Blue Never Felt So Good

Pardon my melodramatic writing for this one post.

We started painting this old house 24 months ago. It started during our kitchen remodel. Painting was something cheap that we did to keep us busy while we watched the contractors work inside. Since then, we've been chipping away at the project, side by side. Each side took about 3-6 months to complete. Winters and summers also slowed us down.

One added detail to the painting project - I also decided to refinish/replace each shingle before the paint. Anyone can paint a house, but most aren't willing to go to the trouble to scrape, refinish and caulk every nook and cranny.

This year we finished the south wall, and in a rush to finish the front of the house, I elected to hire a contractor to replace all the old shingles with new.

I would say this was the most difficult and physically demanding project we've taken on. I went through 4 orbital sanders, 14 boxes of shingles, 50 tubes of caulk, and thousands of sanding pads.

We're happy with the results, and more happy to say we're done! Enjoy.

The carpenters started on the left edge and worked to the right, bottom to top, sections at a time.

Carpenter's progress at end of day 2. We had to buy 11 boxes of shingles for the front.

Completed shingles before paint. I stripped the window trim and fascia boards after they left.

This type of project definitely requires a helper. The porch roof really helped them out with easy access.

Pregnant wife helping me out with painting. Worst husband or best wife ever? 

Painting done, with a lovely lady at the door.

Kinda looks like a ship at this angle.

A month before we bought the house.

4.5 years later.

Before/after.

Baby Room Book Ledge

Red oak book ledge with some of our favorites on display

B suggested we make a book ledge in the baby room that goes across the long wall. Thankfully, with a bunch of old oak left over from our kitchen remodel, I can make these in a matter of a few hours.

The vertical trim piece of a doorway is almost perfect for this type of project. I ripped the piece so it's about 3" wide, and nailed on smaller strips on the back and front ledge to create a channel for the books.

We debated on painting it white, but B elected for the dark wood stain.

Installing requires locating a stud, so we ended up drilling a bunch of tiny holes behind the ledge until we hit something solid (the joys of plaster and lathe).

I think we may add another eventually, but for now, I like the simplicity of one long shelf across the room.

Should hold books until the kid tries to climb the wall with shelf.

You can see where we made some pencil marks for alignment

$20 Antique Door - Score!

A few weeks ago I went to Habitat ReStore in Kansas City for fun on a lunch break. I joke that casual trips to ReStore are "dangerous" because you will walk into the store with no intentions of buying and leave with an unplanned weekend project.

My last trip was a classic example. We quickly stumbled upon a pile of $20 two panel closet doors that perfectly match our house's style. I reluctantly texted B a picture (below), knowing this would pique her interest.

Fast forward 4 hours later, and we're rushing across town in our van to buy three of these doors for our upstairs closets. We could have bought more, but since these all required stripping and refinishing to match our house, I didn't want overcommit to stripping (see exterior house project).

Well, once I got to "stripping," things got really messy. I'll spare you the pictures, but it did take an entire bottle of this stuff to get about 6 layers of white paint off the doors.

The exciting/scary part of doing this is that you have no idea what wood type and finish you'll be left with. I was afraid it would be cheap pine and be a total waste of time. Thankfully, the wood was beautiful and stained up perfectly!

Total time was about 12 hours. I spent about an hour every weeknight for two weeks, and then finally hung the door this weekend.

Here's the skinny 24" closet door in all its restored glory

We kept the original doorknob and spray painted it oil rubbed bronze

The doors ended up being a beautiful pine. I love the thin grain on the frame. Also, we cut out the original panel trim and replaced them with a simple shaker style trim. This saved loads of stripping time.

I absolutely love the idea of restoring old things - the only risk is that sometimes you'll end up spending ridiculous amounts of time and $ to restore that cheap item you found. With this project, I probably spent $50 on this door, including some new materials, like trim, bondo, and fixing some door jamb hardware. The time was a little bit much, but it quickly became a labor of love, so I have no regrets (yet).

New doors like this cost about $240 each, so I think we did ok.

And just for reference, here's the before/after pic.

Painting Progress: Three Sides Done

Look what we finished this weekend . . . .

Current painting status is three sides done, as well as the front porch - leaving just the front 2nd and 3rd stories to sand and paint. I'm starting to believe this project might actually end some day . . . .

Mobile Modifications

One of the very first things I purchased for the nursery was this mobile, from seller WildChildShop on Etsy. I decided early on that I liked the idea of a mobile that would move naturally in the breeze from the van or vent in the room, and wanted something made of natural materials that would fit well with the decor of the room.

Online this one looked perfect - I loved the rustic wood, and the cranes hanging from it are made of maps, giving it great blues and greens for color, and the lightweight strings and cranes should have lots of natural movement.

When it arrived, I loved it instantly. The cranes, held onto fishing line by little pearls, were so colorful and sweet, and it had a very light and airy feel. The one part that bothered me a little was the branch at the top. It was not quite as rough and rustic as the one in the photo, and felt a bit heavy compared to the rest of the mobile.

So it was Carpenter Chris to the rescue! He went through wood scraps he keeps on hand, and came up with this very light and sweet solution. These two pieces of oak, measuring about 1/4" x 1/4" x 12" each, provide a nice light, simple top for the mobile, and match the tone of the room much better.

From there it was a simple matter of drilling and staining the wood to get it ready to hang. The original mobile came with three strands of cranes, so I cut a few cranes off the bottom of each strand and strung them up on some new fishing line to create a fourth, reusing the pearls to hold them on the line. A little more fishing line to string the whole thing to the ceiling (from a little hook I spray painted oil rubbed bronze, to match the rest of the hardware in the room) and we're done! 

And here's perhaps the most important angle - crib's eye view. I love the X in the middle with the cranes lined up on the corners, and the fun shadows it casts on the ceiling in the lamplight.

So for exactly $0 (using fishing line and wood scraps we already had, and rearranging cranes and pearls from the original mobile) it's an even more custom piece than it already was - all ready for our little guy or girl to gaze it sweetly after sleeping all through the night, every single night. Right? Hello?

And now, for the current state of the nursery. Here's what you see looking in from the hallway:

Standing by the closet door:

And sitting on the chaise lounge in the corner:

It's really beginning to feel like things are coming together (other than the mess of stuff we're currently storing in the crib), but there is still a lot to do. Our next steps are:

• installing baseboards
• adding a rug
• recovering the chaise lounge
• adding hardware to the dressers
• replacing closet doorknob 
• hemming the sheer curtains
• making a few pillows for the chaise and rocker

Once these steps are done, we'll be on to the fun stuff - accessories! I've been collecting lots of great things to decorate the walls, and we have a few projects planned as well to finish things off.

Oh, and Wrigley wants you all to know that you don't have to worry - the last piece of the mobile did not go to waste!

Nursery Decorating Chapter 2: When in Rome

And by "in Rome", I mean when you are living with an upstairs that is completely in pieces, and there are paint rollers and brushes everywhere - you might as well paint dressers!

First, a little history. The two dressers and mirror we're using in this room are part of a five-bedroom set I inherited from my great grandmother when I was ten (the other two pieces are a nightstand, which I currently use, and a twin sized brass headboard - which could be great little girl bedroom material someday shall we need it).

She had purchased them a few years before when she moved into a senior living apartment, and when she passed away she left them to me, which was a pretty mind-blowing thing for a ten-year-old! So, they have very precious history to me, but are not precious antiques - making them fair game for a fresh coat of paint and some new hardware!

Although, I do think Nino preferred them before . . . .

The dressers had great, embellished shapes, but the feathery hardware and gold painted highlights really dated them and made them feel heavy. Plus, the ivory painted finish on them had taken a bit of a beating over the years and was in need of a refresh anyway.

So they all got a light sanding, some wood putty and a fresh coat of paint. From there, the putty/sand/putty/sand process began to get the fronts of the drawers perfectly smooth over the old hardware holes. While I haven't selected new hardware yet, I am confident the old holes will not work (they had numerous different sizes and would be impossible to match). 

We use Sherwin Williams ProClassic Interior Oil-Based paint for all our woodwork - trim, cabinets and furniture - and used the color Creamy for these pieces. It's funny paint to use - very sticky, prone to drips and incredibly slow to dry - but once it's done the finish is incredibly smooth and durable, so it's worth the extra work.

Once the painting process was finished, here's what we ended up with.

I love how the embellishments on the furniture drawers and legs show up so much more now that they have a uniform finish. The ivory feels clean and fresh, and really helps the pieces feel nursery-appropriate.

So, hardware is the next step. I have been planning on using blue milk glass knobs for the drawers - something like this:

And while I love the look, I'm feeling like it's not quite what these dressers need. I ordered some samples to play with, both of the milk glass knobs and a simpler, crystal and bronze option like this:

The crystal is still whimsical, but a bit cleaner and less "baby-y" than the milk glass - so I'm anxious to get both options in and see what we like. Either way, these dressers have come a long way from the gold and beaten up yellow-cream they were a week ago.

And speaking of When in Rome, here's a little more to add some excitement to your Wednesday. Because every day is better with a little Will Ferrell.

Nursery Decorating Chapter 1: Sometimes Progress Isn't Pretty

 For the past several months, our nursery has looked something like this.

Very soon after finding out I was pregnant and (before we were even telling people), we came across this crib for sale on Craigslist. I knew I wanted a Jenny Lind style spindle crib in dark wood, and this one, which was only two years old, was an amazing deal at only $60. So we removed our old guest bed and moved in the crib.

Then, in May after my grandfather passed away, were were in his hometown of Perry, Iowa for the funeral, and happened upon a wonderful little antique store. We purchased the rocker, whose arms you can just see in the bottom right corner of the photo. More photos of him to come, but with this purchase we had all the furniture pieces selected for the room - crib, wide dresser, old living room chaise (bottom left) rocker and tall dresser (which can't be see but is next to the rocker). We figured out the general furniture layout we liked and things have sat since then.

Until last week! I decided it was time to attack. Chris was planning on being out of town for the weekend, so I called in some help in the form of my sister and her six-year-old daughter Annabel to get some painting going. Before we could get started though, I had some prep to do.

Chris and I weighed the options of replacing baseboards in the room vs. refinishing them like we did in our own room two and a half years ago. While we like to preserve as much of the house's original materials as much as possible, we decided it made more sense to just start new with these boards for several reasons:

• They were ROUGH. I don't have photographic evidence, but believe me - these ones were in way worse shape than any of the other trim in the house.
• We would have to sand down a lot to get them paintable, risking scattering lead paint dust around our child's future room - not an idea we love.
• The aren't the "nice original wood" we love in the house. Don't get me wrong - fixed up they'll look like a million bucks, but they are low grade pine - not stain grade oak like we have on our main level.
• We can match the style in new boards for about $100 in materials - saving a lot of time and eliminating nearly all of the mess. 

So out the baseboards came! Painting without the baseboards meant that we wouldn't have to worry about edging the bottom of the wall (yay!) and that any damage done in removing them could be repaired prior to painting and putting the new boards in. They came out very easily - I did it by myself in about an hour.

After clearing out the room and purchasing some supplies, we were left with the below scene. See those scratches on the walls? Those are no accident. After I removed the baseboards, Chris and I took a paint scraper and sanding block to the walls to knock off some texture.

We love smooth walls, and while this step still left them far from perfectly smooth, it did take off some of the bumpier spots and goobly-goshes, as we call them. So yes - sometimes progress looks like this.  

Chris also did some light sanding on the window trim, so that it would be ready for a fresh coat of paint while we had the room apart. 

And one important piece to note - the closet in this room contains some of the very last of the original paint from when we moved into the house. That's right - it's crazy turquoise! And you can't tell in the photo, but it's also high gloss paint. If you every wanted to see your reflection in turquoise, this closet was the place to do it. 

I weighed grey paint options, and landed on Sherwin Williams Argos. But when I painted a test patch, it looked blue. And with our robin egg blue curtains, I immediately knew it wouldn't work. 

So Chris suggested I mix in some black paint we had on hand, from painting the back of our fireplace a few years back. Since this experiment would cost us exactly $0 and might make the paint I had purchased for the walls usable, I decided to give it a try. 

So I mixed it in and rolled our new and improved paint onto the walls. As it dried I brought in my fabrics, to test it out. And unfortunately while it was definitely darker, it was still more blue than grey, and clashed with my aqua curtains.

So I bit the bullet and selected new paint - this time Sherwin Williams Dorian Grey (4th down on the swatch). A quick errand and $45 later, we were ready to roll again. Pun intended. 

And while I was a bit bummed about the dollars wasted on my first paint color, it did still work as a first coat, so only one coat of our second grey was required to cover the walls. The photo above shows the difference between the colors - my darkened Argos above our final color of Dorian Grey on the bottom (with our old room color along the top trim - Sherwin Williams Baguette).

And so we painted. We're still re-assembling so more photos are coming soon with the final wall color and a few other updates we made while we were at it.

Oh, and about that closet. It benefited from some extremely enthusiastic child labor. Thanks, Annabel!