We are Still Here!

I promise.

I have been working on odds and ends around the house since it has been too cold to do any painting in the garage.  My poor little space heater just can't keep up.  And I will admit that I have been dreaming of Spring so have also been spending time planning my garden space.

Though we do have some interesting things coming in the next week or so.  We are finally getting things up on the walls in the office.  The home theatre is getting set up in the basment rec room (though we still need furniture).   We are starting on painting in the living room. 

So now that we are back at it, posts will be starting up again.

I do have to ask, is there any interest in seeing some of the photos and design styles that inspire us as we try to work some design magic in our house?  I know that some bloggers do this so just wanted to get some feedback to see if there is any interest from our readers.  So let us know and we will get working on those types of posts.

Sneek Peek - Night Table Redo

This little nightstand was a Craigslist find and cost $10 (I think).  We bought it with plans of putting it in our center bedroom.

A good cleaning and a coat of semi-gloss white paint will make her look like new.

Stay tuned for the reveal.

From Freecycle Castoff to Redone Bedroom Light

Have you heard about Freecycle?  It is made up of 4,876 groups with 6,905,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.

I think it is great.  While you do see some odd requests (my favorite was someone looking for a poster with 13 black and white cows on a green background), most are for items people give away/throw away every day.  Like this lamp.

I got it from someone who was redoing their basement and the brown didn't go with the new color scheme.  It didn't come with a shade, but the price was right (free).  Glad the woman didn't know how easy it would be to make it look fresh and new with a few coats of paint. 

I started by scuffing the ceramic slightly with a sanding sponge just to give the primer something to "grab." Then a coat of white primer.  Followed by several coats of white glossy spray paint.


Top it with a shade from Target and we have a lamp that doesn't look anything like what we started with.

I think it looks lovely sitting on top of another one of my frugal finds, the Craigslist nightstand that cost less than $20.  I just love the way the white sets off the blue wall color. 

Once I get the bedding and other details finalized in our front bedroom (aka the boys room), I will be adding some coordinating trim to the edge of the white shade.  Wish me luck that I can get those decisions made in the next few weeks.

Cost of the Project:
$  0.00 lamp off Freecycle
    2.00 1/2 can primer
    3.50 can white glossy spray paint
  20.00 lamp shade from Target
$25.50 Total Cost

Entering the Digital Age!

 Source

In honor of the dip in temps in our neck of the woods, I thought that today would be all about gas.  Not methane, though we have quite a bit of that thanks to Hubs.  I am talking about natural gas, the kind we use to heat our house. 

We have a multi-zone, natural gas fueled, hot water baseboard heating system with four thermostats.  Zone One is the Family Room and Kitchen*, Zone Two is the Dining Room and Living Room*, Zone Three is the Office and Front Bedroom*, Zone Four is the Master Bedroom* and the Center Bedroom, Zone 5 is the bathrooms (this zone comes on whenever another zone kicks on). The * denotes which room the thermostat is located in.

It is quite nice because we are able to turn the heat up in only the areas where we are hanging out versus heating the entire house.  The not nice part?

We had the old fashioned "lever style" thermostats.  You know the kind I am taking about.  The ones where you have to guestimate and eyeball what the current temp is and hope the temp you want is the temp you are setting it for.  Personally I loath these types of thermostats.

After getting a wake up call in the form of our December natural gas bill (more than double November's), we realized that we needed to get a better handle on how we are heating the house.   Solution:  digital thermostats.  Like these.

We went with the most basic model since we didn't need it to be programmable and we only have a 2-wire system.  We got these at Home Depot for about $25.00 a unit.

Then it was a matter of switching them out.  The switching out part was easy.  Since we have a 2-wire system, we only had two connections to make.    Here is a tip:  Take a pencil and wrap the wire you removed from the old fixture around it.  This will ensure that the wire won't fall back into the wall. 

One hiccups we found was that some of the thermostats had an old-fashioned mercury switch.  Needless to say once those were carefully removed, they got double bagged and placed in the basement waiting to be brought to our county's Public Works Department for proper disposal since placing liquid mercury in the regular trash is a big no no.

I swear this gizmo looks like a high school science project from the 50s.

It actually took more time to sand, spackle and paint the area that was previously covered by the old thermostats.

  

  

 

No these were not taken all in the same room.  I realized that I hadn't taken photos of all the stages in any one room.  Whoops.  So you get to see the Benjamin Moore Riviera Azure from our front bedroom, the awful tan from our living room and Valspar Key Lime Pie from our kitchen.

Now all we need to do is wait to see if being able to set each zone to a definite temperature will result in lower bills or at least not the same shocking jump we saw in the last bill.  Personally, I think it will be the latter since January is our coldest month here is Michigan.   

Will keep you posted when we get out bill for the last week of December and the first three weeks of January.  

Tip of the Project:  After you disconnect the thermostat wires, wrap them around a pencil to ensure they don't fall back into the wall.

Making a Square a Circle

As you may remember, a few weeks ago I made the surprising discovery that several of the bedroom doors had less than optimal doorknob holes (like the one above).  It made replacing the original "attractive" 70s brass doorknobs with the new brushed nickel ones problematic, to say the least.

So we purchased one of these and got to work. 

The problem?  Since there was already a hole in the door, how would we use the hole saw bit to round it off to make an actual circle.

After some trial and error (OK, more along the lines of the saw jumping and skipping around the hole and me using an interesting selection of words not to be used in polite company), Hubs and I figured out how to make the process work smoothly. 

Here's are the steps we worked out.

1.Place the door across your saw horses.  You will be drilling through the door, so you don't want to put it on a solid surface.

2.  After placing the correct sized hole saw on your drill, start the bit spinning.

3.  Bracing yourself, place the edge of the bit at an angle at the edge of the circle you want to drill. Create a small groove.

 

4.  Slowly rotating the angle of the hole saw, repeat step 3 on another side of the circle.

5.  Repeat step 4 on the third side of the hole.

6.  At this point, using the grooves you created earlier as a guide, straighten the hole saw and applying pressure begin to work the saw through the door.  The grooves should keep the saw in line until you get further into the door.

7.  Eventually, you will make it through the door.

Now you have the correct sized hole for your doorknob.

I do have to be totally honest, I did have some skipping on my door (which caused some rather colorful language to be uttered during this endeavor.) . 

However, it wasn't anything that a little sandable wood filler and a coat of white semi-gloss paint didn't fix.

And this

looks so much better than this.

If the instructions weren't clear or you have any other tips, please let us know. 

I am sure we will run into more doors that need some "rounding off" as we continue to replace our doorknobs.

Sneek Peek - Coffee Table Revamp

We got the coffee table above at a local antique store.  LOVE the marble top, HATE the (dingy) yellow and gold base.  I know that gray and yellow are hot right now but not this yellow and not with the gold.

With the selection of our new wall colors, we have a better idea of how the direction of decor in the living room.  This means it is time to get rid of the yellow. 

Yay!!

All I can tell you about the revamp is that there is an elephant involved.  How's that for an obscure clue?

Happy New Year (Several Weeks Late)

Happy New Year! (a few weeks late!!)  I realized that this post has been sitting as a draft for the last 3 weeks.  Whoops!

It is hard to believe that another year has past.  And what a year it has been.  We sold a house, bought a house, started to remodel a house, hosted a couple of parties including the big family Christmas Eve party, tore up a bathroom, repainted several pieces of furniture and painted a bunch of rooms.  Wow!  With all that, I can only imagine what the next 12 months (OK, next 11 months and 1 week) will bring. 

So in the time honored tradition of making resolutions, I thought I would share some of ours.

For the Home

1. Institute the "15 Minute Rule" before bed each evening. This means spending 15 minutes cleaning up the messes of the day so the next day starts out without that "man, the house is a wreck" feeling.
2. No beginning a new home project without completing one unfinished project.
3. No bringing in a new piece of furniture to be refinished without finishing a piece currently waiting to be redone.
4. Never let the "To Be Filed" pile get above the top of it's bin.
5. Get new food storage containers so we can get rid of the dreaded box of random lids and bottoms.
6. Organize craft supplies.
7. Sort through last boxes from our August 2009 move in the basement.
8. Make regular donations to charity to reduce amount of stuff in the house.

For the Body
1. Exercise 30 minutes a day at least 3 days a week.
2. Try one new healthy recipe each week.
3. Restart WW with a goal of losing 50 lbs. (This one is mine, not Hubs')

For the Blogs
1. Post to each blog at least twice a week.
2. Create an ongoing "series" for each blog that posts monthly.

Here's hoping that at least some of them will last through the end of February.