Staircase Remodel Reveal & Tutorial

 It may have taken nearly two months to complete, but we are finally done with the staircase remodel!  I have wanted to do this project for about two years now, but I've been too scared to try.  I'm glad we did it, because the end result is so pretty! 

Framing the Bathroom Mirror

I'm really excited because I can cross off another item on my "List of 8 Things To Do In The Next 12 Months". My goal was to get two or three of these items done by Thanksgiving, and I am happy to report I've officially completed two! Yay for setting and keeping goals! You can read about the first item I completed on the list here. 

I am really happy with the way our bathroom mirror frame has turned out so I thought you might enjoy a tutorial on how it was done. 

First things first, here are the supplies you will need:

1. Trim/wood. We went with a trim that had the look of wood but is much easier to work with because it is virtually weightless. I have no idea what it is made out of but it is almost soft on the back side, like Styrofoam, but hard on the front, like wood. It was very inexpensive, I think about $12 for the three pieces we needed to make the frame.  We found it in the trim section at Lowe's. Make a point to pick trim that looks straight and level. It is normal for wood and trim to be somewhat warped, but the less warped the better in this case.

2. Caulk gun. Like this: 

  

3. Mirror glue. Like this:

3. Miter saw or box. My father-in-law was kind enough to cut our edges for us using his miter saw. 

4. Paint, painters tape and paint brush.

5. Caulk.  

Ok, now you've got your supplies, onto the actual construction of the frame!

Step 1. Measure your mirror (twice!) before cutting your frame to the correct size. We intentionally made our frame about a half inch too long and a half inch too tall so that it would hang over the outside edges of the mirror just a tiny bit and keep the edges looking clean and finished. I recommend that you do the same thing if you tackle this project.  If you want your corners to meet at a 45 degree angle, this is where your miter saw or box will come into play. 

Step 2. Paint the trim. You should now have four individual pieces of trim. Assuming your mirror is a rectangle, you should have two long pieces and two short pieces. Now is the time to paint your trim whatever color you like. Be sure to paint the back side of the trim as well because you will be able to see the back of the trim in the tiny reflection the frame will cast on the mirror. That is a small detail, but it will make your project look more professional when it is all said and done! I wanted our frame to be white and because I am cheap thrifty,  I chose to use leftover paint from our kitchen cabinet makeover (read about that here). 

Step 3: Once your paint has completely dried, it is time to hang your frame. Whip out your handy dandy caulk gun and mirror glue and go to work. The glue we purchased takes two hours to dry, so be sure to add painters tape to the frame to hold it securely in place until the glue dries. Also, be warned, this mirror glue stuff is really sticky, so try and work as neatly as possible or you'll find yourself with a mess on your hands (not that we know this from experience or anything, lol!). When you add your glue to the back of your trim, be sure not to get the glue too close to the edges. For one, if its too close to the edges it may seep out when you press it flat against the mirror. For two, if you get the glue too close to the edge, you'll be able to see it in the tiny reflection on the mirror. Again, this is another small detail that will help your project look polished when it is all said and done!

Here is one small section of our mirror where we accidentally got the glue too close to the edge of the trim. If you look closely, you'll see the glue reflected off the back of the trim. Oops!

At this stage, your mirror should look something like this: 

Step 4: Caulking the corners. Wait until the glue has completely dried before moving onto this step. We waited a full 24 hours, just to be safe. Unless you are a seasoned pro with a miter box, it is likely you'll notice your 45 degree angle corners do not meet up 100% perfectly. (SIDE NOTE: my father-in-law happens to be a seasoned pro, so our corners were nearly perfect). Here is what ours looked like: 

Pretty close to perfect, but you could still see the crack. Again, whip out your caulk gun and caulk (NOT glue) to fill in those tiny cracks. This will make the corners of your frame look finished and completely perfect.

Step 5: Touch up the paint. Your frame may get a little dinged or dirty while you are working on it (remember how I mentioned earlier that the mirror glue tends to make a mess?) so make sure you have enough paint left over to do a final touch up coat. 

And... voila! You've got yourself a custom framed bathroom mirror! 

I'm very happy with the results of this project. Each small change takes our home further away from 1980's builder grade and one small step closer to custom! Good luck with your mirror framing endeavors!

Thanks!

Jesse

Half Bath Progress!

A few weeks ago I wrote this post about all the things I wanted to get done around our house. I'm happy to say I can cross one of those things off the list. 

I painted the cabinet in our half bathroom! Yay!!

Ok, let me start from the beginning.

When we first moved into the house, the floors in our half bath had already been updated with a nice grey-ish neutral tile that we really like, but otherwise the room was your standard 1980's builder grade bathroom. The cabinet was oak (I don't have a picture of it, but it was the exact same color that our kitchen cabinets were before we painted them, you can see pictures of that here). We also had one of those ugly light fixtures that you see often in homes built in the 1980's, one that looked a lot like this:

So several months ago we bought a new light fixture to replace the dated one. I'm really happy with the way the new one looks, but it turned out to be a bigger project than originally anticipated. When we went to swap out the old fixture for the new one we realized that because the base shape of the new fixture was different (it was oval whereas the old one was rectangular, like the one pictured above) it wouldn't fit properly. There wasn't enough space between the light fixture and the mirror and the base of the new fixture overlapped onto the top of the mirror. To compensate, we had to take down the mirror and get about 4 inches trimmed off of it. We took it to a windshield repair place and they trimmed it for us for $10. We also had to repaint the wall because the wall color behind the mirror was a dark green and four inches of that would have shown once we hung the mirror back up. I decided to just paint the one wall rather than the whole room for a couple of reasons. 1) I wanted to keep the room neutral and light because it is such a small space and 2) I was being cheap, and just wanted to reuse paint I already had rather than go buy more.

Here is a picture of the new fixture:

This room is really hard to photograph because it is tiny and has no natural light, but I did my best to make the colors in the photos true to life.

So that is what our bathroom looked like for months. An updated fixture and a blue accent wall, but otherwise, still a standard half bath. I did manage to buy some cute accessories, including that large framed bird art which I love in this space. I think the subtle blue and neutral colors and natural theme tie in nicely with the rest of our house. Here is another peek at some of the accessories we put into this space:

(SIDE NOTE: Look closely, and you'll notice the toilet paper dispenser from this post, and the DIY door knob from this one). 

I felt that the room was decent the way it looked at this stage, but I didn't want to settle for "decent". I wanted it to be "really pretty and welcoming". After all, practically every guest in our home will go into this room at some point, so why settle?

So.... I recently managed to carve out some time to paint the cabinet. Gone is the 1980's oak, and here is what it looks like now:

I think the grey is really fresh and ties in nicely with our flooring. I may even get brave and try installing hardware (read about why I vowed never to do cabinet hardware again after our last disastrous attempt here).

I really want to get the mirror framed BEFORE Thanksgiving, and if I do, I promise to share it with your guys! I've already got all the supplies, I just need to do it! I'm hoping that will be a small project that goes a long way towards making this room feel updated and pretty. Once the mirror is framed, I have even bigger plans for completing this space, but I'll keep those secret for now because it will likely be another two years before I get around to doing them! While this room is not yet complete, I'm happy with the progress we've made.

What about you? Have you taken any steps towards getting a room in your home up to date? Thanks for coming by!

-Jesse

DIY Patio

Back when my hubby (well at that time he was still just my fiance) and I first moved into our home, the back yard didn't have a patio or deck, just a small landing right off the back door. I knew that spring would approach fast and I definitely wanted to make use of our yard for entertaining and cookouts. So, we decided to build our own patio! This was our first major project in the house. Here's what the yard looked like before:

I didn't want the patio to take up too much of the yard because I wanted there to still be  plenty of green space for our pup to run around, but I also knew I wanted to convert that round planter pictured above into a fire pit. We decided a curved patio would fit our space best. We shopped around, and ultimately bought our supplies at The Home Depot. I think we spent about $700 on supplies, but we did all the labor ourselves, so that saved a ton of money (and burned a LOT of calories!). Even though I wasn't blogging at the time, I documented the process pretty well because I was so excited to be doing our first big project as homeowners! 

The first step was to remove the grass from the area we wanted to put the patio. Once all the grass was removed, we had to smooth out the ground and level it.

 That's my father in law helping us level the ground :) 

 I didn't take pictures of this next part, but the next steps were to put several layers of sand and fine gravel over the ground. Then we laid a fabric weed blocker down on top of that. We laid the fabric blocker down as we progressed with the bricks because the wind was blowing it everywhere.

After all the bricks were laid, all that was left was to clean up! The edges were rough, and we planned to finish them, but never got around to renting a brick cutter to do it. Luckily, the grass grew in and covered the edges so that now they look smooth and even! We do still need to cut some bricks and fill in the edges surrounding the fire pit! 

Today the patio looks even better because we've purchased patio furniture as well:

What about you? Have you tackled any big DIY projects in your home that make you proud?

-Jesse 

Kitchen Remodel

Happy Tuesday! I promised you I'd give you the details of our kitchen remodel, so today is the day that I come through on that promise! My hubby and I had a very full January and February this year. We tied the knot, took a wonderful honeymoon and then came home and basically threw ourselves into a kitchen remodel. I'm not sure why we decided this was the time for major home renovations, but regardless, we took the plunge. First, for a basic breakdown:

Helpful blogs that I referred to when updating the kitchen:

allthingsthrifty

iheartorganizing

thekimsixfix

Supplies we purchased or used:

frog tape exacto knife

4 2 x4's

electric sander (100 grit, 150 grit and 60 grit paper) regular sand paper

2 saw horses

1 gallon Valspar semi gloss interior paint (color is called Papparazzi)

polycrylic- high gloss finish- water based

three sponge brushes

two cabinet rollers and paint trays

1 gallon of interior primer- Valspar brand

two regular bristle brushes

tons of paper towels

drop cloths

409 cleaner

shark vac money spent: granite: $1,200 granite installation: $1,200 plus $240 for removal of old laminate subway tiles: $110 subway tiles installation: $420 cabinet supplies (paint, primer, brushes, rollers, trays, drop cloths, tape, sand paper, polycrylic): $93 sink and installation: 175 plus 185 Grand total: $3,623.00

 Now, for some before photos:

Our first step was to hire a contractor for our back splash and counter tops. We did our research and shopped around. We didn't go with the lowest bid, we went with our instincts and chose the company who'd give us the best quality service. We also purchased our granite directly from a granite supplier, which has a couple of benefits: 1) it cuts out the middle man, which saves $$$ and 2) we got to keep the left over granite, so we have plenty left to re-do our master bathroom down the line, or sell it and get some money back!  Here's what the kitchen looked like at that point:

We are really happy with our granite choice. We think it has tons of variation and lots of interesting veins, lines and spots! The color is called "White Fantasy" but I am not sure that is a universal name for this stone. I wasn't able to find any other granite yards with anything called "White Fantasy" or with anything that looked similar at all.

At this stage, I was feeling a little skeptical of our back splash decision. I knew that subway tile was what I wanted, but we spent alot of time debating between a bright white tile, a soft ivory color and the darker neutral we ended up choosing. The color we chose is called Urban Putty 0161 by Rittenhouse. At this stage I was afraid the back splash color was very dull and too similar to our wall color, but I decided to just wait to see it all finished before making up my mind. Now that the professionals had finished their job, the real fun began! Here is the breakdown on how we refinished our kitchen cabinets:

Cabinet painting process:
Step 1:	select a paint color
Step 2:	remove hardware and put into labeled baggies
Step 3:	label doors using frog tape (this ended up being unnecessary)
Step 4:	lay doors out in garage in two rows
Step 5:	remove stuff from inside cabinets
Step 6:	sand everything using an electric sander
Step 7:	sand edges and crevices by hand
Step 8:	clean thoroughly using 409 and paper towels
Step 9:	prime using bristle brush
Step 10:	light sanding and cleaning
Step 11:	coat 1 using roller
Step 12:	light sanding and cleaning
Step 13:	coat 2 using roller
Step 14:	light sanding and cleaning
Step 15:	touch up coat/coat 3 (we didn't need a full third coat everywhere)
Step 16:	light sanding and cleaning
Step 17:	Allow for plenty of dry time between coats
Step 18:	apply clear polycrylic coat with sponge brush
Step 19:	put doors back up
Step 20:	put knobs back on
Step 21:	put rubber bumpers on inside corners of doors
Step 22:	touch up spots that got dinged while being put back together

  

It literally took us days to decide which paint color to choose. Can you even tell the difference in this picture?! (FYI- We ended up going with the one on the right door because we thought it would match our appliances better).

Once we'd taken down the doors we realized that we were going to have to empty out all the cabinets to keep everything from getting too dusty.

Here's a peek of our dining room table loaded down with stuff from inside our cabinets!

After the kitchen was all cleared out, it was time to sand:

And prime:

And paint:

You'll notice we did all the steps for the top cabinets first before we even started on the bottom ones. This made it a little easier to handle the mess, because it was done in sections. Finally after about 4 weeks of work (keep in mind we both have full time jobs, so most work was done in the evenings or on weekends), our kitchen was put back together. We decided to use the same knobs that we already had to save money, but we still plan to distress them to give them an aged feel. They are currently a solid black color and I really like the way they pop against the white cabinets. We're also still planning to paint the walls, but we're having a hard time deciding on a color. Here are the after photos:

What do you guys think? Was it worth all the work? We sure think it was. Let me know if you have any ideas on wall colors because were torn between a light blue and a coffee color. Of course, if you've got any questions, I'll do my best to answer them! Thanks!

-Jesse