M.I.A.

Wow. I completely fell off the wagon. It's been over a month since I posted. Woops!

Let me explain. Back in July, I was prepping for my parents' mid-August arrival. My brother Rob with wife Crystal and son Asher were coming too. I had been keeping a running list of projects to do while they were here, but then realized some of them I could just do myself. So I tried to get as many of those smaller projects done before they came so that I wouldn't feel like the list was overwhelming. Here are a few teasers:

That, on top of cleaning everything.

Basically, I got so busy doing projects, cleaning, hosting parties, hosting family, etc that I stopped blogging about it. And the day my parents left, my computer's hard drived died. Completely. ...I wonder if it had anything to do with Jason squirting about a tablespoon of hand soap on the keyboard last month.... Luckily Dave had made a backup image a few months ago, so most of my stuff was saved. PHEW! He put the image on my new hard drive about a week ago. And here I am. Writing this catch-up post. And here you are. Reading it. Much obliged.

It was so great to have them all here. We went from 2 in this small house to 7! Mom & Dad slept in my room, I slept on the futon in the playroom/front room, Rob & Crystal slept in the living room on a big air matress, and Asher slept in a borrowed pack-n-play in the office/craft room. In other words, there was someone sleeping in every room of the house. Except the kitchen, of course.

Jason and Asher had a great time together and even took their regular naps, despite all the extra activity and noise in the house.

Even though these aren't good pictures, I love some of their expressions.

 

Trying to give each other a high five:

It was about 10 days of projects, projects, projects - taking down my dangerously precarious wood fence, installing a vinyl fence, replacing two light fixtures, making a third light fixture, a couple trips to Ikea, several to Lowe's and Home Depot, putting together two more chairs (so everyone could sit around the dinner table), and hanging a mirror. Wow. On top of that, Rob, Crystal, and Asher took a trip in the middle of those 10 days to visit some of Crystal's family a few hours away in Roosevelt/Vernal. And while in the Vernal area, he also did some concrete work for Crystal's grandparents - repairing a concrete slab in front of their house. And on top of that, Rob was trying to study for a final that he had to take during their stay. An engineering final. Not just some easy-peasy class final. 

This is what my garage looked like at the height of project-ing.

But being the amazing brother that he is, he even squoze (that's the new "squeezed" - it's better, don't you think?) in a game of Zilch. That was probably the highlight of the whole visit. We all played (even Mom!) and had so much fun teasing each other and laughing laughing laughing. Mom and Crystal laughed so hard that they started to cry! It's a great feeling to make people laugh that hard. And my brother's agree - there's something sooo great about being able to make your parents laugh. I have the best family!!

Oh, and we also went out to dinner with the cousins for my birthday (Ashton & Jen, me & Jason, Tiffany & Peter, Dad & Mom, Crystal & Asher) ...

... and met up with some old friends from Toledo for ice cream another night. Yuuuum. (LtoR: Brandon & Lisa Jastel, Jason, me, Ashlynn Jastel, Mom, Ashley & Dan Reyes-Cairo.)

Double Oh! The night my parents were coming in, I hosted a birthday/going away party for Brandon & Lisa and their little girl Ashlynn (she was turning 3). That was a lot of fun too. A few other old Toledo friends showed up for that - Dan & Ashley, Tom and Lovetta Reyes-Cairo, Mike & Rachel Benner. And Jason made sure to walk by the huge double chocolate Costco cake as much as possible so he could swipe the frosting as he passed.

The Painted Counters - Chapter 3

This is where I left you hanging on the edge of your counter seat:

Although I contemplated leaving it like this - I just didn't know if I had it in me to do it again and possible ruin it again - I kind of wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and do it right. So I sanded it to get off any excess bits of gunk and smooth it out.

Ironically, Jason seemed to accept the painters tape as just part of the counter and not mess with it. That is, right up until the time that I actually needed it again. For maybe 7 months, while I put the whole counter project on hold, he didn't even notice the tape! But when I started working on the counters again, that's when he decided to rip off all the tape every. single. day. I'd retape every night I worked on it, and the next day, he'd take it all off. Oy. And of course, the more you ask him not to, the more he wants to.

But I plugged on ahead. Priming...

Priming...

And more and more priming. Oh, and before each new coat of primer, I sanded with 320 grit paper and then wiped it clean with a damp cloth. Sanding between coats means better adhesion for the next coat of paint, which helps the paint job last a long time without chipping, etc. Check out Janelle Beals for more info that. Tip: sand in circular motions! It makes the scratches less visible.

Can you tell how it's not a solid, even white? I kind of needed it to be since I wasn't going over it with solid white paint. I was just going to be dabbing on some gray.

I'm not sure if it was bleed-through or if dark hunter green is just a hard color to cover up with white primer. I'm guessing the latter, because I don't think laminate does bleed through like stained wood does. Eventually I called it good enough and started dabbing. With these colors.

Side note: pictures are either fuzzy, off-colored, or in black & white because all of these were taken around midnight in my dimly lit kitchen, and b&w was the only way to get gray to show up well.

First dabs...

More dabbing...

Getting there...

And it's done!! Here it is in afternoon light, from a million different angles :).

The last step was to coat it a few times with Minwax Polycrylic. With super fine-grit sanding and wiping before the first coat and in between each coat. I discovered that Polycrylic doesn't go on smoothly with foam rollers - it leaves teeny tiny bubbles all over. But that's how I left it. I was just glad to be DONE. One day I'll sand again and do one more coat with a brush, for a hopefully smoother finish. Whenever I get the umph to do it, I'll ammend this with another little post. And some day long after that, I'll paint the cabinets a light gray. The honey color they are now isn't my thing and it doesn't look great with the new white counter. Someday. Someday.

While I'm not going to pretend it looks *just like granite!* like it's supposed to, I do like it better than the green. And I love that I actually did it! finished it! And it doesn't look half bad, if I do say so myself!

Before:

During:

After:

For how it all went down: Chapter 1, Chapter 1.2, and Chapter 2.

The Painted Counters - Chapter 2

And I'm back, bringing you more of the sad tale 'o counters.

Once I realized that this textured, lumpy, bumpy, too-gray counter was a hopeless cause, I lost all motivation to do anything with it.

The next step was to remove all those layers of paint, but that was the same hurdle I didn't want to get over the first time I messed up (here). So it sat looking all crazy for a loooong, long time. Like 8+ months long. Finally, I mustered up the courage to tackle it. (I think I was anticipating some my parents coming to visit and wanted to have made some progress since the last time they had seen it.) Enter KleanStrip.

It's an earth friendlier paint remover. Still a little fumey and not something you want to get on your skin, but better than other options. I just painted it on, waited, and then scraped off the paint.

You can see that this method doesn't take the paint off clean. I had to apply layer...

after layer...

with tons of scraping each time...

(it was tacky-sticky and kinda gross)... until I finally had this:

Green counters again. I felt pretty accomplished. The edges were the worst. A flat scraper doesn't do rounded edges well at all. Somewhere on the internet, though, I came across the idea of using one of those fake credit cards that companies send in the mail to do rounded edges. They bend, but they're stiff enough to scrape and not just fall apart. Worked like a charm.

More to come!

The Painted Counters - Chapter I.2

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I had dark green / hunter green countertops. *cue the record-scratching, stop-in-your-tracks sound* Oh wait. I still do mostly. I just have a white island countertop now. Which is a promising start. But it's been about a year of people looking at me funny when they hear my explanation of why my counters look crazy/gross and feel rough/textured. Almost a year of that and procrastination from the fear that it really would not turn out well even with fixing it.

Rewind.
Anyone remember this post? Artwork on my Countertops!
The house had laminate dark green countertops. The laminate that's supposed to give the illusion of granite, kind of. So, not terrible, but I was NOT a fan of the color.

And since day 1, I've dreamed of having white counters, but saving for some kind of solid surface was going to take a loooooong time. Then one day, I ran across this post from Pretty Lil' Posies. She made it sound so so easy, and I thought, "I can do that!" so I set the wheels in motion by buying craft paint, etc.

It all seemed to be going well, until I added the green.

My inspiration piece of silestone had flecks of bright green that was transparent, almost glass-like. But my attempt to mimic that just looked neon. So I tried going over it with some white to tone it down, but it still didn't look good. It was time to face the music and get to paint removal.

The craft paint was water based, so I tried using water and a scrubber. It was slow-going, so I thought, 'Well, now I know what I'm doing and how I want it to look, so I'll just chip away at this over time. Meanwhile, I'll do the island counter.'

Sadly, I forgot much of what I learned from that first attempt and what I should have known about painting. This next part is rather embarrasing to admit, but it's part of the tale. I don't remember anymore why I did this - maybe just because the island was a lot bigger than that first section and I was in a hurry, or maybe because the first section took so many coats to cover the green that I thought this would be a shortcut, I don't know - but I decided to pour a big puddle of primer directly on the island and then smooth is out and work it around the entire space. BAAAAD IDEA. Apparently I forgot that in the first post, I mentioned that the primer dried fast.

Brase yourself for lots of cringing. This is like horror painting. The Freddie Krueger of painting.



Are you ready for this?

I'm so ashamed! Look a way! Shield your eyes! Ohmygosh it's so embarrasing!

I tried to get the whole counter covered with the fast-drying primer, because I didn't want to waste the 2 or 3 cups of it that I poured on the counter! Wow was that the wrong thing to do. It was sooo bumpy and rough.

And then, not knowing enough about household painting, I thought what might fix it was just to paint over it. Turns out, though, that it's not like spackling where it'll just fill in the crevices and grooves. But "Trial & Error" is becoming my best friend... that I hate.

More primer later, I started with the gray sponging.

And then another shade of gray sponging.

And then the realization that it was too much gray. No biggie. All I needed to do was go over it with some white sponging.

Shoot. Still too much gray. Need more white. (Can you see the line where more white meets gray? I was working from left to right and the line is sort of diagonal from the top left corner of the picture.)

And more white and more white and more white. Some people thought it looked pretty good, but I still didn't like it and I couldn't see the end of adding more white to get it the way it was supposed to look. And it was still really bumpy and textured. Grrrrrrrr. Did I really just mess this up again?!? Here's a close-up.

I know it's sad, but please tell me it's also a little funny. I think it is, at least. Mostly 'cause it's so embarrasing, though. And because it's in the past.