Around the House and Playground – Page 4

Sons Ocean Bedroom

Coomassie Blue was NOT happy about the baby, though he’s adjusted quite well now that copious amounts of food are dropped on the floor for him.

I like to paint. I’m not much of an original artist though, more of a copier. So when we found out we were going to have a baby I settled on an ocean themed room right away. If it was a boy, sharks and pirates, a girl would get mermaids and dolphins. We obviously had a boy and I’m very happy with how his cartooney ocean room came out. All of the murals were painted with basic acrylic paint. The changing table is something I’d recommend to anyone. Having that mobile and mirror really made changing easier. An occupied baby is not a baby that is going to resist changing time. Of course, Son isn’t a baby anymore. He’s 4. His murals are unchanged but his room layout has changed a bit. Instead of a crib he has a loft bed with slide. Instead of having his dresser in his room he has his sister. It’s worked out just fine.

Current use pics of the room being vacuumed:

Kitchen Remodel Stage 1- DIY Concrete Counters with a New Sink and Faucet

The kitchen remodel is coming along slowly but surely. Almost done with stage 1. All that is left is painting the base cabinets and the cabinet doors. The game changers, for me, were the counters and sink. Our old sink and counter looked like this:

It was 6″ deep and the faucet barely came 2″ above that. Can you imagine how difficult it was to fill a simple bucket in that thing. Horrid! The counters are laminate. They had this horrible maroon tile back splash and the tile was on the counter edge. Removing that tile and putting molding on the edge made things look better immediately.

Originally I was going to router a 1×2 board for the front edge of the counters. However, boards aren’t 1×2 in big box stores. They are 1 1/2 or 2 1/2. I didn’t want to have to rip the boards I wanted down to size so I went in search of a different solution. This molding was in the cut bin of Home Depot. It is the exact right size and doesn’t need routering as it already has a rounded edge. Ideal!

Next I removed the sink. This was a big deal for us as it meant no dishwasher and our bathroom sinks are just as teeny tiny as this kitchen one. Basically we’ve been using paper plates and the grill for a few days.

Very simple to do but did require a crowbar as that sink was glued down really really well.

Then I started the cement overlay on the counters. I read a million tutorials on how to do it so I felt confident. I sanded the laminate, mixed my Henry’swith a 1:1 ratio and plopped a glob on to start smearing. Wow. No one told me how anxious that could make a person. It didn’t seem to be sticking all that well to the laminate and I was having SERIOUS doubts about this decision. However, I persevered and did 3 coats.

Look at how terrible that looks! What a nerve wracking first coat!

I did all 3 coats of cement on Sunday and Monday night after work I set about sanding them smooth (by hand, as I really didn’t want all that dust getting blown about) and sealing them. We simply used a high gloss sealant we bought at Home Depot. My sealant is not labeled food safe. Cheng Concrete Sealer is supposed to be food safe. I simply didn’t want to pay that much. Yes, I’m that cheap. Plus I wasn’t sure how this was going to go down so…… I don’t regret my decision (so far). I did 6 coats of sealant.

I have a plastic bag over the automatic dog waterer so it would stay marginally clean while we were doing this. I have caught 2 of our dogs licking the bag. Bucket of water right next to it but they still want that auto-waterer. I think it gives them that fresh toilet water feel. Also, anyone who has multiple dogs should do this. It has changed our lives. You have no idea how often we were cleaning and changing the water on our old 5 gallon waterer. I can’t remember if I’ve linked the one we have before but here it is. Also, it’s hooked into the water supply to the sink. We’ve had it about 2 years now and I’ll never go back!!!!! I don’t think our dogs want to go back either.

As you can see we did not put the “back splash” boards up until after the counter was completed. The back splash boards were premium boards I put extra poly on. There is a slight gap that we are debating on. I think we may put a metal strip up as extra water protection for the wall and wood but we haven’t made up our minds yet.

My dad came and helped me install the new sink. I can be fairly handy after training (my Dad trains me usually) but I was nervous about this plumbing job. Probably because the last time I did any plumbing it resulted in leaks and mold in the master bath. We no longer have a bath tub in there thanks to me.

I have started the slide-out trash can area. The floor is in it and I have the bottom drawer pull screwed into the wall. Now I just need to make the box for the trash can and we’ll be good to go there.

I made a chicken wire shade for the new pendant light and hung it up with a Vintage bulb. I’m not sold on what I did with the rope. May change later.

I made this spice rack ages ago to hide the hole I made in the front of the cabinets in order to replace the old microwave.

I have a partial wall that needs painted, and of course the cabinets and cabinet doors. I may wait on the partial wall until I’ve torn down the part connecting it to the wall I’m removing. I’m undecided as of yet.

So take a look at a few before and afters. Obviously this is after I ripped the wall and the cabinet down but before I’d really put anything up. The tear down wasn’t particularly planned so pics weren’t at the front of my mind at the time, just hammering.

A huge improvement don’t you think. I particularly like my tomato display, which will be canned this weekend.

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The Wonderful World of Pallets

A post by Orchard Husband

I love the versatility of pallets. I looked around to see if there was a guru on making almost anything from pallet wood; and while there are hundreds of sites that have “80-100 uses for pallets” I didn’t find any site dedicated solely to making fine products using free pallet wood.

A week or so ago my wife asked me about upgrading out kitchen. One of the upgrades was building a sort of wall using reclaimed pallet wood. Sort of like this. So, the first thing you have to figure out is where to get your pallets. Pallets can be had for free at most places, try your local hardware stores, the one where we live has a designated area where they stack pallets and anyone is welcome to grab what they need.

Once you have a nice stack* of pallets (*do or/don’t go overboard, there is a lot of wood to be had if you grab some good pallets with plenty of boards on them, you can always use the pallets for other projects). you need to separate the deck boards from the stringer or blocks (depending on the design of the pallet) as the pallet wall will consist entirely of deck board. Now, there are a lot of ways to do this, some with varying degrees of difficulty.

Pry bar method:

I did this back when we lived in Japan, as I provided the firewood for a couple bonfires at the beach we went to. I could only fit two good size intact pallets in my station wagon, but if I broke them down into the individual deck boards and stringers I could usually get around seven to eight pallets worth of wood in the same space. Since I was using this at the beach I had to remove the nails, so this method is a pain. You can find 100s of videos on you tube, and if you are going to use pallet wood for a wall I would not recommend this method as I splits about 99.9% of the wood.

Leverage with 2x4s:

I saw a video where some guy was using a couple of 2x4s, placing them adjacent to the deck board they wanted to pry up on each side and using it to lift the wood out safely and without breaking any of the wood. I had moderate success and moderate failure with this, for a couple reasons.

How can you be successful with this method? You need to have a pallet with good spacing where you can even get a 2×4 or whatever size wood you are using to pry the deck boards off with. The deck boards have to be in pretty decent condition. And the extra boards you need to make your fulcrum have to be pretty long or they’ll just slide and cause problems.

How can you fail miserably with this method? Use a pallet with weathered deck board, or boards with minute cracks and the they’ll just shatter when you try to lift them up. if the deck boards are too narrow to put your levers in, it won’t work. The wider the prying tool the better. I tried to use a couple tamping bars and they just shattered the wood.

So, if the pallets are in decent shape and have enough spacing you can recover the deck boards pretty easily with little to no damage. You’ll just have to hammer out all the nails.

Pallet break down tool:

I didn’t actually use this method, I just saw a couple videos on youtube, and it’s basically the same principle as the leverage method. but you weld some metal bars together along with your handle (the longer the better), place the slots in between the boards and pull up, and the board come out. I think this method would work pretty well, and if you were going to be doing lots of pallet projects I’d invest in building one of those tools.

Cutting with a reciprocating saw:

I ended up doing this method on 98% of the boards we ended up using. Lots of youtube videos showing you how to do this method. but a few takeaways I have. Invest in a 10-12 inch all purpose blade. there are going to be pieces of wood and widths where it’ll save you a lot of time and effort. Also, to leave the nails in or not. Some people say it gives the deck boards character, and if you want to leave them, be my guest, but some of them are a little loose and it’s best to just remove them. One youtube video I watched talked about using a nail punch to remove them. I just used a nail and I’d tamp out the bits and pull them out with a claw hammer.

It is also nice to have some sort of tool to separate the wood a bit for the deck board pieces that don’t have any gaps to put the saw blade in between. It should take a couple seconds to go through each board if you are hitting the nail only. If it takes any longer than that, you are sawing through wood and I’ve heard of people that have killed their reciprocating saw breaking down pallets.

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After you have your wood just sand and stain, but I’ll leave that post to my wife to explain.

Country kitchen remodel stage 1 of 5 in process

I was driving home from work recently when my mind finally figured out a problem in our kitchen design. The trash can was the problem. We had no other place to put it in the kitchen. At least we thought we didn’t. Last year I’d removed the drawers from one of our base cabinets. They were falling apart and their location made them a haven for mice. We’ve since fixed the mouse problem by purchasing this product and filling all the small holes and cracks in the house with it. We seriously haven’t seen a mouse since we did it. Life saver!

Anyway, so I had this blank base cabinet I was never getting around to turning into a pot rack. The trash fit nicely into it. With the trash moved I could finally take down a pointless wall that divided the kitchen from the laundry room. The kids enjoyed helping, and with hammers and eye protection passed around that wall came down. It did an amazing job opening up the space. It feels so much larger now. However, I had a damaged wall that I was going to have to do something with. We need somewhere to put our coats and boots. That has always been a problem in our household as the coats always seem to collect on the dining room table. So I planned to make mudroom cubbies. However, we liked the open feel so much I couldn’t see ruining it with cubbies. Thus we are doing a simple coat rack, a movable bench, boot trays and some wire baskets nailed to the wall. It was decided we would plank the wall from the kitchen into the laundry room to make the rooms flow better, as they are currently different colors. Once that was decided my mind took off and now we have a 5 stage remodel project that is going to change everything.

Stage 1- planking the wall, beautifying current cabinets installed on planked wall, new faucet and sink, open shelves to replace 1 wall cabinet.

Stage 2- moving the fridge and building a pantry.

Stage 3- remove cabinets, wall, and old island and build large island in it’s place.

Stage 4- lighting and fixing the ceiling as we currently have 2 recessed fluorescent lights.

Stage 5- fixing the flooring throughout.

So far in stage 1 I have boxed in the top of the wall cabinets that will remain. I always hated the space above them as it wasn’t enough to do anything with. I removed the wall cabinet and made and installed floating shelves. I’ve hung 3 coat racks in the laundry room. Seems excessive but we had a lot of wasted space in there so….. why not. I’ve ordered the sink and faucet and the Ardex required to cement coat our current counter tops. I’m still looking for planking wood. I think I want to use old fence panels and a local fencing company said they would call me when they had some I could take. I also need to purchase a bench and the boot trays I’ve decided on. Slow going as I am working full time, a mom and a farmer. Going all the same!

Here are a few pics of the wall demo. As you can see I got a bit nuts when we moved in and painted the kitchen a CRAZY mixture of reds, yellows and oranges. My cabinets are red….it’s horrible.

This is the coat rack getting screwed in.

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DIY Playground update

I really like this picture. The tires that form the back wall of the tire sandbox are bursting with greens (tomatoes and weeds mostly), everything is shiny and bright and the kids are happy as clams. What’s not to love.

Things are growing exceptionally well in those tires. I put a tomato in each. Daughter helpfully weeded 2 of them out. I also have some green onions thrown in here and there and mint growing in a bottom tire.

So we finally moved the bucket pulley closer to the sandbox and added hooks to help with toy storage. Do the kids use them? Nope. Daughter is only trying to get the shovel off, she couldn’t btw. Brother had to help her. That clothes basket is what we have been using to hold all of their toys and still use to hold some of them. It is supposed to be hanging on the post but…..life.

I also completed the tether-ball, which is a favorite of visiting nieces and nephews.

I ruined the balance beam as well. I had to move the dirt filled tires so we could till for the clover planting. I need to refill the tires and just haven’t got around to it yet. Eventually!

The clover is coming up spectacularly though!

Spool cars

We went to our electrical company and saved as many spools from the fire as we could. We chose 3 different sizes for our playground. The first thing we did was decide how to keep them from rolling about, as much as the kids loved that. My initial idea was burying them a bit but Husband was much smarter and suggested cutting them. So cut them we did.

The kids enjoyed painting, for a few minutes at least.

Hubby did a great job putting the steering wheel on.

The results are great!