Busy week

Good heavens, it's already Tuesday! Teacher Appreciation Week is next week and I'm knee-deep in projects. My friend Angie and I are working on a biggie and we are so very excited about it. I can't wait to share! Every year, I say I'm not going to go crazy in May because it's my birthday and Mother's Day, but this is just a very busy time for me. Oh well, it keeps me on my toes, right!?

Thank goodness I have little things like this to make me laugh. That little Jack is such a character these days. I bought some "Hawaiian" stuff at the Dollar Tree including the silly coconut cups. For two days, the boys had to have every drink out of those cups which would be no big deal, but they were very hard to close tightly. I was expecting a big spill somewhere when the lid popped off. It never happened, though.
I bought some wood for my fireplace mantle and have been listening to Travis and my dad wonder how I'm going to put it together. I hear doubt in their voices. But I will not be deterred. I know what I'm doing. You would think they would know better than to doubt me by this point! (My dad reads this, so, Dad, trust me on this, o.k.?) However, there will be no woodworking until after Teacher Apprec. Week, I'm afraid.

Restore!

I have been wanting to go the Habitat for Humanity Restore (love that clever name!)for a while, and I finally got the chance today! Most communities have one of these stores. They have building materials that people have torn out of homes and they also have new stuff that was extra or unused or unwanted. There was a lot of junky stuff like old sinks, countertops, brass lighting fixtures. I definitley had to use my imagination. I would guess that in a bigger community, you would have a lot more to choose from. Anyway, I got what I came for--crown moulding! They had a big pile of trim pieces that had been torn out of somewhere. I bought all I could carry for $5.00. Don't worry, I am going to paint it white. They had tons of ceramic tile and all of it in nice neutral tones. I don't think there would have been enough of any one kind to do a whole room, but enough to do a small bathroom for sure. I just needed 5 tiles to place in front of the fireplace and they were 50 cents each. I figured that even if I didn't love them once I got them home, it would be no big loss. My neighbor is in the middle of a bathroom re-do, so I asked him if I could use some of his leftover tile adhesive and he had some leftover grout too. Thanks, Mike! The flooring is my Konecto vinyl planks that are waiting patiently to be laid once I paint the fireplace. I decided to paint the whole thing. For now, I am going to paint it a shade darker than the room. Because the room is small, I think it needs to fade away a little and NOT be a focal point. I would need Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility to make this fireplace NOT be a focal point! It's waaaaay to big for this space! Anyway, check out your community's Habitat for Humanity Restore--you might get lucky!

FAQ about the counters

I wanted to answer some questions that I've had about the counters. First of all, I still LOVE them. In fact, I think I love them even more now that I've gotten used to them! My friend, Michelle, came over yesterday to see the counters because she is considering doing hers and I think her first reaction was that they do look even better in person. They aren't as splotchy as they appear in the pictures and the yellow that always looks so bright (or like baby poop) in the photos, doesn't really show up at all in person. Strange. Maybe she can leave a testimonial comment today! ;-)
1. The Enviro sealer stuff did not have much of an odor at all. In fact, I was expecting it to smell and it really didn't.
2. After I was finished spreading it, I brought in a space heater and left it on for several hours because the higher the temperature of the room, the faster it cures.
3. It is holding up very, very well. It doesn't scratch easily and I haven't seen any chips or anything. I think if you were constantly banging something hard against the edges, it might do some damage, but even with 2 little boys banging around my kitchen, it doesn't see that kind of action!
4. I have been cleaning it with Windex and that Clorox all-purpose cleaner. I don't know that I would use bleach and I definitely wouldn't use any gritty cleaner like Comet. I never used that stuff on my old counters either.
5. You cannot put anything super hot--like something straight out of the oven--on the counters. Does anyone really do that? I try not to leave anything really hot on them for any length of time because I've been told that they will melt a little bit.
6. I am NOT a high-maintenance home-owner type. I refuse to be a slave to my floors or my walls or my counters. These counters seem to be holding up to our abuse pretty darn well so far--and trust, me, with two boys in the house, they have already seen some abuse!
7. I know I am not the first person to paint their laminate and there are other ways to go about doing it. The biggest thing is in how you seal it. You can also use several coats of a polyacrylic sealer. NOT a polyurethane because it will yellow over time. However, polyacrylic leaves a white milky looking mark when water sits on it too long. The mark will disappear, but for a while, it looks like spilled milk. If you were painting your laminate a light color, you would never notice the milky spot but I wanted something darker so I knew it wouldn't work for me. I used polyacrylic on my newly painted black kitchen table and as soon as I can get it outside, I will be sanding it off and starting over. I HATE the white, milky thing showing up on the black.
NEW QUESTION8. Regarding cleaning: I've been using a rag to clean my counters--or whatever cloth-like thing happens to be available at the moment. I like to use those little washclothes that little old ladies crochet for cleaning. They are soft, but they are nubby enough that they get the job done. The Enviro sealer is actually for bar tops, so I figure if it can stand up to what a bunch of drunk idiots can do, it can probably stand up in my kitchen. Something sticky got onto mine and I got out the "Goo-B-Gone" and rubbed and rubbed and no damage was done to the counter. I'm thinking the only thing I wouldn't use would be something gritty.

Check out the crafty blogger HERE who painted her bathroom vanity. It looks amazing. I love the soft, subtle colors she used!

I'll add more answers when I get some time to look at the comments again. (So very cool to have so many comment, by the way!)

AND, I have some fireplace info to share later today too!

Up Next.....The Fireplace

My next big project is going to be my basement fireplace. We live in a 1975 bi-level. We do 90% of our living upstairs because our basement is just yucky. However, I think it has lots of potential to be our family room. Unfortunately, there is a big, old fireplace right in the middle of the room which takes up waaaay to much space. I have hated it from day one and I always knew I wanted to do something to it. Well, last fall our basement flooded and I had to rip up the carpeting. Before I laid new flooring down, I wanted to knock out the hearth on the fireplace. It was about 1 foot high and 2 feet wide all the way around. It hampered furniture placement and took up valuable space. Soooo, I took a sledghammer and started hacking at it. Hmmmm....it turns out that bricklayers know what they are doing! It was impossible!!! I'm not afraid of hard work, but this was awful. My dad came to help and he agreed--impossible to do by ourselves. I didn't take a picture of my hack-job because it was too embarassing! Finally, I broke down and asked a friend who is a mason to come over and have a look. He had it out in 8 hours! He used a hand-held jack hammer thing and a whole lot of muscle and sweat. I paid him $150.00 and it was some of the best money I've ever spent. Now I'm just trying to decide what to do with what remains. Paint over the whole thing? Tile over it? Just paint the grout lines? I am in love with what Layla at The Lettered Cottage did with hers. Wow. I already drew up my plans for a new mantle and that is going to be my first project. I'm sooooo excited! Once it's done, I can lay the fabulous new floor that has been sitting in boxes since September! Everything is a sloooooow process around here.

Doesn't this mantle just scream 1975! It wouldn't be so bad if the corners weren't angled.
You can see the dark, dark, dark paneling that I painted over. It's barn wood. Yuck. Fine for a barn, but not a house.

***A new bloggy friend, Anja, gave me a link to a fabulous home makeover. (Thank you Anja!) Check it out HERE! Wow!!!!

Wow! Thank you Nester!

I am so excited that Nester linked my counter re-do! The best part about it is that many of you are going to go for it yourselves! Three of my friends have come to see the counter up close and personal and are going to do theirs! I will most definitely share their results. For me, it has been soooooo worth the effort. My kitchen has a completely different "feel" now and I love it. Someone had wondered if you could decoupage scrapbook paper down and pour the Enviro down. I don't know why you couldn't. The seams of the paper would most likely show because the Enviro seems to bring out the details of whatever you are pouring it on. Some people on the Thrifty Fun web site used that textured granite spray paint and got great results. I think most of them found that they had to use quite a bit of the Enviro to cover the texture, though. You could be as creative as you wanted to be!

I haven't shown the other side of my kitchen yet because I am finishing up my table makeover. But here is a little bit of a closer look of one of my favorite new additions to the kitchen decor. For the longest time I have wanted to go the make your own pottery place and make a platter with my boys handprints. However, it's pretty pricey for the size I wanted. I have had this big black platter since Halloween that I bought at Hobby Lobby for $2.00 on the 80% off Halloween merchandise rack. I love, love, love the beaded edge. Sooooo, I just put some acrylic paint on my kids hands and wrote my favorite quote with a paint pen. I'm thinking I might wipe Jack's off and get a "cleaner" print and when I'm happy with it, I will spray it with a sealer. It's exactly the look I wanted for super cheap. I love it if I do say so myself!

Here is the reason my table and chairs needed a makeover too. Those are stains on the top and you can't really make it out, but the varnish is all cracking off too. Love the table, just hate the beat up finish.

Go Tracy Go

My sister is running her second half-marathon today. Whooo hoooo! She rocks! In any given day, I don't even drive 13 miles, let alone run it.

Tracy's Easter Balls

As I have mentioned before, the penchant for all things creative runs in our family. Tracy made Bakerella's Easter Cake Balls. Those sheep are the cutest thing I've ever seen! By the way, she doesn't have too much time on her hands, she just enjoys making special things for her family, friends and her kid's teachers. :-)

Easter '09

Here are some Easter pictures. How cute are Jake and Stella!? I can't get my boys to wear cute clothes and let me do their hair for ANYTHING. They always look like a drug them through the bushes backwards. When Parker was little, he was always decked out from cute little hat to matching little shoes. Now, he's scrubby from head to toe. Jack will only wear fleece, so he always looks like he is in pajamas. And don't get me started on their hair. I always threaten to give them their dad's haircut but I suppose they know I'm not serious since he is bald.




I seriously hate coloring Easter eggs. It feels like a whole lot of work for a very small reward. And then we are left with a bunch of hard-boiled eggs that no one will eat. However, in the spirit of fun, we did it. This year the boys were a little more into it so it wasn't half bad.

Playing around

Last weekend we had a baseball tournament in Alton. It was a little nippy, but there was lots of sunshine and they had a great playground. Both of these boys are in desperate need of a haircut. Neither of them like to get their hair cut so I dread the inevitable fight. Meanwhile, they will just look like ragamuffins. The day after I took these pictues, it snowed. Where is spring!!!!????

I painted my counters! REALLY!

In the beginning, there were very ugly yellowish/greenish counters. Not the worst color I've ever seen, but close. However, said counters are in very good shape. No cracks and only a few very small dings. Could I have replaced them with inexpensive stock counters? Yes. But then I would have had to had help removing the sink, etc. and I didn't want to wait for that to happen. I can't do sink removal but I sure can paint! I did lots and lots of research. I found this very helpful website: THRIFTY FUN and read for hours. I took all the helpful hints and ideas into consideration and after months of debate, I decided to go for it.
The first step is cleaning your counters very well. I even used a degreaser just in case. However, a good cleaning with soap and water would be plenty. Then start taping everything off to protect your walls and cabinets. I was going for a granite look which requires lots and lots of paint spattering which is very messy. Then I put down a base coat using some leftover tan paint from our bathroom. It doesn't have to be perfectly perfect because you are going to add lots of paint on top of it. I didn't even use a primer, but you would need to if your counters had any sheen/shine left to them. After 30 years, mine had no shine left at all.
My weapons in the war against ugly: a kitchen scrub brush, some sea sponges, a sample of faux granite, and lots of pretty paint. I also used a cotton ball.
The very beginning of the spattering. I really studied that little granite sample and it appears to me that it was made up mostly of millions of little dots in varying colors and dimension plus some random shading, etc. I did a 12x12 inch sample board just to make sure I knew what I was doing when I liked what I saw, I made a mental note of what I did to make it look that way. In retrospect, I wish I would have actually made notes. Then, you have to just jump in and start spattering. It takes quite a bit of spattering to have any effect. Every once in a while, I would pat my finger here and there to make some of the spatters a little bigger. I think the trick is to be random. Don't pat every 3 inches! Think natural and free-form. I also used the sponges and cotton ball to add some texture/ soften it up a bit. There is no science to this--it is very hit and miss. I just kind of wing it until I like what I see. Yes, it made me nervous when it wasn't looking quite right. I kept the faith though...
Whew! Done. Well, maybe. I like to look at it for a while and see if there are spots I don't like, or that need a little more shading or some other fix. Wait, it still looks ugly next to that awful green paper I used to protect my wall. Let's get rid of that.
Definitely better without the green. I didn't want to paint that little 6 inch backsplash thing for 2 reasons: 1) I think it would have been hard to make it look right and 2) Even though I won't be fooling anyone into thinking this is real granite, real granite does not usually come with a little 6 inch backsplash. They look a little sponge-painty to me in this picture which is NOT what I want. However, it doesn't look that way up close--I swear!
Next up is the sealer. To me, this was the scary part. I had to keep thinking, "What is the worse that could happen!?" Hmmm......yes, I could think of plenty of bad stuff but onward I marched! I used Envirotex Lite which I bought at Hobby Lobby. It took 4 quart size boxes and I bought them one at a time with 40% off coupons which made them about $17.00 each. It's not cheap, but it's still less than replacing those counters. (It is a product that is used on bartops/tables, etc. and it is sold at craft stores and hardware stores.)
The butane lighters are to get the bubbles out. The directions recommend a propane torch but that sounded a little dangerous to me. However, now I'm thinking it would have been better to use it so I could cover more area.


Please read these tips so you can benefit from the wisdom of my experience. (That's a fancy way of saying "Don't make the same mistakes I did!")
- Paint your entire counter at the same time. My counter is in 3 separate parts. I painted the smallest part 2 weeks before the 2nd 2 parts assuming I would remember how I got it to look the way it did. Oops. It was impossible to get the exact same "granite" effect 2 weeks later. Luckily, they are far enough apart that most folks wouldn't notice. Except now, everyone will because I just broadcasted my mistake.
- Plan way ahead. You will not be able to put anything on your counters for at least 3 days which may affect your meal planning.
- Mix the Envirotex in a BIG bucket and then pour the mixture into a container with a spout. I poured from my bucket and it was way too hard to control where it went. I would also use a turkey baster to get into the little spots--like behind the sink--and to keep putting it back onto the sides of the counter as it slides off.
- Wear gloves--and have spare gloves around when the first ones get sticky. Don't let it get on your skin!!!!! My hands got all red, dry and sticky and they hurt a bit. (The direction clearly tell you to wear gloves, but I always feel like they are huge and I don't have much precision. I wish I had just taken the time to find some gloves that fit.)
-Wear an apron--not a cute one. One you don't mind getting mucked up. And if you have long hair, put it in a pony. Seriously.
- TAKE YOUR TIME!!!! The edges are hard to do. I wish I would have just sat in front of them for a half hour and just kept using a sponge brush to put the Enviro back on when it dripped off. I kind of just let it go and it shows.
-Don't start pouring the Enviro at 5:00 p.m. when your family is going to start begging for dinner at 5:05. Making that silly mistake made me rush the job.
- My final result is far from perfect but I HATED my counters to begin with and now I LOVE them. That is close enough to perfect for me.

You can see the whole kitchen makeover HERE.

****EDITED ON JUNE 6, 2009****
DURABILITY:
I've had my counters done for about 2 months now. They are still holding up great. I've noticed that directly on one of the edges--where the horizontal meets the vertical--it's gettting a little banged up. There are some tiny, tiny little spots that seem to have worn down to where I had to put some paint on a toothpick and re-touch. Then I cover it with clear fingernail polish. These are teeny, tiny spots and I think I just didn't get it covered very well with the Enviro in the first place.

You cannot place a hot pan/dish directly onto these counters. I would never do that with laminate either, though. And did you know that granite is porous and can explode if you place a hot pan/dish directly on it? I do, however, leave my crock pot, rice cooker, toaster and coffee maker directly on it and they get pretty hot and I've never noticed any damage or even softening of the counters. If you cut directly on it, it will leave marks--which will come out, but still, don't do it. That's what cutting boards are for.

CLEANLINESS:
I have been using the Clorox Anywhere spray on them for daily cleaning and Windex when I need to shine them up. I'm assuming the Enviro is food-safe because it is a product that is used for bar tops. I'm not at all worried about my kids eating a cookie that has been sitting on the counter for a few hours. They don't lick the counters--as far as I know--so I'm confident that we are safe. If you are concerned, I would recommend finding a customer service # and asking the manufacturer.

Ta Da......The "New" Kitchen

First I need to say that it is very, very hard to get good pictures of my home. I think I need a wide angle lense or a better camera--or some camera knowledge. That being said.....here it is....the long-awaited kitchen makeover! I swear it is much better in person. Honestly!

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

I also added moulding to the top of the cabinets to give them a little height and interest. I swear it makes my popcorn ceiling look higher.

And here's the biggie. My newly painted and sealed counters! Again, they look so much better in person. See how shiny they are!? LOVE 'em! Like Jack said, "Now they wook wike Twacy's and they feew wike Twacy's too!" (Tracy's are granite.) You, too can have fake-granite over your laminate because I am going to show you how to do it. But not until Saturday. ;-)

The grand total for this re-do: under $180.00 No joking! I will break it down for ya':
wall paint: $25.00
cabinet paint: $27.00
hinges: $16.00
moulding: $21.00
counter sealer: $68.00
valance & rings: $15.00
total: $172.00


I will be getting a new faucet, stainless over-the-range microwave and a stainless dishwasher in the near future and other stainless when and if the economy ever gets better. I also need to finish painting my table and chairs black. (They are almost done.) I also plan on adding some punches of color here and there, but haven't figured that out just yet. Overall, I LOVE what I've done and I would highly recommend going for it if you've ever thought about doing a makeover! I had been unhappy with my kitchen for a long time and then I saw what Emily from Chatting at the Sky had done and I was sold. Then she went and did it again at her new house! I don't mind saying that I completely took many of her ideas and put them in my house. I was also inspired by Emily's sister, Nester, whose motto: "It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful." was my mantra as I was pouring a gallon of goo on my counters and hoping not to saw a finger off when I was mitering moulding. Thanks girls for giving me just the kick in the pants that I needed!

Emily's inspiring kitchen.