Thank Goodness Paint Swatches Are Free....

... because I've been smuggling a boat-load of them out of Home Depot and Lowe's.

What's the reason for my most recent trip to the paint departments? Well, aside from the fact that I still have not decided on a hallway bathroom/laundry room/master bathroom paint color (they will all probably be the same color) I've decided to paint- not stain- the bathroom vanity.

Here's how I came to that decision. First of all- last I posted I said my staining days were probably over. That statement was probably made more out of my defeat for that particular project but I'm still not over the burn of the less than stellar results from that undertaking. I decided that I wanted to give it one more shot and see if it was even possible for me to get the junk off that I applied. So I bust out my power sander and got to work. Thankfully, and to my complete surprise, it didn't take much elbow grease or sand paper to get it all off. The down side is that with wood cabinets like ours, the stain really sinks into the wood grain- leaving us with this:
The door on the left shows what it looked like before my staining debacle while the one on the right shows what I'm working with after sanding it down... again. I didn't think it was that big of a deal because, after all, if I was planning on slapping on another layer of dark stain it would just cover it right up.

New problem. Turns out the veneer on our cabinets is pretty thin. So after sanding down everything I had completely gone through some parts of the veneer entirely leaving this:
The problem with this is that with the veneer gone the stain will soak in differently and unevenly. So staining is now completely off the table.

New solution- enter paint swatches. People paint their vanities white all the time and it looks amazing. So why can't I paint it a deep, rich brown? After all, it worked out on our kitchen cabinets. So I slapped these babies up to look at them for the next day or two and hopefully I can begin painting this weekend. I've already narrowed it down to six paint colors- I immediately tossed two of them once I got them in the room- leaving me with these options:
I also picked up some new paint colors for the wall. After my recent epiphany that I'm sticking with safe (and not fun) color and design schemes I thought that maybe I should try to spice things up a bit. So I got these new swatches:
I am already proud of myself for picking these new brighter colors! I'm really liking the look of them too :) I haven't completely tossed my old swatches though... these ones are still up in the laundry room:

If the hallway bathroom turns out amazing with a bright color maybe I'll even work up the courage to get different colors for the master bathroom and laundry room!

A Splash of Color

To say that I like things to coordinate is an understatement. My obsessive compulsive tendencies result in my getting irritated if things clash too much or just don't match. And when it comes to decorating our house I've developed an anxiety about just taking a risk and buying things for our place.

Here's my dilemma- our living room is so well coordinated (minus the bookshelf and tv stand which are two different colors- I'll get to that one day) that now I'm bored! See below picture to see what I mean:

It looks nice- but that's not my issue. The sandy walls, the brown couch, the cream carpet, the beige rug.... where's the color!? I'm getting so bored of looking at the same boring color- and it's everywhere! I've wanted to get some pretty throw pillows, maybe another rug, just something to spice the space up. Problem, I'm afraid of doing anything too bold!

My solution- start small. Worse comes to worse I have to make a return to the store to get something I like better. Here's what I ended up snagging:I'll be the first one to say that this is a minor upgrade at best. The room still needs some work, some color, some flair, possibly some more pattern? But my point is that I'm taking baby steps toward a more interesting color pallet.

Pat on the back for me :) Plus, these plush throw pillows were on the cheap at Kohls. $13.00 each marked down from $33 each plus I got to use $20 Kohls cash. So at least my baby steps didn't throw us into the deep end :)

P.S. Rascal jumped into my "after" pictures to stalk some doves outside.

The Money Pit

Since becoming official homeowners on June 9th of last year, Thomas and I have taken on the role of student when it comes to our house. The whole thing is one giant learning experience. One of the biggest lessons that we've learned? That having a home is tough, having a pool is tougher. That pool has been a headache from day one.

Here's a little reminder of what it looked like when we got possession of the house:
Here we were thinking, "Awesome, our first house has a POOL!" How great! Plus, we live in the desert, it's totally necessary! Well, that was then..... we feel differently now. We have fought tooth and nail to keep this pool from continually turning green to no avail. We tried taking care of it ourselves. We tried having a professional pool guy come and get us started with a monster shock treatment. Nope. It still turned green.

All those chemicals aren't cheap either. Added bonus: with the heat here in Phoenix, the chemicals burn off super quick so we were constantly dumping more and more chemicals in there to the point where our whole yard stunk of chlorine. We were continually burning (literally) through our chemical supply. I've also learned through all of this that I can't stand pool supply stores. Seriously, I revert to being a whiney little kid when we have to go. I avoid it at all costs.

After many, many, many trips to test the water at the pool supply shop we finally figured out that we needed to drain the pool and get an acid wash. Our algae problem was just too severe. Here's what it looked like after the pool was drained:

YUCK! It looked 10x worse without the nasty water in it. Next thing we found out when we had the pool drained? We don't just have algae- we have black algae. What is black algae? Well, it's like death for a pool! Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but it's bad. It doesn't go away with a simple acid wash (which is diluted). The pool peeps we hired had to make an acid paste and slap it on anywhere in the pool that had those black patches so that it could really sink in and kill it. Not only that- but the guy said that our algae problem was so bad that he had to do two acid washes because one just didn't cut it. Thankfully I was visibly upset when he told me this so he didn't add any extra charges. Yay for being an emotional girl!

When the washes were done though, our pool still looked like this:See the splotchy imperfection? So our pool dude informed me that our pool used to look beautiful and perfect and a deep aqua blue like our neighbors pool. But because of years of neglect our pool now looks like this. How do we fix this? With a $4,000 pool resurfacing :( The water works started again, but the pool dude couldn't help me this time with a cost break because he doesn't resurface pools. Obviously we don't have the cash to go ahead and deal with the problem now.

The good news is that we should be able to maintain the pool as is (no green muck) with chlorine until we can get it resurfaced. Another downside: since we do have the black algae issue and he couldn't guarantee that it was totally gone (it burrows under the plaster- the little jerks!) we have to keep our pool with at least a 5% chlorine level and even higher in the summer which is similar to what public pools do instead of the regular 2% otherwise recommended.

So after two days of the acid wash and refilling the pool we have started saving for our pool to be resurfaced. Luckily we were told that we should be able to hold out for 2 years before it becomes totally necessary. And with the pool refilled you can't really tell how uneven the plaster is. This is what it looks like as of right now:A million times better and many lessons learned.

The Bathroom Boo-Boo

Okay- so I'm not about to sit here and profess that I am the perfect diy-er. Nope, completely the opposite. I am taking it all as it comes and learning from my experiences. I am super new to this whole thing. Furthermore, just because I was able to master one project does not necessarily mean that I will be able to conquer a similar project. Case in point- staining the bathroom vanity.
I thought that through my trials and tribulations that I encountered while re-finishing a yard sale dresser meant that I had the staining process down. Not so :( In fact, I may be so bold as to say that my staining days are over.

As I mentioned in a previous post- I wanted to start working in the hallway bathroom. Specifically I wanted to "remodel it without remodeling it" and working with/updating what we have in there. My vanity solution? Take the light and bright birch vanity and transform it into a rich and bold mahogany vanity with new brushed nickel door hardware. I spent this past weekend removing the doors and drawer fronts and sanding off all of the old veneer to guarantee a smooth application of the stain. After hours and hours of using our power sander I followed up with using our newly acquired handheld Dremel to get in all the nooks and crannies of the cabinets. (Don't know what a Dremel is? Think a hardcore heavy duty version of what they use on your finger nails when you get your nails done.) After mucho mucho sanding- I ended up with this:Looks good right? Looks like I did a pretty darn thorough job getting all that old polyeurathane off to ensure a smooth and even coat of stain, right? Well, maybe it looks that way.... but... well let me just further explain how the whole thing went down.

After spending forever sanding these puppies down and looking like I had just walked out of a fight with a dust storm (yes, I was that covered with saw dust) I wiped off the excess dust from the doors and applied a coat of a pre-stain wood conditioner. This product is supposed to ensure what I had been working so hard to accomplish- even application of the stain. Let me tell you- if the staining process went as smoothly as the pre-stain conditioning process, I would be writing an entirely different blog entry right now. Oh, this is where the happy part of the story ends. With my desire to make this process more efficient I obtained a stain that combined the staining of the wood with the sealing of the wood. Yes, I bought a stain that had the polyeurathane mixed in with it. Tisk tisk. That was a mistake. With the polyeurathane mixed in already it created a sticky glue-like application. Not the best thing when your trying to achieve a uniform look. Let me just say now, if you are looking to do some stain work in the future: DO NOT GET THE STAIN WITH THE POLYEURATHANE MIXED IN! GET THEM IN TWO SEPARATE CANS TO BE APPLIED AT DIFFERENT TIMES!!!

This is what the first coat looked like:
Alright, it didn't apply evenly and it isn't even close to being as rich of a color as indicated on the can and the samples provided at the store. But the can says that you can apply up to four coats to achieve a uniform look or a deeper color. What the can doesn't say is that with each additional coat of stain you are fighting against the stickiness of it all which makes application that much more difficult.

Here's coat #2:Umm... it's starting to look messier! Not more even. Definitely deeper in color but it's harder to cover up inconsistencies when the color is so deep! "Well, I thought, the can says up to four coats. Maybe it gets better." WRONG!

Coat #3:
OH. MY. GOSH. I am not a happy camper. Not only did I just spend my entire weekend working on this but it would take me FOREVER to get this stuff back off. Painting over it would have been an option if the polyeurathane was not mixed in. But since it is- it would be like painting over latex paint... it'll just peel right off.

Thomas had to console me when I sat in our backyard holding my head in my hands and unleashing my tears of defeat. "It doesn't look that bad," he said. But that's not the point. It's not about how far down the spectrum of bad it is. It isn't supposed to look bad at all! Not even a little bit :( The whole point of a diy project is to do something for your home that saves you money, gives you a feeling of accomplishment, and looks just as amazing as if you had paid someone an arm and a leg to do it for you. That is not what happened here.

But I'm not ashamed. I made a mistake. I tried to take a shortcut when I should have stuck with a process had worked for me before. I'm still planning on doing a lot of work on this house. My diy days are not over! I may have lost this battle- but I haven't lost the war! Am I getting too crazy here? Seriously, what war?

Anyway, I am looking into having someone come out and give us some estimates on refinishing the cabinets for us- the right way. With just a small vanity- it shouldn't break the bank, or my spirit. No more tears will be shed over a badly stained cabinet. And fortunately I only started on the doors. The base of the vanity is still untouched and will look like this for a while until I can figure out a way to finish the project.

The Bathroom Brainstorm

So, my first official big time project that I would like to tackle this year is...... the hallway bathroom. This is the bathroom that I use the most (I like the tub) and the smaller space makes for a cozier feel than our master bathroom. On top of everything else, when we have company this is the bathroom that is used. So it only makes sense that I would choose to tackle this bathroom before any other minor reno I may want to do anywhere else in the house.

Here's a reminder of what it looked like on move-in day back in June '10. It's a narrow little bathroom so the first shot is taken from the shower and the second shot is taken from the doorway (just to get you situated).
I wanted this room to look like a complete remodel without having to completely remodel it. New paint, new shower curtain, new cabinet hardware, new light fixture, new accessories.... in other words new! Using our newly acquired Home Depot gift cards (one of our awesome Christmas present from my 'rents) we are now on the lookout for a light fixture.

We have the paint color selected (as seen below) and since I'm going to have to take everything off of the walls anyway I thought we should try to find our new light fixture before I even get started with painting. Seems like a waste of energy to put a fixture back up after painting when we wanna eventually give it the heave-ho anyway. (Sidenote: this paint swatch is not true to life. Try as I did, I just couldn't get an accurate picture of the color.... but think sorta minty. The color shown below it is kind of wasabi-esque... so a shade lighter than wasabi I guess! The color is actually called "Wind Breeze")
Here's the light fixture we're working with now. It's a crazy energy puller- not efficient like we would like. And with us now living in the desert, efficiency is essential. It's not aesthetically pleasing and we don't particularly care for the Hollywood make-up chair style. These houses were built quick and cheap- and this fixture is a perfect example of cheap. They were selling these puppies at the stores for about $20-30 brand new. We want to find something that's inexpensive but doesn't look as cheap as it may actually be. (P.S. Like how we have two different types of bulbs in there? We didn't want to buy more junky light bulbs so we've just been working with what we could find in the house already.)
After I removed the shower doors a couple of weeks ago, I took a step back to really get an idea of what we would like. Bathrooms can be super traditional or crazy modern. We tend to lean a little bit more on the contemporary side of the spectrum and decided that it would be okay to have a little bit more fun with the bathroom. So we went out to look for lighting ideas. We scavenged the likes of Home Depot, Lowe's, and The Great Indoors. Here are some of the styles we kind of liked.The one on the bottom is the one that we liked the most. But before we actually purchase any sort of fixture I have to remove the old one to see what exactly we're working with back there. Also, before we take the plunge and buy from the store I've gotta do my research and see if I can wrangle up a better deal online.

Stay tuned :)

P.S. We're still on the fence about what we want to do with the vanity- paint, stain, or leave it alone.

Bye Bye Shower Doors

Ever since we bought our house I haven't been the biggest fan of the shower doors in the bathrooms. In the master bathroom the doors are necessary since there is no bathtub (so we can't just whip on a shower curtain), but in the hallway bathroom that wasn't the case. The doors are in good working order and everything- they just aren't our style.
I tried using a razor blade to scrape off the flower designs to see if that would make it more appealing- but those things just didn't want to come off. So we've been living with the bathroom as is for now.
Until today.... I was struck with a burst of energy and the need to get rid of those things pronto! They aren't pretty (not to us anyway) and they just kind of get in the way. They make it harder to clean, they make the space feel closed in, not to mention how many times I have bruised my foot on the outside of the tub because I didn't account for the extra couple inches that the slider requires for clearance. So I got to work and removed the door.
All in all it only took me about an hour. I've still got some goo-removal to do and I need to get some caulking to fill the screw holes on the sides but it feels so much better now! Plus, I won't kick the darn door anymore (added bonus).
It may not look so picturesque at the moment- but with a new coat of paint going on soon it'll make a world of difference. I've attached a copy of some of the paint swatches that are up on the wall now- that will be the next big project :)

2011 Resolutions- House Edition

This has been an amazingly eventful year for us. As newlyweds, we have experienced so many great, exciting, and overwhelming new things!

First and foremost, Thomas graduated from Medical School this year. I am so proud of all that he's accomplished- there is no way that I could endure the years of studying, lack of sleep (and money) that he had in order to make it this far! It's a blessing that he was able to go through college and medical school- and an added blessing that it's over!

Then the new obstacle began- residency. Residency is tough- for the interns and their family. Now that Thomas and I have relocated for his job, it's tough to do things together and to meet people in a new city. As I work from home, I find that I spend an extreme amount of time with only the cats for company. I'm not complaining- not even close. People apologize for the fact that I am a doctor's wife- and as a result kind of have to go it alone since he's so busy. No apologies necessary- I knew what I was getting myself into- and I'm glad that I did. Thomas is my life and I would follow him anywhere.

Now we're to the part where we bought our home. What an excruciating experience that was. With all the foreclosures in the area (and everywhere for that matter) it was a buyer's market. Why rent when we could call a place our own for the next four years? There was no way that we could buy in California and we were happy to jump at the chance to buy our first home in Phoenix- where the houses were cheap and plentiful. Happy, that is, until we started the process. I don't want to go into it too much because the experience is something that I would rather forget. It was difficult to say the very least and was a true test of our marriage!

So here we are, in our house for over 6 months. We have already come so far in making this house our home and adding what we need to make it ours. With all the new paint, carpet, countertops, furniture, etc you would think we would almost be done. Not so!

Here is my list of 2011 home resolutions:
1. Finish fixing the pool. I'll post about that whole debacle later to explain further. In short, we need to do some work on it which requires mucho dinero so we'll be saving for a bit to tackle that next year.

2. Paint the bathrooms, laundry room. I've got the paint swatches up.... now I've just got to decide on a color.

3. Re-carpet the living room. Most of that raggedy, stained carpet is covered by either furniture or an area rug so it's fine for now. But when we have kiddies in the house crawling around we'd rather it be on a cleaner surface.

4. Clean the grout or re-grout altogether. Our grout is black.... and it isn't supposed to be. That needs fixin.

5. Get new blinds. All of the blinds in every room are either broken (they won't stay up unless you tie the strings to a weighty object) or they are falling apart (chipped panels, broken strings, etc). I would really love to get new, energy efficient, and easy to open blinds for each room.

6. Finish the garage. It needs a new work bench, some storage, and some outlets added. It's kind of ridiculous that our garage only has one outlet at the moment- and it isn't even close to the work bench.

I'm sure that there are many many more projects that need doing around here and more will come up along the way. But this is just some of the bigger things I'd like to tackle- sooner rather than later- that I'd like to accomplish within the next year.

Wish us luck!!!

Finally- our new couch revealed!

We had gotten our couch at the same time that we got our dining room set- but I have been dragging my feet about posting the pictures. We had been using a futon as a sofa since moving in here until we had enough dinero to dedicate to the purchase of a new sofa.

Here's the before shot of our living room- in all it's futon inhabited glory:
Before we decided on a couch to drop a couple hundred bucks on- I had a heavy list of criteria that needed to be met:

1. Our living room is not massive, so a sectional was not preferred, although a chaise would not be a total veto.
2. It's no secret that we have cats and that cats like to scratch things. I wanted to find us a couch that was not cat-scratch friendly.
3. Absolutely, positively, NO leather!
4. The back cushions have to be attached to the couch. The reason for this? The cats loved lying on top of the back cushions on my last couch which resulted in mushy cushions that needed to be re-stuffed to be more firm. Also, vacuuming the couch to remove cat hair was more difficult with cushions that moved around and got hair all the way around them. (Yes, I notice how much the cats are factoring into our decision- but it's completely necessary!)
5. I did not want a suede or suede-esque couch. I do not enjoy getting up from the couch and seeing my nice big rump imprinted in the fabric of the couch. I have enough anxiety as it is- I don't need to have it on display on our sofa! Ha ha!

Phew. Who knew that a couch would even exist that met all those standards that would be our style, comfortable, and affordable? Well, it does- and we found it! Plus, we bought around a holiday- so there was a deal for 15% off :)

Here's the new addition to our home:

Here it is! We got ourselves one comfy couch- complete with a chaise and FAUX leather! It is made of that suede-like material but with the seams that criss-cross through the cushions there are no imprints of our behinds to be seen :) We are happy campers- and as you can tell from the picture, the cats also approve.

Another person's old dresser is our new buffet :)

There are always a ton of yard sales going on in our neighborhood- even more now than in the summer since the weather is much more tolerable. And while I've never been real big on scavenging through other people discarded things, I have been more and more curious about attempting to score big ticket items to fill our empty walls and rooms. I was on the search for a couch or possibly a dining set. Since we recently purchased those items anyway (and couldn't be happier) I started to cool off on my yard sale drive-bys.

But, this past weekend there was a yard sale going on two blocks south of us. Just out of curiosity I did a drive-by and saw an old dresser. It wasn't that great so I didn't stop or get out. While running errands that day I passed by that street several more times and saw that no one had picked up that dresser. What could it hurt if I just looked at it? If anything, we meet a new neighbor and leave empty handed. So I asked Thomas if he wanted to take a walk. We went down there and surveyed our possible purchase. Upon closer inspection- I liked it- and I wanted it. "I'll make you a good deal," the homeowner said. Thomas was skeptical. I told him that we could use it as a buffet table in our dining room- and use it as a place to stash placemats and tablecloths. Thomas' response, "I dunno." It was the end of the day and the lady wanted to get rid of everything. "If you like it- take it." Sweet! So even if what I wanted to do with it didn't work out- we could put it on the sidewalk to be picked up or donate it and we wouldn't be out a penny. We took it.

Here's what it looked like in all it's (free) glory:
And this is what it looked like after I sanded it down and removed all the old and dated hardware:
And finally, after four days of sanding and staining (and then sanding down some more and staining again) and adding some new door hardware, this is what we ended up with:Isn't it beautiful? Well, I think so. Staining was definitely a learning experience but I am enjoying my "learn as you go" do-it-yourself stuff. The buffets that I was looking at in stores would have set us back at least $300. The price for this? In total, for the stain, the brushes, the sandpaper, the door hardware and the sealer it only cost us a cool $68. Cool, huh? And the red mahogany that I stained it is a perfect match to our newly purchased dining room set.

Dining Room Table

We bought our dining room table a couple of weeks ago- and it is beautiful. It's just one more thing that is making our house more into a home. With every bit of furniture we acquire our house looks more and more like a grown-up house... not one lived in by college students with random pieces and futons for couches.
We bought the table at Ashley furniture and the swivel bar stools from Kohls. We scored the table with an awesome coupon in the mail and the bar stools were on sale :) The padded part is made up of the same material- but they aren't identical so it isn't too matchy matchy.
Now we can finally eat dinner at a table instead of in front of the tv w/ our tv trays. Oh happy day :)