DIY-ing Like a Boss

Thanks for that, Andy Samberg.

The hubs and I have been hammering out projects all around the house over the last week.  The best news?  The heat, AC and ductwork are finally installed!  After 5 full days of having dudes in our house banging, sawing, and crawling around (all while I'm still trying to work at home), we finally have roasty, toasty 16 SEER heat-pump goodness pumping through the house.  And take a look at this baby:

Isn't that sweet?  And other than the super-fancy (and super pricey!) Nest thermostats, it's just about the schmancey-iest thing in our house now.

Patrick built a 3' x 3' x 3' composting area so we can have nutrient-rich organic gold for the garden in the springtime.  He used 2x4 treated lumber for the corner posts, and wood pallets for the sides.

The brick building is the little church that's next to our pasture, by the way.

We've also been sticking it to the kitchen.  (If you missed the last post about our kitchen progress, check it out here.)

Here's an update on the progress we've made over the last week.

Look at that cute booty!

With the old boiler heating unit and fuel oil tank gone, we can finally start tearing out the old baseboard registers that are in every room.  We've decided that rather than trying to tackle them all at one time, we're just going to go room-by-room and "makeover" the entire room at once and remove them then.  They will just hang out and hid the disgusting part of the wall and flooring that's been covered up since 1958.  Yuck.  We found part of a deck of playing cards (all stuck together in a big playing card amoeba), abaseball card and a rainbow magnet behind the one in the kitchen.

We bought this big Dragor rug from IKEA on Thursday night, thinking that we'd just cover up as much of the ugly faux brick laminate as we could until we do the "real kitchen remodel" down the road.  (We bought another one for the mudroom, and you can see it peeking out in the photo below.)  And then we told ourselves, "Selves - you could spend a *little* more money and do peel and stick vinyl tiles on the kitchen floor and be way happier."  So we did.

Saturday morning we woke up and started peeling up lineoleum.

 

The thing that gets me most about pulling up lineoleum (we've done it before at the Jasper house) is the smell.  And thank goodness these people didn't have cats.  Gross.

So we made with the sticky (icky), and after we primed the now-exposed subfloor with self-stick tile primer, we started laying our tiles down.

Here's what we used.

We found it on clearance at Lowe's for $0.98 a square foot.  They only have the 18"x18" available online here.

We decided to be extra over-achievers and do grout as well.  I never imagined that they made grout for peel-n-stickies, since the whole advantage of peel-n-stickies is ease of installation and why would you want to add an extra step in what's supposed to be a quickie job?  Because it looks way nicer than just butting the tiles up against each other.

Patrick gettin' grouty

Be-yooo-tee-ful!

Here's a photo of the right side of the kitchen.  Please ignore the towels and miscellaneous tools laying out.  We're working here, people.

 

 

And here's the left side of the kitchen.

 

 

And here's another one showing the (currently naked!) window and sink area.

 

And we hung a new light fixture in here, and one in the dining room. 

Here's the dining room's new fixture:

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's simple and rustic and I love the way it looks with the big cow painting.  Here's the link to buy it.

 

Here's what we did in the kitchen:

Grayton Light - Buy it Here

I went with the one I really wanted for the kitchen (see previous post), and it looks FAB-YOU-LESS.

And here it is in daytime light, not illuminated:

I still need to put another two coats of ceiling paint on our homemade ceiling medallion (that's on today's to-do list).  We had to get creative on how to cover the big 16" x 16" square hole from the old recessed fixture, and I really don't like the look of the ceiling medallions you buy at the store, so we made our own.

We used 1/2" thick furniture grade plywood and 1/2" beaded quarter round moulding.

We used four screws to hold the plywood in place on the ceiling, and a pneumatic air nailer to attach the moulding to the plywood.

I decided to go with the chalkboard wall idea for the weird wall along the right side of the kitchen.  Rather than doing a chalkboard all the way to the floor, I decided we should compromise and do paneling along the bottom part of the wall.  It will add some much needed architectural interest to the room, as well as helping to break up the big span of black on the wall.

I used Rust-Oleum ChalkBoard paint - $9.67 at Home Depot - in the original black finish.  They have a tintable version, but I liked the idea of repeating the black from the light fixture in the paint color.

Since I knew we were doing wainscoting, I measured up 40 1/2" (allowing 1 1/2" for trim for a total of 42" - bar height) on each edge of the wall and drew a line so that I could only paint the area I needed.

It says to use a roller for best results, and since I always want the best results, I started with a roller.  The paint is thinner than regular latex wall paint, and it splattered all over the freshly laid, not even 6-hours old floor.  Cue the drop cloth!  So I busted out the 4" big boy Purdy brush and used soft, sweeping X-strokes.  I actually like the texture better with the sweeping, crossing brushstrokes than what a roller would have produced.

Bye Bye Sharkey Gray!  I'll use you somewhere else in the house!

 

I used a 1" angle Purdy brush on the edges where the ceiling and perpendicular walls meet the chalkboard wall, since I personally hate taping things off when I don't have to.

 

Here is the result after one coat:

 

That big ol' drip is from using the roller.  See why I switched to the brush?

 

It's dry to the touch after just 30 minutes, and you can do the second coat after 4 hours, which is where I am now.  Time to go do the second coat!