There's a Tree in my Pipe

We've been cooking with gas lately! This weekend was another big one... we got so much done! 

First off, during the week, we had a few different people at the house. We had an electrician out to fix some random things, our septic tank was pumped and we also had a Dale Miller Plumbing out to fix some broken inlet pipes into the septic. I showed up Friday morning and the guys had a tractor, digging a trench between our two septic hole covers. Within a couple of hours, they had the old pipes out, new ones in and the waste flowing! Check out the broken pipes with all of the roots that were growing inside of them... this isn't even half of the roots that they took out with the pipes!

 

Meanwhile, James and I got working on finishing our two gates (he cemented in the posts for them last weekend). For the sides of the gate leading down to the pasture we decided to try and mimic the deck railing that we have throughout the property... I am pretty proud of the finished product, it just looks so much nicer than metal fence! (I know I'm not in any of these photos, but I swear I helped)

BEFORE the gate

AFTER!

Beautiful!

AFTER, gate at the back of the shop

The next day, James and I started building a small gate to put at the top of the stairs leading down to the pasture (we are trying to completely seal off the area surrounding our house so that our dogs can roam freely). Again, we tried to mimic the existing railing.

Justin stepped in to help with the mounting. That's what she said.

Finished product!

While we all worked outside, my dad and his new apprentice, Garrett  ;), continued on the bathroom. They started at the crack of dawn with building the framing for the new bathtub to sit on...

1 of 2

So now, the bathroom is ready for a tub!

Plumber in training

In the next week or so the bathroom is getting new insulation, greenboard/drywall, texture and most fun of all, tile! It shouldn't be too long before I can take a bubble bath in my awesome new tub!

And last, but not least, my weekly home-makeover-heroes: Able Electric, Sweet Septic, Dale Miller Plumbing, My pops, Garrett and Justin!

Cabinets, Yo: Part 2

With the upper cabinets finished and most of my doors and drawers under way, I sort of feel like I'm in the final stretch of dealing with the cabinets... at least as far as painting goes. I still have all of the bottom cabinets to paint and wax but to me, dealing with the doors and drawers was a big hurdle.

We are going to wait to tackle the bottom cabinets until we have the appliances, sink and counter tops ready, but with all the painting and waiting... painting and waiting, I just couldn't wait to at least prime them! 

I also prematurely filled in the gaps between the cabinets. I waited until after that to pop off the faux drawer underneath the kitchen sink and it busted the beautiful seams that I sealed up... I will have to patch a few cracks and do some more sanding once we have the bottom cabinets all situated. Here are some "fun" pictures of the bottom cabinets being filled.

 

 

And here are some more progress shots, just for kicks...

Me, priming with Kilz

This color is realistically much more a warm gray, I call it "greige"

Cabinets, Yo: Part 1

Sooo... the kitchen cabinets. 

(Disclaimer: the ratio of text to photos in this post isn't favorable... I follow many blogs and I know that more photos are more fun... but, if you happen to be refinishing old cabinets, you might find some useful information here! Also, please excuse the terrible photos, I plan to post more with better lighting soon!)

James tried to convince me many times to just go with brand new cabinets, and I'm not going to lie, it was tempting. But frankly, it just wasn't in the budget. There were other things that were more important to me to spend the money on than new cabinets. Even if we had gone with Ikea cabinets (the cheapest option), it still would have been a couple thousand dollars and we still would have had to assemble and install them ourselves (and everyone knows, the worst part about Ikea products is the "putting them together" part).

But there was another factor in me deciding to use the existing cabinets, and that was that I really felt like the kitchen was the one room that we could really pull off completely on our own. While I am really excited about our bathroom, tile was one thing I knew I wanted to leave up to a professional. And although I do think that the finished design will feel my own, I don't think that I will feel the same pride in the finished product as I hope to feel in the kitchen (hopefully that pride doesn't turn out to be embarrassment). And obviously, we are going to need and have already used the knowledge and helping hands of friends and family to complete the kitchen, but to me, that still counts as DIY-ing!

So I already did a short post on my kitchen inspiration, but to recap, we know that we will be painting our cabinets, installing new hinges and hardware, raising the upper cabinets and installing a shelf below them (on each side of the stove). We will also add some open shelving on the left side of the kitchen sink and install some sort of shelving over the refrigerator, as an extension of the upper cabinets. We are also plan to cut, seal and install the butcher block countertops on our own. As far as the backsplash, we haven't totally committed to anything yet but our two ideas are subway tile or possibly a combo of bead board and baseboard... either way, we plan to do that project ourselves as well. I'm really excited for this kitchen and although it will most likely be the last big project to be finished on the inside of the house, I think it's going to be, by far, the most rewarding!


With that said, I'm going to get down to business on what we've done so far with the cabinets...

I decided to used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint on the cabinets after hearing some pretty good reviews on the stuff. It appealed to me mostly because of the soft, matte finish but also because there is supposed to be no prep work... no sanding or priming necessary. I say "supposed" because with my cabinets, prep work was necessary. With a normal piece of furniture, you would only need to mildly clean the surface and start painting... but with these cabinets, there was a significant amount of deep cleaning that was necessary and I found out about half way through the painting the upper cabinets that a stain fighting primer was also necessary. (More on the chalk paint later)

I sort of outlined my cleaning process in a previous post, but just the cleaning process of all of the cabinets, doors and drawers took quite a while. This wasn't just a basic scrub down, I had to use a strong chemical cleaner, literally scrape every surface, chip off excess glue and sand certain spots. I spent the better part of two days doing this. 

After cleaning, I had to deal with the holes left from the previous hardware. Those holes were spaced at 3-1/2" and, of course, that just so happens to be like the most rare hole spacing for a cabinet door handle... Home Depot had literally 2 handles to choose from in the color I like (brushed nickle, which is pretty much the most common color). The 4" spaced handles also lacked in variety, so we went with 3". Just so happens that the handle style I picked out didn't look properly placed if we were to reuse the existing bottom hole (it looked to low on the door). I also tried out a knob style, it too looked too low.... so, in the end, we had to fill both holes and will have to re-drill when we are ready to put on the hardware. If you ever redo your kitchen cabinets, I would highly recommend buying a few handle styles and trying them out before committing to and buying a whole bunch of one style!

priming, priming, priming

 

Filling!

With the hardware in the right spot

Filling the holes was fairly easy though, they just needed a quick sanding and after they were dry you couldn't even tell the old holes existed!

Once I had finished the prep work, I got to painting. Everything seemed golden until about 3 days in... I had almost completely finished the upper cabinets, they had already gotten their first layer of wax, and then I started painting the doors. I had about 2 layers of white paint on the upper cabinets before I started to notice quite a few places that had areas of yellowing... it was grease seeping through the paint, you could literally see the drip patterns. Although it was too subtle to be able to photograph, it was definitely noticeable! I think that if the paint weren't the "pure white" color, it wouldn't have even come through ,but that's besides the point... I needed to do something. So at the suggestion of my mom, I decided to go pick up a quart of Killz primer at the hardware store. If you don't know, Kilz is a specialized paint for blocking stains of all kinds, and after two coats, the grease stains were no longer coming through! 

Luckily I had saved the doors and I only wasted those 2 layers of paint (wasting paint normally wouldn't be a concern, but Annie Sloan chalk paint is stupid expensive compared to normal paint and I did end up having to go buy another quart in order to finish the job). Unfortunately, I took another glance at my cabinets in better lighting (the actually bodies, not the doors) and they too suffered from some stainage that I hadn't noticed before. They weren't nearly as bad off as the doors but there were definitely a few noticeable spots. I've decided, though, to just finish the process with them and I'm hope that they look alright with the doors on. If not, I'll just have to strip them and start completely over... ugh. We'll see!

Upper cabinets, drying

Upper doors, with 2 layers of Kilz

So after that greasy experience, I did decide to prime everything with Kilz before painting with the chalk paint (even the lower cabinets that were going to be painted gray), I just didn't want to risk it! 

Other than that minor freak out, the chalk paint has been a pretty positive experience. When I went to buy the paint I was strongly advised by the lady at the store that my kitchen cabinets should not be my first project with the product... "unless you are confident" she said (obviously, that was enough for me for me to go for it). The waxing step is supposed to be the intimidating part of the process but I had watched a few youtube videos and I felt like I could handle it. Now, after having done the waxing, I feel like anyone can do it if you simply know how to follow directions.

Annie Sloan wax and a $52 brush... definitely a rip off, I've had better luck applying the stuff with t-shirt rags

Anyway, as of today, I have completely finished the upper cabinets, they are ready to be put up. The doors have 2 greasy layers of chalk paint in "pure white", 2 layers of Kilz primer and another 2 layers of the chalk paint, waiting for wax. The lower cabinets have been primed with Kilz but I am waiting to start painting them until we have our dishwasher and kitchen sink installed. The lower doors are primed and ready for paint and the drawers are 100% painted in "french linen" and waxed, they just need hardware! 

Some of the drawers drying

So I'd say we are maybe a little over half way there with the cabinets and overall, I'm glad that we decided to go this route. I think that Annie Sloan chalk paint was the right path as well, not having to sand everything saved me A LOT of time and in the end, the Kilz primer didn't take that much more effort. I'm not 100% happy with the upper cabinets, but who knows, the finished product might look totally fine. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy, everything is turning out better than I expected. I am especially loving the "french linen" gray, the color is perfect and it really compliments the matte finish of the paint. I can't wait to see how the lower cabinets look with the doors and drawers in! 

Yes, our old cabinets have a few dings here and there, they aren't perfect, but I really think that the end result is going to have so much more character than brand new cabinets would have had... not too mention, I found enough old pot in the drawers to role a full joint, so you know they've been loved! ;)

This Weekend was a Doozy

(loooong sigh)

I now have Friday's off at work and this weekend was the first 3 day-er that I spent pretty much exclusively at the house. During the week, the last of contracted work was started and finished and on Friday, I met the crew and got to see everything they did. Their tasks were mostly boring things like some electrical work and installing CO2 sensors, etc., but there were a few exciting things. They got our new front door installed... it's beautiful and dying to be painted red. They also patched a few areas of our deck that were rotting and put in new railing in a section that was missing. And lastly, they primed a few spots on the exterior of the house where the paint was chipping and damaged... and they were also nice enough to prime the new section of exterior wall that Mikey put in last weekend!

Also during the week, Mikey put our new flooring in the two bedrooms and it looks amazing! Having the floors down really gives us a better idea of what the finished rooms will looks like, now all they really need is baseboard and paint and they are finished! 

 
So shout out to Mikey (again) and to Bolger Construction for their work, everything looked super clean and they finished their work super fast!  And while they were finishing up is when I started to really work on my kitchen cabinets... having spent so long getting the cabinets clean, they were finally ready to get there first coat of paint. So that's what I did all of Friday, got one coat paint on all of the upper cabinets and their doors. (I am going to expand on my cabinet adventures in another post... they have just been too "fun" to not get their own spotlight!)

Friday night we had drinks and dinner with our best friends and Saturday morning we were back at it... very early in the morning, I might add. Even after last weekend, Saturday was definitely our biggest work day yet... we had a huge crew of seven friends/family that came by to work!

Outside, James and Justin started getting to work putting up our new fencing. It wasn't long before Carl stopped by (to my surprise) to help out and luckily he was able to give the guys some muscle and a few pointers as he used to work for a fencing company. The boys pretty much fenced all day until they were appointed the task of finishing up jackhammering in the bathroom (more on that later)

Carl and Justin

 

James, Carl and Justin working on the fence

New posts for gates

 

Indoors, Annah, Garret and I slaved away on the cabinets, doing more layers of paint, as well as our first layer of wax... later on they helped finish up the fencing job.

The biggest project of the day, though, went to my dad and our family friend and my coworker, Derk... Project Bathroom! I made it very clear when searching for houses that I wanted at least the potential for a large tub, and since this house didn't have one, I knew that something was going to have to change in our one and only bathroom!  Since we couldn't go longer with the bathtub, we had to got wider and going wider would require relocating the tub drain rough-in as well as the toilet rough-in (seeing as the toilet is so close to the tub). So my dad and Derk not only demo-ed the entire bathroom, including the  old fixtures and most of the drywall, but they spent hours jackhammering out a TON of concrete to be able to shift the plumbing over.

They gelatinized the water in the toilet! Tricks of the trade!

Once they finally reached the end of the concrete, they had gone through over 10 inches of slab! A 10 inch concrete slab is almost unheard of... it was A LOT of jackhammering! So here it is, our totally empty bathroom, awaiting the next step!

BEFORE #1

BEFORE #2

AFTER #1

AFTER #1 (other side)

AFTER #2

Unfortunately, Saturday wasn't a burn day, so we couldn't finish our work day off ceremoniously like we usually like to... but we still had our traditional work day bbq dinner of hotdogs, sausages and potato salad. I also forgot to mention that its been unseasonably warm and dry lately... pretty terrible for the drought, but pretty much the best weather that DIY-ers could ask for!  Next weekend is supposed to be in the 70's (holy cow), so we have no excuses to not bust out just as much work as we did this week.

Although I am insanely sore and tired from all of this work, it has been so rewarding and we are excited to do it again next weekend!

So finally my home-makeover-heroes for the week: My dad (Lloyd), Derk, my sister (Annah), and her boyfriend (Garrett), Justin, Mikey, Carl and my momma, Colleen... thanks everyone!