Counters, Revisited: Probably Ill-Advised Pre-Thanksgiving DIY Shakedown, Part II

We have had a scheduling delay on the new countertop, so we're spiffing up other areas while we wait. The granite arrives on Thursday, which gave us this past weekend to twiddle our thumbs and wander aimlessly around Home Depot.

The wandering, combined with a lovely Fall day, as well as pending kitchen spifferation, inspired us to refinish the wooden countertops again. Looking back at that post, it's been over a year since the first stain/finish experiment, and we have some lessons learned:

• Cabot Polystain (stain & topcoat combined) was indeed very durable, and held up to a ton of washing, dinging, food prep, etc.
• It did not, however, weather popping/splattering grease from the stove. At all. We figure this will be an issue with any product, and opted to put a glass cutting board over the side of the counter that got the most grease-splatter abuse. This has since worked out great (and given us another cutting surface), but the damage had been done:

We'd expected to have to refinish them again, and figured that our stain treatment (while maybe not as durable) would be much easier to re-do than the original--the Mr. went through a zillion rotary sander pads trying to get whatever marine-grade shellac the previous owners had off. (We even tried two kinds of chemical stripping agent, and both failed miserably.)

It did indeed prove much easier than the first time. In the space of about an hour they were all sanded back down and ready to restain.  The Captain kept an eye on the proceedings:

This time, we're going with Minwax Polyshades in 'American Chestnut' gloss, instead of satin. It's going to be a little richer of a color than before, and hopefully by the second/third coat it won't be too dark.  Stay tuned...

Living Roomarama: Part the First

Well, hello, after quite the hiatus. So we haven't blogged in a while, but we haven't done anything to the house in a while either. Months, actually. I think we burned ourselves out a little what with all the activity back in the Spring. So anyway, here we are; the garden has given us pounds of okra (and died), the ladder golf has been played, many a beer has been drunk--you get the picture. I think we're finally ready for another go, and the living room is first on the list. We kind of left it to languish after the move. We filled it with boxes of books, slapped ourselves on the back and told it we'd see it when it got cold. Occasionally we sweep up dog fur drifts or turn on a light to make sure the power still works. Well... now it's cold, my sister-in-law is claiming the furniture we put in here because it wouldn't fit anywhere else, and we're thinking it's time to give it some attention. The furniture is going to be the big part. We're excited to free up the space in here, but whatever we get to replace what's here will be the first living room furniture we've ever bought ourselves. It's odd what you notice when it's yours to buy, not just to get along with. Apparently we have all sorts of opinions about sofas we never knew we had. So the furniture thing is pending. In the meantime, we found a rug we liked, so... we have our "inspiration piece" or whatever HGTV calls it these days. It's very large, and woolly, and is making the living room smell like sheep. Behold, the unfurling: The Cap'n sniffed it, lay down on it, and looked bothered (as you see). The picture is dim, but it's sort of weathered shades of red, light blue, teal, eggplant, mustard... lots of possibilities. It's from Pottery Barn, and as of the moment, can still be seen here. It was on super-duper sale and I think they're out now. Here's their picture of it; I think ours would look like this under florescent light, or something: So.. here we are. We have a rug. I'm thinking of painting the walls a cinnamon-y/burnt-orangey taupeish color (if that doesn't make sense, I liked the way the dog looked lying on it. Didn't Lowe's tell me they could match "anything?" A gallon of "grumpy golden retriever mix," please.) I'm finally going to replace the curtains that were here when we moved in, I just don't know with what. More to come!

Update-o-rama, part II: the New Lights

Weee! On a roll. I can't remember if I've already mentioned it or not, but we had some lovely eighties-ariffic outdoor lights in the back and side yards; two over the patio and one to light Captain Muddypaws' egress. I'll let them speak for themselves:

Okay, so not horrible, you know? But they didn't match anything else on the exterior of the house, anywhere. There are some great light fixtures elsewhere (on the front porch and the screen porch)--beautiful craftsman-like, marbled-glass things. Then there were these. There's something kind of "ice cream parlor" about them. So, we found some great little replacements at Home Depot. The Mr. and his father put them up the same weekend the floors went in. And, "ta-daaaa:"

They're a little smaller, overall, than the old fixtures, but they put out the same amount (if not more) light--the clear glass is better for the patio than the white-glazed globes that used to be there. It's a small thing, but it makes a significant difference. AND, since we've been painting and staining a bunch stuff on the patio after dark (more on that later!), we've really appreciated them.

Goodbye, Tile Floors (The Resolution)

The Tile is Gone. The guys came a day early and started ripping it out, and it turned out to be pretty much as bad as we thought (or worse); they basically had to chip out the tile with something that looked like a crowbar, then come back the next day with things that looked like giant car-window ice scrapers to scrape off tile cement that was underneath. They kept having to sharpen the things on a saw to make them useful. Anyway, scraping out the cement and tile meant that the kitchen, family room and screened porch were completely coated with a substantial layer of orangish tile dust for about 24 hours there--and tile dust, I might add, neither smells good nor does it make for particularly nice breathing. I'd be lying if I said we had any regrets about not doing this ourselves; I'm pretty sure we would have given up when the scraper got dull. Anyway, I took some pictures mid-scrapeage. But first, a visual reminder of what used to be:

Inside, with the tile gone but a lot of the cement intact:

The pile of tile accruing in the driveway:

After all that was done, the flooring went in pretty quickly. We were around, trying to complete some other projects, and it seemed like every time I went back there was another third of the floor done. So, (drum roll, please:) THE FINISHED FLOOR.

We absolutely love it. It's beautiful--it makes such a difference in those rooms; they're so warm and inviting now, even without anything in them. SO much better than "public restroom" tile. The Captain, however, is reserving judgment. But then, he's generally resistant to change:

It seems really, really solid and we really love the texture of it. We found that none of the samples we'd seen (even the 3' x 6' one in Home Depot) really did it justice--the variegation is really cool and the color is much warmer on-site than it seemed under the home-improvement-store halogens. Three cheers for new flooring! Where 'toughness' is concerned--we moved in this weekend, and it did withstand a washing machine falling off a dolly with no scratch at all. We tramped in and out many many times from the gravel driveway carrying boxes and pushing handtrucks, and I haven't seen any signs of wear--though right now, most of it's covered with boxes, so I suppose we won't really know until we can see it again. (MWAH, HA HA HA HA! Ha. Ha. Sob.) So, to summarize, we used Home Legend 3.5" Click-lock engineered hardwood in gunstock oak (as far as I know, only available at Home Depot), all-in-one pad/moisture barrier underlayment, and white composite quarter-round. We hired out the tile removal and the floor laying, but we took responsibility for buying/hauling all the flooring and materials and the Mr. did the quarter-round trim himself. He would like me to mention that hammering composite quarter-round (which, apparently, is harder than the regular stuff) into the space between the bottom of the kitchen cabinets and floor is somewhat less than fun ("If this crap was on Facebook, I'd reject its friendship," I believe he said) and the process may have resulted in our second home-improvement related injury. We're hoping he regains the feeling in that thumb. I think that's it! It was our big pre-moving-in project, and having it done is amazing. More pictures to come when the boxes are gone and the furniture is in.

Goodbye, Tile Floors?

I started off on a wallpaper rant, but the actual first thing on our do-before-we-move-in list involves flooring. The rear addition of the house (added sometime late 70s, early 80s?) has a tile floor, that a previous owner extended into the kitchen. You can see it in the pictures in the wallpaper post. It's not bad tile, and it's been kept very clean--but it's showing its age, nonetheless (do people do half-inch-wide, black grout anymore?). We'd like to replace it with some hardwood flooring product. That was intentionally vague, because, as always, there are a slew of befuddling options. On Monday we had an in-home consultation by a guy we found through Lumber Liquidators. He pulled up the in-floor HVAC vents and looked at the cross-section of subflooring, and we think we might have lucked out: the tile isn't mortared to the actual subfloor, but to an additional layer of plywood on top of the subfloor; as far as I understand it this means we won't necessarily have to chip out all the tiles and cement--just the stuff where the plywood boards meet. SO, labor estimate in hand (we're still considering doing some or all of this ourselves, but we have to admit it's tempting, given that it was actually lower than we expected) we're ready to choose a floor. We don't have moisture or concrete subfloor issues to deal with, so we really have our choice. However, this area encompasses the kitchen and three exterior doors, if you count where Captain Muddypaws will be entering from the yard. An additional consideration is leveling; the floor, especially in the older kitchen area, is noticeably sloped. The flooring guy's recommendation was a floating floor--since the house is likely to settle more, and in different spots. It's sounding like an engineered, prefinished product is our best bet. Now the hard part is finding one we like, that doesn't clash with the rest of the house's beautiful old heart pine floors. We decided it didn't need to match, exactly; just flow from one to the other. We'll be trying to make the big decision this weekend. Here are the frontrunners: Bruce Turlington 3" Lock & Fold, "Wild Cherry/Brandywine" (Hickory):

Bruce Turlington 3" Lock & Fold, "Gunstock" (Oak): and Home Legend 3.5" Hand-scraped Click-Lock, "Gunstock" (Oak): Honestly, I think we'd be happy with a lot of things, as long as there's not half-inch black grout involved. More to come!