Hello everyone! Happy Friday to you all.......and I am so late posting this! We've been running around trying to get so much done that I ran out of steam this week. I managed to get about two thirds of my room painted over the weekend before I ran out of paint. We tried a new brand and it does not cover as well as my beloved Behr paint, so stay tuned for an update! You know, once I buy more paint, find a day to send the kids out to their grandparents and have time to finish the last wall. But it will happen soon because I cannot stand looking at two different paint colours in one room.
Anyway, with March here it's time to start thinking about Easter. I know most people are getting ready for St. Patrick's Day and I'm not going to lie to you guys... I completely forgot about it. I was thinking that Easter was the next big thing to decorate for, oh well.
I made a quick Easter sign up to pop onto a table upstairs, just to add a little pop of colour to celebrate that spring is on the way. Which it is, even if it goes from summer to winter in two days. I used some leftover particle board and craft paint from my stash. I have used the oak veneered particle board all over the house (kid-friendly coffee table inserts; triforce tray update; bathroom drain cover), and my love for it is not running out.
I gave the whole thing a quick sand and painted the whole board with my tester of Irish Mist by Behr. I figured the layout and then I traced out the letters and pictures with pencil, though I would have liked the board to have been a bit shorter looking back. (Sorry the pencil is so hard to see in these pictures!!)
Then I used my craft brushes to paint the letter and pictures in blocks of colour, starting and finishing each colour in turn. You can see above that I started out with the bunny in yellow, then remembered that I don't really like yellow and changed it in the end. The craft paints were either used straight from the bottle or mixed with the Irish Mist to make them lighter.
I like to have all of my supplies out and available, and I use little condiment containers with lids (purchased from a local store) to help keep the paint from drying out in case I need to use more. No matter how good you think you are or how much you measure, you will probably never get the colours to match when mixing different batches. It's better to waste a bit and have some leftover than repaint everything because you can't get the colours to match later.
I probably repainted things at least twice before I was happy with the lettering and the bunny. Not going to lie, I gave up with the eggs. They were so hard to paint and really do look much better in person. It wasn't until I started editing the pictures that I realized the eggs look a little off. Again, oh well.
Sorry for the short and sweet post guys, this was planned for Tuesday and I just remembered that I forgot to write it. I wish I could say that big things are getting done, but it's pretty much all maintenance stuff that we have slacked on lately.
But at least I have an Easter sign, right? It's more Easter decor that I usually have, and bonus points because Braxton thinks it's pretty cool. I'm sure Kaley would like it if I would let her chew on it, which I won't. Have you guys started to put up any spring or Easter decor?
Kerby
Hello everyone and happy Friday! The weekend is here, and I am excited to get some much needed painting done. Painting is a hard job without kids being around, add a helpful toddler or two and it's basically an exercise in patience. The kids are going for a visit at their grandparents for the day tomorrow and I plan on getting a ton of stuff done. Plan being the key word.
Today I want to show you guys an easy way to cover an ugly drain pipe that can be seen when you have an open vanity in your bathroom. It is actually a really easy solution and won't take too much time or effort.
Back when we finished the basement renovation a few years ago, which included our half bathroom, we ran out of steam and left a lot of the decorative stuff for later. The bathroom sat like this for a long time and I got sick of looking at the drain pipe every time I was in there. It's not exactly the nicest thing to look at and always made the bathroom feel dirty, even though it wasn't. Maybe I'm alone in that feeling, but I thought that covering the drain while keeping it accessible would look much better.
So I asked Luis to make a cover for the drain using scrap wood from the basement renovation. He used some of the thin plywood that we have used in tons of projects (Tray update; kid safe coffee table inserts) and two pieces of 1x2 scrap wood. I told him I was going to be painting it and it would be mostly hidden so it didn't have to be beautiful.
It's nothing to call home about unfinished and sitting by itself but I knew that it would work perfectly to cover that ugly drain. So to recap, it's literally five pieces of wood that are nailed together to make a screen. We did a test fit to make sure that it wasn't too big and that it covered enough of the drain without taking up too much room. The shelf that it sits on is the main storage place for the vanity, so really don't want to lose that.
Already better. After a light sanding I grabbed the leftover wall paint (Turtle Dove by Behr) and gave it two quick coats. I didn't fill the gaps or anything crazy because I knew this was going to be almost completely covered once in place. Once dry I just put it around the drain, leaving a little clearance around the pipe. I didn't want it to touch the pipe, just sit in front of it. Then I put our basket full of extra toilet paper rolls back in it's place.
It looks so much better to me, almost like the drain is in the wall. And this keeps the drains fully accessible in the future so no worry about anything permanent to prevent a plumber or us from doing any work. It was such a quick and easy way to cover the ugly drain, and I love how much cleaner the bathroom looks.
Kerby
