Black and brass

Welcome to a new week my friends! Hope you had a lovely weekend!

Yesterday I finished up the last DIY project for the family room – I think I keep saying everything is the “last” project and then I realize I have another one. For for real – this is it. We’ve been able to rework most of what was in the room before in the new set up and I’m pretty excited about that. I’ve only made one purchase for the “new” space – a gorgeous chair I found a HomeGoods a few weeks back. I’m in lurrrve with it.

In our old set up we used a dresser as the entertainment center:

I use dressers all over our house for storage – they’re pretty and functional. Most of them are Craigslist finds – well, pretty much all of them actually. The one above is one of my favorites but it was too long for the new spot in the family room set up.

So I switched that out for one that’s been in our bedroom for years. I’ve always had a plan to paint it but I bought it because I LOVED the lines:

Most of my dressers I would never paint – even with some damage I love the warm feel of the wood. This one though, I’ve never loved. The finish was a “fake” look – it’s an odd look that I didn’t care for. It had almost a spattered finish on the wood, I’m not sure how else to describe it. Let’s just say it wasn’t a pretty wood finish. And I’ve always really disliked the hardware on it as well – it’s felt too frilly for me.

So I didn’t feel bad painting this one. I considered just sanding it down to a more natural state – I’m loving that trend lately. But the new chair that sits in front of it already has a lighter look and I knew it wouldn’t be enough contrast.

AND sanding it down would require a ton of work – taking it outside and trying to get into all the little detailed areas of the piece. I prefer sitting on my butt and painting inside. ;)

I started by wiping it down well – I’ve used tsp cleaner in the past but over the past few years I’ve realized just regular cleaning wipes work just as well. You just want to get any residue or dust off of whatever you’re painting.

I primed it with my favorite primer:

I have this tinted gray because I use it on all of our interior black doors. It’s a super thin primer and SO easy to apply. It always goes on incredibly well and dries really fast.

Because I wanted to replace the hardware I filled the holes on the top drawers (they were a different type of hardware than the rest of the drawers):

After the coat of primer I made sure to give the flat surfaces a really quick sanding:

I kind of loathe sanding but this is just a light, fast sanding to knock it down just a bit. You’ll want to do that between each coat of color too – if you don’t (I skipped it once or twice this time) your surfaces won’t be super smooth. Not a big deal but it feels better with a smoother finish.

I knew I was going to like it when it was all primed and ready for paint:

I swear sometimes painting a piece really helps the pretty details and lines shine.

I found this AWESOME brush at Lowe’s that I used for most of the painting:

It’s a square brush and I’ve never seen one like it. It’s made for painting window panels but it was perfect for getting into all the grooves in the dresser. Loved it!

I’ve said many times over the years that I believe every room should have a touch of black. It’s grounding and gives some great contrast. I used to paint ever.y.thing. black but I’ve stopped that. ;) But I knew this one would look striking in a darker color so I went for it. I used the Graphite color by Sherwin Williams that I’ve used for our interior doors.

I found hardware that matched the wide (five inch) span of the old hardware but it was a brushed nickel and kind of basic. I didn’t love it. So I held up the old hardware against the new dark color and feel head over heels with it:

Well huh! I’m not kidding when I say I really didn’t care for these handles before – and now I absolutely positively LOVE them. I gave them a good cleaning with my brass cleaner and they are looking so much better than before. (Yes I had to knock out that filler I had put in the top drawers.)

You can see all the pretty lines of the dresser here:

I am obsessed with it now. Obsessed:

It’s so beautiful, I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out! 

On our doors that Graphite color looks more black but you can see it’s true color better here – a dark, dark gray:

I haven’t dressed it up yet – I just threw stuff on it for the pictures.

This dresser serves as my “office” storage. Or at least it will soon – I have some items in it but need to switch out my supplies from the dresser that used to sit in my office.

The best part – I spent $7 on a new brush and that’s all this redo cost me. WHOOT! I had the primer and paint so that’s always a bonus. I haven’t distressed it at all yet – I’ve said before that distressing stresses me. :) After all that work I hate to mess it up on purpose. So I’ll probably just let that happen on it’s own. And soon I’ll put a couple coats of satin poly on the top to protect it against scuff marks.

I am still laughing about that hardware too – I can’t believe how much I love it against the darker color. I think this may be my favorite painted piece ever and it’s the handles that put it over the top for me. Have you painted furniture? Do you have a go-to color?

I’ll be back on Wednesday with the whole space! I’m going to work hard over the next two days to get all the smaller details finished up.

Black and white and awesome all over

Hello my friends! Hope you had a wonderful weekend! Whew, I literally just finished this project up this morning – I mentioned last week that I usually underestimate how long it will take to get a project done and this was one of those for sure. I’ve shown you this trim work before but it always looks so good, I can’t resist sharing it again. It gets me right there, I love it so.

And every time I replace door trim in the house I forget to share a trick or a step so this time I’m focusing more on how I take down the existing trim.

I actually started this project months ago, back when construction was still happening. I knew I wanted to replace all the door trim in the family room as a part of the renovation but I needed our handymen’s table saw to get these two doorways started:

Those two corner pieces had to be ripped down to fit. I got the side trim up and then it sat…for months. Till last week when I went on a trim/painting mission.

I decided to tackle the other two other doors in this space while I was at this – our coat closet and the basement steps. They’re more of a tiny little hallway but you can see them both from the family room so I just went for it.

There are six tools I use EVERY time I take down the existing door trim:

First up, you need a good razor to score the caulk around the current trim:

If you don’t do that the paint will peel up with the trim as you take it off. A little of this is OK because I’m always replacing it with thicker trim. But I still score every time.

Then you can use your pry bar and a hammer and start pulling the trim away from the wall:

Use the hammer to wedge it under – if your trim is hard to remove make sure to put a thin piece of wood under your pry bar so it doesn’t dent your drywall. I’ve learned that one over the years. :)

Sometimes the staples come off with the trim, sometimes they don’t. I use a flathead screwdriver to wiggle them out a bit, then a wrench or pliers to pull them out:

And finally, my latest fave – this scraper tool is the BOMB. It may even get it’s own post it rocks so very much:

You’ll usually have residual caulk on the wall and if you don’t get that off your new trim won’t go flush against the wall. I used to peel every bit off it off and then use a sander. This new tool makes super easy and quick work of getting all that off – LOVE it.

You’ll want to remove or cut down any baseboards near your doorway too – your trim will be wider so this is a must. After that you can start installing the new trim and this part goes fast, especially compared to the time it takes to remove the existing trim.

I’ve shared this process a couple times so I won’t go into detail again, but this is the model I follow, more or less:

I don’t use that thick of a “fillet” on mine – I use thinner trim called stop. It gives it a nice little detail:

After everything was up and painted (the most time consuming part for sure) I focused on adding the new base around the doors in the hallway.

When we had our hardwoods installed years back we didn’t pull up the baseboards – it was just going to take too much time and our base is really hard to remove. I usually have to end up breaking it into pieces in order to get it out. Because the thick wood was installed right up against our already wimpy baseboards they looked even wimpier after the floors were all done. :)

You can really see the difference on this corner with the old base on the left and the new on the right:

Chunky molding makes my heart SING! Wimpy molding gives me the sads. :(

After a few days of work I got it all done – four doorways completed!:

Let’s look at that before again shall we? Cause it always makes me feel accomplished:

Goodness, it feels so good to have this done! I LOVE how the crown and doorways and board and batten all look together. This builder home is looking more custom with every door:

And now the trim on the outside matches the trim on the inside of the powder room and mud room:

I took down the door to the mud room years ago to open up that space a bit. I did the same with our basement door so this is just an open doorway:

I had to match up the baseboards on this side to the walls with the board and batten, so it’s a little thicker. And I finished painting the faux chunky crown molding in this spot too:

Across that itty bitty baby hallway is the closet door – here’s a Christmas pic to give you an idea of how it looked before:

And here’s that same spot with the thicker crown and baseboards…and one more black door completed!:

I am happy to report this means ALL the doors on the main floor are now painted. And all but one in the basement is done…maybe I’ll get the upstairs done in the next few years or so. :)

To see more about painting your interior doors and the color I use go here.

Whoot!! Another BIG project knocked off my list! I’m so happy to have this part done. I’m literally finishing up small projects now (paint, decor) and I’ll be DONE with the “new” family room.

Are you a black door kind of person? I absolutely love them – I think they add some character and interest to our home. And the new molding certainly doesn’t hurt – don’t underestimate the power of new trim! It makes a huge difference!

P.S. Many of you have asked about costs for the door trim and it can range anywhere from $15 to $30 a door – depending on the pine you use. (I only use pine for this to cut down costs.) I mix the nicer, knot-free pine with some cheaper stuff for the top to bring down costs as well.

Other than art

Hey there! Thanks to all for linking up and visiting the party yesterday – so much inspiration!

Because I’m getting closer to finishing up the family room I’m at the point where I can start hanging some art again – but I think art is hard, always have. Especially with our high board and batten, only certain configurations look good.

But in general I think filling wall space is a difficult aspect of decorating. That and accessorizing – both of those are things that hurt my head and once I figure them out I leave them forevaaaa. I’m always trying to think up ways of making the best use of wall space, sometimes without using actual art and always without breaking the bank. These are some of my favorite projects doing just that.

When I made over my son’s room years ago I had two large walls to figure out. On one side I framed out large art above his bed and on the other side I used trim and paint to make three frames make a bigger impact:

The three frames would have been fine for sure, but I wanted to take up a little more visual space. The molding and white trim do that for sure!

Years back I used some inexpensive canvases (use coupons or wait till they go on sale!) and covered them with wallpaper to fill the large wall over the bedroom fireplace:

You can see how I made the texture of the wallpaper stand out even more in that post. If you have a huge wall you could go way bigger with your canvases! This is a great option for renters as well. (Fabric wrapped around a canvas works well too!)

Our staircase has HUGE, tall walls and I copied an idea I saw in the model home -- using molding of course:

I think that was my first attempt at trim work ever – and you can totally tell when you get up close. ;) I used the decorative squares for the corners so I didn’t have to make any mitered cuts. I painted the insides of them a darker color for even more impact when I installed them all those years ago but lightened that up years back when we had these walls painted.

There are BIG plans cooking up in my head to change up that wall but for now I still love my squares.

I needed something large enough to fill those squares and my DIY wood shim mirrors fit nicely:

They are quite large and crazy cheap to do too.

If you have an odd wall in your house you can always make it more interesting with some chalkboard paint:

I have since taken those frames down and we just use it as a huge chalkboard now. I think every room needs some black in it and a chalkboard wall is a great way to incorporate that! Remember you can do almost any chalkboard color you want now too.

I’m still obsessed with our wood planked wall in the basement stairway too:

It adds a slightly industrial touch and some warmth to the space as well – I LOVE it. And out of all of the things in our house that little wall is the one that gets the most compliments.

Now that I’ve used the underlayment for the new fireplace planked wall I am going to experiment with using stain on that – it would be even cheaper than the tongue and groove pine I used in the stairway!

If you have an IKEA nearby they have HUGE canvases that fill large wall space too. I had always loved this huge map and was excited that we had a perfect spot in the basement for it:

Of course I had to add my own little touch with the frame that matches the wood wall in the background. :)

There you go – a few of my favorite ways to fill large walls. And you can’t find most of them in a store, which I love. Each one is unique to our home and the most expensive one is the store bought map. ;) The rest cost $50 and (way) under.

If you have an awkward wall in your house I think sometimes it’s better to do something dramatic to it instead of trying to make it disappear. Have you done anything different to decorate a wall in your home? If you have feel free to link to it in the comments!

I’ll be back with some fall touches tomorrow!

Simple fix: The disposal

Hello there! Thanks so much for all the love on the finished fireplace, I appreciate it more than you know! We’re so happy with how it turned out and I hope it inspires you someway in your home.

As you know, I like to do things myself if I can. I have mixed emotions when I have to call someone to fix something for me – if it’s something stupid and little I’m annoyed. If it’s a biggie I’m totally cool with it. ;)

This past weekend we had a stupid little something and I was determined to get it fixed myself. Long story short we got lots of little bits of stuff that shouldn’t be down a drain…down our drain. It involved an obnoxious cat. It always involves an obnoxious cat. Not knowing the little bits were down the drain, I turned on the disposal and the “rarrarrarrarrar” of death started up. Actually it’s more of a “grrrrrrr” when it’s not working.

If you know what I mean by “long time listener first time caller” right now than you are my favorite person. If you don’t look up “Mr. Obvious, the critter” for a laugh.

OK, back to the post. The little bits had gone down the disposal and it was stuck. There’s a few things you can do to fix this situation on your own. First things first, turn the disposal off at the breaker box.

If something gets stuck in the actual sink part you can usually get it out of there on your own. I’ve used the handle of a wooden spoon and kind of swirled it around in there and then you can put on rubber gloves and reach in and grab it if you get it loose. Or if it’s tons of little things like glass you can put your wet vac hose down in the sink and try to pull them up that way.

If it’s gone down into the disposal like ours did than you need to move to the next option. The bottom of your disposal will look like this:

There’s two areas that are important. The red button on the right is the reset button. Sometimes you can just push that in after clearing out the drain part and it may work. (The button will be out if it needs to be reset. If it’s already pushed in it doesn’t need reset.)

The area in the middle is how you’ll fix most issues with disposal. You’ll need the key that came with it -- it’s just an allen wrench basically:

If you don’t have the specific one that came with your disposal you can usually find one that works on an allen wrench set:

Although when I fixed ours the set did not work – I had to use the disposal key to do it. The allen wrench wouldn’t grab enough.

You stick the key inside and turn it – you may hear everything inside moving around. This is a good thing. I could hear ours grinding. Every few turns I would try the disposal again – if it doesn’t work on the first try or two keep turning. You’ll want to hit the reset button again if it’s sticking out and then things should be moving again. It took about three attempts to clear ours out but it worked!

It just takes a few minutes and you’ll usually be able to fix yours on your own. Have you ever tried this? It’s a GREAT feeling to save hundreds of bucks! Or at least $75-$150 for a service call so the repairman can do the same thing. 

Now go look up Mr. Obvious. :)

$13 planked wall (Finished fireplace!)

Hello all! Wow, what a full weekend! My husband was out of town so the kiddo and I played hard all day Saturday – all kinds of fall goodness. Sunday I worked my tail off getting the fireplace finished up, finally! It’s DONE!

I had a couple things left to do to get it done – I had already finished up the wall treatment above the fireplace and I’m really pleased with how it came together. I knew all along I wanted to plank the top wall, but I wanted to do it a little differently than I did last time. I wanted the planks to be much wider than the standard mdf or pine I usually use. So I went straight for the underlayment at the hardware store:

This is the stuff used under flooring and it’s SUPER cheap. I paid $13 for a big sheet. The nice guy at Lowe’s cut it down into strips for me – each one just over five inches wide.

The edges needed to be sanded down just a little bit – it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be though. Then I gave them two coats of my Peppercorn color and started the process of hanging:

My wall is a little over 50 inches tall so I did some figuring to determine the width of each plank – I knew I was going to put some space between each one so I ended up with the five+ size. You can use anything you want as a spacer – I had my brad nails on hand so used those.

By the way, I painted the wall the gray color first – this is important if you’re going to leave any space between your boards.

I moved my “spacers” down each plank as I nailed them in, checking for level while I did it:

This install went really fast – the front part anyway. The only parts that took some time were around the outlet:

I used my jigsaw to cut out the spot for it. This wood is so thin I could have just scored it and broken it off really:

You can see I’m no ace at the jigsaw. ;) Good thing nobody will ever see it.

I painted right over the outlet and the cover:

The sides took some time as well just because I needed so many pieces. These were installed the same way:

Because I needed so many boards that were the exact same size I just used my original as a guide to cut them all out:

I just lay it on top of the board, mark the line, cut, lay it down again, cut…it saves time instead of measuring every single piece.

You can see here how skinny this wood is – exactly what I was looking for!:

The corners didn’t need to be perfect because I covered those with some corner molding.

I had finished all that up last week but still needed to touch up some spots. I also put one final coat on the entire fireplace – it needed three coats of the Peppercorn all together.

Here’s that same corner with the trim covering up those rough edges:

I haven’t even filled the holes on the wall yet and I don’t think I will – they add a little rustic flair that keeps this area from getting too stuffy. That’s my excuse anyway. :)

When I designed this huge fireplace I knew the TV was going to have to go above. Not my first choice but it was the only way to make the layout work. So I had the guys make an inset in the middle of that upper wall for the TV to sit into:

We have it on a bracket that moves any direction – but when we push it back in you can’t see any cords at all. I LOVE that. Love love love:

I cannot believe this thing is finally done! I’m absolutely head over heels for all of it!:

I went out of my comfort zone painting it that dark gray but I LOVE it. It feels good to branch out every once and a while. :)

We get such good light in here now the room can take it:

I haven’t really decorated it yet – this is stuff I’ve had up here and I’m not sure it will stay. I’m not sure if I’ll keep the long box up there or not:

The mantel is so deep -- my possibilities are endless! I just want to play around with some things to see what works. For now it’s simple and I like it.

I had some gold candle sconces from Target to hang on either side of the TV but when we held them up last night both my husband and I thought they didn’t look right. It looked too busy. I think I’d still like to try something on either side perhaps, but they will need to be long and skinny:

The crown still needs to be painted and finished up there…I’ll tackle that all at once around the room.

If you remember we had to build the fireplace out this far because otherwise we would’ve had to get a permit to build a “doghouse” off the back of the house for it. That would have added quite a bit of time and lots of money so we went with this. It ended up working GREAT because we now have extra storage and a spot for the TV components on the sides:

A few of you asked and YES the remotes work through that metal sheeting! I LOVE that I have all kinds of junk in those cabinets right now and you can’t even tell. Buwhahaha. :)

We were going to hold off on any more construction till next year…but then I quickly realized I just wanted to get it all over with. So that window on the right will be double doors soon (I’m hoping within a month) and the bay window in the kitchen will get a makeover too. So I haven’t continued the molding in that area or painted anything – there’s no point till after we get that done.

But the big beast in the room is DONE!! It took me nearly a month!:

I’m SO pleased with it. Now onto the smaller jobs in this room to get it finished up – paint, molding fixes, door trim, more paint and then some final decorating touches. This is taking waaaay longer than I thought it would but it’s been a pleasure along the way. :) Thanks for coming along with me, as always.

To see more about the dark gray color, go here.
To see how I cut the inserts out of the doors and what I used to cover them, go here.
For a tutorial on installing a tile fireplace surround, go here.
For tips on how to clean the glass on a gas fireplace visit here and more tips on sprucing up your fireplace here.