annie sloan is my girl

This is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

I get so wound up in my projects that I let it creep into every little spare minute I have and I drop the ball on a few things. I end up remembering the month in a blur of paint and sweat and I have a hard time thinking about the mountain from the top down. this is not the point Michelle. Snap out of it! Journalling is there for you to stop and reflect, so slow down and reflect!

It's Annie's fault. I've been wondering what to do with my kitchen and the old country yuck cabinets have been really making me glare when I walk in. So I hear about this chalk paint thing and I look into it. Annie Sloan is, of course, the best thing out there they say. So I ask around in real life where I can see the faces of the people I'm talking to instead of the 4 star rating. Sometimes I think people online just say stuff is awesome because they want you to think it's awesome and they 'forget' some of the hard times they had. Faces are better for a second opinion. So I asked around and I got 2 hits from warm bodies. One said "Oooh it's gorgeous but the fumes are a bit much. We couldn't go in my mom's kitchen for 2 weeks or more". Deal breaker! The other said "My friend paints everything with that and it's awesome. She loves it! I'm dying to try it! buy me some."  Ok. Well maybe not so bad then? Between these two conversations I realize there is another brand of chalk paint and both of these cases use that brand. Not Annie Sloan. I'm back to digging around and find out that Annie Sloan paint is non-toxic and basically no VOC. Nice! I'm back in.

So then I realize the store is in the UK. Deal Breaker! Then I see a Canadian retailer lister. I'm back in! I look them up and see 1 place in my city that sells it. I check the colours. I time the trip. I make the leap. I had no idea how much this was going to cost but I knew it wasn't going to be cheap.

Before I went and looked at actual price tags I did some research and gave my kitchen some devoted, real and honest thought. Am I really gonna rip this out any time soon? Is that a want more than a need? Is it realistic to expect it before a year is up? If someone walked up to be and said I could make you happy in your kitchen for 50.00 would I do it? Would I do it for 200.00? For 500.00?

I started to hesitate around 500.00.

At the 500 mark apparently my brain and gut start telling me to put the money towards a good countertop and live with it for a while.

Now you might think I'm crazy to do a kitchen make-over for 500.00 and you are mostly right, I mean I am crazy. Crazy because I really don't let fear and common sense stop me. Mostly I find common sense is fairly misguided and fear is, as they say, the mind killer.

So that brings me here, after days of not writing anything down because I'm spending every waking minute painting in my kitchen. It's looking RAD. I'm loving the feeling of the yucky oak suddenly turning into RADNESS and I'm loving my kitchen just a little bit more. I am jonesing for it you know.

It's all Annie's fault.

So here is the low down as far as a perfect newbie knows and as mistake riddled as it probably is, still looks awesome.

2 coats of graphite grey on the 'everything' and then a couple coats of the wax (dark only). I was supposed to put the light wax on first? I don't know. I didn't. I used the dark wax and I love how black/brown/grey it is. I am doing a light 'scuff' here and there on the edges but it's mostly just going to be straight up. Not much distressing. I'm going for an old loft/industrial feel vs. a country feel but I know I can't totally escape it being as the cabinets suck. I'll do my best though.

The paint is delightful to put on, easy to clean up and it covers really well. No fumes at all. The wax is a bit fumey and I open windows because I can feel it but it's not the most fumes ever. I would rate it as medium. By the next day I smell nothing.

I am digging around for pictures but I don't want to give it all away just yet. Still. Awesome! Black Kitchen here I come! here are some inspiration pictures:

PS I know my taste is not everyone's taste and I certainly understand that some people go out and buy this style on purpose. Peoples is Peoples. No offence intended, it's just 1985 up in here right now so nothing is looking good to me.

mess mess mess

What is it about a mess that I can't seem to escape from.

I have always been a bit of a mess so I know it's me. I know it must be. There are many many people in this world who live with neat and tidy cars, homes and clothes. I can't seem to make it through a few hours without some kind of a mess. It's exhausting and I find it stressful. Not only that, but I am always cleaning. I find that exhausting and stressful too.

Here lies the dichotomy of my situation and the pressure point of my frustration. I am surrounded at all times by mess and clutter, and, despite my best efforts, I am always cleaning. Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I cry, sometimes I throw things and other times I curl up on the couch and glare at the mess with one stink eye while pretending not to care about the defeat.

I read up on the situation. I do. I try to do the little challenges (like 30 days to a clutter free house) and I really really want to be there. I do. I want to be THERE.

I don't think I'm there though. I think I am about 3 steps behind "there".

There are a lot of assumptions being made when talking about decluttering and cleaning and what not. The big one is that I don't want the stuff anymore. Hah. Well I don't want everything but I do want some of it. I'm building my art studio right now and I'm looking around thinking that maybe I'll need that extra container. Maybe I'll need that paint can. Maybe I'll want that box of pine cones. I don't know what I will want so I'm paralyzed. I can't make the choice. I need to stop wondering if I'm going to keep it or not and just make some piles, designate a sorting space and make some piles. I can worry about chucking or keeping stuff later. When I know what I have I will be able to make those tough calls with more confidence.

The other assumption is that the surface in which you live can be cleaned. I had to paint an entire floor just to get the point where I could sweep. It's been a bit of a nightmare to get that far! I need shelves. I need furniture. I need closets. I have none of these things lined up just yet. I'm still getting there. My old bathtub was cleaned but it never looked like it. It had stains from paint and polyurethane. The enamel was worn away and a nice white crust was everywhere. There is just no way I'm getting it clean. I need to fogive myself for these kinds of situations. There is only so much I can do and I can't let my frustration put gauges in my happy moments. I need to accept what I can not change. Boy do I.

I think I've realized that part of being neat and tidy is having a place to put things. It's less about the effort of putting things away and more about having a sensible place to put things. DUH right? I know.

You must understand though. I had parents, I did, but functionally they were not really there for me. They taught me very little about how to do anything around the home. My house growing up was a mess, for a number of reasons, and although my brother came away from it all a little OCD and extreme in the neat direction, I did not. I'm still a mess 20 years later. Less of a mess? Maybe. These things stay with you people. They stay with you. So here I am. Sitting at my desk which is full of paper bits and containers and systems. Mostly everything in limbo waiting for the place that it can call it's own.

So here in limbo is where I am too, stuck. Trying to navigate this 'creating spaces' thing. I feel like I don't know how. I feel like I need closets and tupperware but I have no idea where to begin. I wonder about just buying a bunch of dressers and things on kijiji and filling them up. I think this might help but I'm not sure for how long. I have no idea if it will help at all. I could just stuff things into drawers and then feel the need to leave other things out so I don't lose them in drawers. I need to stop this.  Girl get yourself some furniture on the cheap and then get rid of it when it does not work. Stop trying to wait for the day when the stars align your money and your dream dresser. Get proactive! Learn how to take care of your house on your own and be prepared to not do it perfectly. Just do it. Learn and move forward. You can do this.

I don't know which room to start in. Should I start in the kitchen or the entry way? Should I rip out cabinets and move them around or try to make do with what I have? Just start. Girl, just start.

Then there are the temporary fixes. These have become essential to me. Only because I lived with things because they will eventually change before. In fact I have lived without doors, closets, walls, bathrooms and kitchens all because eventually things will change. Usually I think things will change much sooner than they often do. So I live in temporary chaos for what feels like too long, not temporary enough. Right now I am refusing to put my towels in the only cupboard we have that would work for towels because we eventually plan to rip it out. That makes no sense folks but it's the way I am. I can't think of it as usable because in 3 months we will tear it out. So my towels have no home. Girl you have got to get real about the to do list. I need to embrace the temporary fix instead of avoiding it like a waste of money and time. It's not a waste if it keeps you sane. Girl fold your towels and put them in the crazy closet for now.

Here is the other problem.

I'm always doing 'projects'. Always. They disrupt, they suck up time, they spread out and they take a while to finish up.

Another piece of the renovation journey is that it tends to get personal. It's inevitable. You have to figure yourself out a little in order to figure out the house and make it into a home.

Speaking of mess, projects and getting things moving. Look what I picked up = )

I ended up with less paint than I thought I would get because there were so many other things I need to get too. I wanted some extra colours to play with. Sitting in my mess, surrounded by mess, constantly trying to clean up and manage the mess and all I can think of is ripping apart my kitchen and painting my cabinets. I think this is the kind of thing that creates my frustration you know?

I'm probably going to do it anyway. Pictures of my Annie Sloan chalk paint adventure soon to follow. I'll even clean up a little bit before I snap them. 

the nuts and bolts of a renovation

So you want to transform a room and I get that. I really do. There is nothing quite like looking at the before and after pictures and smirking with pride. There is nothing like being in a room you have completely made your own. Except maybe being in a room that actually serves it's purpose fully and that you have made your own.

Sometimes I wonder about these things when I look at other people's pictures. I wonder because I didn't realize it was a thing until we actually started doing it. Part of my process now involves living in a frustrating crappy space for a while before we transform it. I feel like this is the only way to really make a room function properly. You need to know how it functions first.

For example, high on our list of things to do before we even get started with the floors in this giant wood room, we are going to go around and do our best to take out all the squeaks in the subfloor. IT sounds simple enough but it involves a few steps and it's nearly impossible to do after the floor is in.

I wonder sometimes when I look at the white enhanced photos of beautifully painted floors, "Do they squeak a lot?" because I bet they do. Sometimes the most important things you do during a build or a renovation are the things no one sees. It's the insulation, the extra thick underlay or the quality of the subfloor. It's the heat vents hooked up properly and the light switches being wired properly. These are the things that will either create a functional room, or a pretty room you secretly hate.

So taking out the squeaks and creeks in our floor has thus far required the following:

1. Drill + screws and a little hunched over walking. When you find a squeak locate the joist and throw more screws in. Make sure they are flush. Make sure you get the screws into the joist. Repeat x100.

2. Remove chunks of saggy or worn subfloor that seems to bounce. Skill saw+ pry bar and some kind of level to make sure you are not imagining. Also need new chunks of subfloor. It is best to cut so that the new piece will span the joists. If you don't know what I'm talking about hire someone else to do the job.

3. Sister up the joists that are cracked or warped and therefor uneven or not supportive. Again, if you don't know what I'm talking about hire someone. This will require removing some floor or working from an exposed ceiling underneath the floor.

4. Walk around again and find the extra squeaks and creeks that seem to appear after you fix the other ones. You must be super anal about this because once the floor is on, there is no fixing anything. Repeat step 1. Avoid the other steps because they are a total pain.

5. If you can, support old subfloor by adding another layer of sure-ply. It will help level out the floor. If not, then make sure you have a good underlay. Don't skimp here. If you are doing hardwood you need to make sure your surface is level.

I am sure there are more steps. This is not my forte. The husband is the one who goes mental over the squeaks. Insulation is another one, do this properly! Hire someone if you have no clue (and chances are you have no clue). Poorly insulated spaces are not comfortable spaces, I don't care what colour the throw pillows are.

Another thing you might want to consider is a fresh air exchange. I know we are thinking about it. We have a friend who put one into her new build and she says it is the one thing she truely loves about her home. She never feels like she has to open a window. I can dig it.

journalling

So let me just start by journalling our adventures in home renovations so far has been amazing. I already feel like I'm calming down a bit.

I'm not sure if I'm alone in this or not but I tend to get pretty wound up about the project we are undertaking. I can even get a little ants-in-my-pants about whatever we are working on. Some might say obsessive and they wouldn't be too off.

Being the super multi-tasker that I am, I can can easily find myself in the middle of 4-5 projects at once.  I can also start to feel like the mountain in front of us is so much bigger than we can ever hope to climb, when what I really need to do is look back and see how far we've come. This journal thing is a great tool for that. I just wish I had begun sooner.

So here is a bit of a progress report and quick look inside how my brain works.

1. The floor in the "Wood Room" is 90% painted and I'm now running super low on paint. The thinset stuff is a bit of a chore to scrape off and I've already cheese grater'd my knuckle twice. Ow. It looks way friendlier but I'm going to spend a few days on that last 10% to get it looking great.

2. The primer did not stick to the wood panelling and so I'm going to have to sand it first. NOOoooo. Life sucks. Oh well! I had not painted too much before I discovered this so it could be much worse.

3. I'm going to go buy a few gallons of Annie Sloan's chalk paint. I'm thinking Monday if at all possible. I'm looking at graphite for sure, possibly some kind of duck blue or similar. I'm still thinking about it. I might paint the paneling with that stuff as well.

4. In regards to the above: I might paint my kitchen cabs black. I'm in the fantasize stage but it's sure making me happy to think about it. I have decided 2 things for certain and one of them is that I will paint them. The other is that later on I will rip them out. It's a terrible layout. Terrible!! Nothing to be done in that department for now so I must make do. The black thing is really supported by the idea that I won't be keeping them forever.

5. I am going to paint the fireplace bricks in the wood room too. I'm not sure about all this white. Maybe linen would be a better choice.

6. I think I'm going to paint the vanity in the powder room just off the wood room. It's ugly.

7. The kids need a bedroom. They are sleeping in a make-shift situation and it needs to happen. Gathering supplies and inspiration. We've already painted the walls and we are definitely doing some kind of bunk beds/play loft thing in the room.

Ok I'm going to stop there. As you can see my brain is a humming buzzing mess on a Sunday morning. This is why this journaling business is helping. It's like having a place to store all my crazy.

There are still a couple of things on the unfinished list.

1. Replace outlets in living/dining room. (Another coat of paint first?)
2. Finish working on chandelier over dining room.
3. Look in the attic. We have not done that yet because we are scared. I'm pretty sure we will find some kind of crazy situation up there.
4. Finish working on the DIY chandelier for the dining room.
5. We need transitions for the floor (Kitchen, great room) and stair transitions x2.

Here is the fixture I want to replace

Here is me playing with a DIY bubble chandelier idea.

If I can get it together I'll post a few more pictures. Right now I'm waiting for the hubby to take down the current light fixture. 

painting over wood panelling with a smile

So one of the things about moving into a fixer upper is the cleaning and in the new house I have been particularly amazed with what will pass as clean and what becomes less passable over time.

For example you may recall the filthy carpet that was hiding disgusting urine soaked subfloor? Well that made the floor next door which already had the carpet removed and didn't seem to be soaked with urine of any kind, seem really tidy.

I'm sure it wasn't. I'm sure it was really dirty and gross, it's just that sitting beside something really disgusting it didn't seem that bad. Kinda sad really but it's an optical, nay sensory, illusion that seems to be repeating over and over again in this house.

You see this house is/was a really gross dirty mess. It took me a good day to wash the kitchen floor the first week we took possession and by the time I was done the black rubber stair tread things were actually light grey. I kid you not, it was a happy surprise. Of course once I cleaned the floor the windows suddenly became really dirty and needed to be scrubbed. Then I was able to see the spider webs in the corners. We have been here for months and it just occurred to me the other day that the wooden screen door handle might be dirty and it was. The whole thing was so black and gross that it actually just looked like darker wood. It was so bad I could not believe I had lived with it for so long but let me tell you, I didn't see it. Not until something else was clean and something else was clean and so on until suddenly the handle became obvious.

I'm so far into this now that the bathroom vent fans are getting my attention. This is a good thing! It means I have cleaned so much that I'm started to look at things we don't touch on a regular basis.

So, back to this room with the exposed subfloor. I had decided at some point that painting the floor was important because it became obvious that we were not going to 'get' to the floor project for many moons. The kids have been enjoying the space and really started to need, not want, to clean the place properly.

Let me start by saying I love this room. I love this room so much it hurts. It's dark and it's rough and it's not super pretty but the bones are amazing. This is an actual teak bar. Can you not see a DJ in there? Cranking out the tunes? It also has a wood panelling ceiling and it's about 13 feet a the peak I think. It's abnout 10 feet at the base of the rise. So much fun. Beside the teak bar you can see the radio attached to the intercom system that is original to this 1979 classic. Let's tour.

Here is a shot of how dark and dreary this room in is the middle of the day. The lights are on and it's still gloomy as all heck. It's like living in a mine. 

Ahhh. More wood. We actually call this room "the wood room" and the kids know what we are saying. Here is a good shot of the floor and the sun which is shining in the room next door. 

A lot of what you are seeing is from them clear coating the panelling before they put it up. Still, gross. 

More wood, This time in the form of a different kind of wood behind shelves with brick columns. I think this room has great texture. It's so interesting to be in here. It's also interesting to ponder what might be going on underfoot. More in a scientific kind of thinking than in a design kind of thinking.

So I love these panels. When I first walked in this room I declared that no one should enter unless they were wearing a silk smoking jacket and prepared to play a game of snooker. SCOTCH ME!  Still, they have charm and they are real wood. Maybe a veneer inset but everything feels nice and solid.

Ok. So you can see patches of grey on the floor? Thinset from a past tile job that was then covered up by a real baby poop flavour of shag rug. A tan-brown thing. I was actually picturing more of a forrest green shag so the baby poop colour kinda threw my whole vibe for the room off. Anyway! 

This is raw plywood subfloor, not treated with anything and it feels very rough under foot. I covered a good chunk of it with cheap carpets from ikea but it still made me uneasy. There were staples all over the place, this thinset stuff that feels like road rash in waiting, some carpet nails and a bunch of other stuff that made me wince when the kids ran through here like the little wild chimps they are. 

1. We decided we want to try a pallet floor in this room. I'll have some inspiration pictures later but it's a big room and we can't afford to do hardwood in here.

2. So far we have collected 7 pallets which seems to be around 4 square feet? It's going to take a lot of time to get this situation under control, 

3. My kids are not patient people. 

I need something I can clean in the meantime and also something that makes me feel like it's still clean 10 minutes later. 

I just cleared out the room and started painting with straight up latex paint/primer. It took a bit to get all the staples out and to scrape off the disgusting bits of old carpet underlay but so far it's making my brain sigh a huge exhale of relief, Can you see that really fun green colour?

This is the green with a coat of white primer/paint over it. 

A nice unclose view of the nasty being white washed away. 

Even closer! 

Feeling better already. I have to give the walls a good sanding and there are lots of repairs to be done. This white wash does a good job of highlighting problem areas to be fixed for a decent paint job later. 

What's this? Yes she is priming the wood panelling. I am not going to touch the ceiling just yet but that wood wall is getting neutralized. Hells yes. 

Cool Tool: Pliers

So here is a quick look at another one of my favourite tools known as the bent nose pliers. Not to be confused with needle nose or snub nose or side-cutters. The bent nose is handy!

I use all kinds of pliers all the time and it's usually just what I can find. These ones I enjoy a particular amount more than most. I find them very versatile for my purposes and although I'm sure I could have eye rolls from the manthing, I really do think that if you do not have a pair like this look for them. They often come in a set of other handy pliers and you should get to know the many little functions they serve. These are great for holding on to something while you do something else, finding the very tiniest part of a nail to pull out of a wall and even reaching into a drain. Bleck. They are good for bending stuff that needs bending and I something about the bend in the nose makes it easier to see what you are doing.

Here are some action shots of pulling out a staple from the subfloor.

 Notice how you can use the bend to leverage a different grips. The bend helps with the force needed for pinching and for uprooting rusty old staples/nails/wires,

ooh

ahhh

So I dub the bent nose pliers a cool tool. As it is not a dewalt anything my hubby may disagree but I think that sometimes the small tools make the big job more manageable. 

My Secret DIY Advantage is YOUR secret DIY advantage (sorta)

SO I have an unfair advantage over most DIY designer types in that my husband is a contractor. SCORE!

Yeah but in all fairness he wasn't a contractor when we got married. Infact, when we got married he was in the oilfield like so many people around here. Wasting his life away on fat paychecks and mucho machismo in the workplace. I kinda miss those paychecks but I'm completely to blame so I don't chirp too loudly.

You see we started working around the house. I had visions of what I wanted to see happening. I wanted to see walls moved. Closets turned into entrances, spare bedrooms turned into media rooms and all kinds of junk that would just appear out of no where. So he obliged me with the first little job we had on the docket "The Door" that previously did not exist and would need to exist to seperate the upstairs from the downstairs spaces.

Part of our renovation plan was to have renters in our basement to off-set the mortgage/costs of renovating and it was a brilliant plan except for the entrance. The back door came directly in past the kitchen and it was very awkward.

Super awkward.

Also the backdoor was kinda creepy. It was a 60 year old wood door with an old wood screen door attached. It banged when it shut and it had a wicked haunted house creek.

So I went to the re-store and I picked up a modern metal door with a full glass insert for 60.00. 60? What? Yep. 60! Don't get too excited we had to replace the seal gasget around the window and that cost us 90.00. Yep. 90.00! So the whole door was more like 150 but it was still a pretty good steal. My first in a long standing naive notion that I can pay what I can afford and still live the high life. I'm never letting go of that.

So my super confident I can do anything hubby and I hung that outside door and then we put in a french door downstairs (to let in the light) and we put in a hollow core door at the top of the stairs. I got the french door at a box store on sale because it was a bit dirty. Yep. I painted it black. Like I care if it's dirty. We re-used the door from downstairs that we took off to put the french door on, FREE!, and we did all the work ourselves.

200 in tools later we were swinging hammers and paint brushes. My husband had the bug by then. He loved installing the doors and he loved casing them. He read some books and hit the wood hard. Turns out he is a bit gifted when it comes to finishing carpentry. He's alllllll about level, plumb and super tight. He will spend hours trying to make it perfect and I will spend hours mocking him and pulling out my 'eyeball level'.

So, he quit his job, looked up some guy in the paper and found a job working as an apprentice for a finishing carpenter. He really loves it. He loves building furniture, he loves working on interesting design and he's super (slow) meticulous about everything he does. It is a perfect fit and he ended up going through all his schooling and such. Just a regular kind of fairy tale where I meet my prince and he transforms into an awesome more super cool prince after I kiss him. NICE.

Since that first project we've started picking up speed. We have built deacons benches, mantles, ledge tables, closets and built-in furniture. Some of these things are way above what the average DIY guy can do. It really hasn't stopped me though. I just get really super itchy just thinking about a project. I want to go go go!! My lovely hubby is the same. He comes home from work and he's all looking around and getting excited for what the reveal picture will end up looking like. SIGH It's LOVE. All a girl with a big imagination needs is a partner in crime with a fininky need to build stuff.

One of the other perks of this particular advantage is that I can salvage job site materials. You would not believe what the average job site just tosses out. Wood, tile, flooring, landscaping materials and insulation. All picked up from the dumpster and turned into useful parts of our renovation. I can't tell you how many times I've had to decline a toilet. No Sir, we already have one sitting in our backyard. No more please! I have a harder time resisting the other random bits that come my way. I made a huge flagstone patio on the side of my front deck (with a pathway and garden sculpture) all out of throw away materials from some stone veneer job. They had to take this rock and shave inches off to make it level and the slabs left over were useless for the job. They couldn't really get enough to make materials happen for another job either. My house is much much smaller and the left-overs were more than enough to make a sexy stone patio. FREE! I love free stuff. I just love it.

Another super perk is the tools. Apparently my husband is a bit of of a tool-o-holic much like he is a raffle maniac. No I mean it. Big macho man, super huge raffle maniac. He would buy tickets in any kind of raffle ever. I'm not kidding. We have lots and lots of tools and he's always up for more. So, in a sense, we have more tools than the average DIY crazy people although I'm sure if you are just getting into this your tool collection will start to grow too.

He has opened my eyes to fun stuff like chalk lines and the Red Bar but he's also got some pretty handy and pretty pricey tools in his collection. Take the laser level. I laughed at him when he came home giddy like a tween who just got a fake txt from her poster boy crush. Sadly the thing has come in really handy. Really really handy. I don't know if it has paid for itself at home but it certainly has at his work. It's cut hours off his work week and that money=time thing is certainly true when you are paid by the job not the time it takes to do it.

So I guess this was all in an effort to maintain full-disclosure. What we do it not magic and there is no team of experts fluffing pillows or pulling all nighters to get the big WOW in the morning photo session. It's just us. Sometimes we sleep in a camping style situation for months while we put everything together on my 'found it on the curb-side' budget and his 'working on the weekends' timeline.

Sometimes I let the kids help with the painting and sometimes we order in because it means we can work for an extra 2 hours. All this to say I know I scored when I landed my hubby and it gives us a distinct advantage to have a live in finishing carpenter. Maybe don't try all of this at home? Or maybe you should just so you know if you will love it or not. We love it.

L O V E it = )

For Fun here is a picture of the hubby at work and some iphone shots of the house combined with some of the realtors shots from the house.
This is finished as far as we planned to take it. Looks pretty good to us especially from the before shots.