I Love Lamp.

Hers.

I am officially in mourning.

I have been dutifully waiting for my favorite show “Picker Sisters” to make its comeback… and waiting… and waiting…  It’s been so long that Chris has informed me that it’s most likely cancelled and we should probably delete it from our DVR’s list of shows to record.  Noooooooooooo.

So, I’d like to dedicate this post to the untimely demise of “Picker Sisters”- your time with us was so short, but oh so sweet.  We’ll never forget you…

For those of you who weren’t immediately addicted to the show… or even aware… it was a show where two women traveled the country finding antique items (or, as most people would see it, junk) to transform into functional pieces of home decor.  My favorite transformations were when they turned a car’s fender into an upholstered chair and the irrigation pipe they turned into a light.  See below for pics.

   

I decided to channel my fellow picker sisters and find something of my own to turn from junk to treasure.  Hm, but what to choose…

Well, we needed another lamp in the living room and I knew creating a lamp was going to be easier than upholstering a chair so it was settled.  Plus, it helped that I’ve been lusting after the surveyor’s tripod floor lamp at Restoration Hardware.  Why oh why Restoration Hardware do you tease me with such beautiful products that I can’t even begin to imagine affording?  *sigh

Source: Restoration Hardware, $1395

For those of you who are more of the shopper type than the transformer type, here are a few other, more affordable options.

Source: Rugs USA, $416

Source: Amazon, $379

Source: Pottery Barn, $349

Source: World Market, $119

I was actually tempted to give up on my junk transformation quest when I found the World Market option but I knew the sisters wouldn’t approve.  It at least gave me a price limit to stick to.  The World Market version was $119 for the tripod and another $20 for the shade so if I could make this thing for under $139, my mission would be deemed successful.

When you live in a big city and need to find a random item, you turn to the ultimate urban picking source: CraigsList.  Usually it takes me awhile when I’m looking for something really specific but I must have some good karma stored up because I immediately stumbled across this…

Do my eyes deceive me?!  Telescope tripod?  Vintage?  Cool lamp stand?  SOLD!

Especially since, when checking eBay the antique tripods I found were in the $170-$250 range like this guy.  No thanks.

I immediately contacted the seller and set up a time to go look at it.  As we pulled into their neighborhood, Chris mentioned the area looked familiar.  Then we pulled up to the house and looked at each other, both realizing the same thing.

We had been here before.

We had bought from these people before.

Yes, we had fallen off the edge of the CraigsList map.

So what did we do?  Got out of the car, rang the doorbell, and pretended we were strangers… I don’t think the sellers had the same realization we did.  Maybe we’ll clue them in the third time.

Anyway, I offered $60.  He hesitated until I told him of my noble cause- giving this tripod an exciting second life.  Boom.  Done.

Now I just needed Chris to make this thing functional for me!

His.

I love space. And no, not the “space” they talk about on HGTV. I mean outer space, the space that you literally have to strap yourself on top of a couple hundred tons of explosives and blow yourself off the face of the planet at 23 times the speed of sound to get to, the space that is so massive that the human brain isn’t actually capable of accurately comprehending its size. I got hooked on astronomy in Boy Scouts and have loved stargazing ever since. Every night I look up and admire the beauty of the night sky, and I even get texts from NASA letting me know when I can see the space station fly by.

Hers.

Yup, turns out I married super-nerd.  He sets his alarm for 4 am so he can get a glimpse of this thing for a few seconds.  And then he can’t seem to understand why I have no desire to get up with him and watch a small bright ball of light cross the sky.  It looks just like an airplane people!  Trust me, uninterrupted sleep is the better option here.

His.

So, when Julie told me we were getting a telescope stand, I got really excited.

Well, it turns out that we weren’t going to be using it for any space-related activities. No, Julie wanted to make it a lamp. Whatever, at least I’d get to wire something.

I’ve never made a lamp before, but my sister used to make them all the time as a hobby, so I knew they could be made out of just about anything that can stand on its own. I also remembered her saying that Home Depot has pretty much everything you’ll need, so that’s where we began. It turns out we only needed two things, the socket and the cord:

So, now all I had to do was figure out a way to lampify this tripod by attaching said socket and cord. I wasn’t 100% sure how I was going to accomplish this, but I was 100% sure how a lamp works, so I at least had a starting point: mounting the socket. Fortunately lamp parts are fairly universal so all I had to to was figure out how to secure a piece of lamp all-thread to the top, which basically just means I had to drill a hole in the top. Simple enough, right?

Well, first I had to modify the tripod a bit. It had a little nub on the top where the telescope itself would actually mount, but it stuck up maybe an inch or so. I really didn’t want to bore through that much metal, so I strapped the whole thing to a saw horse and took a sawzall to it (I wrapped it in a towel so the wood wouldn’t get scratched):

Next, I took my Dremel and ground down the rough surface left by the saw:

Next, I had to drill out a hole for the all-thread. All the metal on this thing is brass, so it was pretty soft and easy to drill through. I started with a relatively small hole to make sure I had it centered before stepping it up to a larger bit that was just slightly smaller than the diameter or the all-thread.

Finally, I was ready to start assembling it as a lamp, starting with the all-thread.

The brass was soft enough that the steel all-thread basically tapped its own threads, but just to be safe I ran a small bead of high-strength glue around the base to make sure it stays snug.

Now it was time to wire everything up, which basically just means running the wires through and not reversing the polarity of the socket.

And finally, the moment of truth: let there be light!

Poof. Nothing. But how could this be? I had all new components and everything was wired correctly. Clearly, I needed to consult the experts:

Of course! How could I have made such an elementary mistake?

Just kidding, the derivation of the Stefan-Boltzmann constant has nothing to do with burnt out bulbs.

So, now I had a functioning lamp. Oh, but the shade was warped so I stole Julie’s hair dryer and used it as the world’s worst heat gun.

Hers. After.

Well, I’m glad to be the first home improvement/DIY blog that features a scientific equation… Enough math.  Let’s get to the good stuff.  I love how this lamp turned out and it only cost $91 total.  Here’s the breakdown:

• Telescope Tripod Base: CraigsList, $60
• Lamp Shade: World Market, $19.99 (with $10 off coupon)
• Socket: Lowe’s, $4.98
• 8 ft Cord: Home Depot, $5.98

  

Such a great fit in our living room!  I love how it instantly warms up the space and goes really well with our table lamp.  And I can’t get over the $1300 price savings.  I mean, the sales tax on the Restoration Hardware lamp is even more than what ours cost total to make!

What junk have you guys been transforming into treasures lately?  Has anyone else delved into the lamp-creation process?  I was surprised by how easy it was!  It has me thinking… what else can I lamp-ify?

CraigsList Crashes: Volume 3

Hers.

Everyone knows that CraigsList is full of the good, the bad, and the ugly and boy, can it get really ugly.  The posts that crack me up the most are those where the ugly stuff is listed for a fortune.  I mean, seriously people, just because you decided to buy it at one point doesn’t mean it holds value.

Case and point: this mirror.  Does your living room need a nice piece above the fireplace?  Or does your dining room need a beautiful accent mirror to hang above the buffet?  Or does your entry need a mirror that you can check your make-up before you step out the door?  Well, have I found a classy piece for you!

My biggest question is who’s home decor would this fit into?  They better hope Hugh Hefner is a CraigsList searcher. And doesn’t already have one.

Want to get an early start on Father’s Day this year?  You’re in luck- I have the best gift idea for you!  For a mere $350, you could give Dad everything he needs.  Hint: it’s stuffed AND adds some style to his wardrobe.

At least they recognize that the tie is ugly.  I’m not sure that I agree with their “this is a gift that keeps on giving” promise.  I think the only consequence this present would have would be my dad gifting me with something equally as priceless… such as the item listed below.

Now, I see a few problems with this piece:

1. What sick person wants to watch a tiger burn in front of their eyes?  That’s got to be some sort of animal cruelty.
2. A conversation piece?  Well, that’s probably true.  Here’s the conversation I envision happening when your guests come over and see it.  Guest: “Uh, what is that?” Candle owner: “It’s a tiger candle!” Guest: “Did you lose a bet?  Or get stuck with the worst white elephant gift?” Candle owner: “Oh no, I just think it’s a great centerpiece for my table!” Guest: “But… why do you want to burn a tiger?” Candle owner: “Oh, but isn’t it stunning work?” Guest: “Um, I have to go.”
3. Not only is this most ridiculous candle I’ve seen on CraigsList but it comes with a ridiculous price tag.  Seriously, you think this thing is worth $125?  Really?  Really??
4. Curious as to how quickly this thing would go, I periodically look for it on CraigsList to see if the ad had been taken down yet, in which I would then assume it had been purchased.  It was posted at the start of 2013, and guess what?  As of today, it’s still available.  Shocking!

This post wins “Best Photo” award.  Nevermind the ridiculous price they have for this daybed (a cheap metal bed frame from the early 90s shouldn’t cost $150 people!).  What I love about this is that the woman holding the bed is clearly trying to avoid being in the picture but instead of scooting over so she’s able to crop herself out, she just smiles but doesn’t look at the camera, hoping she blends in with all the other junk around her.  You can’t fool us!  We see you!!

And now to name the winner of the “Worst Boyfriend of Eternity” title.

So, not only is he willing to trade his future fiancé’s ring for a motorcycle but he’s willing to take a $5,000 loss for it!  Well sir, congrats to you on sealing your fate as a bachelor for life.  At least you can ride off into the sunset with… yourself.

His.

I think one of my favorite pages on the internet is the “free” section of Craigslist. Not only can you snatch up some good stuff for free if you can quick-draw your phone as soon as it’s posted, but I also realized some people use it as a two-way street, meaning they want something for free, too. This is a prime example:

Here, this guy has cleverly disguised this ad as an offer for free concrete chunks, but what he’s really hoping for is some free labor to haul it away. If you have no way to haul off your busted up patio, maybe you shouldn’t have busted up your patio, dude.

This next guy really gets it, though. This is clearly an individual who understands the male laborer, that we will do just about anything for beer. I can’t count the number of times I’ve worked on a friend’s car, saving them thousands of dollars over taking it to a shop, all in exchange for $8 worth of beer. The true brilliance of this ad lies in this guy’s presumably successful ploy to get rid of two unwanted things, his old wood and this pile of the cheap beer no one else wanted. Except the wine coolers, your wife can have those.

I love a good riddle, and here’s a doozy:

Is it worthless? Or is it worth $10? I’m betting his wife told him he couldn’t watch the game until he posted their stuff on Craigslist.

This next post is another fun riddle. The only thing I can think of that fits conveniently into a TV box is… well, a TV, and literally 100% of the TVs I have bought came in their own box. So, begs the question, what do I need a TV box for? This guy also wins the award for the “greatest overestimation of demand for a product” of all time.

Hey, a sculptu- wait, what?

One of my favorite things to do when I’m bored is just look at random ads on Craigslist. You get a feel for exactly who is using the internet these days, especially when they’re from east Texas. This guy apparently has a slightly different concept of what guinea pigs are for than us “city folk” do.

This might actually be my favorite ad of all time, though. First of all, it’s a good price on goggles. Second, I love this guy’s enthusiasm for selling his goggles. But most importantly, it demonstrates exactly why I don’t eat at Braums, and frankly seeing a guy bent on combining ice cream and goggles wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen there.

Laundry Room: Revealed

Hers.

Alright, enough with all the suspense.  I know you just want to see the after pictures but let’s rewind for a moment, shall we?

We started with this white, cramped, and very-blah room.  The shelves weren’t really working for us because who wants to walk into a room and be immediately greeted by cleaning supplies, light bulbs, and a cat carrier?  I don’t think this look has caught on in the interior design world yet.

 

So, why not try a few baskets?

It solved some of the problems but we knew we could do better.  This room was screaming for some doors to tuck away all of our stuff (because, seriously, who has a laundry room that could coordinate with a bright orange Tide bottle and purple box of Swiffer pads?).

And let’s not forget our sad excuse of a light fixture to top it off.

The room needed a serious facelift, including:

• Establish a theme (country couture). Check.
• Convince Chris that determining a theme for a room isn’t insane.  In Progress.
• Demo old floors and install new floors (read about that here). Check.
• Install new base boards. Check.
• Install crown molding (because our laundry room’s fancy like that). Check.
• Finally pick a wall color and paint. Check.
• Demo the shelves and replace with cabinets (read about that here). Check.
• Convince Chris to say goodbye to his lovely navy laundry bin from college. Sorry, honey. Check.
• Shift shelving to a less obtrusive location, making the room look less cluttered. Check.
• Go bold with the cabinet color. Check.
• Find awesome cabinet knobs. Check.
• Install new light fixture. Check.
• Convince Chris a chandelier wouldn’t be the most ridiculous thing in a laundry room.  On Hold.  (After a long hard debate, I finally won the teal cabinet/glass knob debate with him.  Baby steps).
• Finally, bring some artwork into the space to amp up the “country couture” look. Check.

His.

I don’t have a lot of demands when renovating a room, but it’s usually just keeping a realistic budget and that it be physically possible (Julie doesn’t have the firmest grasp on physics and geometry). This room, however, is probably one of the most diverse rooms in the house when it comes to functionality: laundry, storage, containing the most foul smell any living creature has ever created (i.e. the cat’s litterbox), etc. So, I had my own list of demands:

• Everything had to have a purpose. This room is too small for waste and “fluff”. Check.
• Everything had to be hidden (no more open shelves). Check.
• The first thing I learned about women after I got married is that at least 98% of their clothing can’t be dried, so there had to be a place to hang-dry. Check.
• Learn to tile a floor. Check.
• Unexpectedly learn to contain mold. Check.
• Finally balance and level the machines. Check.
• Install a cat door so we could finally close the laundry room door: On hold.
• Not lose any fingers, toes, blood, hair, sanity, tools, or money. Ha!

I also want to mention that Julie’s plans for a chandelier are not “on hold”, they’re done. We tried installing a hanging light but it was so dark it looked like the kind of interrogation room the CIA claims doesn’t exist. So flush-mount it is.

Hers.

After.

Remember this guy that was hanging on the right wall?  We moved him behind the door for cleaning and cat supplies we needed more often.  When the door’s open (which it always is), you can’t even see this.

We moved the broom/Swiffer station to where the ironing board used to be.

And moved the ironing board to where the long shelving unit used to be as it looks a lot cleaner and is more easily accessible here.

Alright, alright.  Now, to the good stuff.

Ah, we can finally hide our clutter away behind those lovely teal cabinets.

A legit light fixture!

Ah, finally a place for me to hang dry clothes!  This has really worked out to be a great solution for us.

The cabinets aren’t huge but they hold just enough for what we need them for… to hide neon colored items.

And I wouldn’t be a true Texan if I didn’t have some cowboy boots framed. Bam.  Country couture.

Source List and Prices.

• Knobs: World Market, $19.96 ($4.99 each)
• 2 Tall cabinets: Hampton Bay 15 x 30 from Home Depot, $92.80 during a 20% off sale
• Middle cabinet: Hampton Bay 36 x 12 from Home Depot, $54.40 during a 20% off sale
• Cabinet Paint: Home Depot, Behr matched to Valspar’s Glass Tile, $18.95 for a pint
• Wall Paint: Home Depot, Behr formula BL 144/Cl 288/RL 72, $32.98 for a gallon
• Base Boards: Home Depot, $10
• Crown Molding: Home Depot, $10
• Floor Tiles: Seconds and Surplus, $44.70 ($1.49 per square foot)
• Wooden Pole: Bed, Bath, and Beyond, $12 with 20% off coupon
• Wooden Hangers: Garden Ridge, $9.99
• Frame for Art: IKEA, $20
• Grocery Bag Holder: Bed Bath and Beyond, $9.99
• Laundry Hamper Stand: Container Store, $0 (received as a gift but it’s $24.99)
• Laundry Hamper Bag: Container Store, $8.99

Total: $344.76… funny how such a small room can really add up but it was well worth it!

A Little Laundry Teal-L-C

Hers.

We continue to make progress on the laundry room.  Let’s recap, shall we?

We started with this (read part one here).  Ain’t she a beauty?

So before we got too crazy, we decided to try out some baskets in front of a purple backdrop.  Yeeeah… it didn’t stick for obvious reasons.

We knew a complete revamp was needed.  We started from the ground up and replaced our dingy old white linoleum-tiled floor with this much fancier wood-look tile (read part two here).

Once the grout and sealer had dried on the floor, it was time to make those awful purple shelves meet their maker.  I feel like I need to insert an evil villain laugh here.  Today: cabinets, tomorrow: the world!

But, let’s get back to the laundry room.  Once we took the shelves down, we needed to sand the walls then retexture so it matched the rest of the wall.  It seems that the original builder of the house installed the shelves then textured, which doesn’t make much sense to me, but I guess that’s how things rolled in the 1970s.  Those crazy hippies.

Walls were now sanded, re-textured, and SO ready to be repainted.  Just look at this mess.  Want to play “how many paint colors can you spot in this picture”?  I think there are 9…

Let’s get this sucker in order already.  Ahhh, back to one color.  We went with the same color we have in the hallway.  I wish I could tell you the exact color but I ended up mixing a few, then tinting, then re-tinting (hey, I never claimed to be a decisive paint selector).  Anyway, the best I can do is tell you that it’s Behr Satin and the paint formula is BL 144/Cl 288/RL 72.  Happy paint mixing!

Much better.  Now let’s get on with those cabinets already!

His.

Part three. Yikes. Where were we? Walls. Shelves. Floor. Trim. All changed. Now what? Well, remember all that junk that came off the shelves? What went out must go back in. We needed storage, and frankly we needed a lot. The method of said storage had been decided a long time ago: cabinets. Julie had been giddy about cabinets in the laundry room probably since before we even moved in, so I knew it was the only solution. Oh, but there was one minor hiccup: I don’t know anything about cabinets. Sure, cabinets are where I find my cereal bowls every morning, but honestly I have no idea how they’re held to the wall. Fortunately, though, I’m not particularly hindered by these things, so it was off to Home Depot to pretend I knew what I was doing.

Now, Julie had been obsessing over the “n” shape of three cabinets, two taller cabinets on either side of a shorter middle cabinet. As luck would have it, the dimensions of our room lent themselves neatly to three prefabricated “stock” cabinets that could be purchased individually. Ironically, there were even two configurations that would fit: two tall, skinny cabinets on either side of a very short, very wide middle cabinet, or two short, wider cabinets on either side of a not-as-short, slightly taller middle cabinet. After some really excessive deliberation (including taking up an entire lumber aisle with cabinetry strewn about, perhaps hazardously) we went with the tall/skinny configuration. This gave use a better “n” look but also meant less storage. Oh well, we’ll cross that bridge again later, right?

Alright, time to install the cabinets. As I stated before, I don’t really know how cabinets are mounted. But hey, fake it ’til you make it, right? I didn’t want them to be out of Julie’s reach, plus we were planning on putting up crown molding, so I dropped them 4″ from the ceiling… well, 3.75″ or whatever the width of a 1×4 is. Anyway, I accounted for that drop and then ran one long 1×4 across the wall. I used drywall screws to anchor this to the beams to ensure that I’d have a really sturdy mounting point:

Now the tricky part: actually putting them up on the wall. They’re not extremely heavy, but they’re definitely too big and heavy to be handled with one hand while you’re trying to drive drywall screws through them. Fortunately, though, my brother-in-law was staying with us.  He ate the last of my fruit snacks, so helping me was payback.

A quick note: I also installed a shorter 1×4 at the bottom of the cabinets so that they were anchored at the base as well.

Once I had the two large cabinets installed, it was time for the really fun part: squeezing the middle cabinet in. I think it was literally a 1/4 inch shy of being a perfect fit. And, fortunately, there was about 1/4 inch overhang on either side of the cabinet, so I grabbed my hand saw and started hacking away. I did this is the dining room, which apparently is a “weird place for sawing”, according to Julie:

A little more…

After a few cuts, I still had some rough spots that were catching, so I used my wood plane. I love using this thing because I feel like I’m holding a Tommy gun:

Voila! A perfect fit! I tried leaving the cat in there for good but eventually Julie found her and got her down. Better luck next time, I guess.

Hers.

Ready for the big cabinet color reveal?  How bold can we go?

Pretty bold.

We went teal!  We kept the walls neutral so we could do something fun and bright on the cabinets without it looking like we went overboard.  If there’s one room you should go bold and fun, it’s definitely the laundry room.  Anything to make washing clothes a little better!  We went with Valspar’s Glass Tile.

Ah, just another day of filling the back room with painted objects set out to dry.

And here is the rest of the cabinet (along with Chris’ beginning attempt to creating the built-in cabinet look.  Very exciting, I know.

At this point, I finally decided on a name for the theme of the room I was going for (no, I’m not crazy- I just love a good theme).  Ready for it?

Country Chic.

I needed a very special cabinet knob to fit the bill for this.  One Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Hobby Lobby later, I finally found the perfect solution at World Market.  For $4.99 each, these glass knobs were mine.

Perfection.

Stay tuned for the final reveal (finally)!

Evacuate the Laundry Floor

Hers.

It’s sad that I see more similarities in our laundry room floor and Ke$ha than I see differences.  Dingy, dirty, needing to be replaced… sorry to all you Ke$ha fans out there!  Don’t get me wrong- I love her dance beats but someone give that girl some shampoo.

[Update: I am saddened to learn that this song is by Cascada, not Ke$ha but I going to be stubborn and leave my title as is.  So there pop world! ]

But, back to our laundry room saga.

Just catching up?  No biggie.  It’s fairly simple.

We wanted to turn this…

Into something more like this…

For the full part one story if you missed it, read here.

First step: clear the room, starting with our two big lugs- Mr. Washer and Mr. Dryer.  I couldn’t wait to see what treasures awaited us behind the machines.  Turns out that’s where my two missing socks went although I’m still not 100% convinced there’s no sock gremlin living in the dryer.  Oh, and a bookmark Chloe managed to squirrel away from my book.  Oh, and let’s not forget a zillion dust bunnies.  Gross.

With further inspection, we also realized we needed new base boards… we can only assume the dryer gremlin got hungry during a month we skimped on our laundry chores and took to nom-ing on the base boards.  Those look like gremlin teeth, right?

Everything was finally out and we were left with this.

What a mess.  We HAD to fix those floors stat.  One of my main missions is reducing the number of floor types in our house.  When we moved in, there was a total of six different types of floors.  Two and a half years later and we’ve switched out a few of the floors (bedroom carpeting, master bath tile) but we’re still at six types.  I knew introducing an additional type of flooring wasn’t exactly meeting my goal so I wanted to select something similar to what we already had in another room.

As with most of our projects, we got distracted in the middle and ended up at Seconds and Surplus, a discount home improvement store in our city, pricing out door knobs.  And then it happened.  THE sign.  The sign that proved that using a similar floor in the laundry room as the rest of the house wasn’t the craziest idea.

But let me back up a little.  Remember the flooring we chose in our master bath remodel?

This beautiful walnut-look porcelain tile.  That floor was $3.79 per square foot from Floor and Decor.  I had already considered this would likely be our best choice for the laundry room but just hadn’t made it over to the store to buy it.

WELL, good thing I didn’t because look what we discovered at Seconds and Surplus.

What’s that?  Want a close-up of this unbelievable sign?

Yes, that’s right.  That says $1.49 per square foot, and yes, that’s right it’s the EXACT. SAME. FLOOR!

Move aside fellow shoppers, mama needs to buy some heavily discounted tile.

The only problem was that there weren’t any boxes of tile behind this display.  Cue my hyperventilation.  I tracked down (more like hunted) the closest employee to search the back.  A few minutes later he returns.  His face said it all.  They were… SOLD OUT?!  Nooooooo.  So close.

And then my flooring hero arrives.  Another employee checks the system.  The good news is that they had more flooring.  The bad news is that it’s only available at their second location 40 miles away.  Boo.  But, hey, I was ready to hop in the car and head over.  Anything for a good deal.

Then, I heard music to my ears.  ”Oh wait, the lady who bought all of this didn’t actually need 5 boxes of it so we have 5 boxes leftover in the back.”  I immediately look at Chris who can do faster math than me (don’t let that go to your head, honey), my wide, yearning eyes saying it all- “will 5 boxes work?”  Chris turns to the cashier saying, “actually, we only need 4.”

HALLELUIA!  The laundry room was saved!!!

And with that, it was time to get down and dirty.  Those old, dingy floors were history.

His.

Again, where do I begin? I wasn’t nearly as unprepared for what an empty laundry room would look like because, unlike Julie, I’m the one who had to drag the washer and dryer in when we moved in. Either way, though, I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty.

I dragged the washer and dryer out and was suddenly reminded of why I didn’t even bother leveling the machines when we moved in: it was so disgusting back there I just couldn’t wait to get the machines in to cover up all the nastiness. The floor was a vinyl tile that had yellowed to the point that no matter how hard we scrubbed, we were just never convinced they were safe to walk on with bare feet. Oh, and all the baseboards were falling off. At least that part of the demo would be easy.

So, I began pulling up tile. Some were glued down so poorly they came right up as if they were just laying there with no glue. Others were glued down so strongly that getting them up was a bit like trying to peel off a price tag that decides to only come off in 1000 pieces. I guess no one showed the floor guy how to spread glue evenly. I didn’t really have the right tools (I’m not even sure an “overly glued crappy tile scraper” exists), so I just used what I had on hand, which was a set of chisels and a putty knife. Fortunately I wasn’t particularly attached to any of these tools because now they all have floor goo on them.

Most of the tiles just had to be started in a corner before I could just peel them up by hand. Others required some, uh, convincing:

Once all the tiles were up, I pulled up the old brass transition. I wasn’t really sure what to use between the tile in the hallway and the new tile in the laundry room, but that was a battle for another time. Papa got work to do!

Finally, all that junk was GONE!

I should also mention that when I pulled back some of the baseboards, I found every homeowner’s worst fear: mold. It didn’t look bad, but it was there, and that was unacceptable. I asked Julie to Google how to get rid of it, but as usual she dragged her feet and Pinterested (I don’t care whether or not that’s a word) for half an hour. In the meantime, I wiped the spots down with a little bit of bleach and painted over them with oil based primer. Eventually Julie stepped back into the real world and it turns out that that’s actually exactly how you get rid of small mold spots. I know, I rock.

Finally, it was time to lay the tile. I really wanted to retain the wood feel so I tried my best to create a “random” offset pattern like you’d see on a real wood floor, but I also wanted to use as many solid pieces on possible, which meant that I actually ended up with a repeating pattern, but in such a small space (and especially when covered by a washer and dryer), it appears random. Yet another victory for my geometry skills!

Anyway, to make life easier, I used a pre-mixed adhesive. It’s a small room and I really hate mixing things like that, so it worked out really well:

Typically when you tile a room, you work from the farthest wall to the door so that you don’t have to walk on freshly-laid tile, but in the case I was dealing with a very small, slightly non-square room in which the back half of the tile would be covered up anyway, so I chose to start at the door and work my way back to make sure everything would look square as you looked in:

Which meant that I was break dancing by the time I was finished:

I should also mention another reason I wanted to use as many full tiles as possible. I was cutting with this:

I may have mentioned this diabolical contraption before. It basically just breaks the tile in a slightly neater fashion than you could by cracking it over your knee, so I made sure all the cut ends were against the wall and could be hidden by trim. I also had this pile of failed cuts:

After letting everything set for 24+ hours, it was time to grout. We had some leftover mix from the bathroom tile job, so I just used that. As I mentioned before, I hate mixing stuff, so by the time I got it right I had about 40 times the amount of grout I actually needed. And again, who needs special grouting tools when you have a 30-cent putty knife?

Once I had all the cracks filled in, I went over the entire floor with a wet sponge several times until the tile was clean.

After letting everything set for a day or two, I sealed the grout. I have no idea if this actually does anything or not, but it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to pretend it does.

Aaaaaaand I’m done. With the floor at least.

Next up… cabinets!

to be continued…

Airing Our Dirty Laundry

Hers.

Time to show you the ugliest room in our house.  Wait, scratch that.  Second ugliest room.  Ugliest goes to our hoarder room… err… I mean, third bedroom.  But more to come on that later.

Yikes…

This tile used to be white… I think…

Ah, and here you see our nifty solution to stopping the cat from sneaking off to build a cave behind the dryer where I’m sure she would just diabolically plot to take over the world.

This is the view to the right of the door.  Basically, just a holding house for laundry/cleaning/cat supply chaos.

Here’s the view on the left, behind the door.  Proof we have the supplies necessary to clean the house… just not the willpower.

Okay, so the room wasn’t terrible but it was white, blah, and not very functional.  We had a lot of hooks and shelves but all our junk was exposed instead of being nicely tucked away.  Who wants to walk into a room and see cleaning and laundry supplies displayed on every wall, like a second grader’s prized trophies?  No thanks.

My first thought: let’s hop on the “paint the back of the shelves a bold color” bandwagon and see where that takes us before we go too cray-cray.

Well, it took us to a magical land of purple.  And we all know how Chris feels about purple (if you haven’t seen our purple bathroom yet, read up on it here).

Not bad.  Let’s stick a few baskets in there to better hide the supplies.  Ignore the quilt of various beige paint samples on the wall.  Want to know an embarrassing secret of mine?  It took me a year and a half to commit to a color so the walls stayed like this for quite awhile.  I blame the hubster- he’s now banned me from repainting a room a few days later because I decide I then hate the color.  Boo, what a fun-ruiner.

You can also see a view of our light fixture… if you want to call it that.  Yeah, that stayed that way for 2.5 years.  What a sad excuse for a room.

So we lived with the room like this for 1.5 years until finally I had it.  I was running out of rooms to redo and also out of excuses.  It was time to get down to business and solve this laundry problem once and for all.

Time to turn to Pinterest to solve yet another one of my problems.  I rounded up my inspiration pictures and prepared my game plan for the room.

I wanted a bright pop of color but nothing too bold that it didn’t match the rest of the house (i.e. no bold purple in this room).  I decided to go the teal/beige route much like these rooms I found.

Source: This Old House

Source: Houzz

I also knew a layout change was much needed.  I liked the “n” shaped cabinet look seen below and had a great idea for what to put between the two long cabinets that would solve a good portion of my laundry frustration… well, besides having to actually do laundry (wouldn’t that be nice?).  Hint: it involves where to hang up our line-dry clothes.

Source: Houzz

Source: Precision Stoneworks

Game plan was set.  Now onto my favorite part, DEMO!

His.

I’m not really sure where to start, and maybe that’s why it took us so long to get around to doing this room. From a functionality standpoint, it did the job- it had functioning washer and dryer (electric and gas) hookups, enough storage to hold all the junk we wanted out of the way but needed inside the house, and it kept the cat’s business tucked away, out of sight. However, from an aesthetics standpoint, let’s just say it left something to be desired.

Perhaps the biggest issue was the open storage. As I stated before, we keep the litterbox in this room and, unfortunately, the door must remain open. This means that all of our stuff is exposed, which drives Julie nuts. We tried putting everything in baskets but that proved to be more of a band-aid for the situation, since we could never remember exactly what was in which bin. Furthermore, it seems like every piece of clothing Julie wears is “line dry only,” and there was absolutely nowhere to hang anything.

Clearly, we needed a solution. Believe it or not, this was more of a challenge than you might think. For starters, we were working in a very confined space, and we had a lot of stuff we needed to store. Due to the layout of the room, though, we could really only use one wall, and half of that was taken up by the laundry machines. We also wanted to incorporate a hanging area, meaning another large portion of the space was now allocated. On top of that, Julie had already picked out pictures she wanted to hang on the wall. What wall space did we even have for pictures???

Most importantly, though, this project had to be easy (I wanted to complete it in a weekend), and it had to be cheap. We drew up a plan (read: hastily measured one wall), set a budget (read: argued over finances for an hour), and darted off to Home Depot.

to be continued…

A Tale of Three Lights

Hers.

We’re baaack.  I know we have a lot of catching up to do.  So, let’s see… what have you missed?

Oh yeah, that.  That would be from Chris falling through the attic floor.

As we were putting our Halloween decorations back, (Chris in the attic, me passing up boxes from the ground), I suddenly heard a yell and looked up to find a leg protruding through the ceiling.

Oh boy… looks like we’ll be brushing up on our patch-work skills soon.

So, what else have we been up to besides reinventing our ceiling?

Well, we set our sights on sprucing up our entryway from this sad little outdated pot light to something a little lot grander.

Remember these $5 lanterns I picked up from the ReStore awhile back (read up on that project here)?  Before they became my latest table accessories, I thought one of them would be the perfect entryway light.

And here starts our journey of the three entry way lights… aka the story of how I succeeded in convincing Chris to install three different lights and survived to tell the tale.

Light Attempt #1

Our first light attempt used the shorter, hexagon-shaped ReStore light which we cleaned and sprayed with an oil rubbed bronze spray paint.  It wasn’t terrible but I wasn’t convinced that it was the right solution.  It just looked too small in the space.

Chris promised that he would replace it if I still didn’t like it after a week.

Big shocker, I still didn’t like it after a week so up went one of the other ReStore lights.

Light Attempt #2

This one was more of a rounded hexagon shape so I thought it would have a larger presence in the space without the risk of head butting unsuspecting visitors.

Meh.  It was okay but really underwhelming.  I wanted a statement piece and this guy was still too small and plain.  I think these guys work better as table lanterns than functional entryway lights.  So how was I going to break the news to Chris?  A six pack of beer and a big “look how cute I am” smile should do the trick.

Well, it did work, but my punishment was living through it for months as Chris vowed he would only replace it one more time so the next light better be the one or else I better enroll in Electricity 101 classes.

Talk about pressure.  But I like a good challenge.  Unfortunately, the perfect light took a few months to stumble across.

But first, I scoured Pinterest narrowing down the look I wanted and decided that I still liked the lantern look but I needed to go bigger, like way bigger.

Source: Inspired Design

Source: A Life’s Design 

Source: Wisteria

Now, where’s a girl to find one of these massive beauts?

Source: Bellacor, $109.90

Source: Ballard Designs, $229

Source: Wisteria, $279

Source: Wayfair, $520.20

Source: Amazon, $729

Source: Lamps Plus, $750.91

Source: Horchow, $1,385

Can you guess which one’s my favorite?  Hint: Chris would have an aneurism if I bought this light… actually, that’s a terrible hint because any price over $0 gives Chris an aneurism.  Anyways, I just died over the Horchow light but not even I could justify spending over a grand for our entryway light.

I was excited to have the look narrowed down but a little disheartened by the cost of my options.  At this point, Chris had a strict rein on our home improvement budget (he can be such a DIY scrooge!) so I needed a miracle.

*insert months of impatient scouring here… until…

We made a pit stop in the ReStore one Sunday looking for… well, probably something completely different… when I stuck my head into the “Last Chance Room,” a room of the broken, ugly, and outdated (you know it’s bad when even the ReStore calls it outdated).

I found this little guy wedged under a mountain of brass lights who are still hoping for the day that 1991 comes back in style.

It was PERFECT!  It was the best combination of all the lights I loved.  And then I looked at the price tag and felt like I had won the lottery.  $60!  But, wait, it was in the “Last Chance Room” and that meant *gasp could it be* another 50% off!  Um, yes, $30!!

Uh-oh… that meant something was wrong with it and then I found it.  One pane of glass was broken so they marked it down.  All I needed to do was pop the glass out of the other sides and voilah, all fixed.  No need for the glass anyways.

So, here’s the part of the story where I tell you I gleefully raced home to have Chris install it, right?

Wrong.

The DIY scrooge struck again.  ”That light is way too big.  It’ll never work in our entryway.  Our ceiling just isn’t that tall.”

Wah wah wah waaaaaaah.

Wives, I let our people down in that moment.  I gave in to this ridiculous argument of “we should go home and measure before we purchase something that may not even work.”

Oh, but you know I gathered a dozen or so of those brass lights and heaped them on top of the light, hiding it from sight.  No one was going to grab my perfect light while I was out on my fool’s errand.

We raced home, me lamenting all the way that someone was surely going to snatch the light up and Chris muttering to himself how illogical women are.

I raced through the door, grabbed the measuring tape, held it up in the entryway, showed Chris that it could be installed without people fearing for their heads, shoved him back in the car, and we were back on our way to the ReStore in under 10 minutes.

I took off like a mad woman through the store, shimming through old stoves, leaping over paint cans, and dodging racks of shovels.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t as epic as that sounds, but I’m sure I, at least, looked like a mad woman.

Folks, you can breathe easy.  Chris lived to see another day.  The light was still there, in my same hiding place, untouched.  You lucked out this time, hubby.  I wasted no time from there.  This sucker was mine and there’d be no more convincing me otherwise.

Ah, there’s nothing more that I love than a great bargain (except you, honey, of course…) and this was the bargain to top all bargains.  This will be the tale my great grandchildren will gather around me to hear every holiday season.  It was THAT epic.  And Chris was pleased to find out that I had finally settled on a light so we could move on to another project.

What can I say, third time’s the charm!

His.

First of all, I didn’t fall through the ceiling. I exited the attic in the manliest way possible.

I don’t know what it is about women, but they seem to have some sort of obsession with lights. This strikes me as very odd, though, because this is the same gender that believes the quality of their looks fluctuates with the placement, intensity, and spectral range of light. Julie, of course, is no different: it’s not enough that the lights light, they also have to look good and put out said light in a very specific manner. So it was time to experiment.

Initially, I thought we had the light picked out. We had chosen the smallest of the three lanterns from the ReStore that we had refinished as it was short enough to hang from a decent length of chain. It was also a single bulb socket and I thought the light output was perfect for our very small entryway. I don’t know if Julie agreed or if she just likes making me mad, but this is the light we chose. So it’s the light I set out to install.

The first order of business was removing the old light. Most ceiling boxes are a 4″ diameter circle, but this light was a 10″x10″ square:

This meant I’d have some drywall work to do, and I despise drywall work. I cut a piece of cardboard to size to use as a template:

Once I had it cut to the size of the hole, I traced out where the ceiling box opening would be:

I nailed the ceiling box to the beam that ran alongside the light, and used the cardboard template to trace and cut a piece of drywall. First try fit like a glove! Tip: See my drywall screws? I glued a scrap piece of 2×4 to the top side of the ceiling so I’d have something to really hold the drywall patch.

Putty and paint makes a boat what it ain’t!

Here’s the light I installed. I guess the coloring is off because it’s supposed to look bronze or something.

All done! I used a ceiling medallion to help the light stand out a little more.

Well, it turns out that all good things really do come to an end, and Julie demanded a different light. I made her sleep on it for a week but she really stuck to her guns and threw a hissy fit over it, so I installed what she had now decided was the ideal light, which just so happened to be the ugliest light we own.

Look how terrible that is! It’s so bright in there I was afraid to turn on the light for fear the paint might burn off the walls!

I think Julie agreed, because she never turned on the light and finally admitted it looked horrible. Again, she demanded a new light, only this time I got wise- I was tired of her chronic indecision, so I agreed to install one more light, meaning whatever light she chose would be permanent. At first she objected, but I think she realized no amount of pouting was going to make me want to change that stupid light again. Every so often, she’d complain about the light and beg to change it, but I just reminded her of our deal, and that was that.

Well, she finally found it. THE light, she proclaimed. And let me tell you, this thing is huge. It’s so big that I was convinced it was going to be a skull-cracker and/or rip the ceiling box out (still not convinced that won’t happen). Before we bought it, I actually made her go home and measure the entryway to make sure I wouldn’t hit my head on it.

Alas, we came home with our new light. It came with like 8′ of chain but our ceiling is so low I could literally only use one link. It also had some weird scroll thing on the bottom which I also had to remove for liability purposes. But hey, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Ignore the socks. All of them.

Julie threatened my life if I didn’t include this picture:

After.