Roasted marshmallows, smores and warmth out the back door. SWEET!
I had a rusting scrap metal box that Heidi gave me when she and her husband decided to purge some of their….treasures. Lucky me! She originally got it at one of our favorite spots, ReStore. It sat in her garage for a couple of years and then literally sat up-ended in my back yard for another 6-7 years. Getting more and more beautiful with exposure all the while. Continue reading
There was a rental house to the north of my house. The yard was weedy and overgrown or worn down depending on what was going on over there. I wanted to be able to walk to my backyard and gate without cringing. But, I didn’t want a “wall”.
This was the view of my house from the north.
I kept a photo library of fences and arbors that I liked. With those pictures close by and with the help of my pals we designed an arbor type fence for my front yard screen. The main idea was to make sure it had shape/dimension and use plantings to create a “soft” screen rather than an unneighborly wall.
The completed arbor before planting anything.
I used amber colored glass post caps and did not make it one continuous fence.
Old Seattle street lamp. Kitchen pendant light?
We are down one girl this week. Monica is out-of-town with her family. Heidi and I decided to go on a field trip to one of our favorite places. We needed some inspiration and just felt like roaming the aisles of ReStore. Continue reading
The hallway, right off my kitchen, leads both to my back door/porch and down to my unfinished but functional basement. It has been creepy and ugly in that hallway forever.
I used to just shut that door and pretend the hallway didn’t exist. But, my washer and dryer are downstairs! I had to open that door. Heidi and I have referred to it as “the murder’s hallway” since I moved into my house many years ago.
I also realized I was missing out on the beautiful natural light that streams into my kitchen when I leave that door open. So, I called in the girls and we made a plan!
The challenge: Improve it easily and inexpensively and use only what I already had on hand? Steep requirements, but we were up for the challenge. Continue reading
This simple tip saves a ton of time in the long run.
My kitchen color palette is portable and ready to go!
Keep your overall paint color palette handy and top of mind. Grab a couple extra paint stir sticks the next time you are at your local hardware or paint store. Use one stir stick per paint color/finish.
You’ll have your full color palette handy and ready to travel with you as you find and select future paint colors, rugs, flooring, furniture, towels, shower curtain, bedding etc. You see where I’m going here, right?
If you are really disciplined you could write your color formula, paint store name and phone number on the sticks, as well. I’m not that far gone (yet), but I know there are those of you out there so, knock yourself out! 
This easy little project has been perfect for posting drawings, ideas or artwork I make or get from my talented friends both short and tall.
I also clip photos, fall leaves, concert tickets, teen idols (Flashback – I did that in high school) or anything else that inspires me. I’m constantly adding and exchanging things I pin up. And sometimes I don’t change anything for several days, weeks or months.
It’s like a real life, olden days, analog non-electronic Pinterest board! Continue reading
Spring is trying to arrive here in Seattle. We started talking about purging and decluttering those piles that somehow seem to appear and grow on their own. How does that happen? Where does all that paper come from?
There is some good news! If you are fortunate to have a fancy schmancy, smartsy wartsy phone there is a slick new app out. Just snap a photo of a piece of unwanted junk mail and Paper Karma handles the rest. More details are here.
Good bye clutter. Hello spring : )
We are a fan and follower of the Pink Toes and Power Tools blog.
Loved her post about creating a visual library (project gallery) of past projects. It’s so much more intuitive and fun than filing through text links. I’m a visual person so, a sucker for a picture any day.
Have a look by clicking “Our Project Gallery” up in the black bar next to FAQ. Kudos to Heidi who did the lion’s share of the work pulling it together!
Well, I’ll be honest here. Heidi created the whole lion. There was no sharing. 
Heidi after creating the gallery. Sleepy.
You know how annoying all those pesky little projects are that remain on your “To-Do” list forever ’cause you really don’t want to do them anyway? Yes, they drive you crazy.
Here’s the solution. You and each of your friends (I have two) make a list of little things you’ve been wanting to get done. Then you help each other get them done in a swift and fun manner. POOF! Your To-Do list shrinks to near nothing in a day (or two).
Below is my CHECKED OFF, completed and mostly done pesky list.
1. Base Shoe: Size, Cut and Install. I tore out all my base shoe moulding before I got my new kitchen floor installed. I got some new moulding and already had it painted and ready. I just didn’t install it….for 4 months. Once we sized and cut it the install took only about 1 hour. Heidi’s husband dared to lend us his nail gun and compressor. It worked great and wasn’t that scary to use. Really gratifying. After that came the thankless, but meditative job of caulking the edges, spackling the nail holes and paint touch up. CHECK!
Nail gun to attach base shoe to moulding
Base shoe - Before & After
New toe kick with base shoe attached.
2. Toe Kick: Prime, Paint and Install Toe Kick, then Install Base Shoe. I had torn out the toe kicks below my existing cabinets when I got my Marmoleum floor installed, but hadn’t painted them yet to match the cabinets. CHECK!
3. Door Air Seal: A cold draft came whistling up from my basement. The floor near the door was perpetually freezing cold. We installed a simple little hardware strip to reduce basement cold air draft. I had the strip for about 3 months, but hadn’t installed it. CHECK!
Door Air Seal – Blocks air when it is down, lifts to allow door to freely open.
4. Marmoleum Care: I had the Marmoleum flooring installed almost 6 months ago. I purchased the flooring from Greenhome Solutions in the Freemont neighborhood. Cameron and Tess were great! I promised them I would clean the floor followed by the finish/seal right after install. I even purchased the special Forbo Marmoleum cleaning products for the task before the install. I had the product. I just wasn’t excited about cleaning and sealing it – yuck. (Monica wasn’t too excited about reading the 3pt type directions on the back of the bottle.) CHECK!
5. Chair Slides: I got a new kitchen floor installed and I certainly didn’t want it getting all scratched up. I’d been gingerly moving my chairs by lifting and shifting them. No, no, no sliding. We finally searched out some test slide protector options. STILL ON THE LIST. RRrrrrrrr….nothing has worked, yet. I’ll find something. AND if you’ve had success with a particular product, please do not hesitate to pass it on.
You'd think one of these chair slides gizmos would work, but no.
6. Finish Trim: I had a flip-up counter top installed by 4 Evergreen Fabricators. Travis (travis@4ec.biz) did a fabulous job and had to do some tricky figuring-out with the install. He stuck with it and got it right. My counter top can fold down and away when not in use.
Perfect for my limited counter top kitchen. Can’t claim the idea, though. Our friend, Anita, had something similar installed in her kitchen. She tipped us off on the correct brackets to use. The counter top material, install and special flip-up was more expensive than I anticipated so to save some money I decided to finish the edges off myself. That was almost 4 months ago, now. This annoying little project consisted of miter cutting screen molding to wrap and hide the exposed edge of the plywood mount, sanding and painting it all to match the cabinet. CHECK!
Installing the last little trim piece on the exposed edge of the plywood mount.
Trim, completed!
Thanks Heidi and Monica. My list would still be pesky without you! Now on to your houses. Let’s get it done!
You may remember the updated chairs & legs post from a couple of weeks ago? Since those were ready and painted we were off to tackle the tabletop.
The edges of my table were slightly curved and had a multilevel edge detail. I had forever used a tablecloth to cover that up. We decided to just cut the edges off and make the table a simple and smaller rectilinear surface. This was definitely a task that required a little courage and the help of Heidi and Monica. Power tools anyone?
It was a little trickier than any of us could have imagined since there was not a squared edge on any of the 4 sides. We decided to use a metal square to draw what would be the final tabletop shape/size. Then we clamped the same metal squares to the table so we could run our circular saw alongside them as a guide. There was some serious finger-crossing and guessing going on. We knew it wasn’t going to be a big loss if we failed. After all it was only a 20-year-old cheap pine table. And there is always the table-cloth ; )
We figured we could sand off that nasty yellowish surface and stain it a neutral color. Too yellow for me.
Next came the sanding and staining.
The sanding was challenging. No wonder my table had lasted 20 years – it had a hard finish that would not sand off easily.
We started by trying an orbital sander. That didn’t work.
We moved on to non-toxic stripper (Citrus Strip). That didn’t work either.
OK then, confession, we tried a test patch of the highly toxic stripper that was sitting in the basement. No luck! We were kind of happy about that.
Finally, we found that the palm sander, 60 grit sandpaper, and a lot of elbow grease were the trick to cutting through that tough surface. (Heidi’s pretty proud of herself that she cracked the code of the polyurethane finish removal).
After sanding off the polyurethane, we moved into the fine-tune sanding of the wood. We used the orbital sander without the dust bag attached – that wasn’t on purpose, it was a used sander and we couldn’t find the bag…What are ya gonna do?
We made sure we had dust mask, protective glasses and noise reduction head-gear all to protect the obvious. We did the sanding in a garage/shop so it wasn’t a big deal to have a little dust flying around. It wasn’t hard to do but it did take some time and patience.
We began with a coarse 60 grit sandpaper and gradually moved through finer and finer grits until we ended up at 240. It was super fine and the table surface felt so smooth and soft by the time we got there (4 hours later). For the last sanding step, we eased (rounded) the edges very slightly.
We used one of the edge pieces that we cut off the table top to test the stain color options. Again, we just used the stain we had left over from other projects as a first step. We settled on Walnut. The actual table surface is Pine, but the color of the Walnut stain seemed to work well with the other colors in my kitchen. I ended up applying two layers of stain to get the color right.
The final step was to apply the sealer. We used Daly’s Profin. The directions on the can said to apply 3-4 coats. I applied 3 coats with a sponge brush and made sure had good ventilation. Luckily we had some warm days. I could leave the doors and windows open. I did turn on my kitchen hood when the weather wouldn’t allow the doors and windows to be open.
Finally, we put the legs on and there ya have it. There are some finishing details I might get to, but for the most part this project is done for now. On to others!
