Shelves are coming along!

I've been working a little bit each day on the shelves, and with a big push this weekend, I have 99% of the building part done. 

Where I left off is when I had the base cabinets pretty much done, other than the base molding.  I had installed the cabinets, painted (and painted and painted - 1 coat of primer and 3 coats of semi-gloss top coat). 

Dale had applied a skim coat to the wall to even them out, I sanded and primed.  Then I had 2 sheets of plywood cut at Home Depot to 11" wide, and I started on the right side, to be sure I could work out all the problems before I had to make everything fit.  We knew we wanted to run the coffered ceiling edges along the front of the bookshelves to integrate them, so I had to leave 5.5" for the end panels, and that left me a rather short shelf over the doorway.  I decided graduated sizes of shelves would work best, so I got to work building the first set of shelves, and anchored them in.

In the meantime, one of the coffer beams was slightly out of place, which we didn't realize until we took down the plastic and stood in the kitchen, then it was apparent that one of them was a little bowed.  So we took that down and reworked it. 

This is what I got done yesterday.  I still had the facing pieces on the front of the shelves to add, to cover the plywood edges and to bulk up the look of the unit.  But this morning, we decided we should take a break and go to the Rose Bowl Flea Market --

Hoping we could find some interesting stuff -- amazingly, we ended buying only a bag of glazed almonds!  Nothing the whole day!  I saw stuff I liked, but just wasn't inspired to spend the money.  We did enjoy looking, and we'd packed a lunch so that was nice to sit under a tree and chat and eat our sandwiches halfway through. 




But when we got back, I got back to work and finished cutting and sanding all the edges, then got them glued and nailed up:

Fill, sand, paint, and so.much.caulking to do!  I ran out this evening, so I need to get more in the morning, but I have 3/4 of it all done.  Just the last set of shelves on the far left to finish up.  Then I can prime and paint.  And now we can finish these boxes on the ceiling, with the two rows of molding (and more caulk! and more primer! and more paint!)  But it's the home stretch now.

I have a busy week at work, so I won't be able to work much on these until the weekend, but I am hoping to get a little done every day again, maybe a coat of paint for an hour or so a day.  I did manage to get the baseboard molding in, so it's just the cabinets and that last set of coffered boxes to finish.  The fireplace is looking really bad now -- I've just slapped paint here and there on it while I'm working on the shelves, but Dale is going to do a nice coat of plaster over the brick and maybe he can get that done this week (along with finishing up the wall with the sliding glass window.  Who knows, maybe we can move furniture back in here soon!

Bookshelves/cabinets

We've had floor to ceiling bookshelves in the past, and one thing that bugged me about them is that sometimes we have books or magazines that we want to keep, but they look messy and terrible.  So I knew I wanted some closed shelves as well as open bookshelves.  I've been looking on Pinterest a lot to see what it is I really like, and I tend to like traditional shelves over cabinets:

I seriously thought about building he lower cabinets, then came to my senses and decided to buy unfinished ones from Lowe's -- Home Depot has the same ones, they're unfinished oak and I've used them before in a previous house and was happy enough with them.  Mostly, they just need to hide my mess!

Because the walls have all kinds of issues, including the door not being centered, a tv will need to be wired on one, and there's a floor heater that we aren't going to replace for a few years -- I had to buy several sizes, but I know that when I paint them all they will read as one unit. 

The first cabinets I worked on went over the floor vents.  I had to cut out the backs and centers to fit around the vent, and replace the panels on the doors with open metal grating so the heat can come out.  First, altering the cabinet boxes:

I took the horizontal shelves and cut them to fit vertically, to keep the heat confined to the center section.  I also had to move an outlet from behind the one on the left to the side of the base.







So far so good.  I got the other boxes in, moving one outlet, and running a connection between the wall and the base so we could hide our electronics and television wires.  We hung the bracket as well -- I really like this one we got from IKEA, minimal moving parts, nice and sturdy attached to the studs.

This week, I went to Home Depot and had them cut some 3/4 plywood to size for the top of the cabinets, then ran 3/4" screen mold along the edges, filling and sanding. 

The one on the right has a coat of primer, and you can see the outlet box.  Well, you could if Persephone did not want to get into every picture.

Another thing I was really glad to do was change out the pocket door and trim it out.  I've positively hated the previous door - it had a layer of painted paneling glued over the beautiful panels, and it was hideous.  After all the work I had done restoring the one from the hall, I decided to use that one and so Dale took out the old door, and put in the nice, refinished one in.  But we also had to remove all the old paneling "trim" they put around the door.  So I had to cut all new trim, but I got that done this week, and have added a couple of coats of primer and paint, so it looks great.

This is before I got the paint on it.  But Mercury wants equal time in the photos.













I've painted the doors and the cabinets and the door trim, and meanwhile, Dale has skim coated the walls, so they look a thousand percent better now.

He fixed the plaster problems on this side, and leveled out the wall.  I still have to do some more sanding, priming and adding baseboard before I can paint and call this wall finished, but it looks SO much better.






He still has the sliding glass wall to plaster - he added in the drywall but needs to give it a few coats of plaster to fill the cracks and gaps.  And wouldn't you know it, we are about a 12 x 20" piece of drywall short. I hope I can pick up a scrap somewhere this week.











So here is where it stands right now -- got the base cabinets in, painted with primer + 3 coats of semi-gloss, they may need one more coat or just touch ups, and I'm ready to tackle the shelves this weekend.

I'm ready to add baseboard and get the walls primed and the shelves put up!  We've also decided on an approach to the fireplace, something to hopefully minimize it's weird placement that's given us all kinds of trouble as far as arranging furniture.  But that'll be a little further down the line! 

Living room ceiling

As we were driving back from Indiana, we decided we had enough time to get started on one more project at home.  Our kitchen is 99% done - just need to scrape together enough to pay for countertops, but we're OK with keeping them plywood for a little longer.  And we do have a few other things that we'd like to do, such as:

• replace the 2 front windows with new single hung windows
• replace the back door with a full view or multi-paned french door
• hang some decor
• make a chair pad for the bench
• get a new kitchen table

But those things are going to happen over time.  Iam pleased with the way it looks -- no big "reveal" as of yet, because we actually moved a bunch of our living room stuff into the kitchen (the two big recliners, mainly), so I can't quite take pictures. 

But as for that drive -- one thing that's really been driving me nuts was theliving room - it's acoustic tile ceiling and the ugly paneled walls that are painted but still uneven, the giant brick fireplace that's in the worst place ever -- but mostly the ceiling.  This is what it looked like when we bought the place:

Kind of hard to see -- and these pictures look WAY better than the room did.  Nice floor (needs to be refinished, really scratched and gouged, but nice wood), the rest has gotta go.  Here's what it looked like before we moved all the furniture out and stripped out the room:

Best attributes:  good size, nice floor, lots of light from big windows.  So that's how we've had it for awhile.  Painted the brick the same beige as the rest of the room so it would blend in better, but other than that, nothing.  But we were getting this along the edge where we redid the kitchen and knocked out a wall:

That's the lovely beam we put in, and that's the ugly ceiling tiles that we had to cut back to access the area.  Brown, seriously??  what were these people thinking?





So, we cleared the room, taped off the doors and went to work pulling off the paneling and then taking down the tiles and furring strips on the ceiling.  It always looks SO MUCH worse before it gets better!

 And this is AFTER we took stack after stack of ceiling tiles out, and piles of furring strips and nails and all kinds of yukky trash.  Gross.

What we wanted to do was create a coffered ceiling.  We had one in our house on Bosart Street back when we lived in Indiana, we loved it.  I watched another blogger do hers in NO time at all, and it gave me the nudge to get going.  I showed the pics to Dale, and he was sold, so this is our plan.  But first, of course, there are some serious issues that removing the paneling showed us:

We knew there was some plaster damage here, the paneling was loose at the corner and we could peek in and see there were some issues.  Large chunks of plaster gone, and the stuff along the bottom -- well, that's just a mess.  What they had done was create a switch that turned on the outlet - but they ran the wire right above the wood there, flush with the plaster.  We could have hit it with a nail or screw anytime.  Totally  unsafe.  

The other mess is this above, around the sliding glass door.  All kinds of janky wood filler, and big swaths of plaster missing.  This is actually OK with us - we can fix the plaster, but I'm contemplating waiting a bit on this, probably just do some minor patching because we plan on removing the sliding glass door and replacing it with 4 french doors that we bought off craigslist for a hundred bucks.  We'll need to build a frame, and we can see here exactly what size we need to fit it to.  And it would be easier if we didn't get the plaster all finished out since we'd have to cut it again, and we want to get the doors done this spring, so we may just patch this up a bit and let it roll for a bit.  There is also some damage to the floors here which we'll fix when we replace the doors.

After we pulled everything down, we patched all the many many holes in the ceiling, sanded them down, then patched again.  I contemplated priming the ceiling, but we decided to go ahead and lay out the coffers at this point.

Don't you love the contact cement all over the walls?  it's nasty, looks like dried on snot.  We have to sand that down, too, and then do a very thin skim coat to level out the walls.

So after screwing 2 x 4s and some blocking to the ceiling, we attached the sides to the boxes that make up the beams in the ceiling.  This actually went really easily, and this is where we also ran into two more problems:  because we are intending on putting bookshelves all along the back wall, we didn't want to build the coffers all the way to that wall, so we stopped 12" short of the wall to allow for the shelves.  So they just sort of stop--

And then .... I threw my back out.  Went to school for a meeting and decided to throw away some old art projects left on the shelf, reached across for something and just felt something slide in my back -- and I was flat on my back for 3 or 4 days.  It hurt to do anything.  Which stinks, because that means we had to live with our house looking like this!

It finally subsided some, I'm still dealing with it, but I can manage as long as I take breaks and don't pick up anything heavy.  So I got the ceiling and beams caulked, primed and painted  --- 2 coats of primer, 2 coats of paint --
And it's looking really awesome.  Right now we have a stupid "boob" light in the center --we want to get a nice ceiling fan fixture, but we'll wait until we need to.  We decided that since we were going to all the trouble to smooth out the ceiling and we could see where all the joists were, we might as well install recessed lights while we were at it. so that added a few days to the job.  But they are AWESOME.

It's so nice that the crappy ceiling tiles are gone, and the ceilings are beautiful and smooth. 

I've done several other things -- finished a whole lot of trim, am halfway through putting in the base cabinets for the bookshelves, but we had to stop and do a bunch of electrical -- this house had all kinds of wacky circuits, and when we added in the recessed lights, we realized that it was time to do a map and get all the circuits mapped.

We listed every single electrical outlet, switch and light in the house, and tested each one.

After we did this, we realized that about 75% of our lights and outlets were on the same circuit, and we had two empties.  So back up into the system to balance that out.  We feel so much better and we know that there are dedicated circuits now to our electronics and that nothing is over-taxed.  And now, no guessing when we need to switch off a breaker to rewire an outlet or run a fixture. 

So while the living rooms are still gross brown, we have been making progress, and hopefully I'll get some updates up in the next week or so.  We are coming along!

Little Stack Table No. 2

What the heck, I'm going to work on another one.  I decided last night that I would use up some of my decorative tins and metal scraps to cover the littlest table.  So I took it apart last night and got the legs painted so that this morning, I could just cut the tabletop and get started.  I cut the metal into random shapes and nailed them down to the plywood base.  After it was done, I used some black paint to "antique" it a bit - it helps pull the pieces together.

I didn't get any shots in progress, I had to go to my office to get the metal scraps and I was just enjoying the peace and quiet.  But, when I got home, I had to flip the top over to pound down all the nails and I knew I'd have to cover that mess with some fabric so my cats don't get their fur all stuck in there!

I had a scrap of corduroy so I turned the edges under and stapled it along the frame.

then I screwed the legs back on and brought it in to join the other table.

 

This one's pretty busy - but I like that style.  Dale will not be so happy with this, however.  I'm thinking that the last table, the biggest one, I'll do a mosaic top.

The cats approve!

Table Project

I bought this set of Ikea tables at a garage sale for 15 dollars.  It's a handy set of little side tables, but I never really liked the color of the bases, and the thickness of the tops.  I've been wanting to redo them for a while, so I thought maybe if I tackle one at a time I can get these done.  I don't really need them to match, so doing them at different times will give me the ability to think of different designs!

For the first one, I am redoing the middle table.  I have a bunch of yardsticks I inherited when I got my new job - because I also had about 2 dozen metal yardsticks, I decided these would be best liberated to work for my project.

The red one is actually a new one I got at Lowe's and tinted red with some acrylic paint.  I wanted a bit of color on this tabletop.  I started by taking the top off the table - turning it over, it was held on by 8 screws underneath.

 

After I took off the top, I removed the four plastic tips from the bottom of the legs, and used Krylon Satin spraypaint to paint it black.

 

I gave it several coats and let it dry all afternoon.  Meanwhile, I cut a piece of 3/4" plywood to fit the top.  The old one was flush with the sides, and that's what I wanted, so I measured and then subtracted the thickness of 2 yardsticks that I was going to use as a frame.

Then I cut my yardsticks on the chopsaw as I went.  I wanted a modified log cabin pattern, so I started in one corner and worked across.

While I was cutting the rulers, some of them were thicker than others, so I shimmed up the thinner ones with strips of the wooden blinds that I bought for the guest room.  Making the blinds fit to size, I had a lot of leftover wooden strips that I knew would come in handy for something - and they did!  When I got this part all done, I gave it two coats of spar varnish.

After it dried, I reattached the metal base to the wooden top, making sure it was centered correctly.  I cut strips of yardsticks to frame out the top, hiding all the cut edges.  And then I gave it two more coats of varnish.

Mercury approves!  He's wearing his harness, because I took him out on his leash this afternoon.

I'm thinking one the the other tops might look good with hammered metal from old tins.  I think I'll keep the bases all black, which will help make them work as a set.

I love my garage

When we were looking for a house, a garage was something we just assumed we'd have - we didn't give it much consideration, but we knew we'd want one because we have a lot of tools.  This house has a really big garage - two car, and it sits back on the lot in the backyard.  We will likely never use this garage for our car, but I have to say, I LOVE my garage as a workspace!

When we bought the house - it was full of old crap - mattresses, some shabby furniture and a really cool old stove, which we were temped to keep, but realized it needed repair and in the long run, it wouldn't fit in with our plans.  We listed everything on Craigslist for free and folks came over and cleared it all out for us.  Then we moved in and just kind of stacked things all over the place.  It also had a broken spring so we couldn't use the garage door opener to get the door up.  We replaced that, and a couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon cleaning it out and arranging things so we could use the space, and now we have the best work space!

It's the perfect place to refinish furniture or build things - yes, that's my bathroom vanity still sitting there, but I'm hoping to get the bathroom FINSHED this week - I'm going to install the flooring while I'm on spring break one day this week -- we finished drywall installation today - starting tomorrow I am doing the mudding and sanding and priming and painting.  It's gonna happen, folks!

The BEST part about getting all the drywall installed in the bathroom is that now I can take out the rest of it from the living room, where it's been since October.  I cleaned the floor and moved the cool cabinet we got ($35 bargain on Craigslist) to center it where the drywall has been leaning for months.  And I got to get out my collection of Chinese checkerboards!

 


This room has so much work to do - you can't see it well, but this wall has painted paneling on it, and acoustic tiles on the ceiling, and no baseboard.  This wall above, actually, is going to be removed - the kitchen is on the other side, and we are going to open it up.  We were debating on doing it as soon as the bathroom is done in the next few weeks - can't decide if we could get it done before we have company in June.  If we are reasonable and think about our progress on the bathroom, we are probably not going to do it - but we might actually just take this wall out and make do for a bit.  I think we are going to do some furniture rearranging this week - try out some new arrangements to work around our weird fireplace situation.



So - there should be some new pictures coming this week as I finish the floor and the walls of the bathroom.  I can't wait!

Making it comfortable

One of the hazards of moving into and renovating a place at the same time is that with all the dust and mayhem swirling about, it's hard to focus on 'decorating' - while we're busy hauling in cement board and having water running through the yard, thinking of where we're going to hang our paintings and place furniture kind of takes a back seat.  But I decided the heck with it, I'm going to make one comfortable space where we can relax.  And I'm going to have to try out several different ways to place furniture in this weird living room, so I might as well get started.

Kind of cozy!






(What you can't see is the pile of drywall behind the couch).

The little red loveseat is going in my studio, but it looks nice here for now.  Eventually, it'll just be Dale's massive recliner and the chair with the dots, along with a table between them. 

The reason the couch is still in here is because I went to IKEA over the weekend to get my studio desks and bookcases, and they were out of stock! Yikes - but it's a good thing there's an IKEA about 25 minutes away, I'll just keep checking to see when they get them back in.

Dale's making progress on the bathroom.  The kitchen is *shudder*...another story......