DIYing Speckled Skin. I mean, Textured Ceilings.

This isn't one of those never-buy-this-product posts. It will also be pretty evident that this isn't a "sponsored post."  You know, those ones that have the disclaimer at the end where the blogger says that they were paid, but they promise all of the overly nice things they say about the product are absolutely true and have nothing to do with getting paid.  Definitely not one of those.  I just gotta tell you--this product is crazy:

It is hysterical how messy it is.  We had 17 holes in our family room ceiling from moving two vents and installing 6 recessed lights.  I know.  I know.  That math doesn't add up, but once we get the lights wired, I'll spill all of those details on how you can skip hiring an electrician to install your recessed lights as long as you don't mind patching a plethora of holes.

Back to those holes.  After patching all 17 of them, we had to figure out how to make the texture of these newly patched ceilings blend in to our Knockdown textured ceiling instead of looking like brand new white sneakers on the first day of school.

The can said "Ceiling Texture" and "Knockdown."  Perf.  I think the first time I realized I was in for quite a wild ride was before I even sprayed any of the stuff up on the ceiling.  I was holding the can above my head and I remember thinking, "Now how is this gonna work?" I just knew... I knew that this was gonna get ugly.  I squirted real quick and about 70% went on the ceiling and 30% fell back down on me.  And then an additional 5% excess glopped down after that.  One spray down, about 49 to go.  After it got too close to going in my mouth, I started keeping my mouth closed real tight, closing my eyes, looking down and aiming.  Every time it was like a brief snowstorm hitting me.

We have used this product for texturing our walls previously with no problem, but using it for the ceiling--just prepare yourself to get messy.  And I wouldn't even fathom doing this to a finished room with flooring you plan on keeping.  Okay, I'm being dramatic.  Just cover every surface you don't want textured.  Every surface. ;)

After giving the ceiling a fresh coat of paint last night, I was anxious to see how everything looked this morning.

Verdict: Eh. I can still tell where the patches were.  The texture doesn't really look anything like our ceiling texture.  But--it might be good enough....  ....after another layer of texture.

So, I am at it again.  After spending a solid 20 minutes trying to get globs of Knockdown out of my hair last night, I opted for one of Chris's hats today.  A quick retexturing session this morning I walked away with just a few globs on my shirt (yeah, those are from the spray texture):

And lightly speckled skin.

I'd say I'm getting better.


Psst. You guys.  You have no idea how much it means to me--to us--to have received so much support for what we do here.  In nothing short of a miracle in my eyes, we have somehow found ourselves in the top 6 for Best DIY blog on Apartment Therapy.  We are surrounded by heavy hitters--serious money-making blogs with thousands of followers--that I am sure will be rallying the troops and knock us out of the running.  But today, I feel like a winner.  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.  That's one huge leap for small, do-it-because-you-love-it blogs everywhere. 

Family Room Textile Teaser

The first pillow cover that we're working into our family room arrived over the weekend.  It's gorgeous.  It's thick and soft and well constructed. 

I mentioned I wanted to introduce chocolate as an accent color when I talked about our mood board here, and this is the exact color I was thinking of.  You can see a similar pillow color I presented in our mood board:

Number 2, second from the right.  The one I ended up getting is from the same Etsy shop, Whitlock & Co., but instead of a lumbar pillow, we decided to go for a larger square size that would complement our huge couch a little better.

That mustardy, chartreuse houndstooth pillow also featured in our original mood board (Numero 9 for reference) is also from Whitlock & Co..  Unfortunately, it sold out.  Drat.  But she does have a soft gray version that I am eyeing. Impeccable taste going on in that shop.

As far as other textiles and colors go in the room, we are creating a very neutral, soothing backdrop.  Perfect for layering in pops of color, but still keeping things cozy in a way that a relaxing family/tv room should.  Here's what we have decided on so far:

 1.  We're covering the walls with Zinc.  It's a Martha Stewart paint color.  A warm, and quite dark gray.  The family room gets a lot of natural light.  A lot!  Which is great, but it is important to keep in mind when choosing a paint color.  We knew we needed to go a few shades darker to really get the cozy factor that we wanted and Zinc will hopefully fit the vision.

2.  Although our mood board featured a taupe sofa (the Lounge from Crate and Barrel), we ended up going with a light gray microfiber.  I think I let Chris ultimately choose the color and textile for the sofa.  He let me have the carpet I wanted and he got to pick the sofa upholstery.  It'll be soft in every definition of the word.  See?:

3.  I wanted to pull some warmth in with the carpet tones.  I fell in love with Greta's carpet last year, so we are going with the same design (Martha Stewart Winterthur), but I went pretty dark for the same reasons we went darker with the paint color.  Brook Trout, definitely brown, but it is a grayish brown compared to other samples won and will be installed on Thursday.  We'll give you all the details on the carpet pad we chose and final pics once it is in.

  

4.  We got the Kivik chaise from Ikea we featured in our original mood board.  I shopped and shopped for a great chaise that would fit into our budget and this is the winner.  It was about $350 for the chaise and this dark charcoal cover.  Bargain.

Those are the textiles we have in order right now.  What do you think?  Grim city?  A little dull?  Keep in mind we wanted to keep a lot of the major elements of the room neutral so that we could easily change accent colors down the road if we feel like it.  Are you feelin' it?

P.S.  Whitlock & Co. is offering our readers 15% anything in the shop for a solid week.  Use the code CHRISJULIA15.  I may have to get myself a few more pillow covers. Loving this and this.

Venting

Or, "How to move your ceiling vents"
....orrrr, "Make way for crown molding!"

There aren't a ton of online tutorials about moving your ceiling vents to a different location (I couldn't find any--which made this project even more nerve-wrecking), but that's exactly what we did on Saturday.  With the plans to have built-in bookcases from floor to ceiling and crown molding rounding out the top, our vents 8 inches from the wall weren't going to cut it. Especially since our bookcases are 11 inches deep.

Chris kept telling me, "We'll just move them."  Every time he said that I went into panic mode.  When I don't know how to do something, or I can't quite wrap my head around how something is going to work, I panic and get anxious.  Turns out, it was as easy as "just" moving them.  Here's how we did it.

As you can see, we didn't move it far--just about 8.5 inches, but we had to get that length from somewhere else.  Because the end attaches to a bent piece that allows it to come down and out of the ceiling, we wanted to cut a straight portion of the duct.  We cut a rectangular piece out from the ceiling where we knew there were no addition pipes or wires, measured an 8.5 chunk and cut it out with a metal blade attached to a reciprocating saw.  Once the duct was shortened, we brought the two pieces together and attached them securely with really shiny, heat resistant tape.  I am hesitant to say "duct tape" because it isn't the duct tape that you are thinking of.  In fact, that duct tape is good for about everything but ducts.  Go figure.  The tape we used, and you should use if you tackle a similar project, is in the ventilation aisle, right by the ducts.  You can't miss it.  Like I said--real shiny.

Now that we successfully shortened our duct and moved our vent in and reattached the cover, it was time to patch those massive holes we were left with.  Because we also tackled our recessed lighting ourselves over the weekend (more on that later this week!) patching holes was the name of the game on Saturday.  There were a few different methods we used, depending on the hole.  For these rectangular ones, we held onto what we cut out so we could jimmy-rig (first time using that term, woot.) it back up there.

These were pretty substantial pieces that needed more than a little self-adhesive mesh tape to keep the up.  Chris attached a couple shims to each piece of sheetrock and placed it up in the ceiling.

Once up there securely, we broke out the self-adhesive mesh drywall tape and taped around each piece and slapped some joint compound up there.

And voila!  It really wasn't that hard.  My anxiety did flare up a little when Chris had me hold the vent in the ceiling as he hacked it--but I closed my eyes real tight and it was over before I knew it.  Kinda like the whole vent-moving project.  It took an hour.  Tops.

Wiring our own recessed lighting on the other hand...well, that was a slightly different story.  Now the blogosphere knows how to move a vent--or at least that they can move a vent.  It's kinda liberating, right??

Any other fun things happen this weekend?  Did you see Michelle Williams in that orangey-red number?  I loved it.  It was my favorite. Although, I admittedly only have seen it in pictures--we had to officially take down our television until construction is done. Don't even get me started on what that means for me and The Bachelor tonight.  That would give the title of this post a whole new meaning.

The Homies--Best DIY Blog Nom

Our blog was nominated for a Homie award for best DIY blog! So honored. With so many inspiring blogs nominated in our category, we don't expect to win--but if you are a reader, we'd love your vote of support as a way of saying, "Keep it up!"

Thank you, everyone. You make living in constant DIY chaos absolute bliss.

I'll be back in a couple hours to share progress on the family room. We are making 'UGE strides. 'Uge.


Vote here.

win.dow |ˈwindō|

Guess what is happening this afternoon. 

I'm gonna try to contain my excitement during the process.  I don't want to be a total weirdy and watch and stare the whole time--but playing it cool has never been my strong suit.  I'm gonna take about 230 pictures and lean over the banister smiling the whole time.  Because I know you are just as excited as I am about this whole process but can't have a front row seat like me and my girl, Steph, teasers will be posted on our facebook page.

...GAH!!!

Plugging along in Sheetrockville.

Tuesday night was sheetrock night.  It was also the night where we renamed the paint color in our home "Drywall."  Isn't the color eerily similar to the paint on the walls? 

Nuts.  I'm sure we did things unconventional, but like always--we do what works for us.  "Us" being I man and one relatively weak-sauce woman.  So first we propped the sheetrock up on some scrap wood until it was the same height as the adjacent wall.  This was especially helpful to me--holder of the drywall.  It saved me the stress and muscle to have to hold the board up at the right height, and I focused on keeping it nice and close to the studs while Chris hammered it in place.  And then we cut it.

Is that backwards?  Maybe.  But it made for a perfect fit around the step-pattern shape we got going on.  And the rest, we just slid back and secured in its place.

Tuesday night wasn't that fun.  Drywalling in general?  I'm not a big fan.  Last night was more fun.  I like spackling!  I have filled in small nail holes before, but never taped new walls--so I went to YouTube and searched for a tutorial.  This one was so helpful:



I was planning on doing a tutorial myself, but I am not sure I am qualified yet.  Maybe the next wall we knock down and rebuild.  ;)  While I was busy taping and spackling some joint compound on the walls...

...And selling our ottoman and buying other things in the online classifieds,

Chris started taking out the tile flooring by our sliding glass door.  We decided to have the carpet extend all the way to the door.  Partly because we don't like the tile and also we don't want the visual breakup in flooring.  

Chris also finished installing more drywall and started building the small wall that will house more foundation and be the platform for another bookcase on the other side of the door.  And then we have to drywall and spackle that up.  Needless to say, I won't be painting today like I thought I would.  Even though I feel behind, we're way ahead of our end-of-March deadline.  Like....WAY ahead.  But you wouldn't be able to tell that from the sight this morning--

Slim wall not quite framed out with no drywall yet:

Just enough of the tile came up to where we could work on the sides of the future bookcases:

These walls need another coat of joint compound...or two:

And there is dust.  Everywhere!

We are happy to have (most of) the walls up.  By the end of next week, we plan on having all the dirty work done.  As in, recessed lighting in (which we are doing ourselves--it'll be an adventure), bookcases up, window cut out, the carpet installed and the decorating started.  It may be a mess now, but we're holding on to the vision and the promise of a major veg session when we're done.  Hope you'll tag along for the ride.

Missed parts of the process?  See our blank slate here.   Demolition here.  Framing the wall, here.

For Sale: 5 Birds on Wire

We got the drywall up last night, but we still have to do the mudding and taping so we'll save that post for tomorrow so I can give the full rundown on how we checked "walls" off of our to-do list.  

If you already have walls, especially blank walls, you are gonna want to run to snag what I just added to our Etsy shop.  After the Robert Frost painting sold to a D.C. reader (Hey-o!), I realized I shouldn't be hoarding my art in the spare room.  So, 5 Birds on Wire is up for grabs and I am so excited to see it grace someone else's walls.  Get it here. 

We Got Framed.

Cheesiest, most expected title right?  You love it.  Last time you saw this wall, we had just finished demolition and it looked like this:

Now, a few sick days and several stubborn concrete nails later, it looks like this:

Chris and I finished framing this wall last night.  Now, Chris helped build his parents' home, so he knew what he was doing.  I, on the other hand, should of kept track of how many times I said, "I don't understand. I just can't visualize this."  Fortunately, I make a pretty good assistant and can follow directions, so when Chris told me, "Hold this here and don't let it move." I did it and we eventually got things done.

Of course, there were a few hiccups along the way.  We tried two different types of diamond-tipped concrete nails and both kinds bent 9 times out of 10 while we were trying to secure our treated lumber (treated lumber isn't always necessary against concrete, but since we have had water issues before we didn't want to take any chances) to the concrete subfloor.  Chris was getting so frustrated.  Finally, around day 2, he returned the nails to Home Depot and picked up a Ramset.

I never could get the name right.  Remax. Ramsack.  Either way, it is basically a hammer gun.  And with one hit, it shot the nail right through the wood and into the concrete.  It was such a lifesaver project saver.   Caution: You are gonna wanna plug your ears.  It really is as loud as a gunshot.

But the results are quick and efficient.

The other hiccup happened when we realized our foundation and subfloor weren't exactly level.  Surprise. Surprise. Since we are putting bookcases on top of these frames all the way to the ceiling, we needed things to be as level as possible so that we wouldn't have a lot of uneven spaces once we got to the ceiling.  The two lower platforms were especially unleveled, so before we secured the plywood on top, we shimmed it until things were even.

Chris planned and built the whole thing from a couple of drawings.  We are no Ana Whites, so there isn't a source list coming, just these simple drawings that map out the end product (and a couple Greta scribbles):

Is it strong enough to hold a bunch of bookcases?  Oh yeah.  Last night after we finished, we both jumped around on the platforms to make sure these babies weren't going anywhere.  Solid.



Another money-saving perk about this project: We were able to use almost all of the wood that was framing this half wall before. So this project, although a little bit time consuming, only cost us a total of $45.  $15 went to the treated lumber and plywood and $30 for the Ramset.  Tonight we need to put back the insulation and get all the drywalling done, too.  Another thing, I will know a whole lot more about after tonight.

We have a busy week planned with lots of projects.  I can't wait to break out a paint can, or at least start putting together all the bookcases we picked up yesterday from Ikea (All 7! of them and a chaise)

 You know, something I can wrap my head around a little better.  If all goes according to plan, I should be painting by Thursday.  :)  Stay tuned, friends!

Sickness, Sofas, and Carpet Saga

Whew!  This weekend involved a lot of sneezing, coughing, crying and me attempting to make soup for my sick babies (Greta and Chris).  None of it was pretty, especially the soup part.  Thankfully, everyone is feeling loads better which means Chris and I are back knee-deep in sheet rock--we really want to finish building the wall today, let's hope Greta cooperates.

There were also some other behind the scenes tasks and items to figure out that I took care of this weekend.  We ordered the couch.  I thought I had ordered it a week ago, but after you place your order, Crate and Barrel sends you a swatch to okay before they begin custom making the couch just for you.  Here's where my heart sank, "Thanks for your order, Mrs. Marcum.  It will be at your home in 8-10 weeks."  What?!  Eight to ten weeks?!  I tried to get her to tell me that it would be closer to 4 to 6 weeks, but I guess that time frame is not like price.  It can't be negotiated.  Bummer.  I told Chris the news and he seemed unmoved by it, until I mentioned, "Maybe we should look for another couch?"  "No. That is our couch.  We'll wait."  He loves the thing.  And so we wait for our 93" Gray Lounge Sofa to get here.  And wait. And wait.

We also got the carpet ordered.  Which always ends up costing more than we anticipated.  In our case, 30% more because that's how much extra we will have due to our room + a couple stairs set-up.  The whole process was silly.  When the measurer came out to survey the room and get, well, measurements--he was done in about 7 minutes and then told me to sign a form.  I looked over his measurements and told him that the wall (the one we are currently building out a bit to house bookshelves) actually comes out a couple inches more than he has marked.  I told him this before he began.  "Well, it will be about the same actually." "No, it won't."  "Well, why would you want to make your room smaller anyway?"  At this point I am puzzled why I have to answer to the carpet measurer but I give him the quick run-down about our bookshelves.  In addition to needing a teensy bit more carpet and having to pay for a lot more because of the way it is designed, we also have to fork out a little more for the installation because we have "hollywood style" stairs.  When I called the installers to ask them why our installation was so much, she explained that our stairs are hollywood style, meaning the carpet is firmly tucked under the lip of the stair, instead of going straight down.  

I had never heard of this.  And I definitely never thought about it.  I had to look again and sure enough, we have a touch of "hollywood" in our little ol' home.  By the end of our conversation, she had somehow discovered that my birthday was the same as her husband's and then praised me for being a Sagittarius--and suddenly I forgot that I just spent a grand on carpet.  We are hoping to have it installed early next week.  Which means we want to finish the built-ins, lighting, painting and getting the new window cut out and installed all this week.  Did I just say the new window is happening?!  Oh yes.  Yes I did.  (EEEeee!!!!)

P.S.  I gotta know, do you have "Hollywood style" carpet on your stairs?  The more I think about it, I can't picture it any other way.  

Our Plans to Disguise the Pesky Foundation

Yesterday, we let you see what fun it was to take that silly half wall down--but we can barely wait to build things back up in a way that makes more sense to us than a random wall/shelf two-thirds of the way up a wall.  So, here are the plans.  Albeit, a very rough floorplanner.com 3D drawing:

We're doing built-in looking bookcases all the way to the ceiling!  The space underneath the bookcases will actually be wall that comes out the same depth as the bookcases, so despite the way it looks, they won't actually be floating in the air.  We needed a solution to disguising our jolting foundation at the bottom of the wall and we are so excited about having a wall full of shelves.  The above picture looks a little wonky, but worry not, all of the bookcases will be trimmed out to look built in so there will be no seams or space between them.  We are also adding crown molding at the top of the shelves to keep it extra classy and less, puzzled together.

There are three different bookcases that will go into this wall-o-fun, all from Ikea.  First, the Billy bookcase will flank each of the far sides of the right side of the sliding door and we are actually cutting down a full size Billy to fit perfectly on the left side of the door.

In from the Billy, we have the Benno.  Which is actually a narrow DVD case, but we won't use  it for DVDs only, especially since we only have about 6.  However, because of its intended use, it is not quite as deep.  We will be adding boards to frame it out, so it fits in nicely and looks seamless.

Those two bookcases together will bring us to the width of our television, plus about 3 inches on each side for wiggle room.  On top and bottom of the television, we will also be using bookcases from the Billy collection, but this time they are horizontal wall shelves.

Do you catch the vision?  I hope so.  And if you don't quite yet, we plan to have this whole thing up within the week, so you won't have to wait for-ev-ver (Sandlot, anyone?) to see what we have so perfectly mapped out in our minds. Right now, we are working on framing and drywalling the platform underneath all of these future bookcases.  And hope to have that done to share with you on Monday.  Anyone else dreaming of built-ins?  Big weekend plans that don't involve sheetrock?  Spill, so we can live vicariously through you.   

My First Go at Demolition.

We had some technical difficulties yesterday.  I thought I lost my MacBook.  I knew where it was--but I thought it had gone kaput.  Luckily, its sudden turning off and not turning back on was just a charging issue.  So, for now if I keep a weight on the cord, it stays on.  Hahaha.  I'll take it!  All this to say, I missed blogging yesterday.  I missed letting you all know about the progress we are making in the family room.  So, to catch you up:

We tore down the half wall.  This was my very first time demo-ing a wall and it was harder than I thought!  We went from pulling and prying to sawing and kicking.  And lucky for you, we documented the whole thing and then sped it up 650% and added some snazzy music:



That is how we spent our Valentine's day.  Which wasn't a bad thing, really. Chris is really fun to work with and if you didn't notice--I stood back and watched a lot.  Hehehe.  So after all the demolition, it looked like this:

A reader warned us that the half wall was there for a reason, so last week we drilled a hole and found she was right.  The demolition process revealed about a foot of cement foundation jolting out farther than the wall.  Thanks to that reader (Hey Michelle!) and us confirming it in a pre-drilling session last week, we were prepared for this hurdle and actually have plans to incorporate it naturally into the look of the new room.  More on that tomorrow!  Gotta love a little suspense.

Last night, we tackled the electrical work.  Which included more of me scratching my head, confused, and just following directions.  Since this was going to be where our TV is now going to be, we wanted to rewire all the cable and plugs so that in the end, there wouldn't be any visible cords.

Unfortunately, I can't give you a rundown of exactly what was done because when it comes to electrical work, Chris is my hero.  But, if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask in the comment section and I'll make sure Chris answers those.  Basically we first mapped out the whole wall to find where the tv would be in the end.

Then, fast forward a couple hours and he had this nifty box installed that will plug in all of the electronics hidden behind the television.  The middle slot is for other wires to access the plugs from underneath (where an additional slot will be installed behind the dvd player and apple tv.

Really, I am just real impressed.

Tonight we are doing a whole lot of framing, and tomorrow we'll let you in on the real plans for this wall.  It's gonna be major. ;)