Getting chalk paint crazy!

I will admit when I graduated from college and moved into my first adultish apartment I had no furniture or money and lived wayyyyyyy too close to an ikea for my own good. I will try to stand by what I've been saying for a while: there is some okayish stuff there if you're smart enough to pick the right products.  I picked the unfinished tarva dressers and rack nightstands because they were affordable (dirt cheap) and could be stained or painted. My master bedroom furniture is American walnut stained with new hardware and I think they look nice. My second bedroom has the same products but the room is a hot mess. One nightstand was stained a terrible color, one was just unfinished and sad and the one dresser looked like it had survived a world war.  What should I do with all this malarkey? Tell me, Pinterest! Ok! Chalk paint and destressing? How hard could that be?

Really freaking hard.

Reader has to remember I think I'm good at chemistry and I'm cheap (house poor but same thing). After many Pinterest links and youtube videos I bump over to Home Depot, pick myself up a box of plaster of Paris, and decide I'm going to risk a nightstand in the name of homemade chalk paint. I had leftover dark blue paint from the master closet and lots of light blue from the bathroom so I was ready to see if my interesting skills were really as stellar as I thought they were. 

I got lucky. First coat of the dark blue went on well. Behr paint works great with a plaster mixture. Know what doesn't? Valspar paint and primer mixed with plaster mixture. Instant chemical reaction.  Paint stiffens up like.. Nah. Not going to go there. But I was so determined to make it work I thinned it out and slapped it on anyway. Lucky for me the paint dried nice in the Carolina heat and I had a pretty cool light blue nightstand. Then came the hard part. I sanded for hours. HOURS. The Valspar top coat was super hard to work with, but I think I finally got it to how I wanted it to look. 

Tip: don't just start painting on your driveway. You add extra future projects. (Note to self, add "reface driveway concrete to master list) 

***Bigger tip: be consistent. Love of my life sanded the last nightstand. One of us sands heavier than the other :/ 

Master bathroom reface

 

I'm not sure how the real world tackles painting rooms. My family growing up never painted. My parents were anti-painting. If it involved painting, it wasn't getting done. That or it had to be meticulously planned but executed really crappy. 

The day before my birthday I was off from work, was bored around 3 pm... And just sat up and said I was going to work on the bathroom. We hopped in the car, went to lowes, and it took off from there.

Everything in this freaking bathroom was beige. Walls, tiles, vanity, shower, you name it, it was beige. Something had to break up the beige, and it was going to be me. settled on a color we both didn't hate, brought it to the dude to mix, dude screws it up the first time and does a completely different color than the one  circled, succeeds to complete the order on attempt number 2 and away I go home with a gallon of blue paint and a dream. 

And then my dream was put on hold by the tape monster. I taped everything I could reach. I'll leave it at that. Took an hour and a half and I almost gave up there. Taping's a cold biotch. Painting is taping's bitch cousin.

I only had a few hours to admire my new paint job before I came to the realization we took most of the lighting down. Light project was second. We found some indoor/outdoor wall sconces and wired them together and secured them to a wooden base to make a giant light feature. It looks awesome. So much cheaper than buying something similar. Then adding trim around the shower door, and handmade towel hangers were a must and finally adding the moulding around the mirror and gel staining the vanity was a must. Bathroom is coming along. Still a bunch of stuff to do, but I'll probably update you with a part two later.  And I know everyone just probably wants to look at the pictures. :)

Still have some work to do, but loving it more every day! :)

Java gel stain take 2

It's been a while and it's really obvious my blogging skills are so sub-par. I can't seem to finish a project and just sit down and reflect on it. I finish three more projects before I even start thinking about the first. 

Anyhoo, tons of stuff has gone down in Laika land. We bought a puppy, finished up some projects, I pinned a few million things to my "new home ideas" board on Pinterest... And then I realized I haven't shared any of our new accomplishments!

Last week I was kind of feeling blah. We've got some big projects we keep mentioning but never just start on, and little pain in the ass ones I just never went around and completed. This is one of those pain in the ass projects it's been put off as long as it has because the first gel stain project was such a pain in the ass. Onward to gel stain part deux.

The best thing about repeating a project on another piece of furniture is you learn from your screw ups. First thing I did was buy a contractors pack of masking tape. Could have probably used whatever but the blue contractor tape is double the price, and I was about to tape floors and stone so I was not about to spend all my money. Taped floor (genius), vanity top, walls, and the INSIDE OF THE CABINETS AND DRAWERS (genius) until I felt that whatever I put my gel stained mitt on wouldn't permanately devalue. Then it was time again to break out the gel. Even the smell reminded me of sadder times when I had to get in every nook and cranny of 34 cabinet faces, but with my trusty vinyl gloves and sock mitt I went to town on the bathroom vanities. 

Same results as the kitchen. Coat one is a complete panic attack. Coat two you're trying  to convince yourself that coat three will be awesome and worthwhile while your pulse is 130 bpm. Coat three you pull yourself off the ledge because it really doesn't suck, and coat four for normal people makes you feel accomplished.. But for me on coat four my new husky puppy snuck his way into the garage and pounced on a cabinet face so I felt like a moron. All good though.  Three helpful words for completing a gel stain project: sock, glove, exfoliate. I get that shit on me everywhere and I buy a floor scrub brush and a giant bottle of dawn into the shower  to get that stuff off. Acetone removes the stain off things you don't want stained... Like ceramic tile. :/ 

Anyway. Looks good. Master bathroom has had a huge overhaul so it will get it's own entry.

Outdoor Activities!

Laika wanted to go organic...

We have three palm trees at Laikaland. Two trees beautifully placed in the front, and one random one in the back.  If it wasn't there I would vote for a hot tub, but between that stupid pretty tree and the gas tank, there wasn't much to do in this 12'x12' space in the backyard.  We toyed around with the idea of a pergola accenting the palm tree, but that probably wouldn't have worked out. We finally decided to work around our obstacles and going with raised garden beds for herbs and vegetables. 

For those who have been shopping around Home Depot and Lowe's over the last couple of weeks, if you live up North and you haven't started planting yet, I hope I have given you the tools you need to not spend 400 bucks on stupid pre-built raised beds. I saw those boxes advertised during Home Depot's "Spring Black Friday" sale- waste.

Our raised beds cost a total of 100 bucks including the soil. Maybe $120 if you include the plants because I did score those on the 5/$10 sale during HD's promotional sale. Here's the secret: PICKET FENCING.

We found them on sale at lowes for $1/8ft board. We bought 30 of them and some 2x8 stakes. Cut them to size ourselves and made boxes. Then we bought liner and stapled it to the sides to prevent weeds and seepage. This took us maybe 2 hours total to make. We filled the bottoms of the boxes with top soil, mixed in peat moss, and bought garden soil for the top. (Again, 5/$10, can't beat it).

Most of these projects I wait until we've finished until I post a blog (And some I just haven't had the time to sit down and enter..) but I wanted to show everyone what you can do with some picket fencing wood and some good ol' hard work.  ANDDD if something happens and we need to replace a piece of the boxes, WHO CARES. It's PICKET FENCING! THEY'RE A DOLLAR! Cedar is EXPENSIVE!

We also found a rain water holder at Sam's Club for 70 bucks. We cut and connected the back gutter with a flexible gutter so the rain water goes straight into the holder. Has two spouts to connect a hose and a watering can. I really thought this was genius, but we'll see when the water bill arrives. (The bench connected to the herb bed, just to throw it in there, was totally my idea :D )

Boyfriend of the Year also dug up every sprinkler and capped some/fixed some to utilize our water flow.  Master's degree what? Guy needs to be fixing stuff because he's so damn good at it. Again, keeping. 

In the front of the house, all I needed was a hedger for the bushes, some black mulch and a few plants for color for the mailbox.  It's not yard of the year yet, but it could be in time. :)

 

Someone Told Me To Wait A Year Before I Started Doing Projects...

...and I smiled as I blew all my money at Lowes.

dining room before

I can't really remember the order on how we did the next few
projects, but I'll proudly share what we did. :)

It's starting to get really nice down here so every second I have off I seem to be doing nothing but shopping for these projects or working on them with Tim.  And we've discovered that our development stocked the lakes with bass about 3 years ago and no one fishes them, so we've got a running competition going.

Our first real project fail was shortly after the master closet was finished. I wanted shelves in the 2nd bathroom upstairs over the toilet. I think those over the toilet storage holders look cheap because they ARE cheap so I wanted shelving. There's not much to tell and the pictures would have been embarrassing. Ka-Blam. A total bust. People, if there aren't any studs, there aren't any shelves. :( Whomp.

I also managed to repaint outdoor wicker furniture white.  I started with gray and scratched that idea 4 spray-paint cans in... not my best moments...

It's come to me. The next project Timmy tackled was installing LIGHTING.

We really REALLY hated the light in the kitchen.  The cheap dining room light was tolerable for the time being, but if we were going to do one light, might as well do it all together.

Lighting really wasn't going to be the next thing on the list. It was a big deal and we didn't know what we would find when we took that hideous fluorescent light out of the kitchen.  But we were futzing around at Lowe's and came across the perfect lighting for us.  It was this industrial-looking Allen and Roth set that featured Edison bulbs!  They weren't ridiculously expensive by any means; I've been doing my fair share of internet stalking of good deals. I waited until payday and dropped 400 bucks on 2 pendents, 1 giant pendant for over the dining room table, and a three light island light for the kitchen.

Timmy knew how to do the electrical (KEEPER) and put the pendents up first. INCREDIBLE! He had painted the old pendants before a similar color but there was just no comparison with the Edison bulbs.
Then he put up the light over the dining room... and as much as I had liked the piece in the store, my stomach dropped. It was terrible. And it was so dark in there candlelight would have been brighter.

I really tried to like it... but it was so freaking dark I couldn't live with it so unfortunately for my patient, patient boyfriend, the following morning he had to unhook it and put the island light over it.
He was in surprisingly good spirits until about 6 minutes into disassembling the dining room light I shattered the freaking island light.

So back to Lowes to return two lights, and return with two more identical island lights.  No more slip-ups, and we were finally finished.  We even set the height of the island lights so Tim can pass under both without knocking his head. (For those who know us, that's actually a really big deal)

Fortunately for us, the florescent light was less work than we anticipated. Just a couple of small holes that needed to be patched. Could have been a lot worse, and expensive.

We even have a dimmer for the dining room. Fancy pants! But if you don't know anything about electric work, don't do it yourself- find a buddy!

dining room after

Master Closet Remodel

Let me begin by sharing that I'm not really sure how we made it through this project without one of us crying. At 7:15 am, it's not the right time to look at a newly taped and mudded wall and say out loud "You better be f***ing fixing this wall later or I'll call someone" while your boyfriend is still half asleep.  I'm pretty sure never is the right time to say that after he spent hours putting that new wall up, but I'm also pretty sure he still loves me. Not my best moment, but when all you can think about is how much it's going to cost to go back and fix something it throws you in a state of panic.

Our master closet was small.  It was technically a walk-in when we moved into the house, but it was tiny, and the wire shelving wasn't utilizing the space.  The first time I saw it I remember scrunching my face until I saw the other room. The guest bedroom had a huge closet that spanned the wall shared with our closet and had two entrances, so obviously one of those doors had to go.  In all fairness, the comment that I mentioned earlier came two days after this phone conversation:
Tim: Hey baby what's up.
Me: Nothing. Done with work and I'm headed home.
Tim: Good. Soooo don't be mad but I blew through the wall today.
Me: Without me? Damn.
Tim: Yeah, it's better that way. Looks big. Also a big mess so be careful when you come in. See you later love you byeeeee *click*

And now the closet was past the point of no return.  As much as I'd love to tell you that we didn't have any problems with the studding and setting the new wall and closing in the door hole to the other bedroom, this was not easy. This is likely the reason Tim won't even listen my little whines about building our own built-ins in the living room. He's still recovering from the closet... and it was nearly two months ago. Truth is, I caved to my inner-crazy and called one of our friends to come help us smooth out that wall. A reasonably priced handyman is a new home owner's dream. Once everything was plastered and set, we finally painted the walls navy. Navy is one of those colors you see on Pinterest  and really want to use somewhere in your house but are too chicken to actually do it.  Since I was set on having white shelving (and a lot of it) I hoped it would balance well with the blue.


Tim let me design how I wanted my part of the closet. I gave him a drawing that could have been better executed by a 6 year-old, and Tim made it happen.  We ripped plywood at Lowes for the shelves and used trim around the edges. The most annoying part of the whole project was the painting. All that wood has to be painted and then repainted once it's up where it's supposed to be. (And someone was still staining those cabinets downstairs in the kitchen...)  Tim finished my side first and then took about a week to finish how he wanted everything. Super tall people need super tall shelves. (And fancy hand made tie racks...)

I haven't mentioned the holy grail of tools in this blog. Yes, Tim is incredibly handy, but the reason we can even get this stuff done is because we have a Kreg Jig.  If you haven't heard of a Kreg Jig, it's a device used to put holes in wood to join pieces at 90 degree angles without using biscuits or dowels. The Kreg, the saw, and the tool set made this year the best Christmas ever (for me) and everything was addressed to Tim.

Some good points to remember:

• Someone will cut wood for you at your choice of home store.
• Plywood is still better wood than particle board.
• Blowing out a wall makes a HUGE DUSTY MESS EVERYWHERE.
• "Low-dust plaster" is a liar.
• Master closet remodels improve equity...we hope.

                     (The guest bedroom new wall-->) Mandy

General Finishes Java Gel Stain

After the garage floor was finished I really wanted the next project to be the kitchen cabinets before we moved kitchen stuff inside. Almost everything in the house was very builder-basic and the cabinets were that weird orange-brown color everyone seems to equally dislike. It wasn't horrible, it was just...orange, and they were clashing with my theme. We're going for this "rustacoastrial" look and in my rustacoastrial kitchen the cabinets were going to be dark- java dark to be exact.

My friend in pharmacy school bought a house six months before me and posted a before and after picture of her DIY kitchen. It was so impressive I instantly texted her to know what medium she used to stain the cabinets. All I had ever used previously was that runny stain you can get at any home-store and while it works great for other projects, I knew it was a nightmare to use on kitchen cabinets. She told me to buy "General Finishes Java Gel Stain," and warned me that "it was messy but that I would love the results and want to gel everything I owned in it."

I bought the gel stain online (because it's unavailable everywhere you would think would carry it) and happily took down and numbered my 26 (yes, 26) cabinet doors. This is the easy part. I realize at about cabinet 14 there is no way I can lay the cabinets on the floor all at the same time so I put them in the garage and focus on the wood on the cabinet bases first.  I sand and clean the bases, tape the walls, counter tops, appliances, and floors, and pop open my gel stain. Instant love-it's awesomely dark.  I assumed that foam brushes were the way to go and I dove in.  It took me 2 and a half hours to get the first coat on by myself. I was exhausted, and it was indeed stupid messy. Not accepting defeat I closed everything up and go upstairs to find Tim has taken every wire shelf out of the master and guest room closets. 

Tim felt the second project on the list was to blow out the wall between the master and guest closet enlarging the master closet, and making the old guest closet door a wall. Since gel stain takes hours (sometimes days) to dry I had no problem with trying to do two projects at once. 

To avoid making this entry overly long I'll just get to the most important points:

• Take the kick plates off before you start (the piece of wood that runs along the floor). See picture, you'll understand. No, the orange pieces are not intentional, kickplates are flimsy, break, and then expensive to replace. :I
• Use gloves, then put a sock over your hand and dip your hand in the gel stain. After learning this little gem the labor went from 2+hours to 40 minutes per coat.
• It takes 4 good coats to see good results.
• If you have a dog, especially one like Laika, just get ready for a good dose of frustration. Dog hair will inevitably get all over your cabinets while they are drying, and then you will curse like a sailor as you try to lightly sand the stain you meticulously applied in every crevasse of every cabinet.
• Blue Dawn+ (unused)floor scrub brush+your shower = only way to take gel stain off. 
• General Finishes make a rub on polyurethane. Buy it. It's wonderful and you can still apply it with your new favorite tool- the sock.

I also needed hardware for my cabinet doors. I went with 5" stainless steel bar pulls and bought them on eBay. Don't buy them at a store, you'll waste your money. Tim made the template, and I'm happy with my kitchen. Got lots more to do, but it's a huge start.

It only gets better.

Mandy

Purchasing Laika Land and Our First Project

I'll admit it: I had(have...let's be realistic) a serious Zillow problem.

It was an addiction. I swiped and zoomed in at my new home's listing five times a day until I saw it in person.  When I pulled up to the house and went inside I looked like a 5 year-old going to the circus. It was perfectly imperfect. The good things were great and the bad things could easily be fixed. I went under contract two days later and haven't looked back.

And then I made the list.

I think I overwhelmed my boyfriend because "the list" was completed by the end of the night. I'm not even sure if the house was mine yet at the time, but that obviously doesn't matter now. Some projects on the list are expensive. Some projects are easy, some are important, some not so much.  Should half of the ideas even be on the list during our first year? Absolutely not, but I wrote the list in pen.

Prioritizing our projects was the MOST IMPORTANT concept. Helped me budget, plan, and coordinate with moving all my stuff in and time off work. In my delirious mind I was going to finish everything on that list in a week.

The SMARTEST thing we did is start with the garage. Oh my God I can't even begin to tell you how freaking genius that was. Not that we're a dumb couple or anything- Tim has a Master's Degree so clearly he was Master of putting down that floor. And I have my Doctor of Pharmacy-which means I can...mix things and over-analyze everything..not the point.

The first project we (Tim) completed was epoxying the garage floor. He swept and cleaned it while I sterilized everything inside our house, and it took him probably 6 hours to complete.  We went with the Valspar brand epoxy and bought two for our two-car garage.

Here is why this project should be your first:

We left all of our belongings at my parent's house/garage.  We didn't even think about moving in until the floor was down. Then we U-Hauled our stuff from my parent's garage to our garage and ba-zinga, we had everything at our house and had no NEED to move anything if it wasn't necessary. And then we could move to other projects while still having all our stuff here, but not everywhere.

When you buy a miter saw and start doing your real projects and get wood and saw dust EVERYWHERE in said garage you will be so grateful you put down that indestructible floor.


Did I mention it's blue? It's blue!

Follow the instructions. This one was easy, and nobody fights.

Mandy

Hi from Laika Land

I'm not one to post about my life on Facebook. I don't have a Twitter account, and Instagram just sits on my iPhone collecting app-dust. Facebook has turned into this land of sad/depressing posts or makes me sad/depressed when another person 3 years younger than me posts a picture of their engagement ring.  Don't get me wrong, I like to think I'm a generally fun person, but lately if I'm not working, I'm hiding at home, or at Lowes wasting time and thinking of ways to torture my boyfriend with another project. Since I bought my house, lovingly called "Laika Land" in November of 2013 I have been non-stop crazy about DIY projects to make this my home.  Since I ran out of money and still can't seem to slow myself down, I thought I'd start writing about each project to share what works and what doesn't and reflect on the awesomeness of manual labor and sweat equity.  And I mean the real, in-your-face, run-downs of our projects. Not the "omg it was so easy and look how we playfully got ourselves covered in paint that would wash right off" facade that some DIY shows or movies like to pretend is real life.  If you're twenty-something, and you just shelled out all your savings to buy a house that is not custom-built with upgrades, you're going to want to do something to your home, and I probably did it or it's on my list. 

Happy reading, and if you do read this, and you have cool ideas that you did to your house that you found on Pinterest/HGTV/DIYnetwork/ect let me know.

Mandy                                                     (Real Laika --->)