Simple Solutions

Weekend Painting: Magnet Board

Published on August 11, 2010September 9, 2010 by Our Humble Abode6 Comments

We’re in painting moods lately! Last weekend, we repainted our dining room and over this past weekend, a little more painting took place. On Saturday, I painted a magnet board for Vincent’s room.

Before I had my office in the basement, I was using our little desk upstairs to run my stationery shop. I used this board to keep papers and track my current orders. Now that I have a magnetic backsplash, Vincent needs this board more than I do. He has been using the side of the refrigerator to play with his alphabet letters, but many of the letters get kicked under. Enter, the new magnet board. Here it was before I painted.

I picked up Valspar’s Bumblebee Spray paint to use on the frame and used a can of flat white spray paint to paint the metal.

I made a little set up of 5 gallon buckets outside and got ready to paint.

Pass about 10 minutes and I had one coat on the steel and frame.

After letting everything dry for several hours, I popped the steel back in the frame and hung it in the boys’ room. Vincent loves having this in his room and has proudly displayed some of his art.

I do have some more painting to do, so stay tuned for that.

Dining Room: Updated

Published on August 3, 2010May 25, 2011 by Our Humble Abode23 Comments

Over the weekend, we decided to repaint our dining room, completing the transformation. We used the same color as the basement, which extends up the staircase and is visible from the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

I cleared the room and taped off the trim while Ben was at work. After removing the curtains, I decided that I liked how open the window looked. So, I took the outer curtain supports down, patched the holes and sanded it smooth.

I don’t have much time to paint with a three-year old and four-month old. Fortunately, Ben is a quick painter and the area is small. It literally took about eighteen minutes to repaint. Here he is, hard at work.

We had to do two coats. One on Saturday afternoon.

And another on Sunday morning.

Ben hung the curtain brackets about 5 inches from where they were. It’s really amazing how much more open the window seems now. I love it.

I did love the old, dark blue color (Benjamin Moore’s Hale Navy), but this definitely fits in with the rest of the house. The curtains are more fitting with the wall color, too. Sure, the plates don’t pop as much against the new wall color, but the dark table top was just too dark with the old wall color.

The room has come a long way in the past few years. Now it’s exactly as I had imagined. The plate rack is a nice feature, serving as art and storage.

We have some touch up paint to do, especially on the white, but it’s good enough for now. I’m a happy camper. Touch up paint can wait. Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

Here was the dining room as I received it, thanks to Ben’s decorating.

Then we added trim, a plate rack and repainted. We also bought a new rug and I made curtains. Then we had this:

We recently installed a new light fixture and Ben built an ah.maz.ing table for us, bringing us to this point:

And here we are today!

Do you have any projects to take on this weekend?

It’s the Little Things

Published on July 26, 2010May 25, 2011 by Our Humble AbodeLeave a comment

It’s the little things that will kill you…

We’ve decided to tackle some of the small, daunting, and/or tedious projects that have been on our to do list for some time.

First, we grouted our master bathtub seam to prevent leaks.

We had used caulking, but everything peeled when we cleaned it, leaving an open area for water to trickle.

Follow that up with some much needed cleaning. Our bathroom fan was seriously gross, so Ben cleaned that. Then we cleaned some of the hard to reach areas that never get dusted.