Painted Wood Paneling

When we first looked at our house I liked the wood paneling in the bedroom, but I knew someday I wanted to paint it white.  It took me about 4 years to get the nerve to tackle this project.  

This is what the room looked like before:

I did lots of research on just how to cover the knots in the knotty pine.  When we painted the paneling in our other bedroom we used shallac based primer which smelled horrible and after a few months the knots showed through anyway.  So, this time I went with an oil-based spray primer (recommended by a drywall guy).

I sprayed the primer on just the knots to seal them.  This paneling has been on the walls for a while so that may effect exactly how well the primer covers, but this stuff did a great job on these walls.

After one coat of the oil-cased spray primer on the knots, I painted one coat of regular latex primer on the rest of the walls.

This picture is after the above plus one coat of paint.  The white we picked was Dover White by Sherwin Williams, which is a nice warm crisp white.

All in all, it took one coat of primer on the knots, one on the walls and two coats of paint.  It only took two coats of chalk board paint to cover that wall.

I am really happy with how it came out.  It has been months since the walls were painted and no knots have shown through, so I would say the oil-based primer did the trick.

To see the full post on this girl's bedroom makeover go here.

Little girl's bedroom makeover...

One of the bigger projects we did in the last year was to paint and makeover our youngest daughter's bedroom.  When we first saw this house, this was one of the rooms that I new I eventually wanted to paint.  It had lots of knotty pine paneling and while I think real wood paneling definitely has its place in an old farmhouse, I wasn't sure a little girl's bedroom was that place.

Here is what the room looked like when we first saw the house:

When we moved in we only had 2 bedrooms, so we used this room as our bedroom for a few years until I was pregnant with our second child.  We figured it was time to build a master bedroom on the first floor.  I didn't have time at that point to do the painting, etc. that I wanted and I thought maybe it would be better to wait until she was a bit older and she could help decide what kind of room she wanted.

This is what it looked like when she was just out of her crib (about 2 yrs ago):

Once we finally decided to tackle this room I knew I wanted the paneling to be white as opposed to removing it altogether.  White painted paneling has so much cottage character which I love.  It took a lot of research and steps to cover all the knots (I will share that in another post).

Ask my 4 year old daughter her favorite color and she will always say "black"!  Crazy, right? No purple, no pink or sparkles...just black!  Anyway, so when I asked her what color she wanted on the other walls (that were previously blue) and of course she said...BLACK!!  So, I thought, well why not chalkboard black?  We ended up painting the largest wall chalkboard black which looks great and Ken made a little wooden rail for chalk out of a scrap piece of wood with a routered out channel in the center.

We also let our daughter choose the color for her vintage spool bed that was mine when I was a kid.  It was originally a dark cherry color and she chose Kilkenny by Sherwin Williams.  I wanted to give it a chalk paint finish so I used a trick that my friend taught me of mixing regular latex paint with plaster to make a home made version of chalk paint (maybe I will post a tutorial on that someday too). 

We also added some new Ikea bookshelves next to the window seat for her growing book collection.  I got some new foam and simple blue fabric to create a new cushion for the window seat and I added pillows that I had made for her room when she was a baby.

I have always thought kids will put their things away if you have a good system for them to do so.  When we were doing this project I knew we needed to add some toy storage, so my husband changed the window seat storage area from a space where you need to lift up the top to open shelves with baskets and bins (which has worked great for a 4 year old).

We also kept the "cathedral window" quilt that my great aunt made as a colorful piece of art for the wall.  

And last, but not least, we moved the vintage pine dresser that we used to have in our mudroom for hats and mittens into her room for her clothes.  We paired it with an Ikea mirror that I might paint at some point.

So here again is a before and after.  We love the way it looks.  It's so much brighter and happier for a little girl's room.  I will be sharing some of the project specifics and sources next week.

A lot has happened in a year...

So, yes, it has been a long long time since I last posted.  So many things have happened in my life.  Lots of house stuff and lots of personal stuff.

First of all, we renovated and redecorated two bedrooms, one bathroom, and rebuilt a porch.  I will be posting about all of that in the next few weeks.

But, the one major thing that happened in my life in the last year was that my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Although, it wasn't a diagnosis for me personally, it hit me really hard.  My mom is like one of my best friends.  I talk to her everyday (sometimes multiple times a day).  I was so worried about her this past year as she went through turning yellow with jaundice, and testing and attempting procedures that were unsuccessful, and then finally major surgery to remove part of her pancreas, stomach, bile ducts, part of her small intestine, and chemo.

She might be embarrassed with me writing about it, but I am amazed at her strength and toughness.  I wonder if she thinks of herself as tough?...because after this past year, I sure do.

The good news is that she came through all of it with flying colors and hopes to be cancer free for the rest of her life, and the doctors say there is no reason she can't be... which is awesome!

Another things that has changed in the last year is: I have also decided (partially due to my mom's health crisis) to take better care of my health.  I started running again and lifting weights and after about 8 months I am feeling much healthier overall.  I might write some posts on exactly what I did to get back into this type of lifestyle.

So, if you are reading this.  Thank you.  I look forward to sharing tidbits of my life journey again...stay tuned.

Mudroom Update

While our patio project is pretty much at a stand-still, I figured I should share some of the things we have done inside, so here is an update on our mudroom.

A while ago I wrote a post showing my mudroom.  I feel so fortunate to have a mudroom. Our house is very old and we have a lack of storage space and no coat closet, so our mudroom is a coat room, shoes storage room, dog room, etc.

Fast forward to a month ago and I really wanted to get a treadmill.  I always had one and actually used it, but being the declutterer that I am I decided the mudroom was too small and we needed the space so I sold it on Craigslist!  I have to say that was the only thing I ever got rid of that I regretted.  Anyway, we decided to get a new treadmill and I had to rearrange the mudroom to accommodate it (there was no other possible location to put it in our house).

We took down our original simple coat hooks and put up the Ikea ones that we had at our old house.  They have 4 baskets that we plan to use for winter stuff, etc. and they have more hooks which will allow us to store more coats (which is good and bad).

We also made a new runner from indoor outdoor carpet that is easy to clean and durable enough for the high traffic of the mudroom.  It also helps keep the dirt out of the house.

We have 2 dogs and they both love their "houses" (crates).  In fact, Hunter, our big 85 pound husky prefers the small one that he has slept in since he was a puppy even though he has really out grown it.  So, these crates stay in the mudroom as well.

I had to move our red shoe cupboard in order to accommodate the treadmill and the only choice was to turn it 90 degrees which created a sort of "alcove" by the back door.  Not ideal, but it works.

The good thing is that when the treadmill is folded up this corner is kind of "hidden" by the door when you walk in which makes is better... I guess.  Why do things like treadmills have to be so ugly?!

We also needed to put the freezer in our mudroom.  The old one was in the basement, and since we never go down there we didn't notice it had quit working a while back until we smelled it! Yuck!  We needed the new one to be where we could access it and check it.  By putting it in this corner we lost our old dresser that held hats and mittens, so we might have to DIY something like this to remedy that problem.

I still would like to make some new window treatments and a few other small projects, and as much as this room is less "magazine worthy" I have to remember that this space needs to work more than it needs to look "pretty."   So, for now I am happy that it is clean and I can walk on the treadmill.

Our patio is gone!

Last week the guys came with the bobcat and jack hammer and demo-ed our cracked patio.

That big jack hammer made pretty quick work of our patio even though it was almost 10 inches thick.

Our mason brought his dog "Mud" and he and Otis had fun playing all day and watching the progress.

Once they were done, they brought the dump truck in and removed all the concrete rubble.

By the end of the day Mud was pretty tired out, but Otis was still running around.

They brought in a layer of stone and leveled it out.

At this point we are left with a crushed stone "pad"... and we are trying to decide what to do next.  Patio vs. deck? 

Demolition!!

We have been wanting to take our boring concrete patio out and do something different since we moved in (6 years ago), but haven't had the time or money.  This year with the extra cold winter we had the patio cracked beyond repair and heaved causing our foundation to crack.  Bad news.  But, the good news is now it is a priority to get the patio out and make a whole new backyard space!

This is what we are dealing with:

We had already removed all of the lilies from around the patio when this picture was taken.

The guys are supposed to come this week and jack hammer the patio out and start the repairs to the foundation and in order for them to do that we had to remove the stone facing from around our porch.

I actually started before Ken got home from work and it wasn't really that hard to get off.  I love the demolition process...it's great stress relief!

When Ken got home I decided to let him get some stress relief too.

It only took about an hour total to remove all the stone facing, and we were happy to find a usable porch framework to work with.

Once the repairs are done to the foundation we hope to redo the porch to what it would have looked like in 1880 (even though the original porches were much smaller) and we will also replace the decking with something more weather resistant since it gets water sitting on it and has rotted in quite a few places.

This is what I am thinking as far as the spaces between the posts:

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I believe between the patio and the porches this might be an all summer project for us so I will post updates when things really get rolling, and I plan on posts updating our mudroom situation and other projects we have been working on indoors too.