diy – Page 3 – Peacock Orchard

Another Kitchen Remodel Update

If you haven’t been keeping up you can go to these posts to see what I’ve been up to:

I spent a large amount of my Saturday and Sunday completing some of the parts of the remodel I was most excited about. The new pantry was painted (though the shelves still aren’t stained as it’s been too cold to do so far). The best part is the over the fridge storage I built for all of my important kitchen bits.

I had most of my pans stuffed in a single cabinet next to the stove, my baking stone and cast iron skillet in the buffet in another room and the cutting boards stashed on top of my pot rack. It was a mess. I could hardly find anything and getting the stone and skillet were a hassle. No more! They are within reach of us tall people, in the kitchen and beautifully displayed. Of course, some of them aren’t exactly beautiful….that blue cutting board. Still, I am in LOVE!

Since I built, I was obviously able to customize the different heights and widths. It is spectacular! I even had room left over for my huge serving trays.

Allow me to back up though. The first thing I did, after taping, puttying and floating the new walls was add the 2×4 frame the new storage would sit on.

Then I painted, with help.

A very happy helper indeed!

Then I measured and cut the top shelf out.

And painted some more.

The pantry is 70% complete. I still have to make doors. We are also putting a wooden fronting on the side of the wall and the front of the 2×4’s. Also, I have to stain those shelves!

I love it already! Of course doors are needed as not all our food is that…photogenic.

Have to build a door for the top shelf storage as well. It’s quite hideous at the moment. Terribly functional though!

I also primed and texture the part of the new wall that faces in toward our formal living room. The walls are different sizes. The original interior walls of our house were made with 1 x 3’s. I used 2 x 4’s. Still, it works. I have the wall primed and ready for a decision on color. I’m hesitant as there is another wall in the formal living room that is going to be removed so I suppose I should just wait and paint the whole thing at once.

The fridge is almost ready to be moved. The water is the only hang up. I’m building a new sink and faucet for the 1/2 bath as shrinking the wall made the old sink too large. Once those are done and installed I’ll be able to turn the water on and thus have the fridge connected to water for the ice maker. May not be a big deal to some but I’m fairly certain my husband and children could not live without ice.

Kitchen Remodel Stage 2- Update

Before

I always have eager helpers.

I pre-cut the wood for the walls I needed to build before knocking out the final part of the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen.

The walls were built (the above picture is not of the finished walls, simply me laying them out. They are not that crooked once built.) and then:

It’s a family job. My niece and children got in on the wall smacking action.

Here is the new wall behind the old wall. Waiting to remove the old wall until wiring is done.

Boxes have been installed for re-wiring and…

Thanks to the most amazing father in the world, things were re-wired! It should be noted that I removed some residual drywall whilst he was wiring and so he got…..dusty.

The new walls were then put up. I know in this pic the wall isn’t knocked out yet. This is my testing to see if I built the walls right pic. I did. VICTORY!

So part of this is going to be our new pantry. Oh a new pantry, I’m so excited. You have no idea how crappy our current pantry is. It’s a weird trapezoidal shape and is so deep that you have no idea what is in the back corner. So I used 2×4’s to create the frame for the shelves. The shelves are 1 x 12’s.

I measured and cut out a notch for them to fit neatly around a 2×4 for complete coverage.

Repainting over the awful color I chose when I was so very young is quite a trial. 2 coats of primer and 1 coat of paint should do the trick.

Then it’s time to drywall. I made this handy 1 foot tool as my space was 3ft. Drywall is a standard 4 ft and thus I simply needed to cut off 1ft.

And the bathroom wall is up. So exciting! Needed to tape and use joint compound still. That was fairly easy though:

Bathroom wall

Kitchen wall view

Still not even close to done. I need to float the walls, then sand, then prime, then paint. Then I need to assemble my incredible over the fridge storage. I’ve already started on them but I’ll save it for it’s own post. Coming along though.

You can see where I fell off the ladder holding the gallon of primer. Only got a bit of the floor white with that. Fun times!

As a funny aside I got home with the drywall tape and the joint compound and then had to text my father on how to use it. I wasn’t sure how the tape was supposed to stick. He sent me text directions. Drywall sucks by the way. It’s dusty. It’s heavier than you’d think. It’s super fragile and the taping process just isn’t any fun. Worth it in the end, I know. I really need a break from all of this though. I’m beat.

Kitchen Remodel Stage 2- In the bathroom

I am officially unemployed. How terrifying. I’m keeping busy though. I have a kitchen to remodel and I’m getting right to it. Unfortunately this kitchen remodel comes with a bathroom remodel. The only available wall to move the fridge to requires that the fridge be sunk into the space so as not to obstruct flow. Luckily our 1/2 bath is there and way larger than it ever needs to be. So today I removed the bathroom vanity, sink, faucet and part of the wall.

Found an interesting wire from who knows what. Looks like they did a great job with it. I am sure that’s up to code. *sarcasm*

The sink needs to be moved about 2 feet. I was hoping to simply cut the pipe, cut a new hole in the floor and move it without messing with the set up of the drain pipe. Alas I am probably going to have to cut it in a few places now. Perhaps I’ll simply replace the whole set up. I hate this one anyway.

I’ll only be able to move the wall back as far as the light fixture. That lovely hole in the ceiling let me know where the beam ran. The good news is I won’t have to put in an extra electrical outlet as we’ll just consume the current bathroom outlet. It’s not needed in there. Only Husband uses that bathroom anyway.

I work fast. Did this during the kids nap.

Stay tuned for the removal of this wall and the rest of stage 2. I am so excited to build a better pantry here. Plus as soon as that fridge is moved and the new pantry built the main wall is coming down. Terrifying!

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.