$9.00 granite countertop

This picture is equally as ugly as it is bad quality. This is a "before" shot of one of 2 motor home sized bathrooms in my house. Notice the toilet is missing (like the bathroom didn't have enough problems as it was-we had to throw tree roots into the equation). Actually, I just noticed that it's right there, in the bathtub, creating the need for about 5 gal. of bleach! Anyway, this is what our hideous bathrooms looked like when we bought the house, that's right, they were identical. Because in the 80's this looked so cool that you would've wanted two of them.

This is what it looks like now, only about part way through our lipstick on the pig job. I refinished the cabinet with the same "poor man's wood grain" as I did on my garage door. Painted the walls with some leftover paint my Dad's girlfriend had (except for that one patch behind the toilet where the drywall got jacked up). And after a toilet mishap- aka my boyfriend cracked our old one somewhere during the tree root in pipes saga-we bought a new Jacuzzi toilet with the gift card my friend got me for my birthday (thanks Josh G!). Probably the only Jacuzzi I will ever own! The old faucet was replaced with an oil rubbed bronze one I got for $15 - sink included!-on Craigslist. And topped off with a new Better Homes and Gardens mirror from Wal-Mart. BUT ON TO THE GRANITE-I found these 9 granite tiles at my local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store Luckily for me my boyfriend is pretty talented too, I knew he could slap these tiles on in an afternoon & change the whole look of our guest bathroom! He did the smallest grout joint he could then filled in the gaps with a black epoxy grout. Because he and his brother do the occasional tile side job, everything else he used was left over from other jobs. He sealed it with a spray & wipe stone sealer & used a clear caulking around the edge of the sink. It's not what I would've chose if we were paying full price (which by the way is $9.00/sq. ft. at Lowe's!) but it looks a heck of a lot better than that truck stop motel bathroom knockoff!!

Color Dilemma - Help me Decide!

First of all, I want to say sorry for my recent blog neglect. September was an extremely busy month for me! A friend & co-worker of mine had her 2yr old son in the hospital for most of the month-obviously, she was there with him every day. While she was gone I was able to fill in her position at work for her, so she wasn't so behind in things when she came back. For those of you that don't know I'm a stay at home mom so taking over her full time position was a big change for me. Although it resulted in me getting a make my own hours position & kept the whole department from falling behind, things pretty much came to a standstill home.

In the meantime, we've been making some pretty big changes in our front yard. For anyone whose seen my house, you'll remember that there was nothing but weeds & a dried up crappy lawn when we bought the place. So far we've taken the lawn out (the dirt was so compacted that our friend had a hard time tearing it up with his tractor!), put in a large Mediterranean/drought tolerant flowerbed, added a "dry creek bed" with river rock, hacked back our overgrown mulberry tree, & added a couple herb gardens.

So what I need help with is deciding what color I should refinish the two huge urns I got at Lowe's (these were originally $160 ea. I got two of them on clearance for $60 total!) Part of the reason I got them so cheap was that one of them had some damage to it. The finish was flaking off around the top (these are made of lightweight fiberglass/plastic material). So I plan on scrubbing off any loose flakes & using the spray primer made for plastic then putting a regular spray paint over the top of that. If any of you have done a similar project for something that is an outdoor item I'd appreciate your input.

Here's a picture of the vase/urn with the damaged top. You can see how the shiny finish is flaking off & the dull color underneath is showing through.

This is a bad shot but it shows the fountain in my herb garden that matches it almost exactly. The reason I want to change the color is that I don't think the burgundy looks good against the terra-cotta color of our house. There's too much brown going on in our front yard & we need to break it up with some color. What I need you to take into consideration is, whichever color I paint the new urns has to look ok with the fountain (I think both do, I'm just not sure if it's going to start to to look too cluttered with the different finishes).

These are the two colors I'm trying to decide between, I think either one of these will go okay with the house color.

I would add a brown glaze over the top of whichever color I went with so it would age the look of the finish a little more, like this one below.

Here's an example of the green on an actual urn, I have spray paints very close to both of these colors (the yellow is just a tiny bit lighter).

So what do you think? I need all the input I can get on this! Keep in mind that my house is a terra cotta color with a walnut stain on my garage & front doors as seen in my faux wood doors posting here. These two huge vases will sit on either side of my garage door & will soon have some nice big Mediterranean style lanterns installed above them to top them off. I think we're finally getting a break from this little rainstorm we just had so let me hear your ideas asap so I can paint these while we still have decent weather!

One last thing to consider is that I do plan on eventually planting something in these, probably something that will hang down over the top of the urn ( I'm thinking Ivy Geranium or something like that to stick with the Mediterranean look). They're so tall that I can't plant anything upright because it would hit the lights we're installing above. With the plants draping over the sides it will maybe downplay some of the color of the urn.

I'll be waiting for your comments!

My first client! Garage door #2

So after I finished my own garage door a friend had mentioned it to one of her classmates who was also upgrading their first home on a budget & happened to live in my neighborhood. I wish I had a before pic of their house, it started out with a similar color scheme to mine - cream with sea-foam green trim. I don't know if one painter booked jobs in our entire neighborhood back in the 80's or what. Anyway, they painted their house this deep charcoal gray with a crisp white trim & wanted to do something other than just a plain painted garage door. After checking out my door they decided to go with the same idea. Only they wanted to go with a color that matched their front door. I have to give April (also my client's name) credit for doing all the color research on her own. She was smart in going with a color that was very close to an unstained natural wood (shown here). She used Behr Exterior Flat Medium Base Mate in "Sand Point" for the base coat. I went over after it had dried to apply the stain.

This is the color we came out with when it was done - almost an exact match to her front door! Again, April (the homeowner) chose the stain color; Varathane Gel Stain in "Ipswich Pine". We started with a sample board to see how close to the front door this stain color came out. Once April decided that she liked it we got to work with some over sized soft bristle brushes. That's right she helped me do the entire door, luckily for me she took right to it & did an awesome job! April & her husband are total DIYers & the amount of work they've done by themselves is amazing. We randomly alternated panels so that you wouldn't notice a difference between one side of the door or the other.

A little bit closer shot of the texture - sorry these pics are kind of small this was the best I could do. This door actually had a"wood grain" impression in the fiberglass. I wasn't sure how the stain would take to it, we just went with the "grain" & it came out perfectly.

The final shot is a view from the street & was meant to show how close in color the 2 doors are, because the front door is in a shaded area, you can't really tell but believe me it's CLOSE! The pics also look a little more reddish here than it does in person. I have to say, I usually lean towards darker stains myself, but this was the perfect color choice to warm up that deep charcoal. Just imagine how awesome it'll look when they get all the new landscaping in! I learned so much doing this door, it was a lot easier than I had first expected. Can't wait for the next one!


And to the Montgomerys- Thank you for being so awesome & easy to work with!!!

Reunited at last

Do all my recent posts make it seem like I have an obsession with doors lately? Maybe just this one. I followed this thing around like I was stalking it. It was love at first sight when I first laid eyes on it at Re-Store, but I was too much of a cheapskate to pay up on the $65 price tag. After a few weeks it disappeared. That's when I started obsessing over it, I would never find another door like that. With all it's random sized squares & carved scroll detail in the center. I looked & looked but there was nothing even close I could find to replace it. Then, about a month later, I was walking through the landscape exhibits with my family at the fair and there it was.......it had been used as part of a backdrop for an outdoor display made from re-purposed materials. After several calls to the fairgrounds to try to get contact info. for the group who did the display I finally got a call saying that they had picked up the display that morning & donated the door back to Re-Store!! This time I had no problem spending $65 if it meant I finally got to take it home. It's been in my garage for a few weeks now & it's finally time to pull this sucker out & transform it. The only thing is, I'm not going to use it as a door........any guesses on what it's going to be?

This is a closer shot of the scroll detail that I love, on most doors this would be carved into the door. This is actually pops out kind of 3-D -ish I think it makes it look like higher quality.

This is the backside of the door, and the color it was when I first saw it (Olivia's off to the side checking it out). The group that used it for their display painted the aqua finish on the front only. Although I'm going to refinish the whole thing, the aqua will be making another appearance. Hint; it will only be used as an accent this time, have you figured it out yet? I'm hoping to get it built today & refinished within the next couple. Might be kind of ambitious but check back, I'll post as I go.

More Faux Wood Doors

Im posting this as a follow up to my "wood " garage doors this is obviously the before shot with all the crazy colors we started with. This was the closest view I have of the front doors before.

This is how they came out after the walnut glaze treatment (if you're really observant you might have noticed the difference in the fence color between the two pics-all we did was pressure wash it!) These are just inexpensive metal doors that have a smooth surface so I gave them some character with the "wood textured" look.

The close up shows more of the "grain" we finished it off with a $3 oil rubbed bronze doorknob I found at Re-Store (an awesome resource that I plan to feature an entire page for sometime soon).

Although you don't see the door from this point, it still gives a pretty dramatic before & after from this angle of the house. In this shot you can still see the mossy green we tried out before the terra-cotta & the ugly old light fixture-this was also replaced with a Re-Store find. A $4 brass lantern that I gave a rusty brown finish to.

This just goes to show, faux wood doors or not what a HUGE difference color makes. Stay posted, I'll have another garage door Revamp soon. Mine actually led to me getting my first "client" through word of mouth from a friend. Theirs is completely different, I'll have pics up within the next few days.

I'm linking to Power of Paint Party over at Domestically Speaking. As well as these parties;

"Wood" garage doors

So, for those of you who've never seen it, here's a picture of how hideous our house was when we bought it. Someone actually chose that paint color combination....wow. Even through the total mess it was, we still saw potential & were so happy to be buying our first house. My Dad arranged for a painter to show up (as a total surprise to us) one day & told us to pick out a color for the house. The best house warming gift ever! I had been painting different swatches of mossy green all over the house but at the last minute changed my mind & went with a terra-cotta because I thought it was closer to the Mediterranean look we were going for. Needless to say the 80's powdery blue garage doors weren't gonna be able to hang with the new colors we chose. I always imagined that whenever I was able to buy my own house it I would have a rich dark wooden garage door put in.......have you ever priced those things?! You could easily spend thousands of dollars just for a "basic" style, that's not to mention the maintenance & upkeep involved. So I did what I've done with pretty much everything else in our house, I figured out a "poor girls" version of what I really wanted but couldn't afford. After about a month of driving through all the "dream house neighborhoods" in town looking for ideas I came up with the look I wanted & figured out how to replicate it.

I started by having our painter spray the garage door the same color as the stucco. I figured that because I was planning on going with such a dark stain that I would need a rich warm color as my base coat. This picture shows the top three panels of the door completed & the bottom panel with the original base color.

Here's a view a little closer up to show the "wood grain" finish. Because I was going for more of a a rustic look I varied the stain application quite a bit so that there were darker & lighter sections. I think it makes it look more like natural wood.

This shot doesn't show as much detail but it gives a good idea of the contrast between the terra-cotta paint & the walnut stain. The terra-cotta color was a custom blended color based on one of Lowes Valspar colors I think it was called Rustic Oak in a flat exterior finish. The stain was Varethane's Walnut. By the way, the bottom panel of the door is finished now.