No Stain, No Gain

Labor Day weekend is a relaxing, fun-filled, last-chance-for-grilling-and-pool-time thing, right?

Of course it's not! Sure, some lucky people in the world find a place to hang out for three days, but for so many people I know, it's a time to do that one thing that's been put off, or to start a new project that's been on the back burner for months, years, decades...or however long they've been procrastinating. For us, it was staining the deck.

The deck was one of the most exciting things about this house when we bought it. I grew up in a house that had a solid wood deck off the back. I love decks. They're perfect places for putting grills, chairs, and other typical hanging-out things. We both love hanging out. The space was awesome. The only problem was that weather had been terrible to this deck, and it wasn't protected. Furthermore, it was an ugly color. Picture old wood with some green-ish tints in random places. Not pretty.

"Ooooh, I love how none of it is the same color!" said no one.

Our other issue was with the stairs. They were old, a bit wobbly, unpredictable, and unreliable. I broke one walking down them one day. Since I'm not really that obese, it was definitely cause for concern.

It's an adventure every time you walk up or down.

Maybe they'll keep you up...

Or maybe they'll send you toppling face-first onto the concrete!

So, the first thing we did was get rid of all the stairs. Two hammers, a drill, and two pry bars later...

Goodbye, danger steps!

We only had one problem. In our excitement to get rid of the death stairs, we had forgotten to clean off the stuff from the deck. This included two grills, four chairs, two end tables, and a large umbrella. 

Whoops. Luckily, he's an engineer so we figured something out:

Grills on wheels!

Most of the other stuff could just be handed over the deck railing. Still, we felt pretty silly for not thinking of that before we demolished the only stairs. 

After everything was pressure washed, we let it sit overnight. That way, we could be sure that the deck would be dry for staining.

We bought some heavy-duty gloves so that splinters would not be too much of an issue, and we were ready to go!

Safety first

Of course, we picked the hottest day of the year to do this. Despite that all of August felt like fall weather, September shows up and decides to be July. It was so hot that my hands were sweating before I even looked at those gloves. I'm sure there's some expert deck-stainers out there that would tell us not to stain in this kind of weather - and we even read some of their advice after a google search - but we were determined. And mostly stubborn. We did it anyway. 

We had discussed many times how we would apply the stain. Spraying would obviously be the quickest, but we worried about over-spray while doing the sides. The stain was expensive, and we didn't want to have to go buy another 5 gallon bucket of the stuff. So, we decided on brushing it.

It was slow-going. To say the absolute least.

Seriously, that one little section took an hour.

To hell with it! We decided. We're going to spray this thing, and it's going to be fine!

Not only did spraying go so much faster, we were able to develop a solid system. Cody would spray, and I would follow with a brush or roller to catch runs and missed spots. It was going smoothly, and then things got even easier.

Cody's family was able to come and help. His mom and his brother showed up just in time to help stain the rest of the railings (sorry guys. We didn't do that on purpose), while Cody worked on replacing the stairs. With everyone working, the process went much more smoothly. Thanks, guys!

Okay new stairs, please don't break on me or my self-esteem is going into a deep spiral of crazy.

The new stairs looked great, but we chose to leave those stain-free for the night. It was getting dark, and we had steaks to grill. Hey, everyone has to have some sort of relax time during Labor Day weekend, right?

Cody's mom, Terri, gave me the best idea for the paint brushes. Because we'd be using them pretty soon the very next day, we didn't want to waste all that time cleaning the brushes. Plus, we were low on paint thinner. Terri suggested putting them in a freezer bag, and letting them chill in the freezer overnight. The next day, let them thaw for a few minutes and they're ready to use again. They don't dry out, and they don't get frostbite. 

Paint Popsicles! (Not recommended for actual consumption)

The idea totally worked, and I'd suggest it for anyone in a multi-day painting project. Terri's advice: keep brushes with the colors of your walls in the freezer all the time for touch-up painting. Totally worth it.

The next day we finished up the entire deck, and admired the new look.

While we were pretty proud of the job, it was actually time to clean up. Not all of this could fit in the freezer:

Yikes. I'm glad some of it got on the deck.

Happy Labor Day, folks!

Chutes, Ladders, and Laundry

When Cody was growing up, his family had laundry in the basement and the coolest way to get it there: A laundry chute.

When I was growing up, I used to watch this movie, Dunston Checks In, where Rupert Everett chases a monkey around a fancy hotel. There's a part in that movie where Everett sticks his head in a laundry chute to coax said monkey out from hiding.

Clearly, both of our childhoods led to this moment: We were going to make a laundry chute.

Actually, it wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I realized that houses could have laundry chutes. Dunston had always led me to believe that these were only available in luxury hotels. Thanks, Hollywood.

Anyway, we started with a cabinet.

This one!

 

This came from a Craigslist set of cabinets we got right after purchasing the house. They've treated us well! To see how we turned one of these cabinets into a bathroom vanity, click here.

 

We wanted the chute to be big enough to fit clothes into easily, but not so large that it would take up too much room in our closet. So, we removed the doors, cut off the edges, and turned it on its side.

 

Good start...but one side is bigger than the other.

Jig saws are my favorite saws to use.

Even!

 

It was a little short, so we built a stand for it. We also added trim pieces on the top for a more finished look.

 

It's starting to look like...something?

 

 

For the next step, we had to be ready for paint. This means my favorite part in all of woodworking: Sanding.

 

I'm so thrilled here.

 





 

All of that is completely sarcastic.

 

I do not like sanding, Sam I am. I do not like it on a boat, I do not like it with a goat. Okay, maybe it would be more enjoyable on a boat. I've never done that before. Regardless, sanding is not one of my favorite activities. BUT, it doesn't take very long when you have a good electric sander. All in all, I guess it's not that terrible. I guess.

 

The next day, Cody went to work and I stayed home to paint. We painted the bottom stand gray (the same color as our walls in the bedroom/closet. We painted the main part white (the same color as the trim).

 

The stand almost blends in to the basement floor. Look closely!

 

This is where I'm lucky to be engaged to an engineer. Cody designed the door to make it open like a mailbox. I would have had no clue how to make this work, except for moving the hinges to another side. So, I just let him do his thing on that one. After lots of math and drawing, here's the result:

 

Math! You can use it in the real world!

 

The next part was scary. We had to cut a hole in the floor. In our beautifully stained, recently finished floors! The horror!

  

Okay, okay. It wasn't that dramatic. We were nervous, though. Even when measuring and drawing out the square on the hardwood, I was holding my breath.

 

 

AAAAAAHHH.

 





To distract my nerves, I just held a vacuum cleaner and cleaned up all the saw dust.

 

 

Okay...not that bad.

 

From the picture, it looks like our clothes are going to fall straight into the sump pump. I think it's just my terrible photo angle. Plus, we'll end up framing that in, anyway. We couldn't think about that too much, because we were too excited to put our new product in the house! We attached our custom-engineered door, trimmed the bottom out with baseboard, and then marveled.

 

 

Whaaaaaat!

 

Of course, we had to test it out. But, we haven't built the laundry table to keep the clothes in a basket instead of on the floor (or in that pesky sump pump). So we used a ladder. Who knows? Maybe it would sort the clothes for us. You know, darks on top, lights down the steps?

 

(This is a video!)

 

Yeah, the ladder idea was just wishful thinking. However, we're super happy with the results. Dirty laundry is out of sight, and I don't have to drag it downstairs to clean it. Win-Win!

 

 







Setting the Bar

After we moved in to our new-old house, we were really excited to start the fun projects. The most successful one thus far (I think), is the bar in the kitchen. We talked forever about what we could use as the bar, and wanted to recycle something. We thought about barn wood, but we don't have any barns. We did have a ton of extra hardwood flooring, though! The old hardwood from the patch in the bedroom was in a pile in the basement. Could that work? Yeah, maybe.

First, the before pictures. The bar between the kitchen and the dining/living room was on the accent wall. With the kitchen coming around, the absence of the bar made the whole thing look really unfinished.

We also wanted to match the half wall above the basement stairs. But, we were kind of sad to cover it up. Apparently this piece of wood used to be in some kind of bar/hang out spot. It was covered in names and phone numbers from, well, who knows when?

Who are these people?!

So. Step one was to cover both walls with the shape of the bar/covering. We also added supports underneath.  

The wax paper was added so that we could paint these braces later. The idea came from Phillip, when we put up the interior door trim. We figured the same thing would work for this. It did. 

The next step was to add the hardwood and nail it in with the nail gun. The nail gun is totally my favorite tool to use. It always makes me feel like a badass. 

 Gettin' it.

Worked on the other wall, too. 

The best thing about using hardwood floor on the wall and the bar was that it was really easy to do. We just picked the pieces and made sure they looked randomly placed. When a piece was too big, I'd just ran out to the garage and saw it in half. The only hiccup was matching it on the edges. 

Tricky.

For the first picture, we had to rip a piece of hardwood in half using a table saw. For the second, we had to get rid of part of the corner using the Rockwell saw. I started counting how many different saws we used on this project, and it was ridiculous. 

1. Miter Saw

2. Circular Saw

3. Jig Saw

4. Table Saw

5. Rockwell Universal Saw 

Considering I didn't even know that there were this many different kinds of saws before we got this house, I did pretty well. 

Next, we had to sand and stain the bar. We used the same stain as we did on the actual hardwood.

Matching: Check.

Though it looked awesome, we still weren't finished. We trimmed both spaces with boards using 45 degree angles on the corners. (Also, I know how to do that now.)

Nail gun makes an appearance, once again!

Hopefully no one will write their names on this one.

After touch-up painting and polyurethane, this bar is going to be ready for dining. 

This is my fierce nail gun face.

And that's how you make a bar out of floors. 

Out with the Old, in with Our Stuff

After we moved into the house, everything seemed pretty surreal. I've seen so many stages and so much progress, and I had often forgotten that we would be living there someday. With so much more work to do, we were worried we wouldn't be in, even by the end of summer. One night after returning from a long night of work we talked about moving early.

So what if we didn't have the cabinets and the bar done?

So what if the basement would continue to be a construction zone?

So what if there was still a huge pile of carpet in the garage?

So what if we didn't have appliances? 

...Wait, what?

Yeah, we didn't have any kitchen appliances when we moved in. That is, unless you counted the dishwasher we found. We never hooked that dishwasher up, and it was sitting on top of the pile of carpet, so I didn't.

But, we decided to set an early moving date anyway. We would buy appliances, and they would be there soon enough. And the work that could get done during the time we were usually traveling between houses would make it worth it. That's it. That's all. Moving no matter what. 

The next day I bought Cody a mini fridge for his birthday. In addition to my classroom fridge, we could live. It was something.

When we moved, we did everything ourselves, which means skinny-armed me picked up half of all of our heavy furniture. YES! GO ME! I also moved all of the food from the old house, hoping it would fit somewhere to stay edible.

...Also hoping this would last across town.

It was funny to see things start coming together. Even though we had no doors inside the house (like, anywhere), seeing furniture in rooms was definitely a good feeling. 

Our first projects were: 1. Get appliances. 2. Get a dumpster.

The dumpster was a necessity. We had so much trash! Like I said before, we had all the carpet piled in the garage, and the basement needed to be completely gutted. While the basement wasn't ever finished, the walls that were there were in terrible shape. Unfortunately our Waste Management-issued trash can couldn't hold all of that. 

Problem.

We had both been looking forward to gutting the basement. Yes, we wanted to get rid of the walls that had water damage, and yes we wanted the space more open before we finish it ourselves. But mostly, I couldn't wait to get rid of these colors! The first (above), was a terrible pistachio green...or mint (sans chocolate chip) ice cream. 

The second, I think, must have been called "Peeps Yellow."

Multiple levels of Yikes.

I think the theme here was either Easter-colored snacks or gender-neutral nursery. Regardless, this is me getting rid of that:

Muscles!

Obviously, I'm not proficient in using a sledge hammer. That didn't stop me from trying! We spent an entire Friday night getting rid of the walls in the basement, and it was awesome. If you're looking for a fun date night, I'd highly recommend it :)

Beautiful!

The whole "out with the old" theme continued with landscaping. We were pretty tired of seeing the shrubs in front of the living room window. Although we're not sure what we want to put there yet, we wanted to get rid of those suckers while we had the dumpster. But, how could we do it?

You can take him out of the country...

This was hilarious, because a group of teenagers was walking down the sidewalk while this was going on. They were probably all adolescent and judge-y, but hopefully they got a laugh out of it!

More exciting, we actually did get appliances. At first, I was thinking, "These are huge! They don't belong here!" but I've gotten used to them. 

Whaaat?! 

We're working on the dishwasher situation. There will be more on that later. But for right now, this is awesome! It's been really nice to work on the house and just stop to say, "Hey, wanna cook dinner?"

First meal in the house: Pizza!

We both love and have missed cooking, and were sick of frozen pizza from the late dinners at the old house. So, it's ironic and ridiculous that this was the first thing we made in the new kitchen. Turns out, frozen pizza is just convenient (and delicious) no matter where you are. Also, does anyone need a knife set?

We've had many other projects that I'm looking forward to including in the blog. But before this post ends, I want to assure you...we did eventually get doors.

They work, too!

Maegan and Cody vs. the Floors: Episode 3 (Series Finale)

So, I took an extended, unintentional blog-cation. I wrote this months ago, saved it as a draft, and never added pictures. Today (now that we have internet in the house!), I decided to revisit, revise, and post! Here goes...

Last time on Maegan and Cody vs. the Floors:

• There was a push-sander.
• Maegan was hesitant about the stain.
• It worked out fine.

In this episode, we tackle polyurethane and baseboards. What could possibly go wrong? 

Well...many things. Especially for two people that have never worked with polyurethane before. We bought two brand new paint rollers, some trays, and three gallons of the shiny stuff. We had a strategic plan of how to get across the whole house and trap ourselves in the kitchen.

Oh, and I had to buy some of those hospital shoe covers. You know, the kind surgeons wear? So, we were obviously stylin'.

Also, he's using a Swiffer. Attractive, right?

We started in the master bedroom and worked our way to the front of the house. Everything seemed to be going fine, until we noticed these weird bubbles...

Now, if you've read this blog from the beginning, you know that we have had trouble with paint bubbles before. We knew better this time. Leave it alone. Walk away. See what it looks like tomorrow.

Weeellllll...these bubbles stayed. When we ran our hands across our should-be-smooth floor, it felt like a hotel room floor after coming back from the beach. It was rough, bumpy, foggy in some spots, and it looked terrible. Apparently polyurethane likes to bubble up on the first coat. It has something to do with getting into the uneven parts of the floor. Google reassured us that this happens to most people on the first coat.

Google also told us to sand the floors and apply another coat. So, we sanded the entire floor (again), and it sucked. We knew we would have to be very particular with the second coat, so that we wouldn't have to do a third. 

As we contemplated this, we started on the baseboards. I'm extra proud of our system for painting baseboards. Here's a picture:

Finally! Photographic proof that I did stuff, too!

After placing the baseboard pieces on the trailer, I came across with a roller. We used oil-based paint, so it was really smelly. I was glad to be outside. 

Then, Cody came back across with a trim brush to smooth out the paint. The end result looked awesome. This is probably the most successful and efficient we've ever been on this house.

Putting in the baseboards, though not as simple, went just as smoothly. We also put up door trim and jambs. These finishing projects are pretty awesome; I love seeing things come together and actually look like a house 

I've never really appreciated baseboards before. They add so much of a finished look, though! I guess there are some things you grow up seeing, never really paying attention to. Then, you become an adult/homeowner, and you think, "Huh. Those things are really nice. Who thought of those? They must have hated painting down to the floor, and said, 'To heck with it! I'll just put up boards that go all the way around the floor!' What a good idea." 

(Okay, okay...That thought can probably only come from thinking about baseboards. Still, they're very practical.)

Like I said before, I wrote this post quite a while ago. I'm glad I kept it, however, because now I remember doing all of that stuff! Since that time, we have gone to Florida for a wedding, moved in, ended our old lease, celebrated Father's Day with our Fathers, and done lots of work on the house. 

Stay tuned for an update on the bathroom and kitchen! I won't wait so long to post for those :)