I'm not climbing the walls, I'm painting them

It's Sunday. I'm up early. It's raining, that thick Oregon drizzle we've been so severely lacking for the last few months. Our house is one social-worker-visit away from being declared unfit for human habitation. You know, the usual.

Anyway. What have we been up to?

The craft room

Ever have one of those moments where you say to yourself, "I have twelve projects to finish - obviously I need to start another one"? No? Just me? In my defense, I really, really love peeling things.

Like, really.

And the heavy puff-paint wallpaper in the craft room was just begging to be peeled.

Look at those poor 80s pastel birds. They want so badly to fly away.

So a bottle of vinegar water and four hours later, the craft room was successfully wallpaper-free. Everyone says removing wallpaper is a nightmare, but this stuff practically sloughed off the walls. I guess the room was just as eager to be rid of it as I was.

Ta da! Clean and washed.

I still have ~4 gallons of mustard yellow from the apartment lurking in the garage - I'm really never allowed to go to the Habitat For Humanity Restore by myself, I end up with $10 five-gallon buckets of paint - so I went ahead and made the room a mustard paradise. Add crisp white to the ceiling and other walls, and a schoolhouse ceiling fixture to replace the horrible 80s-faux-Victorian tulip monstrosity, and the room feels about 100000% better.

Now badly in need of molding and organization. Also, some curtains. 

Ahhh, much better. (Obviously, organization will come later.)

The living room

Further in the category of "ahhh, much better", the sage green paint downstairs has been slowly wearing down my sanity for months now. It's been almost a year, and I promised myself I would try to like it, but I don't like it. I really fucking hate it. There's just something about it that saps the room of energy and makes me itch. Uncool, sage, really uncool.

Everyone else seems to like it, but it's just not right.

I was all prepared to shell out mucho dinero for some decent gray, since that was always the plan, but in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to rid the house of the sage scourge, I threw some of Metro Storm Gray together with Metro Misty, and...it actually looked okay. More than okay. So one night after work I shoved all the furniture to the middle of the room, and painted everything.

It turns out that the bluish-gray I was so hellbent on avoiding when I originally painted was exactly what the space needed. The fir floors are a very warm color, and combined with the warm sage on the walls, the room was just getting washed out. The cool gray makes both the floors and the trim pop (or at least, the trim will pop when I paint it not-beige) and brings the energy of the room down to a manageable level.

I actually want to spend time in the living room now. It doesn't set my teeth on edge anymore.

I got all the crown molding up last week, and this weekend's project is to fix up the stair bannister.

In other words, de-log-cabinifying the place. Suh-weet!

Random

Also, this happened:

Jesse made that cake entirely from scratch. Like, flour, eggs, sugar, etc. I have never made a cake in my life that wasn't from a box. This was maybe the best cake in the whole world. I might have had cake for breakfast three days in a row. 

Also, further proof that my husband is perfect:

Yeah, he knows what's up.

Coming out of the closet

With the kitchen mostly done, other areas of the house have started to seem in urgent need of assistance. For instance, our bedroom, and in particular, the phenomenal mess that is our closet. 

As you may recall, I fixed the light in August, which was fantastic, but it didn't really help the fact that it's more of a squeeze-in closet than an actual walk-in. Plus, the ceiling is mostly sheets of MDF that are so thin, they almost qualify as wrapping paper. 

Also, the previous occupants left some awkward teenage graffiti:

I realize gang violence is hardly a laughing matter, but I get the feeling that if you're the sort of person who writes "Krip Killer Bloodz" in your closet with sharpie, you're probably not the sort of person who's killing anything larger than spiders on a regular basis. (Just my guess.)

So the closet obviously needs a facelift, and our huge pile of clothes needs an organization strategy. After much mental rearranging with little success, the solution hit me: this is our house, and if I wanted to move a wall, by golly, I can move a wall. 

By moving the wall 36 inches out into the room and rotating the door, I claim valuable floor space (previously reserved for the closet spillover) for actual organization. 

Plus, it wasn't a load-bearing wall, there weren't any mechanicals, and half the drywall from the back side was cracked anyway. 

Things came to a head on a Thursday night. Jesse was out with friends, and I had a crowbar. Only later did I realize that a) moving the bed and removing a wall was perhaps not a brilliant idea on a night when my beloved was likely to come home at least slightly inebriated and b) just because we'd talked about it once or twice didn't mean it had solidified as A Thing That Is Happening. We talk frequently about things (and by we I mean me) and 90% of these things are merely passing fancies. This had suddenly become A Thing. 

Luckily, it all worked out.

On Friday, I took half a day off work and finished demolition. Saturday was supposed to be all about framing, but my original plan to reuse the existing studs was abruptly derailed when all four of them split during removal. Oops. So we had to go acquire more building materials. 

Also, I accidentally found a load of brick. In my defense, it was illegally dumped in the public right-of-way. It was my civic duty to clean it up. If I happen to reuse it, well, that's recycling, right?

Despite the mishaps and distractions, by Sunday I had successfully framed up the new wall, and despite the angle of the picture, it's actually evenly spaced and square. 

By Monday night I had the drywall up and successfully mudded. BUT CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Answer: I have four corners coming together. I shouldn't have done that. (What I REALLY shouldn't have done is buy a drywall book at Mr. Plywood two days AFTER finishing the drywall. Research first!)

Because I didn't want to paint right before going to bed (and thus marinating in a lovely cloud of VOCs all night) I had to wait until the following Saturday to paint the walls. And THEN, when I did get the first coat of paint on, my drywall tape promptly absorbed all the moisture and started peeling off. NOT COOL. Cue several hours of frustrated snarling, one phone call to Mom, and several re-mudded seams. 

But it all worked out, and I got the black bedroom wall I've been craving. I'd originally painted half of the bedroom in Metro's Storm Cloud, but much like the Misty I had tried out downstairs, it wasn't so much a gray as a very neutral blue. I still had most of a can of the mismixed Benjamin Moore black I used in the kitchen, and it's exactly what I wanted. 

This is the contents of the closet. It's blurred because...well, it's blurred for no good reason, other than it's a hideous mess and I didn't want to burn your eyes. 

It was unseasonably warm here this weekend. (59 degrees in February???? What is that???) I think Jesse may have even mowed the lawn. 

The ceiling of the closet posed a particular challenge. Part of it was covered with the tongue-and-groove decking that comprised most of the bedroom (our fabulous cabin atmosphere). Part of it was covered in thin MDF sheeting, and part of it was bare insulation. There parts that were bare insulation didn't seem to have any visible rafters, and I certainly wasn't about to go digging through the insulation to find them. The easiest solution was to acquire several 4ft x 8ft MDF beadboard panels from Mr Plywood and put as many nails as possible in the available rafters. It's certainly not perfect, but it works, and there isn't insulation lurking over our heads anymore. (At least, not visibly so.) 

My original goal, once the closet was framed/painted etc, was to make a closet organization system out of metal pipe like this one:

Source: Pinterest

HOWEVER. The thing about Pinterest - stupid, beloved timesuck that it is - is that there are never any price tags, just gorgeous pictures of things that inevitably make my budget look laughably small. I'm quickly learning that the more I like something, the more money it will cost. (I have expensive tastes. Sigh.)

Pipes were definitely one of these. A wooden closet rod? Like, $10 at Home Depot, and in our case, literally free, because the previous owners used them as curtain rods. But I figured since I built the freaking wall myself, I deserved something nice, so I drew up my plans and bought $150 worth of greasy black pipe. (Had I used non-greasy galvanized pipe, it would have been more like $250, but I have paint thinner and dish soap, and the grease washed right off, leaving a cool antique-looking finish.) 

Vacuum up all the drywall dust, slap on two coats of Metro Mountain Snow, add a $9 rug from Ross and some random basement shelves, and voila! We have a walk-in closet!

I am so pleased I can hardly stand it, and Jesse can actually stand, period. 

The other side looks pretty good, too:

Not bad for two weekends' work. (The next ten days will be spent putting the monstrous clothing pile in order. Yikes.) 

In which I see the light at the end of the tunnel

One of my New Year's resolutions was to set a blogging schedule for myself, and so far...oops. Christmas was exceedingly busy with non-home-improvement-related activities, and Jesse thoughtfully gifted me with the new XBox and a game I've been breathlessly waiting to play, so there's been quite a bit more digital adventuring than building. 

HOWEVER. Our kitchen has been a complete disaster since just after Thanksgiving, when I started in on the cabinets. 

Ah yes, the early stages of chaos. I remember it fondly.

Once I got the upper cabinets and the cabinet by the refrigerator built, it was time to paint. Naturally, this meant everything IN the cabinets had to come out, and so far...nothing has been put back. Needless to say, we've been eating a lot of takeout. (But we did find a fantastic new-to-us Thai place and a new Mexican place within walking distance. Good thing none of my resolutions involve dieting.)

Painting has been a rather slow process. I've been using Benjamin Moore's Advance in Super White (which is apparently the color one gets when one asks the guys behind the counter for "white, just white, the whitest white you've got") and it's my first experience using an alkyd paint. It's ridiculously expensive, but worth every penny. It's so low in VOCs that I barely needed to open any windows (awesome, since it was around 15 degrees here for a week or so) and dries to a hard, glossy finish that is much more resistant to scratches than the Metro Mountain Snow I've used everywhere else.

Speaking of cold temperatures, it was well below freezing around New Year's, and the gray cat next door decided he'd rather live with us, and kept trying to sneak into the house whenever anyone opened the door. Since he's not our cat but still a step above being a stray, I made him a fancy warm cat igloo that he has shunned in favor of a pile of paint rags I had in a box on the porch. Cats.

  Sad, empty cat igloo.

 Ungrateful gray cat. I did tape some cardboard over his box of rags to mitigate the wind somewhat.

Last week was the first week I really felt like I'd made any progress. I FINALLY got around to painting the awful beige ceiling and walls. Everything is a clean, crisp white (Metro Mountain Snow) except for the south and west walls, which are a fantastic leathery black I found in at the Powell Paint Center mis-mixed section. 

Once the ceiling was done, I could replace the light fixtures. It warms my heart to see the horrible track lighting and faux-Victorian flushmount sitting out on the back deck, just waiting to be taken to the dump. SO LONG, EIGHTIES MONTSTROSITIES! In their place are two schoolhouse semi-flushmounts I got on sale from Home Depot and spray-painted oil-rubbed bronze. (There were actual oil-rubbed bronze ones there, but they were $50 instead of $22, and the spray paint I like is like $4 a can...yeah, even I can do the math on that one.) I finally got around to spray-painting the pendant light over the sink a glossy black, and it looks so much better. When it was white, it sank into the background of the tile. Not anymore!

I also painted and installed the two salvage cabinet doors I got at the Rebuilding Store ages ago. They look perfect, and make a classy display case for all my milk glass.

Today, I put up trim. It still needs to be painted, but it already feels so much more functional. I love my kitchen! It's starting to look exactly like I'd pictured. 

Still on the docket:

- Patch and paint trim

- Make doors for upper cabinets

- Re-stain and seal lower cabinets

- Strip, stain, seal and laundry room and basement doors

- Paint window bench

- Install hardware

- Install pot rack (but where, that's the question we're still trying to answer)

- Clean like whoa because seriously, there is so much sawdust (also I accidentally knocked a liter of ginger ale off the top of the fridge today, which exploded and turned the floor into a slick of gingery sawdust sludge)

One of these days, we may even cook in the kitchen. In the meantime, I have leftover pineapple fried rice and Dragon Age Inquisition to keep me happy.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We are not inherently religious people - in fact, quite the opposite - but I love Christmas. I don't identify as a Christian, and it's been a dog's age since I set foot in a church, but I am deeply enamored of the cultural and historical significance of the holiday. (Plus I get to redecorate and give presents, and who doesn't love that?)

I'd love to go all out, but we are still largely a construction zone, so there's less mistletoe and more sawdust. But at least we have our tree!

Jesse and I have a longstanding tradition of getting the absolute largest tree that will fit in the space. In the apartment, one had to squeeze around the tree to get to the couch. That suited us just fine. This year is no exception. We have nine-foot ceilings, and I had to saw a good 8 inches off the bottom of the tree to get it upright. And then, we had to run out and buy a bigger tree stand, because it wouldn't fit in our old one. Three stores later, we found a suitably large one at Home Depot, proving once again that even if you don't think Home Depot is the answer, Home Depot is always the answer. 

And then I put 1200 lights on it, and it still has dark spots. (Good thing I had help putting up the lights.)

I also put up a couple of garlands, but that's the extent of our decorating. 

****

There are 8 shopping days before Christmas, and while I'm usually way ahead of the game in my holiday preparations, this year I am falling behind. I usually start compiling a gift list in August or so, but I'd gotten completely absorbed in the kitchen remodel, and forgotten about the list until...last week. Thank god for Amazon Prime. So now I have all of my gifts purchased, but not assembled. I really should have done that yesterday on my day off, but the cabinet uppers were a much more exciting pressing project.

It took two days of materials gathering (mostly because I didn't realize I'd bought the wrong sawblade, and thus ended up back at Home Depot, and then I needed lunch, and then we went to the grocery store, etc etc) but after a full day of construction, the cabinet boxes are UP, and MOSTLY STURDY and I LOVE THEM.

Coincidentally, my table saw is perhaps the best $300 I've ever spent. (Thank you, Black Friday.) I could NEVER have gotten these done - not as fast, and certainly not as square - without it. Also, it's incredibly satisfying to suck up seventeen pounds of sawdust with the Shop Vac.

So the boxes are done. I thought maybe I'd get around to priming and painting last night, but that was nixed in favor of eating pizza and playing video games. I did pick up a gallon of Benjamin Moore Advance in Super White, which I'm very excited to use. It's a new formulation of paint known as alkyd - it has a lot of the durable, slow-drying properties of oil-based paints, but it's a water-based latex so it's much easier to clean up - and it's supposed to be excellent for cabinets. Normally I'd use whatever mis-mixed paint I'd gleaned from the clearance section, but since cabinets and kitchen cabinets especially are high-traffic and high-impact, I wasn't about to skimp on coating. We'll see how it turns out.

One roadblock I've been working through is the cabinet door design. In a perfect world, I'd have a single, flush-mount full-length vertical door for each section, with an old-fashioned latch.

via Pinterest

While I could have modified my cabinets this way, I feel like I've pushed the structural envelope of the original cabinets enough just by putting in the uppers. Would they be fine if I cut away some of the horizontal fronts? Probably. Do I feel like risking it? Nope, not really.

So that means I either give up latches or give up full-length doors (since the latches need the doors to be flush), or come up with a third solution. And since I hate compromising, I've been brainstorming like crazy, and I think I've finally found the answer:

Source: Pinterest

It's a little hard to see with this picture, but it looks like the doors are latched to each other (removing the need to be flush). This is totally doable in our kitchen; doors without "latch buddies" will get simple knob handles. 

The other thing I need to decide is which doors get glass fronts. Apparently you can just buy glass panes for $1-$5 a piece at (where else) Home Depot, which blew my mind. There's also a glass-cutting shop just up the road, which could also facilitate window-doors. Making the cabinet doors themselves is no problem - or at least, it won't be if I want them, because there's no way I'm buying custom-made windowed cabinet doors at $100 a pop. I just need to do some hard thinking about whether or not my spices stay organized enough to display. There's also the option of some DIY faux leaded or stained glass, which I'm also considering.

Something like this will suit me just fine:

The kitchen is THIS CLOSE to being done, which is both awesome and daunting. I am salivating at the prospect of well-organized cabinets, but will it be done in time for a massive batch of Christmas gingerbread? We'll see.

****

And if Santa is reading this, I really want a living footstool Great Pyrenees for Christmas. (Even though I need another giant furry animal in my life like a moose needs a hat rack...)

Source: Pinterest

Kitchen, now with 50% more grout!

It's election night, and instead of constantly refreshing the Google elections results, I'm electing to stare at my gorgeous new tile.

I finished the last bits of tile Saturday night, just in time for us to host a houseful of wonderful people for our friends Faith and Janet's surprise wedding shower. It went off without a hitch - there was so much love in our house I'm surprised it didn't float off the ground - and I am very pleased to know that there is PLENTY of room to have twenty lovely people hanging out with us. It was a great trial run for future holiday gatherings. 

Yesterday I spent four hours grouting and scrubbing the grout, but the extra time and effort was totally worth it. Those lines are PERFECT. I used the leftover charcoal gray grout from the floor, and it really makes the tile pop. I also glued the poor broken corner back onto our beautiful sink, and we will never mention the sink incident ever again. 

Seriously. Look at this:

  Before (with drywall - please ignore my haphazard, paranoid screw patterns)

  During (so grout. such mess. very tile)

I was not expecting tiling a wall to be such a pain in the ass. My tiles were sliding everywhere. Finally, I figured out that applying the grout and allowing it to dry for five or six minutes made it much stickier, and then the tiles would stay (mostly) in place.

And now look at it!

 I'm still not convinced the light over the sink should stay white. I'm strongly leaning toward spray-painting it a matte black right now, but I'm committed to living with it awhile, as my wise project manager husband suggested.  

Originally, I'd planned on painting the upper cabinets white, and staining the lowers with my favorite Minwax red oak, but right now, I'm kind of loving the juxtaposition of the wood with the crisp white subway tile and the dark industrial concrete. The 80s varnish absolutely has to go (it's not in very good shape anyway, and the cabinet doors especially are pretty rickety) but I'm starting to think having that rich, warm reddish-brown wood on the upper cabinets as well as the lowers would look pretty fantastic. (Plus, it would save me from having to paint, and given a choice between staining and painting, I'll choose stain every time.) My next project is the window seats by the back door, so I've got plenty of time to mull over my options. 

Happy belated Halloween! We had 59 trick-or-treaters come to our door, which was more than I could ever have hoped for. It was perfect - most of the kids were some form of zombie, and most of the costumes were home made. I love our neighborhood!!