Painting A Laminate Vanity

Do you remember this huge bathroom fail from a few months ago?

Well it turns out that the issue was that we used water based enamel. Luckily, it cleaned up fairly easily and we tried again, this time with the oil based enamel. This stuff stunk to high heaven (Nate got it done about a week before Will was born) but it did an AMAZING job covering the crappy white laminate vanity. 

And talk about durable. We tried are darndest to rub it off to see if it would hold up and it didn't even leave a mark. Now the vanity is a nice shiny grey (I wasn't loving the blue we tried before) and it looks slightly less cheap compared to the white laminate.

To add a little more convenience to this situation, we installed drawer pulls and knobs since it was a pain in the butt to get things open. We still need to add the pull to the fake drawer front. It wasn't put on with everything else because we couldn't find it. Then we finally found it (it fell out of the bag in the trunk) and now I have no idea where it is again. Have I mentioned that my short term memory has completely disappeared with the birth of Will?

So we have learned our lesson when painting laminate: Oil-based enamel = Good and Water-based enamel=Bad. At least we started on something small instead of the huge lamenite built-ins that we have upstairs!

Look What We're Working On

Work in the kitchen is back in full swing. We may actually be able to finish everything before the one year mark which is quickly approaching for this project!

Using What You Have

When renovating a home, you tend to accumulate things along the way. In our house we tend to accumulate a lot of trim and scraps of wood and other materials. This came in handy in the kitchen since we needed to trim out the area around the back entrance and pantry as well as around the kitchen window.

Now this trim around the doors doesn't look pretty since it's the original trim from another part of the house:

But the combination of putty, caulk (so much caulk) and primer makes it look oh so pretty.

Similarly, for around the kitchen window, we had left over MDF and short pieces of wood. 

Once again, this got a lot of caulk and primer and even without paint, you would never know that the trim isn't all the same material.

We love reusing things. Projects cost less, the garage is less cluttered and it's less stuff that goes in the trash!

Mother's Day Weekend

I had a great weekend hanging out with my guys and friends. We spent a lot of time outside which I love and I got to go on my first run in 8 months! Here's a snapshot of the weekend.

    #1 & #3: Will before our walk on Friday and after. He's big enough for the Bjorn now and he loves   

    it. I bring it with me on walks now and if he gets cranky I stick him in it and it calms him right down.

    #2: Will finally conked out after being fussy at our friend's house. It's amazing how going outside 

    for a few minutes is sometimes all that it takes to stop his fussing.

    #4 & #8: Enjoying the fireworks that our town has every year as part of the Mother's day festival. 

    We were far enough away that Will slept through them all.

    #5: My Mother's day present from Nate. I broke these in with about 7 miles of walking/running   

    on Saturday and it felt great!

    #6 & #7: Walking around Swan Lake on Friday checking out the birds and the artists setting up for    

    the Mother's day festival

We also enjoyed watching the new moms around town. There are so many new baby birds around the lakes near us. On one walk I counted over 30 babies from at least 4 different type of birds and you sure know which  one is the mamma if you walk to close!

    

Whatcha Looking At?

Map Art

The wall to the left as you look at our bed was in desperate need of something. It's the first wall you see as you walk into the room so you really notice its blankness.

I spent awhile looking around for something I liked and was big enough for this wall. Nothing really caught my eye that was large enough that didn't cost an arm and a leg so when I happend across a site by Stamen Designs, I got the idea to make a large piece of art from many small ones. The site is a searchable map of the world with different views like toner, terrain and water color. You can create images of various sizes so I made map tiles of Budapest, Hungary where both Nate and I studied abroad (and both love). I printed them out on card stock and put them in some Ikea frames. I used the toner view so that we could see all the street names.

 To personalize it a little more, we used wax pencils to mark off various things in the city like our apartments, the school we went to and all our favorite restaurants.

Since I already had the card stock, the only cost of this project was the frames so for about $80 we now have a nice large piece of art for our bedroom.

Linking To: Hi Sugar Plum, The Great Indoors, House of Hepworths, My Repurposed Life, Our Delightful Home, Five Days Five Ways, Serenity Now, Lovely Etc., The Rooster and the Hen, Six Sisters Stuff, Tatertots and Jello, Wayward Girls Crafts, Twigg Studio, Serendipity and Spice, Ask Anna, Home Stories A to Z, Uncommon Designs, House wives of Riverton, Crafty Texas Girls, Southern Institute, Watch out Martha!,http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Everything and the Bathroom Sink

Well, technically, the bathroom sink is basically the only thing that is going to be replaced in our downstairs bathroom. Since we decided to hold off on renovating this room until we can redo the entire addition, we have a very short list of improvements that we want to do to make it a little more user friendly and a lot easier on the eyes. So, a few weeks ago, our bathroom looked like this:

This bathroom was an eyesore of white laminate accentuated by way to many mirrors and a pretty nasty sink so we finally decided to fix at least one of these things and pop out the sink. I had tried many times to get the old sink clean, but the at-one-point clear faucet handles that had turned cloudy along with the odd ring around the drain (not to mention the drain itself) made the sink always look dirty.

Let's zoom in on the nastiness shall we?

Gross right? Since I could not get the sink clean with products, we headed to Lowe's to see how much it would cost to replace it. Did you know that you can get a replacement sink like this for under $20? I didn't, and it definitely made our decision on wether or not to replace it a lot easier. We also picked up a new faucet on clearance and after a little install we had a nice and clean new sink.

We have a few other projects in this room that we're slowly working through and hopefully when we're done it's a much nicer space. Until then, we at least don't have to stare a grodiness when brushing our teeth!