Two Flooring Updates

I was so 50/50 on the chevron floor angles (and the vote in the comments was a close split too!), but it was time to make a choice this week, so I just went with my initial thought and chose the 30-degree cut. I've been getting reeeeal friendly with the miter saw ever since.

We set up the saw so there is a blocker right at 24" away from the blade. This way, I never have to measure or mark a single plank of wood. I just cut one end and then slide the plank down and butt up the cut end to the blocker and cut again. It's still slow-going, but I think we're about halfway through the cuts at this point.

The floors in the kitchen got a little update this week as well. I had painstakingly painted every single one of the tile squares about a month or so ago and left the grout lines exposed.

The plan was to regrout sometime soon, so that the grout looked clean and new (see how dingy it looks in the above photo? I think the old sealer had started to wear off). But as I've been brainstorming backsplash options, I just kept feeling like there were block patterns and grout lines everywhere in the kitchen, with all the brick on the floors and the arched brick range surround. I wanted to do something to minimize all that. So on a whim I poured some new paint on the floor and rolled on a top coat, completely painting over the grout lines.

I'm not quite finished yet (I'll share after photos when I am), but I am thrilled with the look so far. It's about a million times more clean and new-looking. 

Sour grapes are not my thing, but I'm sort of kicking myself for not doing this sooner and for spending like 15 hours before, painting all the individual tiles in the dining, kitchen, pantry and mudroom. (grumble)

Project ADD and Honing Countertops On Site

We've been living here in the middle of renovations for a little over two months now, and I'm starting to notice a pattern where I start a big project and work like crazy on it for a while and then I get a little burnt out on the labor or stuck on a decision or we'll need to order something to move forward. So rather than pushing forward with the one mess I'm already in the middle of, I'll do the least helpful thing - I start another major project. Like the stairs. I started the stairs this weekend. Why? Why wouldn't I finish the floors before filling and sanding and painting the stairs? Just dumb.

Then last night I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and I ended up prying off the rest of granite backsplash. WHY.

I told myself that I wouldn't dedicate even an ounce of creative (or physical) energy to the kitchen until after the floors, stairs and fireplace are finished. But we're about 90% done with each of those projects (I knocked out a good two coats on the stairs this weekend!), so it's hard to avoid thinking about the kitchen more and more. I think it's because I'm a little stumped.

I'm just aching to have an all-new kitchen (I know - diva alert), but I think I'm still committed to the plan of doing what I can with the space as it is now. After posting about the kitchen last, my friend Abby emailed over a link to this fabulous kitchen reno that was done on a budget. The owners had a really nice kitchen before but one that didn't really fit their aesthetic, so they tweaked it. I LOVE what they decided to do with their polished green marble countertops. They had a stone specialist come in and hone the marble on site.

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Isn't the veining beautiful? I love the honed finish. The owners decided to leave the newly honed marble unsealed, which I know isn't for everyone, but sounds completely lovely to me. The author summed up my feelings perfectly when she wrote that she loves her paint jobs to be crisp and perfect and her counters to show wear and tear of use.

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Of course Abby's email and the article got my wheels spinning so I called a few stone guys in our area. One of them quoted me $200-$250 to do the whole kitchen, which was a total steal. He hasn't been good about returning my calls though and my confidence in his skill-level is iffy at best after our one conversation. The other guy I spoke with, who came highly recommended by friends and who I feel most comfortable using, told me his company would charge about $900.

I need to do some more calling around, but it's nice to have a range in mind. I don't want to totally cheap out here and be sad about the finished result, but I won't be paying a grand for tweaking countertops that I don't even love in the first place.

As I was pulling off the splash guards over the weekend, I noticed part of the unpolished underside of one of the cuts probably looks a lot like what my granite would look like after having it honed. I love that it is chalky and matte, and I like that the color is lighter, for sure, and those things alone would be worth forking over the $200. But I think it's just the speckling (and the yellow color) that doesn't sit right. I have a feeling these countertops might not change enough with the honing, especially not enough to merit anywhere near $1000.

I do like how things are looking with the splash guard off though. It's less yellow on the eyes and it's a cleaner look. Maybe once the cabinets are painted and the new backsplash is up, the granite as it is won't bother me so much. What do you think?

Making Plans for the Kitchen with Keep.com

Anyone else ready for the weekend? My body is so sore that Labor Day suddenly has a whole new meaning for me this year. :) My parents are going to watch our girls while Michael and I go to California for the long weekend. On the agenda? Eating and sleeping. That's it. Doesn't that sound amazing? I couldn't be more excited. I'm signing off early this week, but wanted to share some exciting-for-me updates on the kitchen.

Over the weekend we pulled down just the right-most upper cabinet. I tell you, the room suddenly felt about 50% bigger with that little change. I'm hopeful that, with some work, this room can be one of my favorite spaces in the house yet!

After living in the house for almost two months, we're feeling like a big reno for this space might not be necessary for quite a while - maybe five years or more? We've decided to not plan for anything at this point and to assume that we won't be changing anything in a major way (as in moving walls and plumbing) for a good long while. We've actually felt like the existing layout is working pretty well for us. It's not completely ideal, but it so, so much better than I anticipated. So the new goal is to DIY the heck out of this room over the next couple of months and then just see how it feels and how it's working for us, and if after the new year I'm still itching for bigger changes then at that point we might spring for new cabinets and counters, but will still leave the big reno for down the road quite a bit.

So, here's what I have planned for the kitchen, with help from my Keep collections (which are getting my wish lists about as organized as they could be!):

The granite counters are not really my favorite, but I think with a few tweaks, we can make them less of a presence in the room.

I'll be pulling off the granite window shelf and the short back plate that runs all along the wall.

I'll also pull off the granite on the range wall and the brick surround. So the only granite in the room with be actually on the counters and that's it.

It looks like it should come off pretty easily. I'm hoping the brick underneath is in good shape.

The walls and the brick will be white and the cabinets are going to get sprayed at light gray (Ben Moore's Gray Owl) after they've been transformed with a little corner moulding. I'm so excited to tackle this project! The drawers will be a cinch to redo, but the cabinet doors, with their exposed hinges, are proving to be a little tricky, I'm going to make new door faces so there will be only square angles and clean lines on the door and drawer fronts. Can't wait!

Hardware is very TBD at this point, but I think I will do brass again (surprise, surprise). Speaking of brass, you guys are going to kill me, but I totally forgot to pull out my brass bridge faucet from the brownstone kitchen before we moved. Whoops! I'd love to do something brass in here again though, but maybe a touch more modern than the bridge faucet. I called a metal plating company to see how much it would cost to have the chrome stripped off of this (inexpensive!) beauty. We'll see what I can work out there.



I talked to my handyman, Jason, about it and he says it would be a breeze to zip through the granite with one of his special saws so we can install the gigantic farmhouse sink I've been eyeing from IKEA. It's practically a done deal, as far as I'm concerned!

To the right and left of the sink area, where the uppers used to be, I want to hang three shelves on each side. I'm still working out the details on materials, but I think I want something pretty chunky, like these shelves, and maybe, depending on what I do with the cabinet hardware and the faucet, a cool style of shelf bracket in brass. I would want to do something really small though. Maybe something totally unconventional like this piece, which is made for holding up stair railings. The round shape could be really cool on the wall.

You can see in the photos that the wall texture is all messed up where the upper cabinet used to hang.

No biggie there because I want to put up a tile backsplash on the sink wall up to the top of the three shelves and stopping at the door frame and then again on the stove inset wall. In my dreams I'd be able to find a cool encaustic pattern that would work with the existing granite and potentially with some of my white countertop wish list choices for down the road.

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I've only started to think about wall sconces, but I've loved these swing arm sconces for so long now. Seems only appropriate to use them at this point!

Hmmm, what about doing the top shelf all the way across the window?

I also have a pair of this single-head Serge Mouille style sconces that might look cool in a kitchen, though I was planning to use them elsewhere. A lot of the decision lies in which tile I go with for the backsplash I think.

I'm sort of stumped on barstools. Most of them are so expensive and it just doesn't feel like a fun purchase to me, so I've been dragging my feet a little. The most obvious choice is CB2's Vapor stools. I've used them in a ton of projects and they are gorgeous in almost any kitchen and they hold up beautifully. The West Elm wire and wood ones are kind of calling my name though.

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Yesterday I scored the deal of the century on a set of Louis chairs for the dining area (photos coming!). I kept the big long Drexel table from the loft and might just use it again in here, but it might not be the right fit both in look and size. If I end up going with the Vapor stools, this hairpin leg table could be really great in the space with my new Louis chairs?

The pair of ginormous lanterns I bought in Jersey a couple months ago are going to get the red treatment (just like this lantern) I think and they'll hang above the dining table.

Okay, so a couple of questions to take you into the weekend:

1) Have you seen any fab, affordable bar stools?

2) Have you seen my same granite (which is a pretty common one I guess) used before in an interesting way?

3) Any favorite encaustic resources that I didn't link to in this collection?

And don't forget to let me know if you're on Keep now, I'd love to follow you. It's so fun to see what my readers are wanting and buying! You guys have amazing taste!

This post is a part of series brought to you by Keep, which is a free website dedicated to helping you learn about the best products out there as determined by your friends and the people you look up to style-wise! :) I've been using Keep as a way to keep track of my purchases and wish list items for the new house. There might be a lot of fashion distractions thrown in the mix as well. :)

DIY Antiqued Mirror (With No Harsh Chemicals!)

I feel like this might end up being the baby version of a tutorial on antiquing glass to look like aged mirror. I really like the results, but when I try it again, I think I'll figure out a way to make the look a little more dramatic. So stay tuned for that.

If you like a more subtle look though, here are the easy, harsh-chemical-free steps...



You can do this to the underside of any glass you have. I tried it on my glass cabinet doors, but the possibilities are pretty endless: the underside of glass tabletops (you'd want to seal that), a regular picture frame with glass to be made into a mirror, interior french doors for privacy (I'd give the inside a fresh topcoat to match the doors though), glassware and ornaments for a mercury glass look, etc, etc.

You'll need only a few things to get started: Krylon's Looking Glass spray paint (I found mine at Hobby Lobby - Michael's stopped selling it), a half and half mixture of white vinegar and water in a spray bottle and some paper towels.

After taping off just the underside of the frame of my cabinet door, I lightly misted the vinegar mixture on the glass. If I could go back I would have really doused the glass the first round and especially focused on a few spots, rather than doing a uniform spray.

Then working quickly while the vinegar is still wet, spray the Looking Glass all over.

Wait a few seconds (maybe 10 or 15?) and then wipe off the glass.

You'll be left with a cool, patchy look. I almost wish I had just stopped here and spray the whole thing black for a great contrast against the silvery mirrored spots, but you know, live and learn.

I sprayed another light mist layer of the vinegar mixture and repeated the layer of Looking Glass spray and wiped it down all again. This is what it looked like after the second round:

Pretty, right? Again, definitely should have stopped at this point. But I lightly misted the whole thing with just the Looking Glass spray as a final step.

Even though I knew my mistake right away, I went ahead and repeated the steps for the matching door on the desk area cabinet, just so the two panes would match. I think it's still really pretty though. So much better than the clear glass! It's all sparkly and bright, just like real mirror. And I can actually use the cabinet for storage and not just pretty display stuff now. Total bonus.

When I tackle these big cabinet doors in a week or so, I'll probably go a little more dramatic with the mirror. I'll be sure to report back on how that goes.

Have you ever tried this project before? I've seen other tutorials that use these steps on the outside of glassware, but the end finish is pretty textured, so I'd probably stick to doing just the inside or underside of your glass if you're trying this on a bigger surface.

DIY: Spraying Painting Vinyl

There are so many old and sad vinyl chairs in thrift stores all around the world, just waiting for a can of spray paint to come to the rescue.

Let's join together and give them a second life!

Here's the how-to:

This is the third or fourth time that I've spray painted an old vinyl office chair. In the past, I've used a spray paint specially formulated for vinyl called Dupli-Color at Autozone. It worked really great, but the bottles were a little on the pricey side, if I remember right. Now Rustoleum makes a vinyl spray paint too that you can often find in hardware stores. This time though, I used a less expensive and easier to find paint from Rustoleum that has primer built in and is (most importantly) formulated for bonding to plastics.

Before I spray-painted the chair though, I cleaned the vinyl really well. It gives me the creepy crawlies to think about the decades of germs and gunk potentially living on that chair. I like to use a hardcore degreaser called Krud Kutter that really helps to get the vinyl to ground zero. I wiped it down with water and wet cloth after the Krud Kutter too though, just to make sure all the cleaner was off the vinyl before painting.

Anytime I'm spray painting a chair, I put the legs in a garbage bag and tape around the base of the seat, rather than wasting practically a whole roll of tape on tricky legs.

After two coats of white paint on the whole chair, it was time to tape out the stripes. I used a thick 2 1/2" wide tape for this. To make the spacing even, I just ripped off a small piece of tape to put down as a place holder for the empty space. Easy to do and makes this a no-measuring project.

The only tricky part is getting the curves right, but just try hard to keep your spacing even and the tape should be flexible enough to handle the curves and slopes.

Here's where I should have sprayed the whole thing with the white spray paint again. Remember my trick for perfect stripes? This would have been perfect here, but I spaced it and skipped that step (too many spray paint fumes?). Dumb move - I had to go back and do touch ups later. It wasn't too bad though. I just sprayed a little paint into a plastic cup and touched up the bleed-throughs with a small brush.

After the touch ups (which I wouldn't have had with my extra step), I had a pretty perfectly striped chair.

I left it outside for a day or so to fully dry and after about three weeks of daily use, I think this plastic spray paint works and feels just like the vinyl spray paint. I think it was a fine short cut.

Everyone who's been over the house has asked about the chair. It's a bit of a statement piece, which is fun for a kitchen space. Best of all, the chair is crazy-comfortable! And I was so glad to get to reuse a chair that probably would never have been bought at the thrift store. 

In fact, I made my thrift store rounds yesterday, looking for something for a project, and I saw no fewer than five of this exact chair or something very similar. They're everywhere!

Grace needs a desk chair in her bedroom, so I might go pick up another one and see what we can come up with. Maybe a big, huge-scale buffalo check? Or ombre? Block printed? Think of all the color and pattern possibilities!