Weekend Upgrades

Mr. Woodsy was super busy this weekend working on a few upgrades. If you follow us on Facebook you would know that we scored an awesome deal on a new kitchen faucet. Although we both wanted to wait until we replaced our counter tops (next year) to purchase a new faucet--I just couldn't take using the short builder-grade faucet any longer. 

Before...

*(crappy) builder-grade faucet

After... 

Tall beautiful faucet! (Notice where the soap bottle is--covering the hole in the sink--we still have to figure out what we are going to do with the hole!)

Before... 

We would both flood the kitchen countertop/floors with water because of the shallows sink and small faucet.

 After...

No more flooding here... well sort of *until we upgrade our sink! 

 The second upgrade project that Mr. Woodsy completed was installing our pendant lights above our kitchen island. I have been wanting this done since the day we purchased our home (2 years next month)! We bought the pendant lights back in April, and they've just been sitting in the garage waiting for a little TLC. Yesterday afternoon, while I was hanging out with some local bloggers, Mr. Woodsy worked on the pendant lights in the kitchen along with installing recessed lighting over our pool table (not pictured in this post)! This was his first major electrical project, and although it scares the living daylights out of me that he's playing with electricity he was up for the challenge! He bought an electrical book a few month's back in preparation for changing out all the lighting I want changed! (Next lighting projects are to change out the horrid fluorescent lights with recessed lighting in both the laundry room and the master closet!)

This is what I came home to. 

After dinner Mr. Woodsy crawled through the 100+ degree attic at 7:00 at night (think Florida heat in June)! Wired both the pendant lights and the recessed lights in the pool table room, and then came back in to the house and installed the pendant lights.  

Here is the finished product; new kitchen faucet and pendant lights. 

(As you'll notice the stickers are still on the globes.) 

You can't tell what the glass globe looks light from far away. We choose to go with a white/black/grey marbleized glass. This is what Mr. Woodsy picked out and at first I didn't like it. Now that they are up I love it, and he's not a big fan of them. 

View of the kitchen with the pendant lights installed. 

Did anyone else do any weekend upgrades? 

Guest Bathroom Mini-Makeover + Black Crown Molding

*Remember this teaser picture back from the beginning of October? When I wrote about my new $2 bathroom art... Now you finally get to see the tiny bathroom reveal! 

This project was finished at the end of September, but I never had time to post pictures of this mini makeover project. We called it a mini-makeover because we took down the builder grade mirror, light fixture, and medicine cabinet, and added our own touch to the bathroom. We also decided to be bold and not only put crown molding in our guest bathroom, but paint it black! I am so glad we chose to go with black crown molding! It gives such an amazing and elegant touch to this bathroom. We don't have much left to do on this bathroom... we just want to upgrade the laminate countertop with granite, but that won't happen until we get our kitchen countertop done! I hope you will enjoy looking at all the pictures below on how our adventures of black crown molding went. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Woodsy does not have time to write up a tutorial on installing crown-molding. If you asked him he would tell you that the "mrs" is being a slave driver about this craft room project (it has to get done before Thanksgiving (it's been going on since April))! Mr. Woodsy learned how to put in crown molding from his dad. {His dad is very handy as well!} He helped his dad put in crown molding all through there home, and we could say is the inspiration of why we choose to place crown molding in our bathroom! {Eventually, we will have crown molding throughout the whole house, for now we have it in the three smallest rooms of our home; guest bathroom, laundry room, and soon-to-be craft room}.

Let me preface... the crown molding was all painted white at first, and then Mr. Woodsy stacked our painted white high gloss crown molding. DON'T EVER STACK CROWN MOLDING AFTER IT HAS BEEN PAINTED NO MATTER HOW LONG THE PAINT HAS "DRIED" FOR.  {If anything I hope everyone can learn from a BIG mistake}. We unfortunately, had to learn the hard way, and large splotches of paint ripped off the boards thus causing for double, no wait triple the work! Mr. Woodsy had to sand them down, prime them, and then painted the high gloss (twice with this process because he wasn't happy the first time) thus even after the second time of hand sanding the boards you could still see where the paint had ripped off. Luckily on his second go around with hand sanding and painting that's when we decided to paint two boards (maybe it was three) black for the bathroom. We used Behr high gloss black paint. 

{I would say we, but} Mr. Woodsy taped up the bottom base boards and painted them black! This was the start of the black molding. I was very nervous about this, but in the end it came out great! {Side note: we kept the door frame white... we felt that a black doorframe might be too much.}

Mr. Woodsy cutting the crown molding (incorrectly--read below). He bought what he thought was going to be the trick to his crown molding dilemma this "amazing" tool (blue thing under the black crown molding) that helps with angles... no not so much it stunk and almost ruined one board of crown molding. Needless to say this was brought back to the "depot" the very next day! 

As you can tell from the caption... "we have a problem". He cut the angles incorrectly. This is a common problem in cutting crown molding. You have got to have everything measured out perfect! One brain fart and you could have BIG problems! Because we literally had just enough crown molding to complete our three smallest rooms in the house (and just enough painted for the bathroom) he was forced to cut the piece in half to make it work. Not what he wanted to do... he wanted it to be one solid piece, but I refused to spend any more money or time on this crown molding project. At the end of the day when you look up at it you have to look very closely to see that it's two pieces. 

{Not the end of the world in my book!}

If you want to read a great tutorial on crown molding, visit This Old House or visit youTube that's where Mr. Woodsy picks up a lot of great ideas, tips, and tricks! 

After he messed up the first cut he made the second cut correct and decided to start on that side first! Because this was such a small space he did not need any extra sets of hands to help put up the crown molding. Thus after this piece he had to close the bathroom door so he could finish his work (not allowing me to take any more pictures). 

*For larger spaces you need at least an extra person to hold the molding in place. 

Here is the finished product! Doesn't it look amazing?!?!?!

*I purchased the shower curtain over 3 years ago at K-Mart for $20 & hardware for cabinet $5 at Home Depot.

Here is a view of me laying on the ground taking a picture of the ceiling. 

The walls were painted a light grey, and we kept the ceiling white. 

This gives you an idea of all of our upgrades in one photo! We purchased the framed mirror ($25) at Home Goods, the new bevelled medicine cabinet ($30) and Crown Molding (5 pack for $90+) at Home Depot, the light fixture was given to us for free (thanks to Mr. Woodsy's parents). This kind of gives you an idea of our mini make-over. For about $150 we have a brand new look and elegant feel!  

We entered the CSI Challenge: 

{Tutorial} Painting Stripes

When we first moved into our house a little over a year ago we choose to go with a neutral paint color throughout the house; BEHR's Tuscan Beige. We both agreed that once we were living in the house and if we wanted to add color we could do so then. Well it's been a year now, and I'm not going to lie. I'm ready to really change up the colors in our house! So one Sunday morning I some how convinced my husband to go to the hardware store and pick up the supplies (this was prior to looking at all sorts of examples and tips online. Some websites suggested using a matte and satin or semi-gloss paint of the same color. Other's suggested a few shades up or down of the same color, some did two totally different colors. I don't think there is a right or wrong way to do this project. We choose to go two shades darker than the Tuscan Beige> Indulgent Mocha. Since the Tuscan Beige was an eggshell we decided to go one sheen higher and used a satin. This gives a little extra gloss to the darker portion of the walls.

I honestly can say I had every intention of painting. I just needed him to tape out everything since I knew I would not do a good job of that! After he spent 3 hours taping out the stripes I was ready to start painting... Well not so fast. He refused to let me pick up a paint roller. He didn't want me to "ruin" his hard work. Fine by me! Instead I just managed the project (and I think I did a satisfactory job doing so)! The walls turned out exactly how I wanted them too!

First you will want to measure out the walls you will be striping. In our case. I wanted the darker color to end on each of the two walls. For us it was simply 18 stripes 12inches wide. We choose to run the stripes like it was one consistent wall instead of two walls. 

Supplies Needed:

- Paint brush & roller 

- Blue painters tape (we bought two rolls but only needed one)

- paint of your choice (We used BEHR's Satin Indulgent Mocha)

- measuring tape

- Pencil

- calculator

- ladder

You will want to start by measuring the walls and adding "guide" tape. This will help you dictate your width between stripes. You will want to measure at the bottom, middle, and top of your walls. This takes time and lots of patience!!!

Next, you will start using your pencil markings and taping your walls. Not only do you have to be very precise (and patient), but you need to make sure that the tap sits in the inner stripes that will not be painted. In our case the Tuscan Beige that already exist on the walls. You will also want to use a credit card to smooth out any and all bubbles from the tape. You want to make sure that the tape has absolutely no air pockets!

This is what it will look like once your done taping the room. *Excuse the mess* 

Now you can begin to start painting your stripes! 

 

Last panel to paint!

We scoured the internet trying to find the "right" answer as to when to remove the tape. Some forums said 24 hours others said 30 minutes after painting. By the time Jon was finished painting it had definitely been past 30 minutes from where he started, so he slowly and carefully started removing the tape off. Making sure that if there was still wet paint on the tape that he would not get it on the walls. 

Here is the finished product! *view from our kitchen*

*view from the foyer walking in*

As seen on: 

Craft Gawker