone is going to buy that metal star and uncover 50 different paint colors. Come on, dad. This is only the fourth or fifth. I've lost count. The wicker rocker is a fairly recent addition and is pretty special to me. It was my Grandma's rocker and yellow tulips (she was the Pella tulip queen back in the day) remind me of her so I thought yellow was a fitting color. 

So yeah, that's the freshly painted front porch. My favorite place in this house.

And since the resident toddler has been trying to hijack this post the whole time I've been writing it, I thought I'd let her write you all a message...

fhjdvcccccccm/.

Have a good one. 

My Favorite Place...In This House

The front porch. My favorite place in this house. Great place to read. Play. Drink coffee. Escape football/toddlers. You know, relax.

The more time I spent out there, the more the multiple colors of brown trim with cream walls/siding annoyed me. 

Plus, the sill's brown paint was peeling and the resident toddler was becoming more and more interested in helping that process along.

I decided that this Saturday morning would be a good to put my paint-splattered sweatpants and tee back on - after a couple year hiatus - and get back on the home-renovation horse, so to speak. 

I busted out my birthday present from the first year we lived here (actually the first month), a Dewalt palm sander. And got to work. 

 

Better right?  

Then I scrubbed the entire porch (have I mentioned that it's like 20+feet x 6+ feet?) down with TSP-PF. No pics. Because, let's face it, scrubbing is boring. It did look a lot cleaner though. A LOT.

Next came the fun part. Priming the heck out of that "chocolate" (sure...) brown sill. Gripper + paintbrush + me = happy. In case I never said this before, a good paintbrush is worth the money. EVERY. TIME. I love Purdy brushes. LOVE. THEM. They just plain do a better job. And last forever if you take good care of them. Which you will. 

After I finished the sanding/scrubbing/priming, Chris, the entertainer of resident toddler, put said toddler down for a nap and grabbed a paintbrush to start the actual painting. The trade-off of toddler/parent worked out well. You see, Chris and I complement each other. According to him, he is a missile and I have to make sure he is pointed at the right target. According to me, I am a perfectionist and if I want to be picky about the prep work I have to do it myself or keep my mouth shut. Good thing I like prep work. 

The paint's almost the same color but you can see the difference on the wall under the front window. The window with the newly painted trim from a month ago. Color? Cooper Melon by Valspar. We had a gallon of exterior satin left over from the garage trim (yeah, yeah, some day there will be a garage post). This entire project cost us...zero dollars. Well, zero new dollars. I mean, we bought all the supplies at one point. With dollars.

So far so good. I'm blogging this as the paint dries and then we can put the quarter round back on and clean up. So a complete final picture will have to wait for now. 

What can a little paint do?

When we had our original home inspection before closing on our house last year, the inspector told us that we'd want to paint the solid wood garage door before winter (last winter) since the paint was chipping and we didn't want the door to rot.

Well...we didn't get to it last Fall. With weekends filling up with birth classes and baby showers, the clock was winding down to colder weather (not to mention the arrival of a baby) so Chris and Craig, his dad, tackled the job last Thursday.

Chris and I had picked up paint chips on Monday but hadn't gotten around to picking the color to match the house trim before I had to leave for work on Thursday morning. My control freak personality was having a hard time not having input on the color choice...but I let it go. And Chris picked the perfect match - Dutch Boy's Antique White. How fitting, Dutch paint for a couple of Hollanders.

The "before"...

Craig cutting in the panels...

Half done...the new color is quite a bit creamier.

Can't forget the trim...which Chris can paint easily from a 4 ft. ladder...it helps to be tall!

Looks like a brand-spanking new door! All for about $35. Nice on the budget and necessary!

Prime-d Nursery Preparations...

Many people have asked us where we are going to put the nursery and look shocked when we respond with "Oh, in the closet."

Okay, let me clarify. The nursery will be the 10 x 13 room formerly known as our "closet." It is a bedroom but you have to walk through our bedroom to get to it. Future plans for our second floor include moving doors and adding a small hallway so you don't have to wander through our room but these renovations will have to wait till baby's a bit older. Renovations will also include adding a few closets since our house came with ONE. On the MAIN FLOOR. Thus, the reason we used the space as a closet. Here's some "befores"...

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After getting all the clothing and miscellaneous stuff out of the room, Chris primed the paneling (while I was gone). We are planning on painting the room the same neutral color as our bedroom so we can decorate with a lot of accent colors and patterns.

See next post for "shelf removal"...

Baby projects...Giraffe

I was perusing the 80% off section at Hobby Lobby recently and what did my wandering eyes spot...a lonely giraffe in need of some lovin'. For a mere $8. 

Ain't he a good lookin' fella? Just you wait...

A coat or two of spray primer, courtesy of Chris who is still allowed to paint...sporting his handy-dandy respirator.

Lookin' better and better...especially with those dorky little hooks removed.

Ta da. Introducing the much-improved Giraffe. 

 

Eventually, he'll hang on the wall in the nursery...which needs to be painted yet. Right now the nursery is a panel-tastic cave which is going to get a gleaming coat of Swiss coffee just like our bedroom to brighten up the place...sometime. When I am not home. The nursery also needs to have a "clean sweep" as it's currently our closet/all-purpose junk storage room. Uh oh.

More visitors, more to-dos tackled...

Makes you want to come and visit, huh? You are thinking that every time someone comes to visit us we put them to work, right? Well...they were willing and we took full advantage of their offer to help. This weekend's victims...my brother, Andy, and his girlfriend, Alysha. I laid low for the first part of the weekend due to some "special" bug that attacked my immune system on Friday. Sunday morning...let the projects begin. On the agenda, 1)install new kitchen light, 2) install dining room fan, and 3) priming paneling in our bedroom. I recently informed Chris that I am not now nor do I forsee ever being interested in or wanting to learn/do electrical work. Frankly, it scares me. Sure does. Too many steps, risk of death, and so on. I will do carpentry, painting, tiling, wallpaper removal, plumbing, TSPing (if forced), etc but not electrical. Therefore, Andy was Chris'  able electrical assistant and joke-provider/laugher-at-Chris'-jokes.

First, Chris and Andy installed the new kitchen light. The glaring fluorescent glow of the old fixture was not...um, inducing homey feelings.

The new light gives a warm, amber-tinted glow and distinguishes the "Swiss Coffee" paint on the kitchen walls from the white ceiling. I knew the color fan book did not lie when I picked out the color for the kitchen in the first place. 

Okay...I did think it lied but now I'm more educated on the influence lighting has. (Side note: Chris and I had picked out a color that we thought was a light gray to try out in our bedroom upstairs and when I brought the color fan book into a different room the next day I realized it was actually purple-ish pink. Ewww. Make sure you see it in all lights). 

Second, Chris and Andy, fairly confident in their electrical skills by now, installed the new dining room fan. The old fan worked well (and is being donated not trashed) but blended into the ceiling and had the blinding effect...more for Chris due to his super-sized height. It was also a bit too small for the room. Here's a flash from living/dining rooms past...if you are new to the blog, check out the other living/dining room posts to see the transformation.

Now, Chris and I spent many trips to Menards, Lowes and Home Depot surveying our options when it came to new fans. I've watched way too many hours of HGTV in my "day " and I know people loathe ceiling fans. Decorators always try to replace them . I have concluded that: a) their projects take place in the winter or early spring and the homeowners have forgotten what summer is like, b) the homeowners have central a/c, c) they like tripping over plugged-in fans, d) they carry personal hand-held fans to cool themselves (or those misting battery-powered ones) at all times, e) they live in Alaska, f) they like to sweat, or g) all of the above. I will admit that getting rid of the dining room fan altogether crossed my mind when we bought our house...but then we moved in to our home sweet home IN AUGUST. No doubt about it...THE FAN STAYS. We have radiator-heat, no central a/c, do not like to sweat or carry little fans or trip over cords and have not forgotten what summer is like in Illinois. On our fan hunt, we were looking for something "pretty" with good lighting since the fan also provides the only hard-wired lighting for the living/dining area. We didn't really like the four separate-light style since they always seemed to be blinding you but we didn't love the "boob"-light style either. Then...drumroll...we stumbled across our new, beautiful, air-circulating beast equipped with four separate lights that point straight down so as not to blind you. It was on clearance (not too many fan sales in the winter I guess), it was the last one, 10 minutes later it was traveling home, 1 week later it was installed. 

The new fan was meant to be. It fits the "decor" of the room perfectly...in our opinion which is the only one that really matters I guess.

And, because two electrical projects weren't enough...we taped off our bedroom and began priming the first coat. The walls are all wood paneling and the color was very close to that of the hardwood floor which gave off a "cave-esque" feeling. Thick "Gripper" primer worked like a charm, adhering to the paneling with ease. The walls still need one more coat of "Gripper" and two coats of color. While I didn't get any pictures of actually painting due to the fact that I was painting, I do still have some in my hair though if you would like proof. Here'a a few pics to entice you...

Before and After: Kitchen Decor

And now, the much anticipated, newly-painted kitchen. I swear "Swiss Coffee" did not look like white on the swatch. For now, the kitchen looks clean and spacious and lacking in floral decor...which will do. 

             Left: Before (during initial house tours)                 Right: After

 

 

 

 

Kitchen Weekend

My parents, Jack and Carolyn, came this past weekend to help paint the kitchen. Due to some schedule shifting, we were not completely ready to paint so they got to partake in the "joys" of the last bits of steaming along with spackling and painting Guardz on the walls before actually painting "color" on the walls. 
1. Remove the rest of glue and wash down walls. Oh, and remove the forgotten backing in "the space between" the radiator and kitchen window (even tighter than in the living room). Carolyn wins for most talented remover of wallpaper backing from behind the toasty radiator.

2. Sand down rough spots and spackle. Even though we used the plastic taping knives we still made some divots in the walls...which required some filling in. We intially used joint compound which dries slower than lightweight spackle...thus, the hairdryer was used to speed up the process. Note Chris' enthusiasm as witnessed in his "dazed drunk guy" expression.

3. Wash down walls with TSP (actually, TSP-Phosphate Free) to prep for Guardz. Guardz (Zinsser) is a awesome product that our neighbor (a professional painter) recommended to apply to the walls after removing wallpaper and before painting because it seals in any remaining glue which paint would not adhere too and would cause bubbling. Absolutely fantastic. No bubbles. I didn't actually get any pictures of the TSP fun fest (made possible by Chris and Carolyn) because I conveniently had to run to the hardware store and so did my dad...I hate washing with TSP. However, my mom is on to me and I'm seeing payback in my future. 
4. Apply Guardz. No pictures here either because we were in a hurry due to the onset of hunger pains.
5. Go out for dinner at a quaint little Italian joint down the street. Yum! 
6. Paint the ceiling...some of us. Chris and Jack painted the ceiling while Carolyn and Keri fell asleep on the couch, but not before proof was captured.

7. Paint walls "swiss coffee" (next day). As Chris put it, the Swiss must put a lot of cream in their coffee because the COLOR we chose turned out basically white. Argh. Well, at least it's better than floral wallpaper.