Fireplace Oak Mantel and Marble Tile Remodel - Before & After

We started working on the mantel remodel in December after Ivy was born. Since then we've been busy with raising a newborn and everything that comes with that. 

On the weekends, I've been slowly chipping away the tiling portion of this job. Admittedly, the project took longer than I'd like, but I took my time getting everything updated since I'd never tiled before.

We started with refinishing the hearth. The old bricks tiles popped out fairly easily and I didn't have to cut too much tile for the job. I also spent a lot of time preparing the different brick surfaces for tile by coating them in thin set, which was a lot like floating joint compound.

Photos below document my progress from mantel pre and post tile.

Finished mantel before we tiled. Looks pretty good, probably could have stopped here if we had to.

Hearth was step one. You can see I dry fitted everything before laying the tile. The bricks are white from thin set.

The top row was a skinny long cut, so I just had Lowe's make a bunch of these tiles to save me the work.

This Old House recommended starting the vertical tiles across the top, with a ledger strip to guide the tiles across.

Pulled off the ledger guide and ready for the verticals strips.

I taped together my sections so the tiles stayed together.

Labeling helps keep things in order (A,B,C)

Tiles glued to wall, after grout.

Detail of finished job.

I repainted the cavity black - it has this empty clean feel now. 

Becca found the perfect side table and bird to complete the design.

Viola! Job is done - 4 months later - yikes. What do you think?

New Pella Window + Wooden Plantation Shutter

One of the daunting upgrades we've taken on in our house is replacing all of our existing windows with Pella Architect Series windows - aluminum clad, double-hung wooden windows that match the style of our home very well. They are a tremendous upgrade in terms of looks, both inside and outside, and also offer a huge thermal comfort/efficiency upgrade.

They are beautiful (and therefore not cheap) so we're taking a long view on this project, with the goal of replacing two per year. With a total of 27 windows on our two main stories (not including the basement or attic) that comes up to a 13.5 year project - so we're hoping to speed it up at some point in the future.

We replaced two of the windows during or big remodel - one over the kitchen sink (see the exterior here, and the interior here) and another in the upstairs bathroom (see that one here). Those two were installed by our contractor, so we had yet to take on installation ourselves. Until . . . . that time last fall when our baby was two weeks past due and we were about to tear out our hair!

What better time to install a new window?

As I was benched for that particular season, Chris took the project on himself, using this tutorial from our hero Tom Silva of This Old House. After hours of measuring, insulating, shimming, more insulating, more shimming, checking for level, more shimming . . . . we had a new window!

Exterior shot of the newly installed window. All three replaced windows happen to be on this side of the house.

So we're three windows down, 24 to go!

It took about one evening of living with this beautiful upgrade to confirm what we already suspected - that we needed to add some privacy to it. Somehow the new window, while no larger than the old one - made that side of the house feel especially like a fishbowl to our neighbors to the north.

So, I ordered a custom plantation shutter from The Shutter Store, the same company that crafted the plantation shutter in our upstairs bathroom. We were confident in the quality of the product based on our past experience with them, and they were among the best prices we could find in browsing for a ready-to-install custom wooden plantation shutter. (Some sites offered a puzzle-like option, where we would have to assemble frame pieces and doors, and then stain it ourselves. We also checked out this tutorial to build our own - but in the end we found these products offered minimal savings for a LOT of work).

So, we decided it was worth a few extra bucks to go ahead and order the ready-to-install shutter. The major con for us in purchasing this way is the lead time. It's hard to be patient when we feel like we're on display for neighbors, as well as itching to install this beauty, and the wait became even harder when the company missed their 4-6 week anticipated lead time, delivering the shutter almost eight weeks after we had ordered it.

But, it was exactly the color, dimensions and quality we hoped for, so in the end, we are very happy.

Chris installed it in about one evening (a few hours). He had to remove the window stop he installed when replacing the window, and used The Shutter Store's instructions and supplies to fairly quickly have the shutter in place.

Hardware and touch-up stain for hanging the shutter, provided by the vendor.

Window stop removed.

Shutter frame going up. 

And privacy! (You're welcome, neighbors).

In addition to the added privacy, we love the nice, finished look this product offers, which is perfect for this particular window. It still lets in quite a bit of light when the slats are open, and is a perfect privacy screen for the tight side yard we have to the north.

Refinishing the Basement Stairs

When Chris told me he would get three weeks paternity leave when Ivy was born, I had a feeling this could spell trouble. While it was great having him home so long, I haven't seen him sit still for more than 10 minutes at a time during our 5+ years of marriage (except when he sleeps through the BBC Pride & Prejudice, which I believe every husband should be required to watch once a year).

Well, it turns out my suspicions were correct! The day after we brought home our newborn, our house rung out with the sounds of random orbital sanding and nail gunning. He had decided to attack our gross basement stairs, which run off the kitchen.

During our kitchen remodel, our nasty old water-damaged kitchen floor was replaced with new hardwoods. The new boards stop under the basement door, and from that point on the floor is covered with original, very roughed-up hardwoods that were painted white at some point.

Before: gross stairs and landing.

Public service announcement: White painted floors do not wear well, and look dirty all the time.

Ok, back to business here. So, from the kitchen door there are three steps down to a landing, where the stairs turn and continue down to the basement. Chris decided to tackle from the kitchen door to the landing, as this portion of the stairs is actually visible from the kitchen when we open the door. We'll probably get to the remaining stairs someday, but they're much less of a priority.

Based on our usual mindset that we like to reuse materials whenever it makes sense, the original plan was to refinish flooring by the kitchen door and on the landing, and replace the old stair treads with new ones. However, as Chris got the boards stripped and sanded, the boards at the top of the steps were pretty rough underneath.

The old, stripped boards just can't keep up with the pretty kitchen floor.

These beaten up, gaping boards looks especially bad next to the kitchen floorboards, which were installed and finished just two years ago. Fortunately, we had just enough board left over from the remodel to replace board in the area, which looked much better. He purchased a few new red oak treads at our local home improvement store and replaced the three stair treads, and stuck with our original plan to strip and sand down the original oak floorboards on the landing to prepare these boards to be restained and finished.

The newly installed floorboards blend into the kitchen flooring. 

Old stair treads are removed (giving a lovely view of the water heater) and Chris sized new treads prior to installing.

Chris is a big fan of Citristrip - a non toxic and minimally stinky way to remove gooey paint. He paints it on, lets it sit overnight and scrapes it off with a putty knife.

The project drug on a while because we needed access to the basement from time to time, so he could not just keep applying stain and polyurethane over and over. We had to take the occasional break between coats to do laundry and get groceries from our deep freeze, so this really was a great project to tackle while we were both home from work.

Plus, we figured while we had the area all torn up, we needed to do some work to the trim and walls in order to really get full payoff for the hard work. Chris capped the existing baseboards for a more finished look, and installed new shoe molding. We caulked and painted all the trim, and I painted the walls using leftover Sherwin Williams Dorian Gray from Ivy's nursery.

Once the work was all done, the area was quickly transformed.

   

The old trim got a major facelift with some sanding and caulking, and a new cap piece attached.

The landing flooring is a bit more rustic than the rest of our wood floors, but we decided we are good with that and chose not to replace all the floorboards. We'll look for a nice doormat to put inside the door anyway, which will cover all that you see from the kitchen. And while distressed looking, the boards are perfectly smooth underfoot - which is the most important part for us!

While some may find it strange to invest this much time in basement stairs, we are thrilled with the improvement! Even if no one sees it but us we feel it was a very worthwhile effort, improving an area that we use every day for very little cost.

DIY Wooden Doormat

Following construction of our deck last fall, we found ourselves with an abundance of cedar scraps. It was really nice lumber, in various sizes and lengths, so not really useful for any large projects, but we still felt that wood so nice deserved to be put to good use.

Enter Martha Stewart. A friend sent us this online tutorial, and we felt it was the perfect new life for our leftover boards. Fast forward an hour or two, and voila!

We followed the tutorial pretty precisely, so you can see the step-by-step there. Our only changes were the size (we made it extra wide to fit right in line with the trim around our 36" front door), and we used natural colored nylon rope rather than sisal for durability. We love that it brings some wood onto the concrete floor of our porch, and it knocks dirt off shoes very well with all of its little edges and cracks.

Have you completed any fun, simple DIY projects? Or have you recently come across any great how-to's that you're itching to try out?

Switchplate Swap

Chris and I have found that some of the most satisfying upgrades in a home come from upgrading small details throughout the house. When we moved in the majority of our light switches and outlets were white or off white plastic, builder grade materials like this.

While there's nothing really wrong with these fixtures, they just didn't do much for us, and in an old house with original brass and iron hardware everywhere (for hinges, doorknobs, heating grates, etc.) white plastic on every wall just seemed wrong.

So, we started upgrading them one room at a time, replacing all the plastic plates with these metal ones. Each plate costs around $6, so total cost per room was anywhere from $18 (for our guest rooms with one switch and two outlets) to around $40 for our living room.

When we worked on our first few rooms, we went to the trouble of actually replacing the outlets and switches themselves with brown fixtures to match the new plates, which required us to turn off electricity in our basement, disconnect the old part and wire in the new one. This added around 10-20 minutes (depending on how long it took us to locate the correct breaker) and a few dollars per outlet - not a huge cost or time investment, but it did add up over time.

After a few rooms were completed, we wised up. We had some spray paint on hand from another project, and decided to just see how it went to paint the old fixture rather than replace it. We were both thrilled with the result. It looks exactly as good as purchasing the new part, and provided a great time savings - and spared a few bucks too!

That time and money savings added up. Each outlet took about 5 minutes to prep and paint, and for every 2-3 outlets we painted rather than purchased new parts, we could buy one extra plate!

Here's the process. Note - ignore the crazy paint color changes. I painted this outlet while painting the walls in our nursery, and we went through several color variations before landing on the grey we liked in the end.

Outlet with old switch plate removed.

Paper grocery bags were perfect for prep. We hung the large side on the wall with a rectangle cut out, and folded up pieces of the handles to plug the outlet holes. We opted not to turn off the electricity, and just be careful - but you could do it either way. 

Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint applied.

One coat was enough - and with a drying time of only 30 minutes we were able to move through with little or no wait.

And after! 

Another angle. These photos were actually taken about six months later, so you can see what they look like with some wear. 

We used the same process for light switches (only with a smaller opening for the garbage sack, and no holes to fill).

The nursery was actually our last room to upgrade - we had done the light switch but since both outlets were behind furniture when it was our guest room, we kind of forgot just never got to them. And five years in, we're still very happy with this little upgrade. While we realize that probably no one else even thinks twice about them, we use them numerous times every day and think they were worth a little work.

Are there any seemingly small details like this in your house, that you've decided are too important not to invest in? Or any "standard" building materials you don't care for in your space?