Da Flo'

Wow, it has been a long time since our last post! It’s partly my fault as I just finished 10 weeks of training in Ohio to become a Civil Engineer in the Air Force. It was not as boring as it sounds, though it was difficult for me since I come from an Environmental Engineering background. It was actually educational, eye opening and fun, and I got to do some pretty cool things like this.

I left Alex with a few projects to do while I was gone. He did accomplish his honey- do list, but everything on it was a portion of bigger projects to come. I had him paint the kitchen cabinets so that when I got back we could order new counter tops and install backsplash (I got the backsplash while in Ohio.) He painted the smaller pieces of furniture in the bed room, but the larger items had to wait. He also created a bedframe from the headboard/footboard we got a while back.

So you can see we have things accomplished, but not much is show-ready yet. However, the biggest news is that we have the hardwood floors down!! Finally! The receipt for the purchase shows we bought these floors at the end of March and we now have them installed. We originally thought that we were just going to do the living room and hallway, but have since decided to add the foyer into the mix. We didn’t have enough wood to finish so we are waiting on that. While at the store we both fell so in love with the Natural hand-scraped Acacia engineered hardwood floors that it only took us a day to decided that this was the floor for us we were back the next day for the purchase. That’s a pretty fast move for us because this purchase was very permanent and pricey.

Here it is!! Our floor adventure through pictures.  

Alex took the day off work to rip up the carpet and start prepping for laying the floors down. 

I totally helped after work by removing the baseboards.

 Remember that I said our house sat empty for over a year before we bought it. Well it seems that it was used by some lizards as a place to lay their eggs. They snuck in through the dog door and I found these tiny eggs behind our baseboards. Lots of empty shells, but three were still intact. Alex is keeping them to see what hatches.

Be prepared to clean like crazy when replacing floors. I swept and swept and swept!!

"Dramatic" setting on the camera.  

Our granite tiles installed at the base of the fireplace 

The start of the floor! You can see our old textbooks being put to good use. 

Prepping the area between the kitchen and the living room. New kitchen floor (tile) to be added in the next few months. 

Sometimes a piece just would not fit so a little persuasion with a hammer was needed.

We had to work around watching Le Tour de France sometimes. 

One website said it would take 2 days to lay a hardwood floor down. So we got some coffee and worked into the night 

The cat doing what she does best.

This was about as far as we got with the coffee for the night. The website lied it took us a whole weekend and five days after work to finish. 

Laying the floor around the granite squares 

A new fan! We were in the market for a new fan since ours was original to the home and looks outdated (not to mention it didn’t work well.) We were shopping for supplies at Lowe's and just fell in love with this one. The new fan looks modern and moves tons of air, which is great for hot Florida summers.

Old Fan

New Fan

The cat has no thought for her safety! She just loved to nap on the tools 

Ripping up the foyer. 

Scrapping up the glue 

We are looking into thicker base boards so that too will be added soon. But here are the finished shots.

View from the kitchen 

View from the foyer 

View from the hallway 

The fireplace is not a finished project yet. We went out and bought all this granite for $50 (Alex calls it a Craigslist win). We are going to use a small portion of it to make a granite mosaic around the fireplace. We will certainly find other projects to make use of the rest later on.

 

Nook Transformation

If you paid attention to the photos I posted of our house you may have noticed the large nook in the living room. I hated it so much because it seemed like a waste of space where nothing could really go. I wanted to make it a built-in bookcase but didn’t really know how to do it. So, of course, I turned to Pinterest. The tutorial that I found for a DIY bookcase on Pinterest can be found here.

Our nook was a little on the large size: 8 feet tall, 32 inches wide and 21 inches deep. The shelves were going to be large, perfect for displaying large items like the porcelain horse head! We decided to make 5 shelves which divided the space into four 1.5’ tall shelves (including the bottom space) and two 1’ spaces at the top. We went to Home Depot and purchased all the need supplies.

Supplies:

¾” Particle Board

Chair Rail Creations 8” white (2)

1x2x8 Furring Strips (4)

Wood Filler

10x2.5 Screws

2.5” Finishing Nails

An employee at Home Depot was extremely nice and cut our particle board into 6 pieces that measured 32” by 19.5”. We kept the depth of the shelves shorter than the 21” nook because we were going to add decorative chair rail to the front (which added another inch) and we didn’t want the shelves to protrude from the nook.

I had already painted the nook green awhile back when I was painting the whole house. Alex painted all the wood pieces white and was ready to get to work.

At this point I think it is safe to defer to my husband on how the shelves were built.

This is now Alex speaking, taking over from Silvey. I was also responsible for documenting the process, which is why a lot of important information might be missing. This first picture shows the nook before we began installation of the shelves.

The particle board shelves had been cut at Home Depot and were a very snug fit. I cut the furring strips to fit underneath the back and sides of each shelf, ensuring that they were long enough to reach two studs each. I used a stud finder to determine the location of the studs and made sure to screw the strips into those studs the shelf could have simply rested on these supports with no additional connection, but I decided to hammer a few small finishing nails through the shelf into the supports just to keep things feeling solid.

The following image compares a completed shelf with a shelf in progress. Notice how the chair rail really gives the shelf a nice finished look. I applied the chair rail with a small amount of Gorilla Glue and three finishing nails. I had to cut a small opening in the back of the bottom shelf to allow room for the electrical and cable outlet.  

Each shelf had a gap in the back of about half an inch. This enabled the depth of each shelf to be set exactly the same as the others. I used wood filler to fill in the gaps, which actually took quite a while. I don’t think the wood filler putty was meant for large applications like this…but it did work.

I also used wood putty to fill in the small gaps along each side of the shelves and along the edges of the chair rail. Once dried and sanded, the edges looked seamless.

Once all of the edges had been filled and sanded it was time to begin painting. I first taped off the edges of the shelves and painted the walls, shelf undersides, and support strips green. I used paper bags to keep paint from dripping onto the shelves.

Here is a view from underneath. Once the entire underside of each shelf had been pained to match the walls it really made the supports disappear. 

And there you have it. A fairly easy project that took a bit longer than anticipated (Silvey thought I could do it in a day!) Here is the final product…Silvey gets credit for the decorations.

Cost Break Down:

Furring Strip 4 at .75 = $3.00

Particle Board = $18.98

Chair Rail 2 at $8.49 = $16.98

Wood Filler = $2.98

Screws = $8.91

Finish Nails = $3.47

Paint (already had) = Free

Total: $54.32

Because the people at Home Depot are amazing supporters of the military after a 10% discount our final total was = $48.88 

Roman Shades

Curtains!!! Again? Absolutely. This time I made Roman shades for my eat-in-kitchen windows. Of course, the inspiration was a Pinterest post. Here’s how I decided on the fabric for the shades: I was at JoAnns Fabric store (when am I not?) and decided to take a stroll through the Home Décor fabrics. The minute I saw this fabric I was sold. Unfortunately they only had about 1 yard in stock at this particular location. So I had to order more fabric and wait a week for it to come in. I ordered about 8 yards because I wanted enough to make 4 shades even though I only have 3 windows…just in case I botched my first attempt.

Supplies:

Mini Blinds

Fabric

Heat and Bond 

Spray adhesive (or fabric glue)

I followed the instructions, from the blog 365 days to Simplicity, with the addition of a few little tweaks of my own. I could not use the existing blinds because they were yellowed with age and held together with tape. It was also very difficult to raise and lower these 20-year-old blinds. So, I bit the bullet and bought new mini blinds for each window. Maybe that’s an improper turn of phrase. They were only $4 each so it really wasn’t that bad.

Instructions

First measure your window. Mine was 70 inches by 23 inches. I wanted the edges to hang over a little.  I wanted enough fabric so that my final product would be 70 inches by 25 inches. So I cut 75 inches by 30 inches of fabric for my curtains to allow for hemming the sides. 

Now extend your mini blinds all the way out. Cut out the string in the blinds that looks like a ladder (Its the one I am holding in the below picture). Do not cut the thick pull cord that this is wrapped around.

Figure out how many folds you want in your shade. This also depends on how large you want the folds to be and the length of your shades. I read that a good fold length is between 6-9 inches. I chose to have a fold of 7 inches. This is because everything is easier when things can be easily divided. For instance my shade is 70 inches long and I want a 7 inch gap between folds. That means I will have 9 blinds plus the bottom bar so 10 in total. 7x10=70.

Take off the bottom bar. Simply pop out the plastic button and untie the cord. Remove all but your needed blinds. That means for me I was left with 9 blinds. Now remember I said I wanted my shade to be 70 inches. So measure your mini blinds to 70 inches and mark that on the pull cords. Slip the bottom bar back on and tie the string at your marking. Place the plastic button back on.

Back to the fabric. I wanted my fabric to hang so that it was 25 inches wide. I folded the fabric over and made a hem on each side so that I had perfect straight edges which wouldn’t fray with time and use. I made sure that my final product was 25 inches wide. I creased the fold by ironing it down. I then took the hemming Heat and Bond and slipped it between the fold and ironed that down. This just makes sure my fold stays glued down.

Ironing my fold down

Placing Heat and Bond in the Folded crease

Perfect edges and ready for the next steps

I then found the middle of my fabric and made a median line. Similarly, I marked the middle on the blinds and the support bar at the top. This way I could just match up the lines in the middle and everything would be centered.

Make sure the blind pull is flush with the fabric. Also make sure that you glue it so there is room to pull the fabric up and over the top so you won't see the support bar.

In this picture you can see that the blind pull is flush with the fabric

You can use whatever fabric glue that you like. Many people used Mod Podge. From other projects I have done I have come to love and trust spray adhesive Its simple and fast and I was able to hang my drapes in minutes compared to the long time that other glues require to dry.

The Finished Product! Blinds half up.  

Blinds Down

Like always here is a before picture for a comparison 

Cost Break Down

Mini blinds: $4/ blind so $12

Fabric: 11/yard + 40% off so $52 (lots of fabric left over) 

Heat and Bond: Variety pack $6 (I still have tons left over)

Total: $70 or $23 per blind. 

Just for a cost comparison if I only bought the needed 6 yards of fabric for the 3 blinds my total would have been $58 Which is $19.33 per blind.

Compare that to the Roman Shades at Lowe's. The cheapest Roman shade is a plain white fabric that sells for $17.97 per shade. The cheapest patterned Roman shade has stripes and that sells for $39.96 per shade.