Hey, Remember When We Had a Blog?

Sup, boos?

I can't tell you how many times Husbo or I have said to each other, "we should blog about that."  Oh, the intentions are good but when it comes to loading up pictures, typing up our thoughts and making sure it strikes that infamous balance of humor and content...well, the bag of Oreos and the couch normally win out.

But even though I think New Year's Resolutions are dumb, I suppose now is as good a time as ever to get back into it.  And since we undertook a DIY project that a lot of people requested more deets about, the "comeback" blog topic seemed clear: How we turned our fugly laminate countertops into high-class concrete beauties.

Pssst, here's a secret: we didn't reinvent the wheel.

Through the magic world of Pinterest, I stumbled upon this a few months ago when my mom had asked that we redo her outdoor bar for a Christmas present.

It's hard to hate it when you've got an adorable cat as your Vanna White.

My first thought was some type of tile mosaic top, but it was a bit too traditional for my taste.  I'd always loved the idea of concrete counters but everything I knew about making them was they're time consuming, extremely heavy and require some work area.  None of those items sounded like a party to me.  So when I stumbled upon the Kara Paslay tutorial for essentially skim coating your existing counter...I was sold.  

Since they did such a good job going through the steps, I'll walk you through the few things we may have done differently and load you up with pictures.  From an iPhone.  B/c we still don't own a real camera.  (Judge not, Nikon elitists.) 

Preparation: 

As they mention, whatever surface you're looking to resurface, the subsurface needs to be roughed up to "grip" the concrete.  For the bar, we removed the padded border to expose the laminate counter.  Once we did that, we were concerned with how thin the top was.  We had planned on sanding the top down, but visually, it was going to look too dinky.  So we went to Lowes and had them cut a piece of good exterior-grade plywood to add to the top to beef it up.

Husbo squirting the Liquid Nails to the existing top.

Plywood added, clamped to keep it in place.

Screwing new plywood into place.

We also added a piece of 1x2 trim to the front (you'll see it in a picture in a minute) to give the front a nice smooth finish.  We were mildly concerned if the two surfaces weren't perfectly flush, there'd be an odd line or gap at the front.  No bueno.

When it came to our kitchen counters, we didn't have the option (nor did we need) to add plywood on top.  The edges are bullnosed and there was a backsplash that would have been a nightmare to work the wood around.  

You're gross, old counter.  I hate you.

So to get these puppies ready, Husbo took a palm sander and went to town.  But let me back up a second.  If you're getting ready to do what we did, you ought to take some of the same precautions.  

1) Unload the kitchen.  Take everything out of there.  Pictures, appliances, doodads and chotchkies.  

2) Cover the major appliances that can't be removed (the refrigerator, range, etc.)

3) Cover any registers feeding the room.  With all that dust floating around, you'd hate to get it sucked up in the HVAC and blown out into your bedroom.  

4) We had one door we could close and the other opening we taped up a giant sheet.  Just seal off the room in whatever way you can.

5) Wear a face mask.  Or make one and play cops and robbers.

There's a new sheriff in town.

Ok...NOW you can go to town.  Let me just tell you...if cleaning up the giant mess that will ensue makes you faint at heart, don't do this project.  I don't see anyway of avoiding how to keep your kitchen from looking like a bunch of Cuban gangsters had a giant cocaine party in your house.  

I swear Dexter doesn't do crack.  He's just fat and lazy.

Concrete:

When it comes to obtaining Ardex in the RDU area, our local supplier is Fishman Flooring Solutions.  They are out on Corporation Parkway and they're awesome.  They are actually a vendor of mine through work but you can walk in and buy right off the shelf.   They're also Wolfpack fans so you know they're good folk.

The directions on the bag tell you when making smaller batches, it's about 2 parts concrete to 1 part water.  We found that it came closer to 1 to 1.  Ultimately, you want the consistency to be like pancake batter.  Not too thick, not too thin.  

Don't make too much at once.  You can always make more.  If you make too big a batch, it will begin to thicken up and become harder to work with.  Luckily, Husbo and I were able to work at the same time (save for the times I was snapping pictures) so that we could move quickly.

Notice the trim piece we added to the front here.

We did two thin coats at mom's bar and on our kitchen counters.  It took about 2 hours for the first coat to dry so we could trowel on the 2nd.  

Use your finger to help smooth/mold any hard areas like the bullnose curve or where the backsplash meets the counter.

Give it a light hand sanding between coats and wipe with a damp cloth to remove the dust.

Drying.  Give it one more light sand once you're done to smooth out any rough spots.

Sealing: 

Once the concrete is fully dry (we waited over night to be sure), it's time to seal.  We didn't use the sealer Kara Paslay recommended due to not being able to find it. I did some research and found a water based sealer that would work on porous concrete and picked it up at Lowes.

Make sure it's water based if you're going to put it on a surface where food is prepared!

Then it's as simple as brushing on the sealer.  We put four coats on the counter to make sure it was really sealed well.  It took about 45 minutes to an hour between coats.  Luckily, we had gotten into watching Downton Abbey so we had plenty to do while we waited.  

Look at that lovely semi-gloss shine.

Even after the last coat was dry to the touch, to be safe, we let it cure another 12 hours or so before putting anything back on it.  Better safe than sorry, I suppose. 

We like the "hand troweled" look.  You can always try to smooth it out a bit more if that's not your jam.

Overall, we're really pleased with how it turned out.  We rent our house and so a lot of folks have asked if our landlord cares.  Well our landlord doesn't know.  But he also isn't aware of how many bedrooms this place has so I highly doubt he'll remember what the counters look like.  Plus, it's a giant upgrade in our opinion.  

When the counter gets wet, it gets dark in those areas, but it dries no problem.  We've had the ones in our kitchen for just over a week and have made food, spilled things, etc and they are holding up well.  We'll let you know if that changes.

Well, maybe.  We all know how good we are at keeping up with this thing.

Extreme Makeover: Dresser Edition

Easily his best picture.

Ever since we lost our dream house, I've had the insatiable desire to change things around our rented abode. Apparently, my designer brain was so focused on the idea of a blank slate, I found myself anxiously pacing around our house with creative energy bubbling up inside...and no outlet to relieve me.  Something had to be done.  I had to relieve myself.

I'm pausing so you can appreciate the wording of that sentence.

I'd had an idea for a dresser treatment that I'd seen that soon developed into a small obsession for me.  I'd told Husbo about it no less than 15 times over the past month and for some reason, my brain did not connect the fact that I had both a dresser that was begging for a makeover AND creative energy for days.  One afternoon, while visiting the new West Elm store in Durham, I saw a dresser there that was at least a 2nd cousin to the dresser I'd been dreaming of.   I promptly showed Husbo (as if the first 15 times weren't enough) the idea that I was so enamored with and that genius of a man removed the stupid veil over my brain to suggest that perhaps we could just refinish our existing dresser.

He'd never been sexier to me than in that very moment.

Due to my complete lack of impatience, we had to get started immediately.  Enter: the black blob.

We've had a good run, old friend.

It's not horrible.  In fact, for many years, I loved it.  I got the dresser from my old Hroomate (not a typo), Bryna.  When she decided to get married and move to Japan, she decided not to pay the shipping required to bring this baby with her. Go figure.  When she was using it, it was a cool shade of avocado green (she'd gotten it second hand and gave it her own facelift).  When I inherited it, I went goth on it...and she got a fresh coat of black paint.  

Any good before picture has extra crap laying around.  You gotta get the full effect.

I lived with it like this for a good 4 years but as other things in our bedroom began to evolve, she was slowly becoming the odd woman out.   The mirror that sat on top was a Homegoods find from around the same era.  While the idea of it was pretty cool (the "shutters" close to create a faux window look), it was much too ornate for my increasingly simple taste.  Through the magic of Craigslist, I sold that heavy beast for 80 bones.  80 bones that would not only cover the cost of renovation, but leave me a little extra for new accessories.

So first, we removed all the hardware.

A woman without her jewelry.

Then, we borrowed some paint stripper from the original Handyman, my father-in-law.  Husbo brushed it on all of the drawer fronts, and we scraped.  We scraped a lot.  Apparently there were four coats of paint on those bad boys.  (Sidenote/warning: that stripper stuff is rather caustic.  We both wore gloves and made sure to protect all the surfaces around where we were working.)

Not gonna lie: this was a pretty nasty step.

 After a bulk of the paint was stripped, Husbo took on the task of sanding down the faces to a smooth finish.  With a palm sander, he used a rough grit sandpaper to knock off any other paint that was hanging on for dear life, and then went back over each of them with a fine grit paper to get a beautiful, smooth surface.

Ahh!  We're naked!

I gave a couple of the drawers a patching with a bit of stainable wood filler (b/c this piece is so old and had been banged up in some places.)  Once that was dried and sanded smooth, it was time to stain.

We picked a stain color that most closely matched our bed frame.  Might as well make it look intentional, right?  We used a minwax product that had a polyurethane sealer built in.  I try to be patient with things like this, but if I can cut out a step by buying a 2 for 1 product, I'm doing it.

After two thin coats, brushed on in the direction of the grain, we brought them into the guest room and let them cure for a couple days.  

I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I'd peek my head in to drool over them. 

So what about the body of the dresser?  Well luckily, we never had the intention of stripping/standing/staining that piece.  After the very long process of treating the flat, simple drawer fronts, we couldn't fathom how long and complicated doing that to the dresser would be.  Instead, it was going to get yet ANOTHER coat of paint.  

After a rough sand and wipe down, we started with an oil-based primer to give it some tooth.  (Note: you cannot paint acrylic paint over oil-based paint but you CAN paint it over oil-based primer.)

Sexy socks and shoes, honey.

While he did that, it had been a couple days, so I was going to finish off the drawers and prep the space for moving the piece back in.  I put the hardware back on (we bought a couple more knobs to replace the original handles that were on the center drawers) and then added a liner to the top row.  I'd had a yard of wallcovering from work that I'd wanted to do something with and thought it might be fun to line the insides of the drawers with it.

Here I am weighing the corners down to help the glue set up.   Tre chic.

One other task that had to be tended to was the wall BEHIND the dresser.  You see, when Nick and I were first married back in 2010, his band at the time went on a tour of the East coast for a week.  In my newleywed bliss, I thought it'd be fun to surprise him when he got back with a bedroom makeover that was more of a blend of our styles.  So I made pillows, I hung curtains, and I painted.  

Well confession time: even DIY energizer bunnies run out of steam.  We have a rather large master bedroom with tons of mouldings and trim, so I assessed the task before me and made a few executive decisions. One being, not to move the dresser or the mirror.  Besides weighing 4500 pounds and running the risk of it falling and trapping me underneath, it was after midnight on the day before he was going to return.   So I painted around it.
 

I ain't even ashamed.

So I needed to paint the wall.  I found the task rather amusing so it wasn't that big a deal.  Meanwhile, in dresser land and seven very thin coats of white paint later...(when you're painting white over black, even if you're using a primer, it take a while to get a complete full coverage)...we were done.

I apparently forgot to take a picture of that step so here's a filler pic:

Seven coats?!  Say whaaaa?

 

How many of you just skipped the rest of this blog to get to this point?  I hate when people don't show the before and after before I lose interest.  Let's skip ahead then:

 

BAM!

She's friggin' beautiful in my opinion.  We let the paint cure for at least 4 hours between coats and then a full 24 hours before bringing her back into our bedroom.  I really just put a few things on the top for this picture as I wanted it to be completely hardened and cured before messing anything up.  But oh...she was so worth the wait.   And here's a reminder of what we were dealing with before:

And then after:

The honeycomb mirror is from Ikea and I'd picked that up a couple months ago.  $14.99 Y'ALL.  I still need to find a new plant for the corner and I want to get a different laundry hamper now that I'm banning all black from our bedroom.  I've got a little cord management velcro I need to install to take care of that issue on the left but overall...a success.

And as far as the budget:

2 Paint Brushes:          $5

Primer:                      $10

Wood filler:            $3.50

Foam roller:           $6.50

Stain/Sealer:              $10

Quart of Paint:     $11.50

Honefoss Mirror:      $15

Grand Total: $61.50*

*Note: we had (2) $5 off coupons from Ace Hardware for joining their rewards program so I didn't count the tax on these purchases because it was mostly covered by discounts.

With the $80 I got from the mirror I sold off, the moral of this story is that we made $18.50 by doing this project.  Garth, that was a haiku!

Hambones Across America II

(Did you think we forgot about the blog?  Because we kinda did.)

Part Deux: The Mountain States 

After some major biscuit confusion at the Carson City Carls Jr. (aka Hardees), we hit the road. Destination: Salt Lake City. Have you ever driven across Nevada? Don't. There's nothing there. Highlights included Ethan wearing a Burger King crown (Yeah there's so little in Nevada that we ate at Burger King. It was not good.)...

That's KING Hambone, to you.

...and me pretending to be European - which consisted of tucking my t-shirt into my shorts. 

"Ja, hallo? Warum sind wir bei Burger King? Es gibt nichts in Nevada. Danke, Google Übersetzer!"

And have you ever wondered how many times Sirius XM could play Collective Soul's '93 hit "Shine" in a day? Because it's like 6. I'm not complaining.

Besides that, it was hour after hour of this:

It's a lot worse than this picture.

Ok, the best part about this drive was right after we crossed into Utah and reached the Bonneville Salt Flats State Park. Just a giant dried up salt lake bed. All kinds of land speed records were set here. You know those commercials where there's nothing around and a bunch of cars are driving in formations? Yeah that's Bonneville Salt Flats. Despite Carla getting up to 101 on the interstate, we felt it was necessary to drive on the Salt Flats and see how fast a VW CC with 4 people and a lot of luggage could go (Jeans McQueen hit 117). You don't feel like you're going super fast - you feel like you want a lot more control of the car, because driving on salt is weird.

That squealing you hear is not a tortured animal, but Sarah, who upon watching the video later does not recall making said noises.

We used up all our gas on the Salt Flats and wisely decided to push on to SLC. Except then the gas warning light came on. And there were no gas stations showing up on the GPS until... well, we got pretty worried. We finally got to one, then made it to Salt Lake City in time for cupcakes. Sweet Tooth Fairy. They had a sign up for Cupcake Wars flavors that was TWO MONTHS OLD - tease. Also apparently a chain out there, so Sarah equated it in her head as "Gigi's of the West and most likely overrated" (it was).

How does she stay so thin with all these cupcakes? She's a magician. Also, a lot of dancing.

Thanks to some facebook.com suggestions, we ate at a really delicious Mexican place called Red Iguana.

The Killer Mexican Food?

Our waiter really loved pronouncing the Spanish words. Made them seem more exotic. ¡Hor-cha-ta! Anyway, Salt Lake City seemed like a pretty cool place. Saw a bunch of stuff from the '02 Winter Olympics - in which we finished 2nd in medal count, BTW. By "we" I mean 'Merica. Number one? A certain nation with great policies on naming children. Keep reading...

The next morning we're off to my Aunt Melissa's house in Redstone, CO. Driving through most of Utah wasn't a lot different than driving through Nevada. Well it was a lot prettier. Stopped at this mountain lake for the girls to frolick.

They got dizzy fast.

We had lunch in this tiny little town at a drug store soda fountain. Behind the counter was an interesting book - Sweet Land of Bigamy. Of thee I sing! I was taking a picture of some weird incense "flavors" and and a dude who was working there apparently made some comment about goosing me to get me out of the way. Yeah maybe Utah is kinda weird.

At some point in the afternoon, we started talking about kids names. We don't have kids yet. Neither do the Hambones. But it's fun to think up names. We were talking about a lot of ridiculous names, gender neutral names, etc. For some reason, Carla looks up that in Germany, names not only have to be distinctly male or female, but they can't cause any type of negative effect on the child's life (Freakonomics anyone?). My response to this was, "Germany's got it goin' on." And they really do. I mean, besides that ugly period from 1933-1945. That was a pretty bad time.

Around the Colorado border, we made a little stop at Dinosaur National Park.

We totally pulled over and took this picture as we left Utah.  Tricky.

Barefoot Contessa didn't know there were dinosaurs in North America. From the visitor center, we took a half mile trolley ride up to a building they basically built over a huge mass of exposed fossils. Pretty cool. You could even touch them and stuff. For some brilliant reason, we thought it'd be fun to hike back down (someone told us there'd be some exposed fossils along the trail - there was one). About five minutes in we realize hiking in the 100 degree desert wasn't our best idea of the trip. Somehow I sweat the least... maybe because I immediately went shirtless. But also because humidity is the bane of my existence. 80 in NC and I'm soaked, 100 in the desert and nothing.

He's STILL wearing jeans, folks.  In the 100 degree desert.  (Notice one leg is hiked though.)

A few hours into Colorado and Ethan is not at all impressed with the Rockies. Even after ending up on an unpaved state highway! We get to Redstone just in time to meet my aunt for dinner at the Redstone Inn. Well Taco's got a thing against eating in hotels... but the Redstone Inn might as well have been taken straight out of the Alps. Really good food - I had trout for the first time, which I had previously avoided because it feels a bit cannibalistic. Get it? Trout - Trout Man? Jokes!

We didn't go swimming. But we did eat under those umbrellas.
Photo credit: Interweb

It was dark as we traveled up the mountain to Melissa's house. Saw lots of deer. No bears, though apparently one and her cub had been hanging out in Melissa's neighborhood. I had to assure Sarah we were off-grade enough that the bears wouldn't get in to open the window overnight (bears are excellent climbers). When we got up the next morning and looked outside, we didn't really want to keep going on our road trip. Melissa does a lot of traveling, but it was easy to see why they chose this as their home base. I just got an email from her this morning inviting us back, we're going to have to take her up on that!

Why is it called Redstone?

We decided to take the super long way to Denver - through a little place called Aspen. (Made an inordinate amount of Dumb & Dumber jokes while there.)  Had lunch there, and then over Independence Pass. There were no guardrails. There should have been. The views were much better than the interstate, and it was pretty cold at the top due to elevation.

The best part about this stop? Outhouses. 

After going down over 6,000ft, at the base of the Rockies, we reach the Mile High City - Denver. Denver was founded in 1858 by settlers traveling west who got to the Rocky Mountains and said, "AW HELL NO." I can see Denver being a pretty cool place, maybe we just hit the wrong places that night. Rain certainly didn't help. The next morning we hit up this place called Snooze for some breakfast.

This better be worth it.

There was a 30 minute wait. On a Thursday. At 10:00am. Either no one in Denver works, or we fell for a tourist trap. Whatever though, it was worth the wait. Before we left town though... yep. Cupcakes.

Sarah's new cupcake-bff worked at Big Fat Cupcakes, which is in no way a misnomer. We got 4 enormous ones - which contained both the best AND worst cupcakes of the trip. The worst was an orange push-pop flavored beast which didn't even get finished. The best was a chocolate cake with Andes mints melted inside and a mint icing. Much like peanut butter and chocolate, this is a good gauge of a cupcake shop. Big Fat Cupcakes hit a home run with this one.*

*Altitude makes it a lot easier to hit home runs at Coors Field, kick field goals at Mile High Stadium, etc. I'm not saying this applies to cupcake home runs, but this applies to cupcake home runs.

There is a part III to this trip.  In theory.

Outkast would be proud.

I'll preface this by saying I am in NO way addicted to Pinterest.  I definitely use it from time to time but if I started to pin everything I loved on there, it would incite a pretty intense anxiety attack from the amount of unfinished projects and ideas that I never got around to actually doing.  You see, I'm a DIYer.  Not a PIYer (Pin it Yourself).  So for every few things I pin, I make sure I actually DO one of those things.  

I got this image from Pinterest.  The irony is thick, I know.

Anyone who has ever perused the site has probably seen the hundreds of "recipes" for DIY Laundry detergent.  With incredible claims of saving crap tons of money and many of them going the all natural route, I made this idea one of my super exclusive pins.  (If my pins had a wardrobe, they'd wear Members Only jackets.)

What's odd is that I've not ONCE thought about how much money I spend on detergent in a year (I imagine it's not more than the average American) and I don't go too far out of my way for the natural, organic route (sorry treehugging amigos).  But this seemed easy enough and would kill two birds with one stone.  (Husbo would be upset if I didn't encourage you to Google "Nick Thune Killing Two Birds joke."  It's worth it.)

After a Saturday afternoon trip to Target (and then Walmart)...here's my loot:

Update: I didn't use the small container of Oxi-Clean.  Photobombing bastard.

1. (1) four pound twelve ounce box of Borax (Found in Laundry aisle)
2. (3) bars of Fels-Naptha soap (Found in Laundry aisle)
3. (1) four pound box of arm & hammer baking soda (Baking aisle)
4. (1) box of arm & hammer super washing soda (Laundry aisle)
5. (1) large container of Oxi Clean Free (Laundry aisle)
The only semi-difficult part was that the soap bars needed to be grated.  Ready for an action shot?

Go Steelers!

It took a little while to grate the three bars (Husbo helped) and afterwards, it looked like grated cheddar cheese.  Since I've been known to eat an entire bag of cheese cubes in one sitting, it was a good thing it smelled so much like soap.

Make your own taco bar, anyone?

From there, I just mixed all the other ingredients into a large 5 gallon bucket (this recipe makes about 3-1/2 to 4 gallons).  

I have bigger plans to help organize our laundry closet/pantry/storage catch all, so I thought I'd give myself a head start by storing my new concoction in a fancy pants container.  I bought a simple glass jar from Target and with some leftover chalkboard paint I had lying around, I went to work.

Here's a quick hint for painting this stuff onto glass: scuff up the glass a little with some sandpaper and wash it with a warm cloth to get all the dust off.  It will help the paint adhere better.  Tape off the area to be painted and you're off!

It takes 2-3 coats to get good coverage on glass but I always wrap my paint brush in a plastic bag between coats so I don't have to wash it between applications and it doesn't start to harden up or get gross.  Easy. Breezy. Beautiful. Cover Girl.

And here she is filled up and labeled.  (Which, if you think about it, is kind of stupid because I'm relatively certain that even with my horribly awful memory, I think I could remember what I put in this container.  But I'm a big fan of adding "jewelry" to any project.)

Hello, lova.

I wanted to wait to write about it until I made sure it worked. If it left our clothes smelling like a sweaty gym bag or made weird splotchy stains, what kind of endorsement would that be?   So yesterday,  we did 3 loads (I used 2 tablespoons per load b/c you can use less with this stuff).  Verdict: amazeballs.

It smells really great (but not too strong) and left our clothes scent-free but fresh.  They say it works fine in HE washers (which we don't have) and on sensitive skin (which we also don't have but I can see why that would be true).  We do, however, use cold water for everything but the whites.  It worked well in both temperatures.

After I did a little math on the subject, figuring the total cost of the ingredients and the amount that I made, it equates to about $0.08/load.  Compared to the brands we were using before, we were spending 2-3 times that per load, wasting the plastic containers and purchasing every 4 months or so.  This should last us well over a year.  

Is it going to save us enough to buy our own private bungalow on the coast of the North Shore?  No.  But it kept me busy for an afternoon and considering I would have otherwise gone out and bought an amazing pair of "fall is almost here" boots, this project did actually save us some money.

*Note: the title of this blog post is an ode to Outkast's 2001 megahit "So Fresh, So Clean."  Even though I'm happy to overuse a catchphrase or joke until it makes people groan, 10 years is my limit for outright usage.  But I'll imply it all day long.