I get to cross things off!

Sunday was such a nice day.  Hardly any bugs, not a cloud in the sky, and most of all, no wind.  A perfect time to paint the outside doors.

Ryan decided to paint the back door first. It was strange wandering in and out of the house all day, not being able to shut the back door behind me. After borrowing a couple of sawhorses, he taped off the window, removed the handles and the lock and got to it.

He also took this opportunity to spray paint the keypad lock's cover black.

We were a little leery about what color to pick to paint the doors. I didn't want cream. The handles were black, so that color was out. Gloss or matte was also a big question. We ended up picking a basic white gloss metal spray paint. We decided the worst that could happen is we would hate it and have to repaint.  But I have to tell you, it looks SO much better. 

We started off with this:

And then changed the door handles:

And ended up here:

Ryan also taped off the spot outside where Rodeo had been clawing at to say he wanted in.  It started off looking like this:

And now looks like this:

So much better right?  Ha, and I like how that same little red car is still sitting there, a month or two later.

Since Ryan put two coats of spray paint on each side and we wanted to make sure the paint was nice and dry before flipping the door over to paint the other side, we only managed to get the back door painted.  The front door will have to be next weekend's project.  The towels got hung though!

I get to cross off #32 from the list, as well as the "s" on number #31!  This weekend, my mom and I are having a garage sale so I also get to cross off #8, and #9 too!

Let's hope I survive Garage Sale Weekend and all the prep that goes with it!

#17

Yes, tackling the upstairs bathroom and it's holes. 

Technically, it didn't need painted.  The hand towel holder had fell off the wall, with little help I'm sure from three little kids, leaving a couple of screw holes behind.  The toilet tank was once screwed to the wall as well.  (Sounds weird I'm sure, but it's the style of the toilet).  Anyways, although the previous owners left behind the paint from the house, it's been really difficult to figure out which color went where, and the sheen seems to be different as well.  I don't know.  I figured I'd just repaint it instead of driving myself crazy with non-perfectly matching spot.

I had forgotten how much I hate painting bathrooms.  Listen, I don't want to smoosh my face up against my toilet at the best of times, let alone try and get an even coat behind it.

Bah.  That's all I have to say.

Here's the somewhat prepped before picture.



I gave up on the tape pretty quickly.  I mostly just taped off the side of the vanity and behind the door where the two different mouldings meet from the door and the closet, aka the worst part to paint in the bathroom.

After.

 

What? You can't tell a difference???!  Why yes, it is still beige.  We're painting for re-sale still people.

It's actually a much, much lighter brown. 

 

Heh.  This color has a story all to it's own.  See, I didn't want to buy Home Hardware paint again, since the last batch I had was so crappy.  So I went into our little tiny Benjamin Moore store to see if he could color match to my paint square.  Why, sure, yes they do color match.  Can they call me at this number when it's ready?  Huh? Can't you just do it in like 5 minutes??  Don't you have a little computer scanner??   Uh, no.  Apparently, according to him, he was going to 'eyeball' it.     ...

 

*crickets*

 

Let's say I was a wee bit unconvinced by his ability to eyeball it.  But in all honestly, when I came back, he had it pretty much color perfect.  You couldn't even see it on the paint paper?tab?thing?, what ever they are called. 

 

Here's it all back to normal, with a hand towel holder even!!

 

 

Ryan re-caulked the bathroom tub while we had it tore apart, so that's TWO things we get to cross off the list. 

Go us!

Storm's Art Part 2

Here's a couple better pictures of Storm's art in her room.

Storm's Art

This:

has been kicking my butt this week.

I started it last Saturday, sorted out the right paint shades and painted the words.
I got about this far:

And there it sat for more than a few days, while I distracted myself with virtually anything that would allow me to not sit down and finish painting all that black around those teeny tiny swirly letters.

My original idea was to paint the sides black, the background a lighter pink with the black backed letters. Sorta like this:

Except...I really didn't like it.  For one thing, I made the pink too bright.  My Storm is not a pink girl.  It was just a bit disappointing.

So, I came up with another idea.  First, I painted the area that would remain pink, a much lighter, nicer pink.

Then I called in the husband to mark out the outline and tape it all off.

Thank goodness for him. 

ready to paint

Following advice on how to get picture perfect stripes, I painted over the tape with the light pink.

And then painted over the tape with black, and filled in the rest of the area.

Then I recruited the man again to take off the tape.

Here it is, all done and drying, waiting to be hung up in her room.

I'll have to take a better picture in the daylight when I hang it up.  Oh let's be honest.  When Ryan hangs it up!

Whew.  I'm glad this project is done.  I get to cross something off the list and Storm is extremely happy with it!

First Veto

Saturday was Ryan's busy day.

He shovelled our sidewalks, shovelled out the gate to the back yard, chipped all the ice off the back sidewalk, walked down to Mom's and shovelled off and chipped all the ice off her back deck (since someone beat him to the front driveway).  By the way, it's like -25 with a windchill and Mother Nature decided we didn't nearly have enough rooms on our igloo and dumped like six more inches of snow on us.  He started laundry, cleaned the stove (!), went to the store, made supper, and vetoed one item off the list.

That's right.  One thing now has a notation beside it.

You see, I mentioned it's -30ish outside right?  Well, guess what.  It's about -20ish in the attic space.

Ha!

See that?!  #14.  spring job, above 0!!

Ah well.  I've lived with that weird light for almost 7 years.  I'm sure I can wait another 3 months.


Oh, and before you think I wasn't home or just sitting on my computer, I was getting started on #22.

That's right.  I'm in the painting zone.

Subway art, my way

My hand is a little sore.  My arm is a little sore.  I haven't painted in a really long time.

But I got it done.  Even before Christmas!  Go me.

It started off with using Wordle  to inspire me with the placement of the words.

Decided on something finally.  I had tons of screen snips.  I could spend hours hitting randomize on that site.  Anyways.  Here's a shot of the words on the canvas before painting.

I used our projector and traced the words on with pencil.

Words all painted.  Looks good with a white background, but I wanted black.  Sometimes, if I'm doing a black background and using the projector I'll just print the picture or words in white and then either draw the outlines on with chalk, or paint in the dark with the projector on.  Yes I've painted in the dark.  Lots.   But it's freaking cold in the basement and I wanted to paint at the kitchen table.  So I painted all the lettering first.

Then I outlined in black. 

Here's where I stopped for the night.  All the eyes and faces are for the kid's amusement when they woke up in the morning!  They were quite fascinated with the painting.  Blade was so happy his name was in brown, because it's his favorite color!! Um, not really, it isn't, but he's a sweet child and he was just excited to see his name and everyone else's on a painting.  Hehe.

Finished Painting.

It now hangs in the kitchen.  The colors look a little off in this picture, but here's the inspiration for these particular colors.  It hangs about 15 feet to the right of the gigantic painting I did 4 years ago for behind our table.

Side note:

Hunter came home from school and seen the painting with just the letters done.  He says, "Did you do that with Wordle?".  I was like .. um yes, thinking in my head, how do you know about Wordle?  Hunter: "Oh, yea, we use that at school when making our Power Point Presentations!"  

...

Have I ever mentioned he's 9 folks??  NINE, and they are making Power point presentations in school..with wordle.   School rocks these days!

Swap Shop Finds

While looking for a buffet for the sitting room, mom and I saw a lot of 'interesting' furniture.  Most of it extremely ugly and overpriced. 

Until we went into the local antique store/swap shop. 

We (I) didn't really expect to find much there in my price range (cheap!).

In fact, we had declared the place a bust when the owner had asked us if we had went down to the basement, as she had more stuff down there. 

 Basement?!?

So down we trudged, with me thinking I'd just find more of the same down there as I did upstairs.

And lo and behold, we found something!!

Okay actually we found about 4 somethings, but two wouldn't fit in the place I was thinking about.  We did find the buffet there, for a mere $45, broken and looking for help.  I also found this huge blond coffee table.  I've been randomly on the search for a big, square, black coffee table to put in front of my sectional downstairs.  Well she may not be black, but she's definitely big and square!

After borrowing a sander from my FIL, I took it outside and sanded it down.  Just to discover it was really laminate and not wood.  Oh well.  It scratched it up a bit and I had primer!  A coat of primer and three coats of really pathetic paint (DON'T buy HH Beauti-tone Paint, what a waste of time that stuff was.  I had to put on three coats and in some spots I can still see where I should have done 4 (FOUR!! Zomg I don't think so!)) 

Anyways.

Here be the final results.

She fits in perfectly!!! Oh and she was $25 people!

Twenty five bucks, NO TAX! 

Woot!!