Our Backyard Update - New Entertaining Spaces {Before and After}

Last summer we decided that we needed a better back yard.  Not because it is small but because it wasn't very good for entertaining.  We had a patio and a deck but not space for both seating and dining and a grill.  After brainstorming for a bit, we came up with a plan.  The first part of the plan was to add more and better entertaining space.

First up, remove the rickety railing on the existing deck and replace it with something that was up to code (and wouldn't collapse if someone leaned on it).  Then, add a step up deck, or patio deck as I call it, to the other side of the patio.

Here are some old photos from when we moved in.  The railing on the deck is less than 3 feet high and moved when you leaned on it.  Not exactly conducive to feeling safe.  

Here is another view of the rickety railing.

And that little deck to the right of the photo was off our master bedroom.  It was only about 4 feet by 6 feet.  Not exactly a spot for doing anything but standing there.

Since these are pretty big projects and not something we wanted to tackle ourselves, we hired this out. I asked around at work and got a great recommendation from one of my colleagues.  Dave the Fireman.  He is a full time fireman who does work like this on the side.  We were so happy with the result.  We have referred him to several other people, who are also very happy with his work. I am so happy we found him!

First up, our new "step up deck" off our bedroom.  It is glorious! So much space! 

It runs right into our patio.  So nice!

 

Here is the new railing on the existing deck.

Here is a view of the the whole back of the house.

 

We have almost 65 feet x 12 feet of entertaining space.  When it was all done we weren't quite sure how we were going to fill it all up.  

But don't worry, we have managed to make some progress on that front.  I will be sharing some patio lights, a fountain, patio furniture and a dining space.

My 1st Chalk Paint Adventure - An End Table Makeover!

I have been seeing chalk paint makeovers everywhere in the blogosphere. Of course there is Annie Sloan, the original, fabulous to be sure but expensive! And limited in color. So the crafty and ingenious women and men of the internet have come up with tons of recipes for DIY chalk paint - some use unsanded grout, some use plaster of paris, some even use baking soda.

For my table makeover, I went with a plaster of paris recipe from Elizabeth & Co. 1 part plaster of paris, mixed with just enough water to make it smooth and 3 parts paint. That's it. Easy peasy! Now according to the info I found online, apparently flat paint is best however, I was planning on using oops paint to get just the right shade of light greenish grey and some of that paint was, well, unknown.

Here I am with all my supplies. I am a messy painter so I usually try to paint outside.

I started with this "lovely" table that I got off Craiglist for free.  I had bought a desk and the seller decided to throw in a couch table and end table for free. Not a  bad deal since I got all three pieces for $15.

While it has these cool finials on the bottom, it also has this so attractive plastic brass. I tried to pry it out and that just didn't work. I was afraid I would damage the wood if I tried to remove it.  That "brass" was part of the reason why I wanted to try the chalk paint. It apparently sticks to everything, even without priming.

You can see from the photo below, it took me a while to get the color just right. Yes, you are counting right, there are 7 different color tries at getting the color just the way I wanted it.   I used white, dark grey, light grey and green paint. Thank goodness I made enough to do the 2 coats because I wouldn't be able to recreate it again.

Once I got the color right, things progressed very quickly.

The first coat went on with great coverage. It was a bit rough but the second coat seemed to even it out.

One of the best parts about this paint is that it dries amazingly fast. I got 2 coats on and dried in less than 3 hours.  It would have been less but I was working on other stuff at the same time. (I love multi-tasking!)

Once the paint was dry, I gave it a light sand with a sanding block. This really smoothed it out.

Here it one spot before sanding. You can see that it is a bit grainy.

Here it is after a light sand. The graininess is gone and it is so smooth.

A couple of coats of Minwax Paste Finishing Wax and the table was ready to go back inside.

It is also the perfect spot to put my foreign coin art while I gather the rest of the pieces for my gallery wall.

One other part of the table makeover - I painted the back of the glass top with liquid gilding paint in platinum, like this.

It adds a subtle shine to the table that I just love.

I think it looks fabulous in its new home! 

The paint color is a lighter version of the grey green in the wall hanging right behind it.

Check out the places I party.

Foyer Fix Up - Part 2

First off, I have to apologize for the quality, or lack there of, in the photos for this post. Some were taken with my old camera which was in the process of breaking down and some were taken with my old Blackberry which didn't have the best camera.

In the end it doesn't matter since the tile in the foyer looks a-mazing, if I do say so myself.  I know D agrees since over a year later, we still stop to look at it as we walk down the hall.

As you may remember, we started this journey with a blandness.

No, this isn't our stuff.  This is one of the listing photos.

We have replaced the light, painted and added our furniture. (see Foyer Fix Up -Part 1 for the details)

Now it is onto the biggest job.

Flooring!

When we moved in, we knew the flooring was laminate. What we didn't know realize is the poor job one of the previous owners did on installation since there was a big rug covering much of the floor. It was baaaad. Though it was click and lock flooring, many of the pieces were neither clicked or locked. To make up for that there was liberal used of finish nails through the top of many of the pieces. In the sunlight it looked like someone spilled glitter on the floor there were that many nail heads glinting.

See what I mean.

Love the huge gap. Perfect for catching dirt and pebbles.

So one night in a fit of "I can't take this anymore" and "Something must be done," I ripped out the flooring.

I have to say that ripping out the flooring before we had a total plan on what to replace it with may not have been one of my smarter moments. I mean, we had a vague and general plan on what we thought we wanted to do. Slate. 12 x 12 tiles. Laid on the diagonal. Easy and peasy. However, we hadn't done any measuring, we hadn't purchased any supplies, we didn't have a tile saw, I think you are getting where I am going with all this. 

Once we went tile shopping, the plan quickly spiraled out of control into uncharted territory. In both a good way and bad way. The good? If we could pull it off, it would look a-freaking-mazing. The bad? It was waaaaay complicated and we hadn't done complicated tile yet. Yeah, I think for a moment we were possessed by the spirits of professional tile installers.

The new plan?  Still slate but in addition to the 12 x 12s there will be a pinwheel tile for the inner border and 6 x 6s in the middle. Like I said, waaaaay complicated. Plus, we had the added bonus of the room being narrower by 1.5" at door end and the wall with the closet is just over 1" shorter than the other wall. [sigh] Thank goodness D is a Math Wizard.

This is why a dry fit is key! If you do a dry fit you can make the allowances and deal with the wonkiness before you are elbow deep in thinset.

So we began the loooooooooooooong process of dry fitting the tiles. I have to tell you, this stage took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. Like several weekends and a number of evenings. Mainly because of all the measuring, and double checking the measuring, then cutting, then fitting, then needing to make tweaks (more measuring and cutting)and then starting all over again on another tile/section/etc. In some ways it was brutal. But as the design started to unfold, we could tell it would totally be worth it. 

Let the dry-fit fun begin!

See what I mean by complicated? What were we thinking?

The little triangles were a total pain since the slate kept splitting into layers.

Dry fit is all done!! Let the celebration begin!

Once we had all the tiles cut and marked, we moved them into to the living room, where they were laid out on some blankets in the exact layout for the install.  Then we were were onto the next step...

Installation!

First up, underlayment. We are lucky enough to have 1.5" thick subfloors so we didn't need to add any additional plywood. This meant we could move directly to installing the Ditra. We used this product for a couple of reasons. We like that it adds some waterproofing since this is the front door. Since we were using a natural stone, we liked the fact that it minimized the movement between the layers of flooring (subfloor and slate).

I could go into some detail how to install it but will instead refer you to the Installation Handbook and instead tell you some tricks we used and tools that we found came in handy.

1. Kneepads: Wear them. This stuff is HARD on the knees. Even now mine ached when I think about crawling around on that stuff.

2. A Level (the longer the better): to make sure you don't have any high spots in the Ditra

3. A board wrapped in carpet and a rubber mallet: This will help you make sure the Ditra is pressed into thinset. If you find a high spot, you can place the board on top and use the mallet to hammer it down until it is level.

4. Some sort of palm protection: See #1. This stuff is hard on the hands too. I actually ended up tracking down a pair of my old biking gloves since they had padded palms to save myself some major pain.

5.  You can see pieces of painters tape in the dry fit pics.  We used those to make sure the pieces were lined up right. We marked out a bunch of stuff, where the grout lines were along the hall floor, how adjoining tiles were to line up, etc.  We figured that since we only had one shot at this, we would try to make every effort to minimize where we could go totally wrong.

Once the Ditra was down and the thinset underneath was dry, it was tile laying time!!

Thanks to all our planning and the complete dry fit, this step went quite quickly and we were done in about 2 hours.

Another day of thinset drying and it was onto grouting. The knees pads were again a great help since slate is hard too. :-)

Grouting is a dirty business, so no pics at all, but as the clean up began, we knew we had a winner. The darker tiles on the outside, the lighter ones on the inside. It looked just as we had hoped.

A couple of days of the grout drying and we were left with this.  It is beginning to look pretty darn fab at this stage.

At this point we only had one more step to go.   

Sealing!

We were in the home stretch.  I couldn't have been happier.  We used the glossy stuff since we wanted the tiles to look wet and really bring out the color.

4 coats later, we were done!!

How gorgeous did it turn out! We just love it!! All the long weekends and late nights were totally worth it.

But we will probably never, ever, never, never, ever do another tile project as complicated as this one again!

We went from bland 

to GRAND!

Cost of Foyer Fix Up - Part 2 (approximate since I can't find all the receipts)

$   70.00 Tile Saw
     60.00 12 x 12 slate tiles
     40.00 pinwheel tiles
   120.00 6x6 tiles
     70.00 Ditra
      40.00 Grout & Thinset
      20.00 sealer
      10.00 tile spacers 
        0.00 sponges, floats, etc. (we already had this stuff from a previous tile job)
$  430.00 Total Part 2
      84.50 Total Part 1
$514.50 Running Total to Date

The last step is installation of baseboards and trim pieces.  However, that won't happen until we do all the baseboards and trim in the hallways and living room later this summer.

But even without the new baseboards and trim, I think it looks amazing!

From Freecycle to Fabulous Lamp

As I was scrolling through my Google Reader this post from Copy Cat Chic caught my eye. (I love that site! Reichel Broussard does the comparison shopping for you on home decor items. You should go check it out for yourself.)

The post in question white versions of these lamps.

The one on the left, the Robert Abbey Rico Espinet Fuzo Koffi Table Lamp, is a bit over $200. The copy cat, on the right, the Ashanti Table Lamp, is almost $100.

This is where it gets interesting…

Take a look at these ridges.

Don’t they look similar to the ridges on the lamps above? I thought so too.

A Work Shop Transformation - From Chaos to Organized (and it didn't cost a dime!)

One usual result of trying to complete several projects at one time is a work shop that becomes a total disaster. At least, that is what happened to us.  We had lived with this situation for several weeks, making it worse as time went along.

As you can see from the pictures below, once we ran out of room on the large workbench, we decided the bottom ledge was perfect for throwing things on. Once that was full, we used the floor. Needless to say, things were going from disorganized to total disaster.

Here is the proof.

Apparently this is where boxes go to die on our house.

Why put break down the boxes when you can pile them in the corner?  And yes, that is a mitre saw sitting on a box of bamboo flooring.  Again, why put it on a table when an extra box of flooring will do.

Or, we could just throw everything on the work table.  Why put them in some sort of order when you can throw them on the table?

Or we could just start filling up the bottom shelf of the work table.  Yeah, that's it, fill the bottom shelf so things don't end up on the floor.

Whoops, guess again.  We ran out of room on both the top and bottom shelf on the work table, so the next logical place for them was on the floor.  This is when I knew we had to take charge and get organized.

That and having spent at least 20 minutes looking for a phillips head screwdriver that wasn't only 4 inches long. I knew it was time to get things off the floor, off the work table and into some semblance of order.

The worst part, our workshop in is a huge area of the basement.  And we already had some storage pieces we could utilize that had been left by the previous owner (these are way in the back of the room.)



 

We also had space along the wall to hang our elfa shelves that were formerly in the basement of our old house. (Check out our mess inspector in this picture.)

With an afternoon, the storage pieces leftover storage pieces left by the previous owner and and the elfa shelving along with my label maker, I was going to make order or the mess.

I think I was pretty successful.

The corner where all the boxes were previously stacked haphazardly.  Looking so much tidier.  Once all the stuff in the middle gets added to the weekly trash pick up, it look even better.



The elfa shelves up and organized.  The floor cleaned and not a single tool on the floor. (Yay!)

The work table is empty and ready for the next project. 

A couple of the storage pieces left in our basement have been utilized.  The one on the left is for paint and paint supplies.  The one on the right is our flooring supplies storage. 

Another left-behind piece holds fasteners, tapes, caulks and other small items.  And all the those little white things on the shelves are the labels to help keep us organized.   

An previously unused IKEA storage piece and some baskets I found in the basement hold other small items like tape measures, gloves, screwdrivers and the like.  And we have all our Dremel tools, bits and attachments together in one locations.

So in the course of an afternoon, I was able to create organization out of chaos.  It is so much nicer to head down to the workshop to plan out our next project. 

Next up, cleaning out the garage.  Before gardening and painting season starts, we need to get things cleaned and organized so we know what we already have and what we need to buy to accomplish our plans.