Phase 2 of Pool Updates

I finished up a project earlier this week that I was expecting to be a lot more intensive than it turned out to be. About two hours of thorough scrubbing and two or three of application took the pool from this...

To this. 

Go ahead and focus just on the formerly pink coping around the edge. Wait, I conveniently have a closeup for you, in case you forgot its pink awfulness. 

A few weeks ago, I was at Home Depot browsing around the paint section and had this brainstorm: what if we stained the coping? We'd talked about redoing it, but it was going to be too expensive with the other little pool plumbing update we'd decided to do at the advice of the resurfacing company.

So I launched into researching Behr Semi-Transparent Concrete Stain.  Lot of super mixed reviews, but people mostly loved it or hated it, which told me some people did kind of a crappy job prepping or selected a surface that wasn't a good fit and thus hated the result, and some people did a good job prepping and picked a good surface and liked it.

I was pretty sure our very rough, very weathered and very porous coping was a good candidate. The "water drip" test confirmed the surface was open (the dripped water absorbed immediately). I figured that literally anything would be better than the pink, crossed my fingers it wouldn't flake off in three months leaving me with a huge mess and went for it. Here's my review of Behr's concrete stain, at least so far.

Before on the left, after application on the right in the photo below.

After some discussion, we ended up selecting Sunbaked Clay as the stain color. I tried that the day before and wasn't thrilled with the color, since it came out warmer and pinker than I was hoping. You can actually see a tiny bit of it in the image above, on the bottom right corner of the pink block. It's warmer than the end result. I took the can back and asked them to add some gray or green to dull the color and cool it off, which had very satisfactory results.

Lemme tell you, it was pretty fun very carefully working my way around the deep end hovering above that swamp. I'm glad those boards were nice wide 2x12s, which were left from the tile job.

You can see that the stain didn't absorb immediately all over. I think this is at least in part due to the inconsistent weathering of the coping blocks, the original surface of which was mostly long gone but inconsistently worn. I also opted to use a throwaway chip brush to paint instead of rolling; the roller felt like it was applying too much product and seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I had to cut around the edge of the tile grout anyway so the brush was more efficient.

But by the time it dried (left, vs. just-applied on the right) it had soaked in very well and the color dried down some. The texture was just like it was before I stained: pretty rough and not slippery or finished-feeling. I like how the texture of the material comes through. It's exactly what I was hoping for when I went with the semi-transparent over the transparent stain.

This is a spot where the stain took inconsistently. I think for some reason the old original finish of the coping was left around the crack and in those pink speckles on the right and bottom of the image below. Hardly any of the coping had that smoother texture, and given that I have no reason to believe the coping was ever replaced in the 50-some years the pool's been here, I think it just wore off years ago.

 Again, more inconsistent absorption.

 On the whole, I'm pretty happy with this. It was $25 for the gallon, which I used about half of. Even if I had to redo this annually, I would still be satisfied. We'll see how it wears for the summer, with some traffic and water and chlorine and lots of sunshine.

A lot of the reviews I read commented that it wasn't stain, it was super thin paint. My opinion is that I might call it paint if I were applying it to a less-porous surface; I can see how it would sit on top and not sink in. But given how rough my surface was and how readily it sucked in anything liquid, it sure acted like a stain to me. It's latex/acrylic, not oil, so it's different than a wood stain, but I still think it acted more stain-like than paint-like.

I'll report back again (hopefully next year at the earliest) on how it's wearing. I'm optimistic for a good summer on it, but we'll see.

The Office, Pretty Much Done (!!!!)

This day, like every other "it's finished" day, has been a looong time coming. Not only is pretty much everything on my March sabbatical list for the office checked off, but I did a few bonus projects too. (Out of school for eight years, still looking for extra credit.) 

First, the picture ledge. I've wanted something above my desk since we move back two years ago, and I batted around all sorts of ideas. I have this great original piece I got from One Kings Lane three years ago and have yet to frame. It's on top of the crates on the shelf on my desk, where I've been trying to protect it from getting bent or scraped up. It's kind of big though, and I felt like if I did a gallery setup (another idea) that it'd overwhelm the whole thing. It's a fairly large space, but not huge, and just to the right of the lamp will be filled in once I get a monitor. My computer sits on top of the crate in the middle. So I scrapped the gallery and the single piece.

Then I happened upon someone talking about a ledge out in the blogosphere and thought, I could TOTALLY build one of those in like two seconds. More like 30 minutes including finishing time and an hour to install because I was tired and stupid (always a great time to start drilling holes into your wallpapered wall...) but luckily Todd came to the rescue with a great suggestion on how to hang it and saved my wall from many unnecessary holes.

Plus I have a bunch of already-framed art that needed a home. That's not counting the lighthouse watercolor all the way on the right, painted by my talented late grandmother, that I haven't yet put in a frame. Nice associations with each one, all gifts and things that make me happy to look at. Perfect for right above my desk where I spent a decent about of time looking.

I also moved this seashell print so it's centered above the cabinet. Its previous position was a foot or so left, which was where it lived when the room was configured differently. It took me about 3 minutes to move it, and it'd been bugging me for months. I have no idea why I drag my feet on easy fixes like that.

Side note, maidenhair ferns really need even indirect light. I had the one in the terra cotta pot on a shelf on my desk where it got light from the window and the back door, and it grew into this really demented-looking shape, half of the stems pointed at the window, the other half at the door. Hopefully I can rehab its shape.

The fern on the left is a type of Boston fern, which I've heard are rather notoriously fussy plants. This fluffy version is awesome. When it needs water, it just turns a lighter shade of green looks a bit pathetic, and then I stick it in the tub and give it a good soaking. I got it as a teeny start four or more years ago (an indication of its hardiness, since I have for sure killed more ferns than I've kept alive) and now it's almost two feet wide with no signs of slowing down. If I put it in a bigger pot, it might take over the whole room. The dimension of it doesn't really come through on camera, but it's so wild and textured, I love it.

 So, here's my office. I'm calling this one done for now, though I'll probably never stop tinkering.

Lastly, in honor of Easter Sunday, a line from my favorite Khaled Hosseini book, The Kite Runner: Come, there is a way to be good again. Hope this and all of your other days is filled with the spirit of redemption.

Master Bedroom Plans and Schemes

The master bedroom has never been a done deal. The color offsets the general lack of thought that's gone into this room, but other than the headboard and curtains, I haven't made much headway. Not for lack of trying, but until a couple of weeks ago, my creativity was kind of stuck. I finally got unstuck though and started working on this board.

Unstuck feels much better than stuck. Here's the plan:

• Art. What I have over the bed is actually a single piece I PhotoChopped as I was playing around; it's from Laura Dro Designs and is part of a collection of amazing ikat pieces. I love her work and have been trying to figure out where one of her prints might belong in the house.
• I've already painted the pineapple lamps (I took pictures but they seem to have vanished...which is always rather unsettling). Next, figure out lampshade situation. NO ivory.
• Gonna hack some Ikea Rasts and paint them (probably) a weathered black.
• Bought canvases to do some painting. Unbelievable deal at $6 each at Joann's.
• Silver leaf the dropcloth euroshams so they have kind of a weathered silver finish.
• Get one of those fake sheepskins and make a pillow out of it.
• Already have the quilt, great deal at Fred's a few weeks ago.
• Planned accent colors are yellow, orange and fuschia, which Todd has agreed to.
• Replace the light fixture. I actually think I might be able to sell it; it's a vintage capiz shell flush mount and it's actually kind of cute, just not anymore in this room. Couple of the contenders are on the board. I'm still shopping. 
• Paint trim/built-ins at some point. This will be a big job. 
• Need throw blanket. Still haven't figured out what that should be.

Luckily, I still like the blue a lot. Can't wait till this one is a wrap, but the process has been a lot more fun lately. 

Black (Walnut) Beauty

Last month, I finally made it to Rogue Pacific Lumber. I heard about it from the guy who owns Limestone Coffee in downtown Medford, because I chatted him up about the amazing slabs of wood they have for countertops at the coffee bar. He said they do a ton of reclaimed wood from all over the country. 

I adore reclaimed wood and quickly decided this was a place I needed to check out. After being taken around the lumber yard, I landed on this piece of black walnut (it's about twice as big as what you see on the countertop). Thought it'd make a great live-edge cutting board, and I was right. The grain is really beautiful, and the figuring in it doesn't come through well on "film" -- too bad. It's almost iridescent. 

All the oil is soaked in now so it's not shiny. I did about three heavy coats of mineral oil as a light finish, just a little something to protect against water soaking in. You can see how it's soaking in to the lighter wood on the right more than the darker stuff on the left.

I also had a little epiphany while I was looking at the $8 bottle of butcher block oil...I wonder if the mineral oil in the butcher block bottle in the woodworking section of Bimart is the same as the mineral oil in the pharmacy section of Bimart. A little googling indicated that it indeed was, so I picked up a $3 bottle of the other kind of mineral oil and used that. And that is just one of the many reasons I love Bimart. 

Transitions

I knocked out almost everything on my office list this month. One of the last items was making and installing a transition for my outside door. It looked like this since we had the "new" door put in ... over six years ago. It has driven me crazy. 

Argh. That's old "Great Stuff" foam filler, which, for the record, doesn't wear well as a threshold. Just in case you were wondering.

It was a bit of an undertaking; I had to rip one of the red fir floorboards I'd saved from upstairs at a 45-degree angle so it fit all nice and neat.

But now, finished :)

Fence, Flowers, Fireplace.

Yesterday, I crossed a few living room tasks off the old list. See that little vent cover? It used to just be a hole. And the panel it's screwed into used to be gross, chipped and not cut to match the fireplace. I don't know why vents are needed there, but it's just a hole into the mantel and it's all cobwebby and disgusting, so the vent is a good solution. I ordered them (there's another around the other side) a few months ago, but yesterday I trimmed the panel to fit against the hearth (only six and a half years after the hearth was installed) and did some touch-up paint so it looks all spiffy. CHECK. 

The downside is that it really highlights how badly the mantle needs to be painted. I'm just starting to think about what that project will entail, since it's almost definitely lead-based paint, and there's probably oil in the mix too. I found a stripper that's made of soybeans (who knew?) that neutralizes the lead, so maybe we'll go that route. The other option is a heat gun, because I am NOT interested in sanding 70 years of paint off the mantle. It's made it a long time with a little bit of touching up, but it looks really crappy up close and will definitely need to be done at some point.

I also threw together this crate yesterday evening. It's not on "the list" but it was on my list to make a wood box (hey, just in time for summer!) for the fireplace. We had the wood sitting in a messy little pile next to the hearth all winter, and all I could think about were the black widows I was certain were lurking within. Turns out, no spiders, but this does look a lot tidier. I'm going to get a bin pull and stick it on the front for decoration. Brass, maybe, to contrast with the cedar.

 I'm calling this "birthday bouquet remix." The fluffy green things are from a bouquet Kate brought me for my birthday a few weeks ago, and I added some clippings from our magnolia bush out front for some contrast. LOVE!

Ok, next, the fence!! Todd's dad has been adding this fence addition to close off the back yard from the road. This is what it looks like from the back...

And from the front. The goal was to make it even with the existing fence, so we'll add lattice to the top, add 2x12s to the bottom to close the gap from the declining grade and then landscape around it so the whole thing looks nice and finished. Those really tall 4x4s will be trimmed down when we're finishing things up. Obviously, the gate will go in the middle.

A Little Pool Update

Now admittedly, these aren't the greatest pictures, but the pool is still looking pretty dreadful. But now the new tile is in! So at least that part looks nice. In the following picture, you can see the blue around the top of the pool. That's new. It used to be a very worn aqua, and this is a great improvement. 

Here's one more up closer. The white jagged area below the tile is plaster that came off in the course of removing the old tile. No matter! It'll just be covered up with Pebble Tec soon!

Fun little nugget: the pool was drained a couple of weeks ago, pumped all the way dry. The tile guy then drilled holes in the bottom of it, so it wouldn't "float," or pop out of the ground and crack, due to pressure from the ground water. Normally the weight of a pool filled with water is enough to counteract the pressure from any water underneath, but when the pool's empty, it weighs a lot less.

The holes let the water move in and out of the basin so we don't have any unfortunate incidences of pool crackage. Considering the pool filled up with about five feet of rainwater at the deepest point, it's a good thing we have those holes!

Goodbye, Antique White

Years ago, shortly after we moved into the house, we needed to do some touch up painting on existing off-white trim and built-ins. I evidently didn't know you could get a custom color match and used my own high-tech method of eyeballing paint chips next to said trim. (All things considered, it didn't work too bad.)

My fatal flaw was that I didn't consider the fact that I strongly disliked that ivory color, and considering we were, you know, redoing the entire house, it was in my power to decide to paint it a different color. Live and learn. It borders on tan with the amount of brown mixed in, and it really doesn't do the bolder wall colors many favors.

I can pretty much tolerate it in the living room, and the bedroom is next on my hit list, but it was driving me redneck crazy in the office where everything else is white. It was all very incohesive, which bothered me because the office is otherwise the most-finished room in the house. It's decorated and accessorized just how I want, so this one massive, glaring "detail" really needed to change. There were a handful of other issues that were grating on me, too. They're noted in this marked-up picture.

 Window casing painted. See how the crown and chair rail is so much darker? Not anymore!

 Closet doors, for contrast. BLEH.

 And after, with their cute little coral Anthropologie hardware. Anthro has the best hardware.

Removed tiny bits of wallpaper that we left on the wall when we removed wallpaper about five years ago and replaced scratched screws on outlet and switch plates, which makes a surprising difference in my little OCD brain. I also slapped a bit of paint on the old ivory outlet (the actual plugs). If you go fast enough with the roller, the paint doesn't get into the holes, which I'm guessing most electricians would say might be a bad thing.

 Mmm...that crisp white against the navy makes my heart happy.

What else... painted the nuts and bolts on the light fixture so they blend better and finally touched up the ceiling where the old fixture was. We put this in almost two years ago. Sometimes I move slow on the things that annoy me the most. What you'll notice from this picture is that there is no dirt halo around the base of the fixture and that you don't see two silver bolts sticking out on either side of the base. It just looks normal.

 Painted the white wall with a fresh coat of more-scrubbable eggshell finish, instead of the primer (possibly just a dead flat paint) that was there (again, from five years ago). It was in rough shape, whatever it was. Lots of holes, some bad, unsanded spackling...it just needed a fresh coat of white.

Not fully put back together, but looking so much crisper.

I've felt thankful every day that I've had this time to knock out all these projects (and there are more to come I'll be posting in the next few days). I'm actually kind of excited now to start working again in my finally finished, not-annoying, cohesive office.

Painting tips for lazy painters

I hate painting. I think it's my least favorite of all the home renovation tasks I've had to tackle. It's tedious and takes forever because we either chose super-saturated colors or have to paint large spaces. The tedium inclines me toward cutting corners (hence the "lazy" part), which produces a result I'm then unhappy with.

So today while I primed the entire stairwell, upstairs landing and ceiling, I had plenty of time to think about how I've gotten better and made painting a bit more palatable over the six or seven years I've been working on this house. Hopefully they make your life a little easier. This isn't at all a comprehensive list of painting tips, just my own takeaways that I haven't seen elsewhere.

Prep

1. Think of prep as part of painting. I always think of painting as the bulk of the work, and for some rooms or projects that really is the case, but it helps me to reorient my project mindset to 60% prep, 40% painting. Or something like that. Otherwise I do a sloppy job prepping and end up with messes that need cleanup later.

2. Frog Tape. The trick with this stuff is to wipe it with a damp rag/sponge before going to town with the paint. While the water in latex paint theoretically activates the tape's barrier, my experience is that without the water, I've just spent twice as much on tape that performs like blue painter's tape. When it's wet, it's pretty incredible how well it works.

3. Remove outlet and light switch plates. Do it while you're prepping so you won't be tempted to paint over them. Not that I know anyone who's ever done that.

Tools/Gear

1. Hat. As you know, I have curly brown hair. When there is white paint, or especially primer (primer is my hair's FAVORITE) my hair will dive into the freshly painted surface. Getting primer out of hair is no picnic. Wear a hat.

2. Safety glasses. My dad is usually right about things. I keep learning that. Just last week, I cut my tongue a little while licking a butter knife and scowled when I heard his voice in my head saying "don't lick knives." Another thing he told me a while back was to find a pair of safety glasses that were comfortable (that is important) and actually wear them. I'm not as diligent about the safety glasses as I should be around power tools, but with painting a ceiling, I can't not. There's just something about looking up at the roller that feels like eyeballing the inside of a gun barrel.

I know. They are super fashionable. Whatever... you know what's even less fashionable? Getting paint in your eye. (Another Dad-ism: it's not a fashion show, Joanna.) Also please note the HAT. I primed all day and have none in my hair. I think. 

3. Spatter guard roller. Even when you're pretty careful and not slopping paint all over, like I was for most of today, you still end up with a bit of splatter from the force of rolling the wall. This thing cuts down dramatically on that. They're like $5. Well worth it to avoid drop-clothing everything (or ending up covered in spatter).

4. Trim guard. I don't always use this thing, but sometimes it's handy. Don't expect it to be as crisp as what Frog Tape will do for you, but it can be the right tool for semi-detailed work.

5. Assorted accessories:

• Paper towels and some water, good to have nearby
• Quality brush. Bite the bullet, buy one and then treat it nicely. This Wooster is my favorite. I have an equivalent Purdy and don't like the handle feel as much, so I use it less frequently. Brushes make an enormous difference in the finish you get. 
• Paint pourer of some type. There are tons out there, just get something that goes on your paint can to keep it from getting paint crusted in the rim. 
• Mini roller. Two types: sponge for untextured surfaces that you'll follow with a brush and a normal one, but mini-size, for small textured areas

General

1. Don't cheat. It took me a long time to realize cheating actually made my life more difficult and resulted in more work and crappier results. If you're lazy and you hate painting, do a good job the first time.

2. Paint trim and walls the same color with different sheens. This is almost as good as cheating and you don't really get caught unless you are super sloppy. It mostly works if you're going with whites or maybe grays if you're doing gray molding. I did an eggshell wall and semigloss trim in Behr Swiss Coffee last week and didn't tape anything. It's not perfect, but you can't really tell where.

3. Music. I'm not a big music-listener in general. I only sometimes have something on in the car and probably go days without listening to anything. But for painting, I've found it helps me a TON to listen to something, and that something for me is country.

I'm not sure what "the holler" is, but from what I can tell, there are trucks and beer and swimmin holes and biscuits. I love two of those things, so that's good enough for me. I also pick up gems like "idle hands are devil's handiwork," so I get good, everyday lessons out of it too.

4. Paint quality. Buy good paint. Like a good brush, good paint makes life easier. Cheap paint is infuriating to deal with, because you put just as much work in and end up with something that looks awful, and the $10 you saved will not be enough to buy the amount of beer you will need to make yourself feel better about it.

I ended up with a gallon of Behr's Ultra Premium Plus (or something, there are so many fancy words on it I can't even remember) and have been very pleased with how it's performing. Behr Premium Plus has also treated us well; most of our house is painted with it.

5. When you get tired, stop for a while. The wall will still be there later. If you don't stop, you know what else will be there later? The bad job you did because you were tired or sore.

Cleanup

1. Drips. If you get a paint drip on the floor, leave it (assuming your floors are wood). They scrape off very easily once dry, as long as you leave it in an undisturbed gloob (technical term) on the floor. Also, these are fun to use to mess with people. Try putting a few dried ones on your significant other's cell phone screen.

2. WD-40. I've discovered that a bit of this on a rag will remove smaller dried spatters from a polyurethane-finished wood floor.

Coming Summer 2015: Pebble Tec!

Oh, yeah. In case you've ever wondered what a 50-year-old pool looks like when nobody winterizes it or cleans it for 6 months...

Now you know.

The word you're looking for right here is yum.

Anyway, the reason it's drained (and it's actually empty and no more leaves right now as I'm typing this) is because this is the first step to pool resurfacing. I thought I'd mentioned this before but apparently didn't get to it. We're getting the pool resurfaced in May with Pebbletec. We didn't think we were going to be able to afford it, but it fell right within the budget. So exciting, because the warranty is way longer than plaster AND because it looks...fancy. See?

 It'll look JUST like this.

Mostly. Maybe more like our pool but with this finish, since the waterfall/hot tub/lagoon shape aren't exactly included. I don't *think* it should look that greenish but want to make sure. In any case, it will be a wild improvement over the current situation.