The Aerodynamics of Airplanes

Our nursery is not very glamorous right now, in fact, it’s the least blogged about room in our entire house.  I know I’ve written at least 3 times the blog posts about bathrooms.  As a refresher, this is what we are working with:

Giant red N on the wall, gold/white ceiling fan and some poorly painted red paint.

We are planning to tackle the wall colors/trim situation very very soon (like, this weekend soon), this post however, is about the white and gold situation in the middle of the room.  We are ceiling fan people, I know fans are not “in”, but I’m all about function and in a 2 story house, we need a ceiling fan.  I looked around a bit and determined that any fan that I could remotely consider attractive is about $200.00.  I took to Pinterest for some alternatives and found a fabric fan makeover from Jennifer at Dimples & Tangles.

I happened to have the following things on hand: spray paint, fabric, mod podge, and an ugly (but perfectly functional) fan.  Steve also made the poor decision once upon a time of teaching me how to take down light fixtures and fans.  Muahahaha my plan was hatched.

I got a bit way layed as I stood in the nursery with my step stool and screwdriver trying to remember if I was definitely supposed to take the blades off first, or if I needed to take the light part off the bottom first.  We had a conversation that went a little something like this:

Me:  So, out of curiosity, if you are taking down a ceiling fan, would you take off the blades first or the light part?
Steve: Depends, usually the light part would come off first.  Which fan are you taking down?
Me:  Not necessarily any fans, it’s just a curiosity question.
Steve: Yeah right, are you taking down the nursery fan?
Me: maybe.
Steve: What are you going to do with it?
Me:  This really cool thing I saw online, I’m going to give the fan a makeover and it’s going to be awesome.
Steve:  something about the aerodynamics of balancing a fan, airplane wings were definitely mentioned, and something else about not bubbling the fabric.
Me:  Yeah, tons of people have wrote about it online and nobody said their fan wobbles, so I’m sure it’s fine.  I have a good idea of how it’ll work in my head.
Steve:  …….yeah………I better just take it down.

So once the fan was down, and Steve was fully convinced we’d be buying a new fan before the baby arrives, I took off to the dining room to get working on my plan.  As part of our “compromise” with me being able to paint the fan, he gave me stern warnings about the implications of paint in the fan motor, so I grabbed my painters tape and settled in for a little prep work.

Here is the gorgeous goldness that was the “before” picture.  It probably wouldn’t take me very long to tape, but we were watching 21 Jumpstreet while I was doing this, so it somehow managed to take the whole movie.  I would guess if I had not also been watching Channing Tatum…I mean, a high quality cinematic production, while I was doing this, it would have been 30 minutes tops.

Basically, there is a filter that protects the motor and it’s under all those little holes.  I taped all the little holes, the motor parts, and the electrical for the light.  I originally picked a bright blue, but made a last minute switch to navy after holding my fabric choice by the various blue choices.  I headed outside to my “studio” and once again made the neighbors question what on earth goes on in this house.

While the paint was drying, I came back in and got to work on the fan blades.

I had originally gotten 1 yard of the green giraffe print but I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to use it.  Once I decided on my fan plan, I was dying to dig into the giraffe print.  I laid out my 5 fan blades and had fabric left to spare.  If I had started with this plan originally, I probably would have only needed a half a yard or so, but I’m okay with the leftovers.  I got it on sale for $4.00 a yard.  I just laid out the blades so they were all going the same direction and traced.  If I had a lined pattern, I would have been really careful to line them up, but since it didn’t matter, I just stuck them on and went.

I cut them the exact size of the fan blade, you don’t want too much overhang because you won’t actually wrap it around the edges of the blade at all…this will mess up the aerodynamics and cause the fan to wobble.  (See, I did learn something from my mid-day lecture…)

Once I had my fabric cut, it was mod podge time.  I didn’t take any pictures of this because I was on a roll, but basically, apply mod podge to the fan blade, be VERY VERY generous and be sure to coat all the way to the very edge.  Then, I laid down my fabric, smoothed it so it fit, and applied a layer of mod podge to the top.  I took an old credit card and used it to completely smooth down the fabric.  From there, I applied a second thin layer of mod podge and let it dry.  Rinse and repeat for all blades.

After the blades were dry, I needed to recut the holes for the fan blade arms to attach.  I took a utility knife and carved out the holes very carefully.  I also went around the edge of the fan and cleaned up any excess that was bigger than the fan blade.  Again, gotta keep those aerodynamics in mind…

Then, after lots of thin coats of spray paint and anxiously waiting for my pretties to be done, it was time for the best part — the reinstallation.  Steve decided it would be in our best interest for him to do it…I guess accidentally electrocuting the baby would be a bad thing.  Pregnant women — don’t try this at home.

After some excited pacing around by me, it was up and I LOVE it.  I reused the same “globes” it came with after a failed trip to Lowes to see if there was something I liked more.  I am probably going to cover up the white parts of the fan pulls, but I wasn’t sure with what yet, so I left them be for now.  I did spray paint the pull chain blue.  Remove the red wall in your head with a nice soft gray one and it will look even better.  Want to see it closer?

The best part?  Not even a hint of a wobble and Steve was shocked to call this project a success.

So for $4.00 for fabric and $3.50 for a can of Navy Rustoleum, I have a brand spankin’ new fan!  This project took a little over a half can, so I can use it for some other nursery things that I have up my sleeve.

and that’s all folks, a nursery project done and in the books!  Now I have to stop staring at my work and go to bed…

(and for my mom who wonders if this will make you nauseous when it’s turned on, it looks like a green blur, so I think baby will have a nausea free experience in the nursery)

Anybody else tried to make over a ceiling fan?  Now that I know how easy it is, the other fans in this house don’t stand a chance…

Linked up to A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Things We Love — Filtrete Wireless Thermostat

A long time ago, Young House Love gave away a wireless thermostat.  I was incredibly intrigued and started researching the heck out of the Filtrete Wireless Thermostat.  I have an obsession with any household item that can be controlled with my phone, so I was  sold.  It has a few dings against it in the reviews for ease of hook-up, especially pertaining to a certain “C” wire.  Having NO clue what a C wire was, I sent it to Steve and crossed my fingers for good news.  Sadly, we had no C wire, but Steve knew how to add one, so add it he did.

The trickiest part of the entire process was getting it to sync with the router.  It took several hours and finally we gave up and called customer service, 40 minutes later, we were in business.  My favorite part is the ability to turn it to “away” when we’re gone.  I always forget to turn the thermostat down when we leave the house, so now, I can pull it up at my phone and set it to away…when we’re close to home, I can take it off away and the house is a nice reasonable temperature when we come back home.  You can also create custom programs (as you can with other, cheaper thermostats) for different days of the week/times of the day.  We’ve had it installed for nearly 3 months now, and the cost savings on our gas bill has far exceeded my expectations.  The thermostat has already paid for itself and then some.

And yes, if you were wondering, I do pull out my phone to show people the temperature in my house at any given moment.  :-)

All in all, if you are thinking about upgrading your thermostat, I would recommend it.  It will take a bit of patience though and possibly a call to your electrician if you don’t have that background knowledge to do it yourself, but it’s been worth it for us.

Source

Anyone else obsessed with programming their house to run via phone app?  My next request is the ability to double check that my doors are locked from my phone and my oven is off…the second I find something for that, you’ll be the first to know!

Let me know if you have any specific questions about the installation, I’ll check with the brains behind the operation and let you know!

Fancy a Coffee?

For Christmas, we gifted ourselves a Keurig.  I am not a coffee drinker and Steve lives on the stuff, so I assumed we were pretty much getting it for him…but then I discovered the world of Keurig cider, cocoa, and tea!  So now I love our Keurig too.  What I did not love about ol’ K is the amount of counter space it hogs.  This was not jiving with me…after trying the coffee machine near every conceivable outlet in our entire kitchen, I came up with a plan.

We moved our media stand into the “dinnette” nook to use as a coffee bar table.  I grabbed some things we had around the house and FINALLY hung up our word art that’s only been sitting around for 6 months or so.  The only thing I bought for this was the his and her mug holders.  I found them at Hobby Lobby and got both of them for $7.00 total thanks to an awesome 50% off sale.

I wanted to have one side as a coffee bar and one side as a wine bar…however, the universe is thwarting my efforts right now, so Lucy’s food has been promoted to the special kids table as a place holder.

I lucked out and happened to have 3 baskets in the closet that fit perfectly.  The dishes in the cabinet is my mismatched china collection…remind me to blog about it someday.  I needed somewhere to put tea, and I had a blue glass wide mouth jar down in the basement that did the trick nicely.

I found my little mirrored tray for $4.00 at Goodwill.  My jars were from Target along time ago, I just personalized them with chalkboard vinyl and my Silhouette.

I’m loving this small piece of completed-ness in our house of chaos.  It feels SO GOOD to finally have something on the walls.  Anyone else doing some reorganizing?  Did you put together a coffee bar?  Move your entertainment center somewhere else when it no longer worked with your house??  Do tell!

Linked up with: The Gunny Sack.

Sketch It Up

We’ve been plotting and scheming our grand master plan for the laundry room.  We had some ideas floating around but with our clean slate, we needed a way to visualize our plans.  We sketched out some ideas, heck, I even drew what I was thinking on the wall…about that time we realized we were being incredibly silly.  They make technology for this people!

So we downloaded Google SketchUp and Steve nominated himself to learn how to use it.  Google actually has some great tutorials on how to use SketchUp and after watching some of the videos, it’s on my “to learn” list too!  It seems reasonably easy and endlessly helpful.  After several drafts and brainstorming, here is what we are thinking…

We’re going to do some built ins around the washer and dryer.

There is a small shelf for laundry detergent and fabric softener.  The bar on the left will be for hanging clothes and the staggered bars on the left will be used as a drying rack for clothes we don’t want to hang on the hanger to dry.  The storage on the top will be mostly decorative since it’s 8+ feet up and I can’t reach it without a stool, but we’ll definitely have some pretty baskets up there to look at.  We tried the sketch-up with out this extending to the ceiling and it didn’t look as custom as this does.
In addition to the built ins for the washer and dryer, we’re also going to build out a mudroom area.

This is a rough drawing and we are going to add some hooks to this as well.  We’ll store our shoes in the cubbies under the bench and have some bins for mittens/etc in the upper cubbies.  You may have noticed the sink, we built that off of specs on the ikea website.  We wanted a small sink that was close to the wall for this room.  We’re hoping that once we see it in person, it won’t look super “bathroom-y” and more “cool slim functional sink” instead.

Here it is with the walls/doors included.

We are planning to do the bench and built ins in white, the floor was the closest we could find to our actual tiles and the walls will be a really really light gray.  I’m still brainstorming accent colors for the room, but since it’s a beige box right now, I still have some time.

A view from above:

and yes, those are the dog bowls you see there, got to make sure to account for that!!

I’m so excited to have a plan and Google SketchUp was amazing in helping us visualize our brainstorms.  Now that we know how easy it is, we’ll be doing this for our future rooms as well.  Best part?  It’s completely free to download and use.  Anyone else ventured into SketchUp land?  Did you find it as fun as we did?  What do you think of the laundry room redo?

Bustin’ Down The Wall

Remember our bathroom disaster that is currently unfolding?  Well, we’re in a waiting period in there because it needs to dry out before we can do much else with it.  We have a lot of stuff we need to do in there and as we were thinking, brainstorming, and generally feeling frustrated about the bathroom, we got a fantastic idea…it was high time we took a sledge hammer to the house and ripped out the most frustrating feature of our house.

Give up?

We laid into the laundry room with vengeance.  I was so tired of the lack of flow in that room and it’s the first room we come home into, so while we’re waiting on water to dry upstairs, we’re getting down to business down stairs.

Biggest problem of the room, right here.  The door straight ahead goes to the garage, the door on the left is for a small closet, and the door on the right goes to the kitchen.  They are all big doors and they are all in the way of each other.  Not to mention how small the room feels.  We have 9 foot ceilings in here too, but it doesn’t feel like it because the room is so claustrophobic.

Enter a plan, stage right.

Closet is coming OUT.

First, we removed the honkin’ laundry sink.  We love our laundry sink, just not in our laundry room.  It’s way to big for the small room.  This guy is being relocated to the basement for brush washing, etc.

I’m ready to smack the first celebratory hole in the wall, look out world!  Don’t worry, we know that the best way to demolish something is not to pull it down piece by piece with a hammer, I just really wanted to hit it.

We took the trim off the door framing, not sure when/if/why we might need it again, but it’s in good shape, so we pulled it off nicely and took it downstairs.

Yeah, we realized here how dusty it would be…we went and got our masks.  However, we took the reciprocating saw  and score around the studs and peeled most of the sheet rock off in decent size chunks.

Once the Sheetrock was all cleaned off, we nicely took apart the studs.  It’s worth noting that this wall was in no way load bearing…but if you aren’t sure, be sure to check before you start pulling stuff down.

We did surprising little damage to the Sheetrock we want to keep, so that was good news, some patching and we should be back in business!

View from the back corner.

View from the peninsula.

I had a really hard time capturing how much more open and bright the room feels (because it is still not much square footage), but we are excited about the progress so far and ready to move on to the next phase!  Patching and fixing the wall and floor so we can move into the fun part — building some shelves and organization!!

Anybody else bust anything up this weekend?!?  I have a new found love of demolition….

**Update: If you are thinking of demo-ing a similar wall and are interested in the process we followed, this is what we did: identify the Sheetrock we want to keep in tact, score the edges with a utility knife between the “coming down Sheetrock” and the “save it Sheetrock ”, cut to the studs with reciprocating saw and take out large pieces of the Sheetrock.  After the Sheetrock was down, we took apart the studs carefully so we didn’t ruin the Sheetrock (again…be careful of what you don’t want to demolish)…and that was it, some quick clean-up and we were in business.**

Easy peasy organization

I had a lot of goals for January, we’re probably not going to get them all done, but I’m proud of the progress we’ve made.  A big goal of ours?  Get some organization down in this kitchen.  Our house is big, there are 2 of us, and we have a TON of storage, so why are we always a mess?  Because all that space has no organizational properties.  I started small and tackled our “junk” cupboard.  It catches EVERYTHING (especially those things you need somewhere to shove quick when company comes over).

Why did I neglect to take a before picture…sigh.  This is the cupboard in contention.

Our biggest organization challenge?  Paper!  We get all our bills electronically, so aside from birth announcements, magazines and wedding invites, our mailbox fills with a lot of JUNK.  I don’t like to just throw full credit card announcements in the recycling for anyone to grab, so we would make a pile and cart it upstairs to the office to shred occasionally.  I had a thought this weekend, why not save a step and put the shredder under the desk and shred things instantly.  So I brought the shredder down and it was a success…except that the cord covered the drawer to reach the outlet.  45 minutes later, we had an outlet (yep, Steve was feeling inspired and got that puppy rigged right up).

Success.  Next up, I had to tackle that drawer.  It was full of everything random that we didn’t know where to put.  A quick trip to Target and I found the perfect slim organizers for the drawer (it’s only 1.75″ deep)

The thing I love the most — empty compartments and space!

Finally, I tackled the cupboard, this was my favorite because with the assistance of the shredder, I emptied it!

Cookie cutters, magazines, and…wait, what is the photo album doing in there Elizabeth?  Glad you asked.

I had a spare photo album laying around and I had an abundance of paint samples that I wanted to keep (since we clearly have a lot of rooms to go), so a few minutes of work and now I have a nice, organized paint book.  I recycled all of the colors that don’t go with our existing color plans and badda bing, badda boom.  No more paint chips all over the cupboard.

And that, my friends, is a quick and dirty organization of the junk cupboard.  Anyone else organizing in the new year?  Any fun tips you follow? I’m new to the complete home organization game, so I’d love to hear what you are working with!

Unfinished Project Intervention

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve mentioned “unfinished project month” more than once in recent posts…Steve and I decided that we’d start off January getting our hineys back in gear and finishing some loose ends around here.  First up for an intervention, the master bathroom.  We’ve neglected that room for almost a year, so no more neglect, we are making that room livable usable space!

Current State:

First thing’s first, we’re going to FINALLY do something about the sub-floor.  We’re adding another layer of sub-floor on top of it because the floor was uneven.  Steve is actually tackling that as I type…it sounds like the ceiling is falling down (as a side note).  Once the floor is good to go, we’re going to prime it and add some stick tile linoleum we picked up a long long time ago for 30 cents a tile.

Painting is also on the list since someone painted these walls poo brown.

We’re also going to paint the vanity, because it’s looking worse for the wear (as you can see).  We’re going to frame out the mirror to make it thicker and put in an extra vanity light so we have some better lighting in this room.  We’ll also paint the doors and trim white.  I’m so excited just thinking about it…too bad we can’t work on it 24/7 until it’s done!

Next in the unfinished files….that dreaded dining room.  We won’t get it all done this month, but we’re going to get that wall paper down finally and mud/tape the fresh drywall.  My awesome chandelier needs a better background…

Finally, the “smaller projects”…

These have my name and my name only written on them….let’s play “I spy” shall we?  I spy with my little eye…a chair in disrepair (waiting to be reupholstered), a table that’s seen better days (I started sanding, but haven’t gotten much further), a lamp needing spray paint, a $10 craigslist dresser begging for a facelift, a door that needs a coat of white paint, and tons of stuff to organize on my new shelves.

PHEW.  26 more days, we better get on it!  Is anyone else feeling the freshness of a new year?  Does your project corner look as bad as mine?!?!

The Entry Way Facelift

Sunday was Steve and my 1 year anniversary (yay!) so we’re celebrating all this week (double yay!).  Our one rule is that our celebrations could not involve any house “stuff” because we are on vacation.  Well, late last week, our painters called.  See, we had them bid to paint our inside — Entry way, ceiling, front room, ceiling, hallway, ceiling, and the living room/kitchen ceiling.  Since the weather was so nice here last week, they asked if we minded if they did it a week later.  Fine by us, so they showed up Monday to give us a belated anniversary present….a clean and fresh 1st floor!!!

Since we haven’t talked about those rooms lately, here is the foyer (from the top of the stairs) before.

After

I painted the trim on the upper window white before the painters came so I wouldn’t have to worry about being on the ladder and balancing myself.  I’m working on the trim in the rest of the 1st floor to get the same clean look.  Also, I’m seeking a replacement light fixture for our entryway….because the fresh paint makes this one look even worse!  :-)

Here was our front “sitting room” (our game room) before paint.  The color wasn’t bad, but with zero overhead lighting in this room, it was just a really really dark box.  Plus the paint was incredibly beat up.

We decided to go with the washed khaki for a uniform look for now.

View from the living room before

and after

and my favorite…the upper hallway before

and after (I also love that the dog changed….Lucy is modelling the after for you)

It was amazing to come home to this…we’re going to be back to painting our own rooms now to save $, but getting such a large chunk of our house feeling like home is truly priceless (and we didn’t want to be precariously perched trying to do the entryway ourselves anyway).  We went with the Baer Washed Kahki (that we used in our living room as well).  Is the perfect neutral for our space and really gives us that “clean slate” feeling that we’ve been going for.  I am still amazed by how much a fresh coat of paint can really do for a space!

How about you?  What’s your favorite color make-over?  I’m thinking about tackling our bedroom next and without some intervention, it’s probably going to be gray…

Just call me a Sneaky Sneakster

Steve went out of town on Thursday to go mountain biking with some friends for the weekend.  I have been thinking for several weeks about what I could do while he was gone to surprise him.  He’s been working SO HARD on the outside of the house and I know it’s been stressing him out, so now that the outside is done and the painters are in action, I decided to tackle the garage.  We have a nice large garage that was completely full and we have been parking outside.  Want to see how bad it is??

Old windows, tools everywhere and SO MUCH SAWDUST.

A big ol’ mess over there.

And now, a little bit of progress being made.  Hurray!

I decided to paint it a nice gray color.  How’d I pick it?  Well, I went to Home Depot, picked a color from the Oops section for $7.00 and went with it.  It is Baer exterior flat paint.  I had read online that exterior paint was more durable for the garage since it’s exposed to the elements a lot more than the interior.  I opted for flat since it’s the easiest paint to do touchups on and I know the walls will take a lot of abuse.  I grossly underestimated the amount of paint I would need and had to go have them color match another gallon for me.  All told, I probably used a gallon and a half out here.

I decided to paint the stairs Oil Rubbed Bronze.  That’s right, I found my favorite spray paint also comes in a can.  It has a nice glossy sheen (without being slippery) and I think it made the stairs awesome.  I primed the stairs first with some tinted primer I also bought in the oops section (1 gal for $5.00).  The Rustoleum was $8.00 for a can.

Here it is (not done by any means, but a definite improvment).  I’m going to paint the workbench the red color you see on the swatch and we’re going to build some more shelves to house our stuff, but that was all too much to do in one weekend by myself!

I’ll be sure to share the eye candy with you as I make more process on my garage make-over, but for 3 days and $40, I think it’s a significant improvement!  Most importantly Steve was really surprised and loves it.  Also, as a direct quote, “I can’t believe you moved all that heavy stuff by yourself.”  Me either hub…me either.

Am I the only one who loves surprise makeovers?  Have you painted or organized something while your spouse was out of the house?  How on earth do you organize your scrap wood??

Mold FREE is the way to be

As you may have gathered Saturday, we were both pretty worn out and frustrated about our house.  This was SO much more than we were expecting and we couldn’t help but feel completely over our heads.  I mean, we went from figuring out how to replace discontinued siding to facing a serious mold infestation.  After checking in with my dad at the end of Saturday, he offered to come down and help us for the day so we took him up on it.

Sunday morning our reinforcements arrived bright and early.  Having his expertise and some extra sets of helpers was a big relief for us and we were ready to get started.  So what did we do?

We started by getting rid of the moldy studs.  We let them dry out over night (thankfully a 0% chance of rain, phew) but it was clear they were quite rotten and needed to go.  The tricky part about removing studs from an existing wall is if you don’t remount well enough, the wall will no longer be stable.  Since we weren’t saving the moldy drywall, we used the sawszall to cut off the rotten parts.  

Next, we needed to get that drywall out.  This proved very easy since it was soaked.  You may wonder how we didn’t catch this sooner, all I can say is there is chocolate brown paint in there and it’s been painted at least 3 times, so it seemed to seal it in.  For fun, I took the putty knife and scrapped all the paint off the wall…yep, it absolutely peeled off easier than the wallpaper.  Awesome.

Dad also reinforced the bottom of the window (and yes, we’re giving up trying to fix the stupid window and we’re just replacing the whole dang thing).

In case you were wondering, the electrical box was also completely rotted out…so that’s not super safe…

Here you can notice some of the newly placed studs (and yes, my favorite stud muffin in the yellow shirt).

We needed to survey the damage and make sure it was contained.  We verified the upper part of the house wasn’t rotten and then headed inside.

Staring at the ceiling.  There was a bit of mold in there, so we wiped it down with bleach and let it air, before we seal up the window we’re going to put Killz on it to make sure it’s dead.  The good news is there wasn’t any rot.

Check out that newly studded wall….as I was mentioning you need extra super reinforcement so the new wall is braced and not going anywhere.

No…that’s not a 4 pane-d window…

After we got the studs back in, we were ready to start getting the house sealed back up.  We’re not done with our fix but it’s supposed to rain this week so we need to seal up or we’re going to have a pool in the dining room.

This board felt fantastic going up….like a sigh of relief.

Last board of the night.

I’m sad we didn’t get a good group photo  Dad and Steve at the end of the day.

We covered the front of the house in clear plastic wrap to help keep the moisture out.  I didn’t get a picture because it was after 10 p.m. by the time we finished!

Still on the exterior to do list:
Piece together our siding
Fix the back of the house window sills
Select and order new windows
Install new windows
Pick a paint color
Finish painting the exterior lights
Have the house painted  (SO glad we didn’t decide to do this ourselves)
Sit on the front step and have a drink with an umbrella in it