The Blues

October 24, 2016October 24, 2016 makedajohariLeave a comment

Our bedroom has paint! I feel like everything in finally coming together. Thanks to the balcony our room gets lots of natural light, so I decided I should take advantage and go bold and pick a really dark color. I had my heart set on Navy, it took a little convincing to get Seth on board, but eventually I got him over to the dark side (cheesy pun intended).

Normally I would suggest one buy paint samples and test out a couple colors before committing, but I did not follow my own advise. Our local Ace Hardware was going out of business so they were having a fantastic sale on Benjamin Moore paint. It really seemed wrong not to take advantage, so we decided to pull the trigger. We chose a color called Deep Royal, it is super super dark, I love it!

Before the color went on the wall a lot of prep work had to happen, soooo much spackle. We replaced the base caps throughout the room and had to fill a lot of holes from old cable cords, and telephone lines…which is actually kid of weird to see in a house, a home phone is so rare these days. And as much as I appreciate the look of natural wood, it’s kind of limited to flooring for me, wood trim is just too much.

We primed the trim and the walls. Because we were doing such a dark color we went with a grey primer for a better base.Once the walls were primed it kind of felt like we were done, the grey looked really nice. But I think anything would have been better than what it looked like previously.

No matter how great the brand of paint, I have never gotten away with one coat. I had high hopes this time, but of course it took two. The walls just drank in the first coat. The left is the first coast, it almost looks greyish charcoal, the second coat is on the right side, it takes too coats to really see the color.

I’ll admit I was a little scared and almost backed out and chose a lighter shade, but I’m really glad we went for it. The end result is amazing. The color is super dramatic, it’s going to be a great back drop for our furniture, and most importantly it makes my beautiful light fixture pop even more.

How many electricians does it take to install a light fixture?

July 18, 2016July 24, 2016 makedajohariLeave a comment

The answer is 5. It took three months and 5 electricians to find one that would that wouldn’t flake! This was shocking and has really been holding up a lot work for us. There are only so many things one can do to work around it. Patching, sanding, and painting a wall to only later have holes punched in it for wiring purposes doesn’t make much sense. But the great news is we finally found one! Soon there will be more updates on the work we’re doing now that we are no longer on pause. But I guess it’s been a nice work break. More to come soon!

Floors – Part 2

December 30, 2015 makedajohariLeave a comment

The upstairs floors are 100% done, and they look Awesome! Now that it’s all said and done the floors were not really a hard project, but a very very tedious project. Sanding all the edges by hand required a lot of patience, but it felt good to finally check that off the list. Next step, cleaning, lots and lots of cleaning. As one would assume, it creates quite a mess. After our first round of sanding we came downstairs to find the entire living room covered in a thin layer or dust.

Once the floors were as clean as we could possibly get them it was time to stain. When we finally arrived at this step both Seth and myself were extremely nervous. It was a lot of build up getting to this point, and this is the part that would really show if we did a horrible job, or what if the color we chose was actually terrible in a large space? Thankfully neither of those things turned out to be true. In fact it was the easiest part of this whole project, very much like The Karate Kid, “wax on, wax off”. We got a nice rhythm going, Seth would wipe the stain into the floor and I would follow a minute after and wipe it off.

I think it only took us a little more than 2 hours to apply stain to the entire second floor, not bad. Then we took a break. It was a nice excuse to do nothing since we had to wait for the stain to dry and couldn’t be upstairs. Lastly, it was time for the polyurethane. So this is the quickest step in the floor process, but I would say the easiest to make mistakes. The polyurethane simply gets wiped on with an applicator that looks a lot like a mop. The tricky part is making sure you don’t miss spots and that it doesn’t pool anywhere. Seth took responsibility for the majority of this step, which I was totally okay with. He did a great job 🙂

Two coats of polyurethane later the floors were done! Again we were able to a take long break since we couldn’t walk on them for seven days. It is very liberating to actually not be able to work on any projects, I was happy for the week off. So now after the bathroom, that was the second hardest project upstairs. It should only get easier from here…fingers crossed.

Demo Days

February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 makedajohari3 Comments

If you’ve ever had a rough day, there is no better way to release some stress than taking a sledge hammer to a wall. Once we finally closed on the house, the first thing to do was to take down things we don’t need, things the previous owner did horribly, and completely tear down the upstairs bathroom. It’s amazing how many people will volunteer to break stuff in your house; we had a lot of help tearing things down. As they say many hands make light work.

Demolishing the bathroom took a lot more effort than expected. I learned that bathroom fitters are really well installed, a little too well. Underneath the fitter was painted tile (who does that?) and wallpaper. Removing the floor also turned out to be much more work than expected, underneath the floor tile was more tile, and underneath that tile, 2 inches of concrete. I let Seth and Luke handle that one.

Demo - Bathroom Tile, more tile Demo - Shower Tile

The other big task upstairs was demolishing the master closet. It was just not quite deep enough, not well built, and also lined with floral wallpaper; it all had to go. With Seth’s growing collection of plaid and my general love of clothing, a functional closet is a must.

Now that everything is taken down, we’re working on putting it all back together. I’m just waiting to get to the decorating part. But first things first: the upstairs bathroom must be finished!