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Sidenote Saturday: Welcome To My Party

Sidenote Saturday: Welcome To My Party

I’m a little late to the party. Like three seasons late to the party. This week I found Fixer Upper on Netflix. I’ve watched the show before when we have had cable in hotels or at a friends’ or relatives’ houses. But to have episode after episode at my disposal? Game changer.

So needless to say, I have been binge watching and this is what I have learned:

People who DIY should not watch television shows or Netflix shows of people who DIY.

Why? Because they make it look so easy and fast! Fixer Upper is 44 minutes long without commercials. An entire house makeover done in 44 minutes?! It took me that long to decide what color to paint the guest bedroom 😉

But at least I can scratch that off my To Do  list.

I started with color options from Sherwin Williams and thought I had found the right one, but I couldn’t find a trim color that I liked. My next option was Home Depot and after a little digging and swatch collecting I found this:

Planetary Silver for the walls and Frost (a perfectly suited name for Minnesota) for the trim.

Here’s what the remainder of our guest room DIY list looks like:

Select wall and trim colors

Buy supplies

Prep walls

Sand trim

Paint trim

Paint walls

Paint closet doors

Paint back of bedroom door

Paint window cornice

Make curtains

Buy bedspread

Make a headboard

Rearrange furniture

Here are the before pictures taken from the four corners of the room:

 

This is going to be fun. I hope you enjoy the DIY journey along with us!

Happy Saturday,

~Wendy

Sidenote Saturday: A Quick History Lesson

Sidenote Saturday: A Quick History Lesson

So here’s a quick history lesson: In 1865, the Tell City Chair Company was founded (the same company who made the chairs I was working on the other day).

As this website says:

They produced some of the finest hand-crafted furniture in the world. Pieces are highly-valued in the antique community and can be found in the White House.

Who knew history could be fun?!

You can read all about the company here.

Because these chairs have so much background, I didn’t want to paint over the original wood. But the seat cushions desperately needed some attention.

I removed the fabric to uncover another layer of fabric, which was original with the chair.

This process was not a fast one. Both layers of fabric were stapled to the seat bottom a billion times, and removing them was very tedious. Wade has a phobia of getting stuck in the foot with sharp objects, so he about had a cow when he walked into the garage and saw staples all over the floor.

Heehee sorry Wade 🙂

The next step was picking fabric. I wanted to do something with Farmhouse vibe. These are the four fabrics I was choosing between:

I had my friend Nikki model for me today. Thank you Nikki for being a fantastic fabric model, Cindy Crawford has nothing on you!

I knew which one I liked right away. Tan woven fabric with small linen colored stripe = Winner!

I will let you get back to enjoying your Saturday. Stop by next week for a step by step tutorial on how to recover a chair seat.

~Wendy

Sidenote Saturday: Becky’s Dresser and How I Take Advantage of Great Weather

Sidenote Saturday: Becky’s Dresser and How I Take Advantage of Great Weather

After a very humid week, we finally had a break in heat and humidity yesterday. It was a top 100 day, upper 70’s with low humidity. That meant that the air was turned off, the windows were opened and the garage doors came up as I spent the day playing at my workbench.

Today is going to be just as amazing so you know what that means? This will be a quick post to catch you up on a couple of things that I want to share and then I will be off to enjoy the day.

Let’s start with the picture that Becky sent me showing how she styled the dresser in her entry way.

I love the personal touches she added. She shared with me that she was going to add one more basket on the top slatted shelf but won’t be putting any baskets on the second shelf as she had planned. Her daughters are loving putting their shoes in their new special spots!  Too cute.

Great Job Becky!

On Wednesday I revisited my new favorite store, Rustic Revival Barnwood. If you live within 100 miles of this store, GO!!  Anything and everything you need to complete that barn wood project is here.

I bought five gray barn boards, an old window frame and two pieces of slate.

Hold on tight as I show you next week what I made out of these items.

What’s that? You don’t want to wait??

Here’s a sneak peek. 🙂

I have to go…the day is calling. Have a great Saturday,

Wendy

Sidenote Saturday: Casters

Sidenote Saturday: Casters

I’ve fallen into a caster phase. I want to put casters on everything!

I went to a barn board resale shop and by the time I left I had 100 projects floating around in my brain and I wanted to put casters on all of them.

Everything needs a caster.  🙂

Let me show you how easy it is to put caster on table legs.

Our dining table is nice but needed an update. You guessed it, casters.

I ordered these online through Amazon. $24.00 for a set of four.

They arrived two days later and we got to work right away attaching them to the table. This is a very quick and easy project.

Seriously, 20 minutes is all you need.

Using the actual caster as your guide mark where you are going to screw it in.

Drill a pilot hole.

Screw in the caster and repeat for the other three legs. Then flip the table over and you are done.

Easy peasy.

These casters were about two inches tall, which logically raised the table two inches. That meant that I needed to add chair pads to make up the difference. Chair pads were becoming more and more necessary if only for the fact that I was tired of peeling myself off of the wood chair seat on a humid day. Gross.

I had intended to make some chair pads but Wade and I went to IKEA yesterday to buy Jack kitchen supplies for his new college apartment and I found these pads.

$5.oo a piece!!  I cannot make them cheaper than that. Six chairs pads instantly piled into the cart.

While I sit here and bask in all of the dining table update glory, I want to thank you all for following along with my backsplash posts. I would much rather hear your opinions than the sound of crickets.

Have a great weekend,

Wendy

Sidenote Saturday: Grouting is Not Fun

Sidenote Saturday: Grouting is Not Fun

So far, tiling the backsplash has been fun. Not fun like going on vacation fun, but fun as in learning something new and taking pride in the fact that I did it and it looks great fun.

But yesterday, the fun came to a screeeeeeching halt.

Grouting is not fun.

It is tedious and messy and time consuming. You should definitely hire someone to do this for you. God Bless those people that enjoy this step or make a living doing it. YOU ARE WORTH EVERY PENNY!

First I mixed the Flexible Grout Admixture (the bottle on the left) with the sanded grout. The Tile Shop suggested using the admixture instead of water. Since this is my first time grouting, I can’t say that it worked better than water, but I can say that it worked really well.

Per the instructions on the bottle, the consistency of the grout should be similar to toothpaste. Again I added the liquid first and then the grout powder. After finding the consistency of toothpaste, the mixture needed to sit for 6-8 minutes before starting to grout.

At this point it was a matter of squishing the grout between each tile using a padded trowel. (I have no idea if that is the correct name for the trowel, but it has a little bit of give to it.)

In the area that the trowel was too big, I grabbed some grout with my fingers and filled the cracks. Grout will fall off your trowel and onto the counter and behind the stove and onto the bottom of the cupboards and maybe even possibly onto your glasses. I warned you it was messy.

I grouted about a ten to twelve inch space and then wiped everything off with a damp (not wet) large sponge. Rinsing my sponge often, it took at least five times to remove the grout from the tiles. I warned you about tedious.

Final warning: Time consuming. The pattern of grouting and wiping continues until you have bumped your head 3000 times on the cupboards, you run out of grout or you’re finished.

The grout needs to dry for 24-72 hours before I can seal it. Thank goodness. I am going to need that long to get motivated to finish. 🙂

On Monday I will share a couple of tips and tricks I have learned and then the big reveal on Wednesday!

Have a great weekend,

Wendy

Sidenote Saturday: Today Is The Day

Sidenote Saturday: Today Is The Day

Today is the day. Today is the day that I jump in and start the backsplash. Today is the day I stop watching 8000 videos and reading tutorials and just go for it.

Today, I am nervous. I have never taken on a project like this one all by myself, but I am going to give it a shot. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and successes.

Let me back up one step, prior to gathering supplies, I took a class to determine first hand if I could even do this.

 

I decided that I could.

Then I made about five trips to The Tile Shop to find the exact tile I envisioned. And just when I thought I had found “the one”, I found a different one.

This is going to be in our kitchen for a very long time, so I wanted to love it, not just like the tiles, but love them. This is my definition of tile love.

Next I had to do some math.

My backsplash area is approximately 220 inches wide x 14 inches tall.

220 inches wide x 14 inches tall = 3080 square inches.

One foot equals 12 inches. One square foot: 12 inches wide x 12 inches tall = 144 square inches.

I needed to figure out how many square feet of tiles I needed:

3080 square inches/ 144 square inches = 21.39 square feet.

If each tile sheet is 1 square foot or 12×12 square inches and each box contains 10 sheets,

then the answer to “How many tile sheets do I need for the backsplash?” would be 21.39. Rounding that number to 22 means that I will need two full boxes of tile and a third box for fill in tiles and breakage.

Did I lose you? Call me if you need help.

Side note: I tutored Algebra for years and also volunteered to teach an advanced math class at our local elementary school.

I love math.

Moving on. The next step was to gather all of my supplies. I bought:

  • 3 boxes of Gobi Brick Tile
  • Pro Grout Natural Sanded
  • Flexible Admixture
  • Pro Bond Non-Sag
  • Enhance and Seal
  • Trowels
  • Wet  Saw

 

And now…I work.

Stay tuned for a progress report on Monday.

Wendy