Chair Spification

Spification should be a word. It probably makes me sound stupid when I use made up words all day long, but I don't care. I prefer to think it makes me sound creative. As in, there are currently no words in the English language to adequately express my astounding vision and creativity, so I have no choice but to make words up that can accomplish this.  Ha! Anywho...

Avah needed a a chair to go with her newly purchased (on clearance for half off!) Parsons desk from Target. What can I say? The girl has an eye. She obviously wanted a chair to go with it, but we were both way too frugal (read: cheap) to buy any of the options at Target. I told her I would find something at Goodwill for the desk. She gave me that sure-you-will-Mom look. Or maybe it was a please-don't-let-it-be-hideous-because-I-don't-want-to-hurt-your-feelings-if-I-hate-it look. Not sure which, now that I think about it. I stopped into Goodwill on Monday and came home with this beaut for $8:

Stunning right?! Avah came home and was clearly concerned. I told her I would fix it up, and that night I got to work. First, I removed the part where you put your butt. Clearly, that's not the technical term, but you get my point. There are four screws holding the flat part to the chair frame and it pops right off. Most chairs like this one have the same set up.  

I gave it a quick sand with 100 grit sandpaper and wiped it down. Then I primed it with a good quality oil based primer in a spray can. I used Zinsser Cover Stain, my all time favorite primer for furniture and cabinetry. It's super important to use a stain blocking primer on wood so it doesn't seep through later on. It also bonds to pretty much anything and will make sure your furniture wears well. The can was $6 and it took about 10 minutes to spray down.

I let it dry overnight. I could have moved on to the next step after an hour of dry time, but I was way too hot. It's still summer here in AZ. The next day I took another 10 minutes and sprayed the finish coat.

I used one can of Rustoleum 2x which ran about $4 a can. Lastly, I reupholstered the seat. This sounds super scary, but all you do is grab some fabric, wrap the seat, and staple it. Crazy easy. I got my fabric at Goodwill for $2 when I bought the chair. I washed it in really hot water and dried it, so it was good as new. Here it is all done:

The real test will be tomorrow when Avah gets to see it. Cross your fingers for me! What do you think?

PS: Don't mind all of the junk in the garage. It's all either waiting to be refinished, going to the bulk recycle center, or going to the garage sale pile!

Guest-O-Rama!

The past week has been mostly focused on the guest room. We have a crapload of boxes sitting in the family room that belong in there, so we had to buckle down and bust it out. Like a lot of the rooms, we didn't get a true "before" picture. This is the next best thing:

 

The prep work had obviously be started at this point, but you can see the beautiful shade I not so lovingly refer to as "poop brown". Not only is the color too dark for my taste, the paint job isn't so great and the paint isn't wearing well. Not a good combination.

The first thing we did was rip up the carpet. It was very old and very discolored around the edges. Ripping out carpet is so easy, and we saved $250 doing it ourselves. All you have to do is pull up the edge of the carpet with a pair of pliers.

 

 

Then take a utility knife with fresh blades and slice.

 

And keep on going. 

Then you roll it on up. Seriously. Thats it.

 

Next we filled in the holes from pictures and curtains that were hung. I used to be so intimidated by spackle. There are approximately 1.2 million different spackles to choose from at Home Depot (this miiight be a slight exaggeration). Finally, I found one that super easy to use. Behold, Dap CrackShot.

 

 

 

 



This stuff is awesome and so easy to use. In fact, its so easy, a two year old can do it!

 

 

 

 

This also miiight be a slight exaggeration. In all seriousness, its almost that easy. You get a grape sized glob on your spackle knife, smoosh it into the hole, and pat it down so its flat-ish. Don't scrape it hard in there, but put a little pressure. Once it dries, go back in and sand it down a little with 100 grit sandpaper. Done and done!

Last of all of the prep work, I primed. Since this lovely poop brown hue is so dark, it was necessary. Primer is cheaper than paint (by far), so keep that in mind when you are tempted to cut corners. Cutting corners never works out. I promise. I've tried. I used good old fashioned Kilz Primer.

Finally, it was paint time. I chose Benjamin Moore Regal Matte in Edgecomb Gray. Its an awesome gray-ish taupe-ish beige-ish color depending on the light. Its amazing.

Here's the before, one more time:

And the after:

 

Its hard to get a good picture with this color so it reads right through the lens. Even so, isn't it soo much lighter and brighter? I feel like I can finally breathe in there.

House Tour - The Befores

Admittedly, we've done a pretty crappy job of taking before photos of the new house. We got to work within hours of getting the keys, so there wasn't much time. I'm already regretting not taking a second to snap some pictures because its so important to really see how far you've come. Luckily, we have a few pictures from the listing and some when we had our walk through. Its better than nothing! Anyway, here she is in all of her poopy brown glory!

 

The Living/Dining Room

 

 

 

This room has probably come the furthest of all of the rooms. The very first thing we did was hire a contractor (due to time constraints) to divide this one large room into two rooms. One is a front room that's open to the front door, and one that is enclosed into an office. Here's how it looks today:

 

 

Front door is immediately to the left

 

Prior to carpet installation

 

 

The Kitchen

 

 

 

 

We've made little baby steps in this room. The drywall media center has been demo'ed and is one large open space now. The window you see in the upper right hand corner was also drywalled over. We are planning on doing a built in recessed media console here (DIY, of course). We've also removed the frilly curtains and prepped for paint. Down the road, we will paint the cabinets and put in new countertops!

 

 

Hunter's Room

 

 



Holy blue, Batman! This room has been pretty transformed with paint and new carpet. Here it is today (sans furniture and décor):

 



 

 

Guest Room

 

 

 

 

I'd love to say this room looks totally different and beautiful, but it pretty much looks the same. I'm going to be getting my paint on tomorrow, so I'll be sure to share the progress.

 

 

Play Room

 

 

 

This room also looks the same, with the exception of new carpet. Its a HUGE room (20'x16') so its going to be a big undertaking.

 

 

Master Bedroom

 

 





 

This room is the same, except for the carpet, too.

 

 

The Backyard

 

 



 

We love love love the backyard. It is so relaxing and beautiful. It was one of the main reasons we love this house.

 



Not Pictured (Yet)

 

Family Room

Stairway

Upstairs Hall

Downstairs hall

Avah's Room

Downstairs Bathroom

Upstairs Bathroom

Master Bathroom

Laundry Room

 

 

So there you have it! We have lived here for 3 weeks now, and we've accomplished all of this with our own two hands (except the building of the room) during nights and weekends, I'm pretty freakin' impressed with us. There is still so, so much more to do, but we are loving every step!





Why DIY?

Most people don’t understand why we’re so obsessed with DIY. Most people ask why (or just give us that look that says “You’re crazy”) when we start talking about the things we want to do. There are also many people that don’t understand why we don’t just take a big ole loan out, hand the cash over to a contractor, and get the home of our dreams a few months later without lifting a finger. For a lot of people, home improvement is a necessity or a chore and not something fun. I suppose if I really think about it, I probably felt the same way about 5 years ago.
 

 

Our First House

 

When we bought our first house we were young. We were still “growing up” ( I feel like we still kind of are), and with that means we were on a tight budget. We moved into a 2380 square foot foreclosure out of the equivalent of 2 bedroom apartment filled with hand me down furniture. For example, my couches were “reclaimed” from the sidewalk of my mom’s neighbor’s house. So picture us in a large house in need of updating, a small amount of crappy furniture, and about zero dollars after closing on the house. Taking out debt was completely out of the question for us. We wanted to live within our means. $2500 in labor to paint the house was definitely NOT within our means at the time. So yeah. Insert DIY.

 

The very first day while Justin and his friend moved us in, I started painting. I didn’t paint because I wanted it pretty, but rather because the house was in desperate need of paint.

 

 

Our first house's kitchen. Fruit themed wallpaper border and dirty white walls = yuck.

 

 

The upstairs hallway in our first house. Notice how dirty the walls are.

 

The painting job that I did was pretty terrible. We weren’t happy with it, but it was still definitely an improvement over what was there before. Over the years, I continued to research and try out all sorts of things, from wall painting techniques to painting cabinetry in our bathroom. I even painted our vinyl floor in the bathroom! Do you sense a theme? I was too scared to venture off into doing anything besides painting. Don’t get me wrong…I learned SO much from that time period and it was all through trial and error. I learned how to spackle and retexture walls, how to caulk, what kind of primer to use and when, various sanding instruments and techniques, which paintbrush to use and when, how to cut in a perfect line, why it’s important to use quality paint, etc. We lived and learned and got so much better as time went on. Not only that, but I developed my love of DIY and all of the challenges that come with it.

 

Eventually we became a little more confident. We built a train table for our son’s second birthday that wasn’t perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better looking and better quality than anything we could have gotten for the price we paid ($97 in lumber). Surprisingly, it was pretty easy, and it turned out awesome (if I do say so myself).
 

 

 

 

After we built the table, I realized that most of the pieces I had been pining over in the Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel catalogs could be made on the cheap. We could do it, except for the little tiny issue of not having all of the right tools. And then it hit me. I could spend $1000 on a dining room table at Pottery Barn, or I could make one for $100 in lumber, $300 for a miter saw, and $200 for a nailer and compressor, all of which we could keep for other projects. We’d still save $400.  That got me really, really excited. I love saving money. I also love seeing a finished product that WE made ourselves, exactly how we wanted it and without any help from others.  

 

We sold our first house in August 2013 simply because we wanted more space and a pool for the kids. We sold our house for a lot less than what we could have had we gotten over our fears sooner and made a bigger impact. Like our first house, our new house has a ton of potential. It’s in a great neighborhood, has a great floor plan, but hasn’t been updated at all since it was built in 1997. We are not going to make the same mistake this time around. I look back at everything that we learned in the past 4 years and I realized that if we had been too scared to even pick up a paint brush, we wouldn’t have learned anything. We are going to experiment this time around, take some chances, and make our house a home.