Stained floor

It's stained! It's finally stained! Look how beautiful. We will have to wait until morning to take another photo.


After


During


Before

Floor Progress

After a one week hiatus, we picked up where we left off and finished going over the floor with 120 grit sand paper.





We wiped the dust off the walls with a damp rag and cleaned up as thoroughly as we could.





Now we are going over the floor with tack cloth. This is an important step.

My boys

Don't pets make a house a home? Tell me about your pets.

Check it out

I went to the Christmas tree shop and look at what they had.







It's my wall pattern.
These organizers are pretty kewl too.

Floor progress

Floor progress with 120 grit sand paper. You can really see the difference in the surface.






Before with 80 grit.






After sanding again with 120 grit.

Guest Room: Crown Moulding

We are working on the crown moulding this morning in the guest room. Tonight we will tackle the floors.





I love the color of this room!






Can't wait to replace the light fixture. Just a few more things on Craigs list and I'll be able to buy it!

Craigs List

I sold my dresser on Craigs list. When the buyers came to pick it up I got all sentimental about it. They sent me a picture and I knew I made the right decision. She's found a good new home.

Floor progress

Here is the sanded floor with 80 grit sand paper. It took 2 days for the dust to settle and then we went back and vacuumed and cleaned again.



I can't wait to see what the finished floor will look like.

Picture frame moulding III

After cutting all the pieces and nailing them up, it was time for spackle and paint.





I use my middle finger to spackle the nail holes and corners.





Put a gob on the end of your finger and push it into the holes and wipe smooth with your finger. You can also use a damp rag.





As it dries, take a break and play with your dogs. Hi boys!





If you need to, sand any excess spackle off. I use a damp rag.





Then apply your paint!





Viola! I love the way it turned out. It's just too bad that most of the furniture is covering the walls.






Here's what we decided for under the windows. I love the way it looks.

How to Paint a Stenciled Wall

As I said before, I tested a small area in the farthest corner of the bedroom. It's a good thing I did. As you can see in the below picture, the paint begins to overlap looking all "yucky".

Also I made the mistake of using a graphite pencil. Instead, use a color pencil.

To get a smooth look, I painted one continuous "squiggle" and then went back and painted the other "squiggle". Yes, I'm full of techincal terms today!

So that when the stencil met from tip to tip, it look like one continuous intertwined pattern. The color looks a little darker in certain angles.

The above photo is the most accurate in color. I love how it looks! It's too bad my other photos make the wall look bumble bee yellow!

Then I just held the brush gently and keeping my wrist straight, I followed the stencil around. I painted 2 coats of the white metallic paint. It dried very quickly so I did the 2nd coat right away.

There you have it. Are you going to attemp this yourself?

Picture Frame Moulding - Complete

Scratch this one off the To-Do list!

Picture Frame Moulding II

After I drew the picture frame boxes on the dining room walls, I remeasured each length and made a neat list on a piece of paper. Not only am I double checking my numbers before cutting, but it helps the hubs to cut pieces quickly and efficiently.

I labeled each wall by letter to keep it simple stupid and then made a coordinating list of the length and how many of each we needed. ie. Wall "A": (six) 22" pieces and (six) 20" pieces. We did it this way, so we could complete one whole frame before moving on. We could have just cut everything at once, but from experience it just gets confusing and mistakes happen easily.

Do yourself a favor and get a miter saw. Borrow it. Rent it. Get it on Craig's list. Be sure to use safety googles and ear plugs. It's loud!

As the hubs cut 4 finished pieces, I'd go tape them to the wall by lining them up to the lines I sketched earlier and then checking it with a level.

Time to nail. A nail gun and actuator makes life so much easier! Start with the top piece first. Check that the neighboring piece will line up nicely with it (they tend to bow inward). Put pressure on it and then nail. This is why the taping is so conveninent. It holds things in place.

4 finished picture frame mouldings! Only 14 more to go!

Next time: Spackling, painting, and caulking.

20x30 Canvas for my Apartment

Through Social Living, I bought this 20x30 for $60 (originally $130). I love this picture taken by Scott Robert Lim with the bridge in the background and thought it would make an awesome piece of wall art in my apartment.

Picture Frame Moulding I

Here's a project that has been on my to-do list for a long time...maybe 3 years! It was about time I wrapped up the dining room by completing this project. I'm excited!

At 4" from each edge, I began drawing frames with my level. I used a pencil. (The lines didn't show up in the picture so I went over them in Paint.)

There were some odd corners that I wasn't sure about, but here's what I decided to do with that. After I was done, I made a neat list of all the lengths of wood trim so we could get ready for cutting.

Let's Talk Floors

After I painted the walls and moulding in the new guest room, it was time to do something about the floors. We toss different ideas around and weren't really sure if we wanted to make the effort to sand them down and re-stain them.

We rolled the area rug up which came with the house and found this. Most of it vacuumed up. Using a damp rag, we wiped the floor down and cleaned any dust.

We went cheap and instead of renting a sander from Home Depot or Lowe's, we just used what we had - a hand sander and a band saw with 40, 80, and 120 grit sand paper.

Using the band saw with the 40 grit sand paper, Keith worked on areas that seem to need the most work before moving towards the rest of the floor.

After sanding a small area (3x3), stop and vacuum the saw dust up with a shop vac. Pretty soon we could see it was totally worth sanding the floors. We read a couple of different tutorials. It's important that you're just sanding off the previous varnish and smoothing the surface out. There's only so much you can sand before you compromise the strength of the floor.

How to Stencil a Wall

Before I started, I got my supplies ready. Here I have 2 bottles of paint: one in champagne and one in white. I also bought a pack of new brushes. I ended up using the 2nd one from the left for the whole project.

AC Moore had a huge assortment of colors! I love it!

Place the stencil on the wall. I started by eye-ballin' it. Then I checked it with a level. I used a tan colored color pencil to sketch my pattern, so that it would blend in better with the wall. Make a little mark on the left or right edge of the card stock to keep the stencil aligned in the vertical direction.

So it looks like this. Here, I made the mistake of using a mechanical pencil and the lead was way too dark and smeared the wall. So I went back with a damp paper towel and wiped the pencil away. It still left an outline so I didn't have to redraw it. Lesson learned. Use color pencil.

See how the lead pencil shows through. Then I tested the paint out by painting in the farthest lower corner of the room (away from the front door). It's a good thing I did since it turns out that I didn't like the champagne (too gold once it dried). Also, I found that keeping the brush strokes even was important. Don't overlap too often.

Painting next....

How to make a wall stencil

So I know you're all wondering how I did this?

First, I started by googling images of wall patterns and did little sketches on a piece of paper to get a feel for how fluid the stencil would be when I'm ready to paint. In other words, the easier it was to sketch and move my hand around, the easier it would be to paint too. When I was ready, I started by sketching one side on a piece of card stock and then folded it over, so that the stencil would be symmetrical.

Intentionally, I sketched the stencil a little shy of 5/8" wide because I knew my paint brush was 5/8" wide. While folded, cut the stencil out with an xacto knife. This is just the trial run so it doesn't matter if it's not perfect.

After I cut it out, I retraced it onto a new piece of card stock to use as my wall stencil. Make sure the top and bottom points on the stencil are exactly in the center and equal in width because you're going to put tip to bottom each time you trace the stencil onto the wall.

Carefully cut it out with the X-acto knife. I left 2 "notches" to hold the center from falling out. I should mention that it's important that when you retraced the stencil onto the new piece of card stock, be sure it's level to the top edge of the card stock. You can draw some lines from the corners of the stencil to help you line up the stencil when you're sketching it onto the wall. I left the additional 6" of card stock at the bottom of the stencil to help me use it as leverage when I'm moving the stencil around on the wall. Also, I can lean on it so that I don't smudge the wall.

How to trace the stencil onto the wall next...