Turning Old Roadside Garbage Into Roadside Treasure

I have become the biggest do it yourselfer since becoming a homeowner, and honestly I had no idea how much I loved restoring old looking things into something that looks as if I spent a whole lot of money on it.

Hence this old drawer. Sadly I did not take a before photo, and I regret doing so. At any rate, what we had was a beaten up old piece of garbage sitting on the side of the road, neglected, looking sad, and no one wanted it.

I however saw potential, and knew once I got it home, patched it up a little, sanded it down and filled in the cracks and holes with some wood filler, I would have me a nice sock and bra draw! And that my friends is exactly what I have!

I painted it to match my changing rooms pink and black theme, and added the hologram rainbow glitter to the black paint to give it a gnarly glistening effect. It actually looks a hell of a lot neater and prettier in person. 

All in all, if it is wood, and it is on the side of the road, I know there is potential. Glad for my keen eye... it was just what I needed!

There is a tutorial on how to add glitter to pain in my blog somewhere if you care to look for it. : )

Antique Gold Leaf 12 Light Chandelier - Painted Over!!!!

Someone out there would probably want to kill me if I told them that I painted over gold leaf. But, yep, I did just that.

I got this here old antique chandelier from the little old man that my other halfs mother takes care of. He had it hanging in his basement from a nail hook for over 60 years, and told me that if I could get it down, I could have it.

I had no clue what sort of condition it was in, or if it was even something I wanted, but he was so adamant about giving it to me that I of course took it upon myself to go and have a look.

It was unfortunately wrapped underneath a burlap sack, so I had no clue what it looked like till I got it down and unwrapped the old dusty burlap from it.

At any rate, the story I got was that he purchased it in the 1950's for $500. After unwrapping it and taking a glimpse at it, I was impressed, and knew that all it needed was some dusting. The thing was so old and untouched that the crystals on it were literally so dirty they looked frosted.

I cleaned it up, and took a look at it. The chandelier was stunning, but I simply cannot stand the gold color, and I knew it would not at all match the darker black, red and white hues going on in my parlor.

After some serious debating, and realizing this chandelier was worth quite a bit of money- according to ebay, people are buying these old things way over the $1,000 mark. I decided I would paint over the gold leaf.

Yup, cringe now.

I don't care though. I had no intentions of selling it, because I loved it so much. It took me a bit of time, but the chandelier

now hangs proudly in my home, and it really is quite the stunner. The photos just couldn't even do its beauty justice.

Martha Stewart Pink Glitter Paint Over Black Walls

Not really feeling it. The Martha Stewart Pink Glitter Paint is semi decent depending on what color background you are applying it to. I found it odd that it was a pink hue yet when dry gave off a green glitter shimmer. Meh, so be it.

At any rate, on top of black walls this is basically the results, it is more of a cosmic star sort of finish, which is not terrible, but if it is not something you are looking for, I'd skip it. It's also rather streaky.

Bull Terrier Puppy!!! Maybe!!!!....

I cannot lie, being in my new home for only 3 months now, and we have already gone through $10,000 just to get the place in order. I hate watching my savings dwindle down, but that is life...

At any rate, with that said we decided on one more semi large expense... however this one is a gift to ourselves that'll keep on giving... pee-poo-barking and so on.

We already have a bull terrier, he is one filled with energy, farts, burps, and lots of love. He is really a gentle giant, but has a lot of energy. Back when I lived home my brother had a boxer that Bully loved and adored. My brother moved, and took away his best friend. My little dog is just too tiny to play with Bully, and honestly my little guy hates him.

I caved this past week and started looking online for a semi stocky breed- one that could handle his rough housing. I was initially going to adopt a pit bull from the shelter, but as asinine as it sounds, I do have reservations about pit bulls in general... which I know- it is stupid, and it is so hypocritical of me considering the fact that Bull Terriers come from the line.

After poking around on the net, I found this one Bull Terrier though that stole my heart, and the reason was due to the fact that she has these markings that make it seem as if she actually has eyebrows!
It's rather interesting, and after posting a picture of her on my Facebook profile, a lot of my friends thought it was fake, or photoshopped, but the fact of the matter is that those are her real markings.

After contacting the owner I got some more photos sent to me of the little girl laying down. She appears a bit larger in the photos in comparison to this photo, so I am curious as to how big she really is. I know Bull Terrier puppies are larger in general. We got our fella at 6 months old and he was already nearly full grown.

At any rate, she is pricey, a $1,500 drop in my bank account, but figure she will make the perfect addition to our tiny family. More so for my big guy who misses his old pal. Hopefully this here puppy will keep him busy and out of my hair!

We are scheduled to go and meet the fog this Saturday in Queens. I initially was going to take the train, but figured riding in would probably be cheaper and faster.

Not sure if she is coming home with us or not yet, but I guess Saturday we will know!!! I'm excited!!!

UPDATE!!!

We got the little girl... her name is Demonia, and she is pretty high maintenance, a little more high maintenance than our first bully, but she is a riot, and fits in with our little family perfectly!!!!

Hand Sanding Old Wood Floors

Underneath the old shabby carpet in our parlor sat these wooden floors, likely not touched since the 50's, and ever since the 50's I am sure these poor wood floors have seen their fair share of cat pee, cat poo, dog doo, and all sorts of yucky and nasty....

It became my mission to restore the woodne floors in the house, to make them dark, shiny, and looking like a pile of new!!!

I knew I could easily just hire some handy man to sand them down and re-finish them, but I am not that sort of person. I would rather save myself $500, and tackle it myself. 

The photo shows what my floors look like now. Last night I found the time to whip out my orbital hand sander to begin sanding the floors by myself, by hand!

I was amazed at how nice the areas I covered looked with barely any effort on my part. My little Makita sander is a pretty awesome tool, and it seems to be scrapping up and sanding the floors right down to their natural beauty. 

I figure in due time, the entire parlor will be done and sanded, and ready for stain. 

I will come back and update this here blog piece as I move along in this particular room/floor. 

OK- So here is the during photo. This is the floors after about 6 hours of hand sanding using the orbital hand sander. I have to go down a little deeper till the wood is pale before I can stain it. However, 6 hours on my butt, and this was the result, which is not bad at all. What a difference! And they said it could not be done! Pssshhh.... it was actually quite easy and the room is rather large too.

But the best news is this:

When we first purchased the home we were told that only the parlor and small hallway were wood floors. However after making my way around the room, and getting to the threshold that connects the parlor to the kitchen, I discovered that the wood floors do in fact travel through the kitchen.

So--- tonight's big project when I get home from work is to yank up the old floors, and the baseboard laid down on top of the wood floors to reveal the wood floors in the kitchen! Crazy people who covered them up!

I am so excited about this and cannot wait to just get home today to begin!

That's me down there, excited to discover the wood floors in the kitchen! We don't know how far they travel, but we are about to find out~!

For those wondering, the hand sander I am using is the one available in the link below- the smaller 5 inch orbital sander.

In order to sand wood floors, you will want to use a low grit- anywhere from 20-30. I am using a 30 grit, only because they did not have the discs available in a 20 grit.

When all is said and done, I will re-post the finished product on this blog.

The House is Lit For Christmas

So we finally got up the Christmas lights. We did not blow a fuse so living here is pretty nice, considering the fact that if we put up more than 6 strands of lights at my parents house the whole house would blow out. Hehe.

At any rate, it was beyond exciting putting up lights in my own house this year. I got so into the spirit that I made these here stockings using some craft green glitter glue, and stockings I picked up at the dollar store. 

He wanted to put our 15 foot snowman up on the roof! I wouldn't let him because I was afraid of a gust of wind taking him away. I did however settle on allowing him to put the 6 foot snowman up on the lower level roof. It looks pretty good!

I put the larger 15 foot snowman up in the front between the 2 lit up trees. He looks pretty dang good there. We had began putting the lights up on November 1st, which was a little early. Just yesterday, December 2nd- others in the neighborhood finally began to put theirs up! I was waiting for a month to see others get into the spirit. I got my spirit a little early!

Here is me and my Bubba!!! I plopped the little hat on him, he was not happy about it!
The walkway below, was lined using Halloween branch lights I got on sale for $2.00 for a set of 3. I bought the last 2, and just used them as xmas lights. No one knows the flippin difference!

Bathroom Makeover!

Upon the many times we had been in the house to view it before even owning it, everything looked nice and fine. Yeah she required a bunch of updates, but for the most part it all looked pretty cosmetic, and even the inspector whom we paid $450 to do the inspection of the home missed a few major key things that should have easily been detected by a professional.

For instance...

The very first day we moved in and used the downstairs shower we discovered that water was literally leaking from the built in shower window out onto the deck and down into the basement as well.

Great!

Now not for nothing, had the inspector actually ran the water for a bit in the shower this would have quickly been discovered.

I cannot complain though, it's now my issue, my house, and the fix had to be made by me.

When you are a new homeowner though, and unaware of the handy work involved it can easily consume you and you could end up spending an entire day installing a new window, and then another week jusyt laying in tile. Granted it could have been done faster, but it is a wee bit impossible when you are working a full time job and then coming home to work another household duty.

Due to the awkward window size we had to spend top dollar on an Andersen Window. Schnazzy, and everyone who has since seen the new window naturally commented on the brand. I for one cannot fathom why, a window is a window if you ask me, and I would have been more than happy to not have spent $280 on a new name brand window, and spent half that for a lesser known brand. But eh... such is life.

Installing the window thankfully was a do it yourself job taken on my my other half.

Here is the before and after--- well, sadly I did not get the before shot of the bathroom before he tore the walls out. Kick me now... but here it is.



 

Now the major issue with why we had to re-do this entire bathroom was previous owner laziness. Notice in the before shot how he used greenback in the shower- no wonder the crap leaked. You need cement backing in the shower, especially for tile work, which this bathroom had in plain white before it had to be torn up.

At any rate, this bathroom was a labor of love, as was my upper level bathroom.

The upper level bathroom was claimed by yours truly, the only time my other half was allowed in was when he was refinishing his bathroom! Tee-hee!

At any rate, as you can see by the photo, here is my before shot, as is, as it was purchased.

The image next to it, is my finish.

I painted the walls brown. Now initially I hated it, it seemed to dark and reminded me of poop. However after adding polyurethane crown molding, I realized that the brown was actually really nice. Nicer than I thought!

 

I then decided to paint the moulding antique gold. I did this by applying a coat of black paint, and then Martha Stewarts specialty finish paint in Penny Copper. The result was a high beam glossy copper finish, and I adore it!

 I also re-did the window frame, and even the door. All in all the bathroom now looks like a classy sassy bathroom, fit for my queen like standards. Haha!

The final touch of course came about a week later, when I came across this cute wall vinyl sticker. I added it right to the bottom wall below the window, and just adore the added touch!

I will include the tutorial on how to install polyurethane crown molding, how to paint it an antique copper, and how to use corner blocks in another post at another time.

Lucky Visitor

The house was mine before I even signed for the deed. The day of our closing we went into the home for one final walk through to see if everything was in the same working order as the last time we had seen it.

The first visitor of the day was a Praying Mantis.

What a lucky thing to see a few hours before your closing. It signifies a lot, and after some research it made a lot of sense.

Did you know a praying mantis only moves when she has to?

I did not necessarily have to move, but the mantis also signifies patience... which I surely have a lot of.

At any rate, here was our first lucky visitor.

Burner Is Out... Burner is In...

So the other night the oil burner decided to not click on, our usual temperature is a steady 67 degrees in the house. Fine time for it to decide to go off.

It was more upsetting because we had the fireplace guy coming to install our M55 Pellet Stove, but sadly they had to cancel... that same very day no less. What a kick in the teeth.

So I head downstairs and hit the rest button, and wallah, the burner kicks back to life, roars like a lion, and then...

Like another kick in the teeth...

It turns off again.

I cannot for the life of me figure it out, the burner supposedly was serviced a week before we moved in- at least that is what we get for taking the previous owners word for it.

I do some investigative work and find the service card on the burner. Turns out the burner had not been serviced for an entire year! I assume this is a mistake! So I take it upon myself to call the last company that was in to service it. It seems the previous owner used this company for years, so yes, of course, they should know the last time they were in to service it.

I get a call back and low and behold it's true, he lied. The burner had not been serviced for a year. So now it is 11pm, and I am left with no other choice but to dig into my wallet and call in for emergency burner fixin! Yowza's.... $418 later, I end up with a working burner, and a service contract. Not exactly what I was planning on doing, but the guy was super friendly, and ended up staying and chatting with my fella for an hour after all was fixed.

I appreciated his good friendly nature, but hello! It's now 12:30 at night, and I am ready for bed.

Anyhow, the following day while at work I get the phone call I am waiting for...

My M55 is ready for installation. I will be including a review on the Enviro M55 in a later post.

So here it is folks, the beast. Capable of heating up the entire home, and guess what it sure as heck did! So the thing literally cost us a trip to Fiji- Twice... but hell, either a week in Fiji, or a lifetime of warm cozy winters. We are literally going to save a ton of money on oil! Just what we need - money in the bank! Yeah baby yea!

Don't mind my little photo bomber- that's just Bubbie, and he totally is in love with his new pellet stove!

I Think I Am Going To Love It Here

Back in 1994 when my parent bought their home, the only welcoming gift they got was a basket of fruit from their real estate agent.

The neighbors sort of ignored us, and possibly even hated us when we first moved in.

I was expecting the same sort of unwelcoming committee the day we parked out U-Haul in the driveway....however after just 48 hours we had already met 2 neighbors, and gotten 2 welcoming gifts. I had never felt more welcomed anywhere in my life, and they were still strangers!

The first gift came from the older woman next door, Lorrene, she brought over a package of Halloween themed cookies, which were fabulous, and a nice large container of crackers and cheeses.

The following day, the neighbor across the street brought over warm homemade bread!

Yup... I love it here! I feel like I stepped into a scene in some movie... where everything is perfect... what is the catch?!

Burner King- Contract Sting

So after being suckered into purchsing Burner Kings service contract on our boiler the other night, we had to once again make a call in to have the same issue addressed once again.

We called in to have them come back to look at it at 6pm, it's  now 9pm and no one has returned our call to let us know when they are coming.

Funny.

Seems the moment you pay the jerks for a contract they don't give a rats A blank, blank word about you or the burner- or the fact that we have had no hot water or heat for a few hours now.

Thank God for the pellet stove otherwise we would have froze by now.

Word to the wise... ya need a burner contract for service- skip out on these clowns.

Halloween Do It Yourself Light Up Craft Pumpkins

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I have been collecting Halloween decor since childhood, and had Chase Bank actually been a little quicker with getting our loan in order, we would have been in the house sometime in the August of 2013, instead of October 3rd.

The house was and is nowhere near being ready for decorations, and there is still so much to unpack a month later, so naturally most of my Halloween goodies remained in their boxes up in the attic where they now remain. It literally took me 3 weeks to find everything, organize it in Halloween labeled boxes, and store it all away.

The good news is that I am totally ready for Halloween 2014, as I now know where everything is!

Before moving in though I created something pretty cool that I figured you do it yourself crafty folks out there would like. I created my own light up craft pumpkin string set, which when set up and put on my steps looks pretty awesome.

Here it is...

This was actually pretty simple to make, and I will have it for years and years to come, because these pumpkins do not rot!

Now my first word to the wise would be to only purchase these craft pumpkins AFTER the holiday when they go on their mega 75% off sale. Michaels and other craft stores already have them marked down. If you get them during the holiday hype, you will pay almost $30 for a large sized one, which is crazy!

Before just randomly carving into them you will want a template... you do it in the same manner you would a regular pumpkin, you hold a piece of paper with the template to the pumpkin, tape the paper on and make small holes around the template. Remove the paper when you are done tracing out the design, and then you can begin cutting.

The two bottom pumpkins were templates I found in a pumpkin carving kit booklet, and of course the one at the top is handmade, and adds such a charm. Our pizza delivery guy thought it was neat because it made finding our home easy peasy.

I did not want to use those cheap battery operated lights, not only are they weak when it comes to giving off light, but they also die fast if you forget to manurally turn them off at night.

Instead I cut a hole in the bottom of each pumpkin, and stuffed it with green colored Christmas lights. I only used one 50 light string set and simply connected them all together on the same light set.

It worked like a charm, and everyone who saw them commented on how neat they were.

So there you have it folks, a fun, simple, and pretty little addition for your steps or rail at Halloween time!





----Aside from my craft pumpkins, here was the small amount of items I was able to find. At least I had some decorations out this year.

And lastly... I had to decorate myself up for Halloween, and yes, I am guilty of this here Halloween Selfie combo shot.

Getting My Parlor Ready

So most people probably would not want a black and white living room with Victorian red and white furniture, but I am not everybody, and I am sure there are others like me whom would dig it. After painting over the stairwell though, I decided to get a little more creative. What about black floors?! Why not! So this is basically my next DIY quest. I have the black and white stairwell, I have the cool re-done Victorian red and black throne chair, and heck, I even got the flippin $5,000 Enviro pellet stove to go with the whole allure of the room. I'm likely going to do what everyone else on every forum suggested not to do... I am painting my wood floors a high gloss black and finishing it off with a super high gloss poly finish. These babies are going to shine, and I will be sure to share the before and after shots. But for right now, here is the stairwell, which I think came out beautifully.

This was not the only project I had taken on. My dad gave me an old lamp which I knew would fit into my parlor just perfectly.

However the old lamp looked sort of dated, so I took it upon myself to go ahead and give it a facelift. Hours of back breaking labor went into this sweet chandelier. Here is the progress photos as I worked on the lamp.

The Before, The During, and The After.

This Old Chair

I found this chair at a yard sale about 10 years ago. Everyone who saw it dubbed it ugly, anf that I shoulf have left it in the yard I picked it up at. They were sure it would have ended up in the garbage anyway.

Pshhh... what do they know?

It took me 10 years to finally own my own home, and to finally bring this old baby back to life.

Here is the before and after shots of my beautiful throne chair.

I have yet to find her match in beauty, but Ebay sells some really stunning throne chairs, which cost a hell of a lot more than the $30 I paid 10 years ago.

I dusted her off, and gave her a fabric cleaning, followed up by some red fabric dye. I then slowly gave her 3 coats of high gloss black paint. Quite stunning now, and everyone compliments the old chair.

Frame Out A Mirror Using Polyurethane Crown Moulding

I had about 30 feet of polyurethane crown molding left over from the bathroom. I had a spot that seemed pretty ideal for it, but everyone who heard of my plan to frame out the parlor mirror told me it could not be done.

Please!

Never tell a crafty craftenstein like me what can and cannot be done.

I was told I needed to use plain flat molding to frame it out, but the stubborn Taurus I am.... well... I went ahead with my plans with using the decorative crown, and guess what? It came out looking fabulous.

I liked the fact that I was able to make my 45 degree angle miter cuts by hand, due to how lightweight polyurethane molding is!

Anyway, below you will see my step by step before- during and after photographs.

I think I did a schnazzy job!

For those of you wondering how I did it, it was all rather simple. I measured my mirror, measured out my molding, and simply applied it to the walls using Loctite Adhesive.

I then used painters tape to just hold it in place so it would not slip. After all was dry, I used spackle to connect my miter cuts to leave it looking seamless. I then of course painted it black to match the black and white color scheme I have going on.

All in all it turned this old 60's mirror into a more classical look. It allows it now to pop, and it looks decorative and a heck of a lot nicer than it originally did!

I am glad we decided to keep this mirror in place. Originally we were going to knock it down, but I liked it, it made the room look a lot bigger. With it framed out the room just has a sweet refined look- that Gothic turn of the century decor I was going for!