Soooo tempting..

Ever since I figured out that staining is not that hard (as in, yesterday,)  I've been looking at solid wood pieces of furniture on craigslist thinking.. "I could make that match my stuff..."  Well then I found this:

 

(courtesy of apartmenttherapy.com)

Wait.. you mean I could paint a chandelier?  Whoaaa... in fact, two of those are the same as the one I picked up at the thrift store for $5.  I wouldn't have to find a matching plate to go against the ceiling.. just.. paint one.  

Damn it.  Somebody stop me, please.

Whoa!

I know I'm finished sanding the floors now.. but when I found hard wood under layers of kitchen flooring, I was reeeeally tempted to pull all that up and have a hardwood kitchen floor.  My brother in law took one look at it, though, and said it looked like asbestos.  crap!  I know removal of asbestos is not simple.  So I put the idea on a shelf until I'm ready to seal it in with tile.  Well, then I found this!

I can cut a sample of the floor and send it off to be analyzed for about $30.  Sweet deal, IMHO.  

I also grabbed a water test and a radon test.  Why not?

This blog would probably be more effective if I took pictures with something other than my blackberry, but  since I can't remember to bring my camera before I go to the house, this is what you get for now.

Since there's no difference in the colors in the picture, I've added color samples from the website and adjusted them with photoshop to what I think they look like in person.  Got it?  So my floors are going to be... gunstock!  I didn't think I wanted a "red" stain, but the english chestnut just looked ashy.  

The stain spreads really easily, I was able to do half the closet test area with a little dab of a rag.  I'm feeling really confident about staining the floors.  I'll tell you how I feel about polyurethane when I'm done.

I also bought a dishwasher today!  A portable Maytag model popped up on Craigslist today for $150 and I got it.

I/we (he) finally sanded today!

I finally started sanding my floors today.  I was anxious to do this because it's the LAST thing I'm making myself do before I move in.  That and the roof, but I can get the roof fixed while I'm in the house.  I'm not sanding around furniture.

ANYWAY.  I rented the sander, I got it to the house, my boyfriend helped me get it started and it took more than a few passes with the 40 grit sandpaper to get past the polyurethane in the back bedroom.  After that, he pretty much took over.

I tried to be helpful by sweeping behind him so the sandpaper didn't get clogged, then I wiped down the floors with paint thinner while he moved on to the next room, and I ran out for more water and dinner.

Anyway, it's 10 hours after I rented the thing and I still haven't finished the first step on all of the floors.  After getting a room and a half done, we were through two of the three packages of 40 grit paper and we had three more rooms to go.  I went for more sandpaper and got the girl to give me 36 grit this time, and it worked SO MUCH BETTER.  I also got duct tape so that the bag on the machine would be functional, but I'll be removing that before I return it.

So, tomorrow, I have 3 or 4 hours to finish sanding the dining room with the 36 grit, but I know I won't have time to make a pass with the 80 and 100 before it's time to return the sander (and go to work.)  So this will be a two-rental job after all.

playing in SketchUp

I try to use online paint visualizing software, but the problem with it is, they only let you do one room at a time.  Maybe with a view into a hall of some kind.  My living room looks into my dining room which looks into my kitchen (which looks into a nook.)  Essentially, you end up seeing 4 spaces at once from the front door, 3 if I keep the nook the same as the rest of the kitchen.  Two rooms will not let me see how three or four colors will look next to each other.  So I tried it with sketchup.

I really want to paint my kitchen a bright turquoise, but that will never look good next to that gray blue I have my heart set on for the living room.  If my house doesn't end up looking like grandma's, or a thrift store, it might end up looking like the MAC eyeshadow display.  There are just too many colors to choose from..

Thrifting

Today we hit the thrift stores instead of working at the house. We went to Fan Thrift, intending to go back to the house afterward.

I've been shopping for several furniture items, like a couch and dining room table and chairs. I also want to replace some of the awful fixtures in the house, like the gold chandelier and wooden bathroom accessories. Well today I did!

First, I found the chandelier. The old one looked like this:



I had found several others for about $40 at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $40, but in white. I held off on buying them even though any color was better than the gold tone. But then I saw this for $5:



Score! So much better. Still not exactly high end, but I don't care. I just want to light the room without looking like grandma's house. In fact, that's my whole goal in renovating and decorating my house. Don't make it look like grandma lives there! I might even embellish it a little bit, if I feel like adding to my ever increasing list of projects. I think it could look like this:



But first things first.

I also found a dining table and chairs similar to this set for $34:

And these bathroom fixtures for $3:

Which kind of but doesn't really match the toilet paper holder I found for $1 a few weeks ago but TOTALLY matches the trim kit I found on Craigslist:



Maybe I should just call this blog "thrift haul" or something. I feel like one of those people who search for china patterns at flea markets. Right?

So, in all I spent $42 on $300 worth of home furnishings. Today was full of win.

scraping is done!

This was before:

If you don't understand why I went through the trouble to remove the paint from the walls and not just the visible wallpaper, consider that in some places, the walls looked like this:

And, given a little tug, like this:

We found what looks like at least 4 different wallpapers, and decades of paint on top.  I decided it was all coming down for a fresh start.

And now, I am down to bare plaster.  You can see samples for paint colors I'm thinking of over the fireplace.  After I refinish the floors, I will prime and paint.

Fridge clean up

Cleaning my fridge should have been a one-day job.  I think I didn't look at it very closely:

I took it apart, hosed the insides off in the backyard, then dropped them in a tub of hot water and bleach. I took a bucket of that bleach water and rinsed down the insides and outside of the fridge, only a magic eraser would get rid of some of the spots on the white surface, including on the rubber seals. I used a Shop Vac to clean off the top, back, and underneath. Then I used an all-purpose cleaner and pieced it all back together.