Getting Caulky

I was a little cocky going into the weekend thinking we'd wrap-up our DIY Door Casing Project we've been working on, boy was I wrong! But that's how most DIY Projects go, now that we have a little one again & a tween working on a big school project. The good news is, all the framing of our doorways is complete! The last time you saw our doorway casings, we framed our doorways with thick molding (almost 4 inches thick) and added a simple header using a 1x1 and a 2x1. You can read more about our inspiration for the DIY Casing Project here. Here's how it looked the last time you saw our door ways.

And the bottom of our baseboards looked 5ike this (not cute) 

Since then, we added a top trim piece to our doorways using two 1x1s and 2x1 in the middle section. I love how simple the doorway headers now look, to me they really fit the style of our California Rancher. 

Then we trimmed out the bottom of the doorway piece with the 4x1 piece, with mitered corner cuts. To hide the inside seam of the doorways, we used pieces of lattice. Again we mitered each corner cut. Oh, when I say 'we' I mean Hasani! I marked all the cuts using a 45 degree angle and he made all the cuts. 

Can I just say how much I'm also in LOVE with the bottom of our doorways! They look so polished and nice next to our existing baseboards! I like I said I'm in love! 

After the doorways were finished being framed out, it was time for my to get caulky. I had a ton of wood to caulk, a ton! For all the seams, I used caulk to fill in the nail holes and knots in the wood I used wood filler. Our doorway casing project has started a snowball effect around our house. As I've already mentioned, I plan on repainting the our baseboard trim (too bad I didn't get to it over the weekend) So with that said, after seeing how amazing our doorways were looking we decided it was finally time to replace our old dated small front door trim. We like our existing doorway trim that surrounds our garage door, so we bought the same trim. 

While Hasani was removing the old front door trim, he discovered a key hidden in the wall. Crazy huh? 

Next Hasani trimmed our existing baseboards to fit our new wider width door trim. Then I measured the miter corners and Hasani did the mitered cuts. Before Hasani nailed the new doorway trim in, I cleaned up all the drywall with a broom. It felt so good, it get to clean behind the old door trim, lol.  If you've ever removed an old piece of trim, you know exactly what I'm talking about, lol. Yup, I just added another project to my re-painting trim project and I'll be touching up paint on our front door surrounds. 


Here's how the door looks right now, pre-caulk and glossy white paint. 

Another snowball affect: we're finally getting around to added a new floor transition piece between the living room and dining room doorway. We bought an unfinished oak transition, I stained the piece Early American with left over stain from refinishing our hardwood floors last year and then applied a clean coat of polythene (also a left over from our hardwood floors) The new transition piece will help add a cohesive look between our original hardwood floors and our faux-wood floors, we installed two years ago replacing our ugly cracked tile. I'm really happy about this 'snowball affect,' because floor transitions are a good thing.

Next we need to sand, prime and then finally paint our new doorway casings and install our new doorway transition piece. Even though there's still a lot to do, I'm super excited about how doorways look! Oh, how I can't wait to see our DIY Door Casing completed and our baseboards glossy white again. I hope by Monday night, after the baby and tween head to bed, I'll be sanding and then priming our doorway casings and new front door trim. 


What do you think of our DIY Door Casing Project so far? Are you in love with the bottom of our doorway baseboards like I am? What do you think our our doorway headers, perfect addition to our little rancher? 


Any snowball effect projects happen in your casa lately? Have you found anything odd when your removed baseboards in the past like we have? 

Adding Casing to Our Doorways

For a while I've wanted to add some molding to our two doorways in , one leads to our kitchen and the other to our hallway. I didn't think adding molding would make a huge improvement in our home, until I saw a great How To on the blog A Charming Nest. They transformed plain doorways into a lovely architectural feature, that added so much character to their home. After seeing their pretty transformation, I knew for sure we had to upgrade the look of our two doorways. I really like the pretty details of A Charming Nest's casing trim and I like the ones I found on Tar Paper Crane. 


Pretty!! Love all the details :)

{ via A Charming Nest }

{ via Tar Paper Crane }

After showing Hasani what I wanted to do, we went shopping at Lowes. We stopped into Lowes and decided to go buy wood for our door casings instead of buying MDF. We decided on wood because, all the of our baseboards are wood and wanted to keep the same look thought out our home to keep everything consistent. We went though all the wood at Lowes, and bought the straightest and smooth wood we could find. 


6: 4x8 (each one 1 inch thick) 
4: 2x8 (each one 1 inch thick) 
4: 1x8 (each one 1 inch thick)
6: Lattice pieces 


We took all of our pictures down near the walls we would be added trim to. Next Hasani has sections of the bottom baseboards on both sides of the the doorway. Then we measured marked each board and made the cuts. So far both the front and back wood trim and header is on the doorways. We love the look of the doorway casing trim in the 1st picture above, however we have to keep ours looking more simpler since we have a 1950's California Rancher. You know so it doesn't look overdone. Here's how's ours currently looks, still much much more work to be done. 

Oh, I'm already in love how with how the doorways look! Even there were only halfway done. The thick almost 4 inches wide (to me) wood trim really makes our average sized doorway appear larger and the ceilings look taller. I like when little updates make huge improvements.  

After going back and forth over leaving the top of the header plain or adding a little molding detail, we've decided to a little trim to give it a more finished look. We still have a lot left to do, I'd say were about 50% done. 

We still need to: add miter corners on the inside if the doorways for a nice finished look. Add latices (thin strips of wood) on the inside of the doorways to hide seams where the wood meets the inside frame of the doorway. Fill all imperfections for wood filler, lots of wood filler! Sand, Prime then paint all the trim glossy white! We also plan to change out our front door trim, with trim that matches are garage door trim, since both over those doors are can be seen from the same room, we want to keep things consistent. 


I plan on paint lots and lots of trim over the next few days. I'm going to repaint all the trim in our hallways and touch up trim paint in our living room. I think I mentioned before that, some of our white trim got stained while Hasani and my Dad where finishing our Hardwood Floors last year. I was way too pregnant huge and tried to attempt re-painting the trim. My Dad did some touch ups for me in the Nursery (thanks Dad) Anyways I've been putting off re-painting the trim for far too long. We should be done in a few days, and I'll have more before, during and after pictures to share!


What do you think of our new door way look so far? Have you ever added casing to your doorways? Any project, like trim paining you've been putting off like me?

Mirror Makeover

* A big thank you to everyone for helping us choose our new Blog Pic! Another big thanks for all the sweet words about my family, we have lots of fun together & I'm glad our pictures capture that! As you can see we went with picture 'A' and added Mojo's picture too. We love that our blog now represents our whole family. Even though I'm they main blogger (Hasani chimes in from time to time) this is truly a family affair documenting all the fun and sometimes stressful projects we've done since becoming homeowners *

Now back to the mirror makeover. Back when I was shopping for a dresser for Avery's nursery I came across an old 70's mirror at a local thrift store. Once I saw the mirror, I knew I had to have it. A while back  I missed out on a fab mirror, because Hasani couldn't see its makeover potential. This time I listened to my gut and loaded the huge mirror into my shopping cart. I paid $ 25 bucks for the mirror, but considering its size and weight, it appears to be really wood cut all one piece, its actually a good deal.

When I came home with my prize, sure enough Hasani thought I bought home a lemon you know an ugly car that you paid to much for and can't take back. Then I reminded him of the mirror that got away, and shared with him my inspiration from Little Green Notebook. Jenny took an aged mirror and transformed it from icky to wow. She painted the mirror a moody grey.

{ Little Green Note Book }

I decided the best spot for this mirror would be at the end of our hallway. The one and only hallway hasn't seen much decor action in our house, just paint and an updated light fixture we installed months ago. I thought by installing the mirror at the very end of our hallway it would accomplish to things. 1. Bounce more natural light around during the daylight hours. 2. Make our hallway look larger, since mirrors always have that great affect. Next I took color inspiration from the pillows in our living room. I love the new floral pillows, great colors: greens, navy, golden yellow, turquoise.

I thought the painting the mirror a shade of green would look really good. I went to Lowes and bought a small sample paint size of 'Crushed Oregano. Before applying the paint, I cleaned the mirror with soapy water and then applied a coat of primer. After applying the first a few brush strokes of paint, I HATED how it was looking it was just awful. So I went back and thought what about a darker green, nope another FAIL.

So instead of jumping into another color fiasco, I do what I always do when I hit a design wall. I take a few days off from the project and come back to it with fresh eyes. See the to oops colors in the back ground, yeah not my cup of tea of this mirror. Anyways this time I decided to go dark deep navy. I bought 2 cans of Krylon Fusion paint in glossy. It says its for plastic, but also works on wood metal. Plus I liked the fast dry time.



I was very impressed after spraying on one coat of paint. Everything was looking smooth and shiny. Crazy glossy shiny and I HATE spray painting, but this spray paint and I for along. I was a little concerned the navy blue I was going for wasn't getting dark enough, but by coat # 2 I could already see a darker shade emerging. After spraying on the final coat I wait 12 hours before bringing the mirror inside, plenty of time for the 'spray paint smell' to blow away.

This once dated mirror used to be attached to a dresser, so I needed to install new hanging hardware. I decided to go with U brackets, they promise to hold 50 pounds. We estimated the dresser was likely around 15 pounds. I my ruler to pick the placement for the brackets and help create a strait line. The Hasani nailed in the hanging hooks. The mirror hangs just outside of our bedroom and Avery's in the future we'll look into a new method of hanging the mirror as Avery gets older and mobile and starts to pull himself up on objects. I can see us drilling directly into the mirror into a stud. We'll share what we end up doing.



Here's a the after, a nice long shot of how the mirror looks in our hallway. In this picture its hard to tell what color the mirror is, but in real life you can easily tell its a deep navy. I LOVE how the mirror looks its glossy and pretty and does exactly what I wanted, bounces more light around and creates the illusion of a larger hall.

Look at the shine!

Although it took longer to get to the after on this mirror with the two color hiccups along the way! I'm really glad I stuck with it, I love find old pieces and giving them a second chance and an updated modern look.

** Update, I forgeot to mention, I spray painted right over the green paint and did not prime and had great results! It's usally recommended that you prime first **

Have you transformed any old mirrors lately? Have you had in color hiccups with a project before, what was the end result?

PS: Also check out this post here about Organized Spaces on ReNest, from Apartment Therapy Chic Little House was mentioned! :) Super cool to be included in such a great group :)

Purdy Lil Paint Job

While out shopping with my mom one weekend, we stopped at a yard sale looking for deals. I lucked out and found a cute French bistro chair with a cane seat. Surprisingly the chair was solid and I thought it would make a good addition or living room. Just an extra chair for seating when we have a friends over. I was drawn in by the chairs lines the curve of the back of the chair and its pettiness. Perfect to tuck into a corner when not in use. The chair reminds me of the Vienna Side Chair. Sadly this is the best before picture I have on the chair.

I thought white white would be the perfect play it safe color for the chair, but secretly wanted to paint the chair a bold yellow { like the tray I updated for our living room }.  I was all set to paint the chair white, but after I mentioned my true color choice to Mr. CLH he thought yellow would the the perfect color too. I got him thinking like me. 


Now for Purdy part of my chair redo. I was contacted by the wonderful reps at Purdy Paintbrushes asking me to review one of their paintbrushes. I've been wanting to try at their paintbrushes for quite sometime! I've been planning upgrading my paint bushes when I began painting my kitchen. As you know a good paintbrush is a must when painting a piece of furniture to get a professional finish. Nothing worse than picking out 'brush hairs' from a piece your working on and getting obvious paint brush strokes. 


Here's my paintbrush package I received in the mail; Purdy Prep & Paint. The paint brush is a 2.5 inches and the Painters tool is perfect for scraping paint, spreading putty, open and clean cracks and opening paint cans.

This is one nice paint brush!

Because I decided to paint this chair such vibrant color, I used tinted primer. Lucky for my budget I had leftover tinted primer from painting our front door. After lightly sanding the chair and applying the primer with a sponge brush { for detailed painting & prep steps please click here } I began the painting process.


Purdy Paint Brush Review:

I'm not being paint for my review, just asked to review the product - that's it. I loved using this paintbrush! It's a good size and nice weight. All the paint stokes went on nice and smooth. Nada brush strokes. I applied two coats of paint and each coat went perfectly. I bought cheaper paint brushes in the past where I've picked out brush hairs from from wet paint. I'm happy to report, my hands stayed clean no paint brush hairs left in wet paint.

When I clean up my paint brushes I use soap and water and let the brush air dry, I also take forever for the brush to get clean. Cleaning this brush was a breeze, the brush looks brand new still after painting with yellow paint. I'm so excited to use this paint brush on future projects { kitchen cabinets here I come!! }
Here's where our new chair residing in our living room and a glimpse of our living room looks now. Did you notice this corner of our living room looks a little different?

Well we made some recent changes to our living room, on Wednesday I'll share more.  

Sons Tween Room: Refinished Desk, Before & After

Do you remember the desk beat up desk I found for my sons bedroom redo a couple of weeks ago, the one I paid a mere $15 bucks for? Well after a lot of hard work and maybe a little whining from me his desk is all finally completed. When I first started planning his bedroom makeover I thought a painted desk would look cute (but that was when I bought desk # 1) after buying his wood grain drum shade light fixture, I really wanted to stain his desk a deep walnut like our dining room table. However the top his is desk is laminate, so I went in another direction and was inspired by Young House Love's  dresser to refinish Tabari's desk into a mix of modern and vintage. I have to say it was a lot of work, but so worth it. Before I show you the after, I have to remind you of the before, in all its glory (note the sarcasm) 

This desk was a hot mess: missing hardware and lots and lots of writing on the top of the desk and a funky box on the bottom of the desk. Even though it was a hot mess, I loved the vintage lines of the desk which gave it more charm. The desk was also a solid piece of furniture, all wood (except the very top) and super heavy.

After we refinished our dining room table, I received a lot of emails about the steps refinishing and sanding etc. Since I slacked and didn't do a how to post then, I created one for the desk.

How to Refinish a Desk

Like any painting project or staining project, clean the wood with a soapy water and a clean rag, and let dry. 

Sanding 

I sanded the entire desk with out Black and Decker Mouse power sander, I used 60 grit sandpaper. I made sure to sand in the direction of the wood grain, when you sand in the direction of the wood grain you get a nice smooth finish. I used a combination of the power sander and hand sander. Next I sanded the entire desk and drawers with a 220 fine grit sanding block, which leaves a nice smooth finish. 

Staining

I love the staining part of  this project the best, this is when you see all your handwork payoff. We used Minwax Wood Finish Dark Walnut 2716, fortunately we had left over stain from our dining room table project. I applied the stain with a brush going the same direction of the stain. I took my time applying the stain to the desk and made sure I made to drips on the desk finish. The directions recommended waiting waiting 5-15 minutes before wiping away excess stain. However I let the stain sit on the desk for 25 minutes so stain would really soak in. Then I wiped away the excess stain using lint free cloth, again wiping in the same direction as the wood grain. 

I wanted the desk to be a nice rich dark oak, so I applied another coat of stain following the same directions as the first coat. After wiping down the second coat with a clean lint free rag, the desk was a nice rich dark walnut color I was looking for, so I only did two coats of stain. 

Clear Coat 

I let the desk dry 24 hrs and before starting the clear coat application. For the clear coat I sued Minwax Fast Drying Polyurethane Semi Gloss. Before applying the cleat coat gently stir the the polyurethane - do not shake. Wipe away all dust and then very lightly sand the desk in the direction of the wood grain using a 220 grit sanding block. Then apply a very THIN coat of polyurethane, I applied it using a sponge brush. The dry time on the label says 6-7 hours and then you can apply another coat, I didn't want the desk too glossy so I only applied one coat. I let the clear coat dry for 8 + hours and then again very light sanded the desk with a 220 grit sanding block. This stuff is smelly just like the stain, so I left the desk outside for 48hrs before bringing the  desk inside my sons room. 

Hardware

Finding hardware that fit the original wholes in the desk was a challenge!  Most standard new pulls have whole spacing thats 3 inches apart, his desk and whole spacing that was 2.5 inches apart. I thought about drilling new wholes and filling the excitsing whole with wood filler like I did with my dresser (here) but I was afraid it might not stain properly. I used cup pulls for the dresser, which kept the vibe of the vintage desk. 

For the top of Tabari's laminate desk I read YHL's instructions on using an oil based primer verses a water based primer (here) After I sanded the top of the desk, I primed the top of the dresser with 2 coats of Zisser Oil Base Primer using a sponge brush. I used two coats of primer because I wanted to make sure the writing has completely covered. I waited 30 minutes between coats of primer. Next I used a sponge roller and applied 2 coats of Valspar Gloss White Paint. Then waited and additional 24 hours to apply one thin coat of Clear Water Base Poly.

Here's Tabari's refinished desk in his bedroom. I love the contrast of the dark walnut stain and the glossy white desktop. I'm really glad the desk turned out nice! 

For some reason it was really hardware me to take a good front picture of his desk (note to self, read the camera manual!) His desk is 99% done, I still have to cut a board to fix the gap in the desk, were a pull out board once was. 

I like how the modern West Elm chair looks with his traditional desk.

Tabari's loves his new desk and thinks it looks cool. What do you think of his desk? Am I on the right track in creating a tween space that is a combination of modern and traditional?

ps: Here's a recap of completed projects & ideas for our sons tween room: Painted Room (here) Used Tools as Decor (here) Room Lighting (here) Found a Desk (here) Desk Chair (here) DIY Floating Shelves (here)