by Wendy Scheel | Sep 17, 2016 | DIY
I love working with drop cloths. There must be something about the simplicity of the fabric, the blank slate to create on and the old world charm that draws me in.
There are so many fun, great ideas out in the blogosphere so let’s take a look at a few.
Roman shades anyone?
Furniture covering?
No-Sew-Drop Cloth Valance?
Lampshades?
Wait, you don’t want to make a lampshade? You don’t want to try your hand at recovering your furniture?
You want to make something out of drop cloth just because you love it also?
I recently shared a quick tutorial about how to make a growth chart. It’s super easy and quick, but if you don’t know how to sew or don’t have the time, you can buy the blank growth chart here and make your own.
I’d love to see what you create!
Have a great weekend,
~Wendy
P.S. We are putting the final touches on Jimmy and Nikki’s slate backsplash and it looks amazing. Details with before and after pictures next week.
by Wendy Scheel | Sep 12, 2016 | DIY
As you may know, yesterday was the official NFL Season opener. Our household isn’t huge on football, so I spent the day multitasking. With the football game playing in the background, I spent the day working on orders and planning out my week.
If you want a visual of what that looked like, you can catch it on my Instagram account, OldLakeGeorge, from yesterday! (Nobody likes the sound of their own voice right? Please don’t judge haha)
Across the street however, there is a household of avid Minnesota Vikings fans, our neighbors Jimmy and Nikki. I didn’t want to disrupt their game watching, but we had some work to do on their new backsplash. So I snuck over at halftime to get started.
As per the directions of Aspect Peel and Stick Tiles, the area needed to be clean, flat, smooth, dust free drywall. As you can see we already most of those steps accomplished, but I did I quick dusting with a cloth and voila! Ready.
Ok, not quite ready. Before we could actually lay tile, we needed to do a few things.
We checked that the area above the countertop was level. A nice level line is necessary because if you have a slanted beginning, you will have a slanted backsplash. Not good.
Then, we laid out the tile to make sure the pattern looked nice.
Lastly, we removed all the switch plates. Once they were off, we measured for the opening of theses plates and cut the tile. The tile Jimmy and Nikki chose was a very thin, slate tile that came in 6×23.5 inch sheets. They were very easy to cut using common kitchen scissors. If they had chosen something glass or metal, we would have had to use a glass cutting tool or a utility knife.
From this point on, using the Aspect Peel and Stick Tiles really was as easy as it sounds. All you had to do was peel off the paper on the back, line it up on the wall, and stick it on! And as a little side note, they have fantastic instructions on their website.
The only word of caution I would give is to make sure that you line the tile up carefully because once it’s stuck, it’s stuck!
As halftime ended, I wanted to let them get back to the game but I promised I would be back later this week to finish.
So far they are loving what they are seeing and I am too.
More updates this week,
~Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Sep 10, 2016 | DIY
I feel like I have been doing so many big projects lately (i.e. the farmhouse table, big wholesale pillow cover order, etc.) that I decided to take a little time for a few little projects.
I found an idea on Pinterest (which is pretty amazing because Sam takes care of my Pinterest account, thanks Sam!) using a silver platter and some chalkboard paint. I happened to have a silver platter that hadn’t been used in a very long time, so I decided to spruce it up! This quick little project took less than 20 minutes (not including drying time).
The first step was to paint the whole thing with two layers of paint. I used Country Chic Chalk Paint in the same Cheesecake color as Sam’s wedding centerpieces (see those here).
After both layers dried, I painted the middle section with Rustoleum’s Chalkboard paint in Black.
From there I treated the dried platter with chalk, meaning I took a piece of white chalk and rubbed it all over the black paint.
I ended up using this fun little project as a decorative piece for my Fall mantle.
I also had time to change a piece of my living room furniture. Previously, I had decorated with a chest from Charles Schultz’s estate in that spot (yes Charles Schultz’s as in the author of Peanuts), but the piece was too long for the space.
Hidden in the loft upstairs, I’ve had a card catalog just waiting to make its debut. I took the casters that were on my dining room table off, and put them on the card catalog. This raised it about 3 inches, which made it the perfect size for my loveseat.
These two projects were so quick and fun.
Then Sam gave me another quick idea, this time not in the DIY category. After her visit this weekend, I sent her home with a bunch of corn on the cob. She found a way to cook it using her crock pot! I had never heard of this before and want to give it a try myself! If you want to try it too, here’s the link: http://www.theyummylife.com/slow_cooker_corn_on_the_cob
Hope you all have a great weekend! Can’t wait to see you next week and fill you in on updates about Jimmy and Nikki’s backsplash.
~Wendy
by Wendy Scheel | Jul 23, 2016 | DIY, Sidenote Saturday
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
by Wendy Scheel | Jul 16, 2016 | DIY, Sidenote Saturday
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
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