This weekend we deceided to give the fireplace a well deserved facelift. The old look was nice but we need to move this place into the 21st century.

First I bought some joint compound and fill up the deep grove to smoothen out the depth between the brick and mortar. This had to dry for 24 hours, after that I reapplied since cracks accured once the compound dried out. Waited another 24 hours.

After everything was dry I applied a primer ( I prefer Bulls Eye 1-2-3 primer) let that dry for a few hours and applied another coat.

In the meanwhile I took the fireplace doors apart and bought a semi gloss black spray (rustoleum) and spray-painted the fireplace doors a nice and even black.

Once  the primer dried I applied a lighter color of the wall color (Valspar Laura Ashley 208) and deceided last minute to paint the wall behind the mantel the same color.

And the most fun part, updating the todo list.

Finally after months of talk we started to move forward on “Project Basement. Called my buddy Alex that we started taking apart the basement. I initially demo’d the bathroom to see what was underneath all that horrible tile.

Once that was done Alex came and I showed him the floorplan (floorplan changed quite a bit and i’ll will upload the new version soon) and my ideas. He started framing the main room while I started to frame the “bedroom” and closet. We also created a new opening to the laundryroom, this will be framed in with a door.

I have some problems with Wordpress so all photos are here.

Once we are done with framing we will start with the bathroom and have a look at electrial.

1. First I started with cleaning out the room
2. Disconnected the radiator and moved it outside the room.
3. Patched holes and cracks as good as possible with wood filler. (whatever brand)
4. Sand floor. I started with a medium-grit paper, since thats the one I had laying around. Next time I would use a more heavier grit paper.
5. Vacuumed twice!
6. Apply primer. I used two coats of Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3. This was good since it filled up the cracks in between the wood.
7. Waited 24 hours. I wanted to sand once more but after two coats of primer the floor felt smooth enough.
8. Apply one coat of paint. After a few days of heavy discussions I made the decision to have them painted black, Behr “Raven” Black. I used a brush for the corners and a roller for the rest.
9. Waited 24 hours and installed the molding around the baseboard. Once that was done I painted the baseboard and molding Swiss Coffee (Vaspar)… in the process I painted all the molding around the windows and doors too.
10. Waited 24 hours and painted another coat of “Raven” black.
11. I had some leftover Hammered Silver (Rustoleum) and painted the radiator silver.

The floor took 2 days to completly dry. I’m very happy with the endresult, a modern, clean looking room… now I need to buy some decorations!

You take it apart!

We had two options, repair or buy a new one. Since we are trying to save money we wanted to see if repairing it was an option. I called two repairguys and none would return my phonecalls. Frustrated I went to the basement, yelled at the machine and start taking it apart. Halfway thru I googled washer repairs and one guy has simple photo instruction on how to check several parts.

It came down to two parts the agitator and the motor. Checked the agitator which looked fine. Went a step further and took the washer bottom apart.

The connection piece to the motor was warn out and needed to be replace, a simple $12 plastic piece i picked up at Sears.

Placed the whole washer back together, pushed the power button and.. voila washer works even better then before!

So after a few months of silence we are back and ready to start with new house projects.

First things first, to add more privacy to our living room I  frosted the frontdoor and sunroom. Looked arouncame to the conclusion that IKEA had the cheap simple frosting material called AMORF.

On my way to find frosting material i saw that Homedepot had a outside clearance sale. I went back and saw a nice ceilingfan for 1/3 of its original price. The old ceilingfan in the kitchen needed to be updated and was bothering me already the whole year.

After that i did some cleanup in the backyard, since the previous owners left all kinds of construction debri.