Wet-bar. Oh, the wet-bar.

Posted in DIY by Christina

Heehee! <-me laughing at myself.

Why? Well, what started as me simply painting the wet-bar cabinetry has resulted in the start of a full-on makeover. Donchya just love it when that happens? 😉

First, let’s start at the beginning…

This was our wet-bar on the day we got possession of the house. Kinda dated. Kinda ugly. Kind pointless (in my opinion). Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with bars, it’s just that something about a sink in a living room just seems like an accident waiting to happen. Like when my back is turned Lucas will decide to play “splashpark” or something of the like. But regardless of my worries, we have it. We own it. It’s ours. And we’re not taking it out. So, we’re gonna make it work. And heck, not only that, we’re gonna WORK IT. Make it cool. Snazzy. The place to be.

So, once we finally had the keys to the ~~kingdom~~ house, we changed out the flooring and I accessorized a bit…

Better. Still dated, but better. Then, I painted the built-ins on the opposite side of the room, and it became glaringly obvious that I needed to paint the cabinets on the wet-bar to match.

So, I got going…

I used the exact same process for painting these cabinets as I did for the built-ins, so check out that post if you’d like more details. Everything went smoothly with the painting process except that I could NOT for the life of me figure out how to remove the drawers. I ended up having to leave them in there and paint around them, which definitely lengthened the process, but wasn’t too bad. Once I got ‘er done, I decided that the crisp white cabinetry was awesome, but the new color emphasized just how peach the countertops were. Now, granted, I’ll be doing a concrete treatment to them soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to minimize the pastel quality as much as possible.

I’ve discussed how I removed the sidesplash in our old bathroom before, and decided that I should do it again here. I basically wanted the wetbar to feel like more of a piece of furniture than a random sink in the living room, and removing the side-splashes would help with that. We never really use the sink anyways, so I didn’t foresee moisture being a huge issue. Again, I followed the exact same process that I used back then, so check out that post if you’d like more details (sorry… this is a long post already, so I just wanna prevent it from becoming a novel if I can). Plus, those other posts are pretty detailed.

Now, I’m just gonna say this… Our house is weird.

The things we would’ve loved to have been completed right (Ahem! An intact roof, plumbing without leaks, a front door that closes. etc.), were done halfway. Something like our fugly sidesplashes? Built like a friggin’ tank. You wouldn’t believe the time and effort it took me to get here…

It took me about an hour and a half and much sweat and muscle to pry those suckers from the wall. The process toughened me. Aged me. In the end, I looked like this…

That, my friends, is the face of victory. Also known as, sidesplash-you-are-my-bit#%-face.

Once the side-splashes were off, I decided that I wanted the backsplash off as well. But, we couldn’t remove the backsplash without first removing the mirror, so….

Which left this original wallpaper….

Psychedelic, baby.

I might’ve considered keeping the wallpaper had it been in better shape. Unfortunately, it was riddled with glue and screw holes. So, I got to removing it. I pried off the backsplash first, which didn’t put up a quarter of the fight that the side-splashes did, and peeled off the wallpaper…

Excuse the attire. I’d just been jogging, which seems to motivate me to make split-second decisions about removing large mirrors, apparently. Anyways, the wallpaper was surprisingly easy to remove. It literally peeled off the wall in large pieces without ANY prep. I just pulled at it and off it came. Kinda scary when you think of how heavy the mirror was and how the entire weight of the mirror was simply glued to the wallpaper. Not only that, the glass shelves were screwed into the wall, but not a single screw was attached to a stud. The screws were simply sitting in drywall with no anchors whatsoever. When we tried to unscrew them, they just spinned in place aimlessly since they weren’t actually gripping anything to begin with.

Once the wallpaper was gone (I totally kept some of the larger, intact pieces to use for art somewhere), the wet-bar looked like this…

I made a very small effort to remove the wallpaper glue residue from the wall. This is a really important step if you’re looking for smooth walls. BUT, since I knew our plan was to tile this wall anyways, and I saw how much work removing the glue would be, I decided to leave the glue and simply patch and prime the wall. This is what I used to patch…

(Note: It was NOT ready to sand or paint in 30 minutes. It took substantially longer than that to dry.) It was lightweight and really easy to work with for the most part, though. I simply troweled it on, waited for it to dry, sanded it smooth with a sanding block, and repeated the process a second time. The wall looked like this when I was done….

I then caulked the gap between the counter and wall with paintable caulk…

Then, I primed the wall with shellac primer…

Unlike our other homes, we actually have smooth walls in this house, which is pretty rare for Texas. The wall behind the wet-bar, though… NOT smooth. Namely because I didn’t remove the glue. But again, we’ll be tiling the wall, so it’ll be fine. Once the primer was dry, I applied two coats of wall paint (Gallery Grey by Kelly-Williams). And here’s where we ended up…

Now, I’ll be honest. I kind of missed the mirror once it was gone. The wall seemed so plain and generic without it. And really, I never had a problem with it. It was kind of retro. But, then I reminded myself that (1) The mirror wasn’t the safest feature in our house, having seen how insecurely it was mounted, and (2) we aren’t done yet. I need to learn not to second guess our decisions in the middle of a project. The middle never makes sense.

So, basically, the plan for the wet-bar is as follows:

1. Change out the faucet handles to update the fixture on the cheap

2. Coat the countertop in concrete and seal that puppy up. Once this is done and the tone of grey concrete is apparent, we can…

3. …Choose tile to install on the entire wall behind the wet bar (anybody have a wet-saw we can borrow?). I’m thinking some kind of glass mosaic tile or maybe marble? Once this is done, we’ll…

4. …Add a large framed mirror to bounce some light around. And the piece de resistance.,,,

5. Install two pendant lights above the bar for additional light and style.

Woop-AH! (That’s a whip sound) (which made sense in my head) (but now, not so much) (thanks for sticking with me) (loveyou)

So, anyways, I’ve already changed out the faucet handles, reattached the cabinet doors, and accessorized the area as a Phase One step to tide us over until the other improvements are complete. I’ll have a post about that up soon… I just didn’t want to overload y’all in one post, so I’m spreading the love. Next, I’ll be concreting the countertop (yes, I totally verb-ized ‘concrete’). And I already know which pendants I want. We just need to get them and install junction boxes in the ceiling. I can’t WAIT to get this all done and see it come together. I’m pretty excited about it.

So, have any of y’all started a “small” project as of late which snowballed into a big one? Tell me about it!!

You can check out the next steps in the makeover here: switching out our faucet handles on the cheap, and finding a CRAZY awesome vintage mirror

16Feb2015

The porch project

Posted in DIY by Christina

It’s been a while since I’ve discussed our backyard. Last we spoke about it, I had just sealed and enhanced our terracotta patio…

Well, let me tell ya…. A LOT has gone down since then. A. LOT. (<-said like Loyd of Dumb & Dumber) And I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was ALL Joey. Thus, this post is more of a progress report than a how-to since I didn’t actually participate. I just watched with admiration through the window. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. 😉

Basically, the changes all began with a drainage problem on our back porch. Starting a few months ago, whenever it would rain, the water would approach the house, sometimes coming within a foot of it. No bueno. Joey tried to declog our existing french drains with pretty much every method he researched, but to no avail.

So, around Christmas, he spent days digging a trench and installing a drain at the west end of our porch (Ahem! A 200-foot trench in 20 degree weather), which resulted in this nicely graveled-in drain…

That helped the flooding on that side of the porch, but as we came to find out several weeks later when it rained again, the other side continued to flood. So, he spent many, many more days out there removing the crazy-heavy railroad ties, and installing another drain, along with a sump pump (a pump that forces the water through the drain and out to the street).

So, picture this. He’s just spent all this time. WEEKS working on this. Our back yard is all torn apart as you can see here…

He’s exhausted and sore, but had FINALLY finished and was starting to put the yard back together again. I get home from work and Joey meets me out on the driveway. He has a look on his face that I could only describe as “livid shock”.

Joey: “So, guess what?”

Me: “What? Are you okay?”

Joey: “No. You’re never gonna believe this.”

Me: “What?”

Joey: “Ya know that weird electrical box on the porch post that we thought had something to do with the pool?”

Me: “Yeah, what about it?”

Joey: “Well, after I finished clearing things up back there, I took another look at it. There was a GFI plug that had been tripped and needed to be reset, so I pushed the button to reset it. And I heard humming coming from underground. So, I started digging. (pause)……..Turns out, we already have a sump pump. And it works. It works great. It was just off. Which explains the flooding. ….I did ALL THAT WORK for NOTHING.”

O.M.G. Never have I wanted to cry for another person more. Poor (handsome, handsome) man.

Basically, the sump pump had been buried underground about two feet which is why we never knew about it. The existing drains weren’t clogged, the sump pump had simply turned off when the GFI plug had tripped, which explained the recent floods we’d been having (our porch hadn’t flooded for the first few months after we moved in). Since we didn’t know we had a sump pump or that this electrical box controlled it…

(we were told by our inspector that the plug likely had something to do with the pool pump), we didn’t think to check the switch. So, when Joey attempted to connect power to the new sump pump via that switch, he discovered it. UGH. Painful, right?? I guess that’s what you get with old houses, though. You just never know what’s been done before you.

So, now that we knew that the drainage problem was taken care of, we had the issue of the missing retaining wall next to the porch to contend with. Joey was NOT going to put those nasty rotting railroad ties back, so we ended up getting stackable retaining wall stones from Lowes for about 1.78 a pop.

Joey did the whole wall himself, and I have to say that he did a fabulous job. He said that the most difficult part was ensuring the bottom row was level in every direction. He used sand beneath the bottom row to act as a bed for the stones and placed them down, moving them around until they were level and straight. Then, he used more sand to back-fill each row behind the stones. To ensure that he had a straight line, he tied some rope between the columns of the patio as a guide…

We still have to get a topper for the wall (the cement pavers are just placeholders… They’re destined for another part of our yard), but here’s where he ended up with the wall…

The above shot was taken before he added a second level to the left side, which can be seen here…

He’s going to add a few more stones (once we buy them… we ran out) to even it up with the right side…

Then, we’ll be planting bushes and ground covering beyond the retaining wall to make it feel cozy and lush.

Here’s the before pictures just for reference…

I’m so impressed with him. Seriously. Other updates that he’s taken on include this screen that he built to camouflage our HVAC unit…

We based this screen on a picture that I found on Pinterest. It’s L-shaped to still allow access to the unit, but makes it much less of an eyesore from the porch. We still have to touch up some of the stain on the corners and add one more plank to the bottom. Then, we’ll landscape around it with bushes and gravel. It’s sweet already, but it’ll be awesome when it’s done. You’ll also note a start to the path we’re creating beside the screen (that’s where those rectangular pavers on top of the retaining wall will come in). This path will go all the way around the house and will be bordered in and filled with gravel around the pavers.

That pile of decrepit wood that you see in the back of the shot is a portion of our old fence (which’ll be taken to the dump soon). Every part of our fence has been replaced at some point in time except for this one. It literally had 2 foot gaps in it. It was original to the house and was rotting, and completely falling apart. Joey replaced it recently for both aesthetic and security reasons. You can see the new fence here…

Once the menagerie of half-done projects are finished, we’ll be boxing in the columns on the porch and staining them the same color as the HVAC screen to emulate stained wood posts. Eventually all of the railroad ties along the fence will be replaced as well. I’m getting really excited about everything. And more impressed by Joey by the day.

Our porch is still in disarray as I type this, thus I have no pretty “after” shots this time. Our pool is getting drained today in preparation for resurfacing (I’ll write another post about that) and we anticipate a bunch of dust in the process, so we’re waiting until that’s done to clean and get everything situated. The coping needs to be replaced around the pool (ugh) and the most cost-effective option is flagstone. The reason why I’m mentioning this now is that our plan for the retaining wall topper is to use coordinating flagstone to tie the two elements together. Once the coping is in, we can choose our topper and get that hammered out. And once that’s done, we can actually start to use our porch again. (And celebration, complete with jumping and giggles (from me) will ensue)

So, anyways, y’all have a great Monday. I have much in store for you in the posts ahead. I’ve had a busy weekend (Heeheeheehee!)… 😉