Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Free Graphics Wednesday #20

Wow, I’m just so busy right now with my kitchen renovation going on but I wanted to take the time to share my free graphics with you again this week.  Enjoy.

birdsflowers


card


card2



dogbasket


gibsonlady

This lovely lady looks like a Gibson girl to me. Here she is twice more with subtle differences.

gibsonlady1



gibsonlady2



jesus

And I leave you this week with Jesus the Lamb holding a lamb.
Wishing each and everyone of you wonderful rest of the week. Princess




Wednesday
Success U

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Kitchen Renovation: Installing A Farmhouse Sink

Hello blogger friends! Today I’m going to share how to install a farmhouse/apron sink into stock kitchen cabinets.

I was so excited when my sink arrived via FedEx freight.  Here it is still in the box.

sink copy


It is a Whitehaus fireclay, double bowl, farmhouse apron front sink.  Isn’t she beautiful? If you are interested I bought her here.


sink1 copy


This sink was one of the splurges of my renovation.  I had three splurges, the sink, tin ceiling tiles, & my new refrigerator.

Now I have stock cabinets that were not made to hold up a 120 lb. sink.  Yes, I said 120 lbs! Remember the before picture?

kitchen2sink

For the sink to fit we had to cut the front down and reinforce the cabinet.  See the arrow at the left those are inserts that just pop out and the arrow at center is about the point we cut them down to, maybe a little lower.

Supplies needed:
Hammer
nails
12 to 14 feet of 2x4
wood filler
liquid nails or wood glue
miter saw

After you have cut out the cabinet front you need to measure the length needed for each 2x4 brace and then cut them out followed by measuring for the boards that will lay flat across the braces and cutting and nailing them in.

support copy


This picture shows where we inserted 2x4’s at the front corner and back corner on each side & the ones laying horizontally across the top. We used liquid nails on the ends of the boards before nailing them in to make the joints doubly strong.


support1 copy

We also put one at the center front as you can see here.  I hope to be able to break down the original doors, cut them down to size, and re-assemble them.  If that does not work I will order replacement doors.

After the braces were in we found some help and set the sink in place.

sink2

I just LOVE it?  lol I never thought I’d be in love with a sink.
The dimensions of the sink are: length (from front to back) 19 7/8”, width 32 3/4”, and the height is 10” which is the part I love most as they are so deep.  I just hate a sink with no depth to it don’t you?

We are now working on my butcher block counter tops and they are fairly time consuming to construct.  I will be posting a separate in depth explanation of how they are made, but for now I thought I’d leave you with a tease of one of the smaller pieces that go next to the stove.  This one I plan to leave unfinished for food preparation the others will be stained and sealed with polyurethane.

butcherblock


I’ll have more instructional posts soon.  Including, of course, making the butcher block counter tops, painting an appliance, installing snap-lock, tin ceiling tiles, upgrading basic cabinets to designer cabinets, and installing Allure flooring.

Have a great week and don’t forget if you haven’t already sign up with Linky Follower, Networked blogs, or via e-mail as Google Friend Connect has already gone away for some bloggers and may be going away for good.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Free Graphic Wednesday #19

Hello blogger friends.  I’m very busy right now but couldn’t pass up sharing my graphics this week.

Please read the Disclosure Page. To save an image just right click and choose “save as”.

lady

A lovely lady

lady1

lady2

And finally with a canvas finish.  I just think she is really pretty don’t you?


flowers

Lovely Bouquet

flowers2



flowers3



sundaycouple


Here’s a couple out for a Sunday Stroll.


sundaycouple1



apple

This is obviously an apple lol.



floralcross

For Easter a cross with dogwood blooms.


amenones



amenones2

Anemones & Dragonflies


Thanks for stopping by and I hope you can use these images in art work or scrapbooking.

signature

Monday, February 27, 2012

Kitchen Renovation: How to Remove A Popcorn Ceiling

Hello friends one weary blogger here to share how to remove a popcorn ceiling.  I just removed mine from the kitchen this weekend with my sweet daughters help.

First, you need to be sure that your popcorn ceiling has no asbestos in it and if it does I would turn this project over to the professionals.  Its just not worth the risk to do it yourself.

Supplies

water bottle
scraper
mask
goggles
lots of drop cloths
and if you really want to stay clean-- a space suit

Cover all furniture and cabinets with plastic drop cloths, sheets, or whatever you want to protect everything.  Also, if you are smarter than me you will move everything out and cover your floors also, and then your clean up will be much easier. Sigh.


If you are planning to just paint your ceiling I would not recommend using the water bottle because if you use to much or you scrape to hard you are going to damage your sheet rock and cause more work in the long run.





If you are going to cover your ceiling the first step is to spray your ceiling in one to two foot areas with plain water.  (I put water in an old Greased Lightening bottle).  This softens the popcorn material (what is that stuff anyway?), cuts back on the powder residue from spreading over your entire home, and makes it easier to remove.



After you let it set for awhile start scraping it off.  It comes off very easily.  Continue those two steps until you have removed all of the finish. By the way we removed all the vents and light fixtures after I took this picture. 



When you get through you will look like this:



Hah! If I had on a darker T-shirt you would really be able to see how dirty I was. lol

Now if you were my daughter you looked like this:






Look at her! The hair is still in place, she hardly had any powder in her hair, and her make-up was still on! And she did just as much as I did and in this picture was going back around and touching up a few spots. Thanks sweetie I love you.

By the way I recommend a scraper like I used it really worked a lot better than a plain one.  It is made by W.M. Zinsserman, Co. Inc. I don’t know where my husband picked it up at but there are probably other similar ones out there.




Here is what your floors will look like with about one and one-half inches of popcorn ceiling on them.




It took us about one hour to remove the popcorn from a 10’ by 26’ ceiling and another hour and one-half to clean up.

The best way to clean up if you don’t cover your floors is to sweep up the majority, then vacuum, and finally mop a couple of times.  If you mop before you vacuum you will be mopping forever.

Now I just decided today (please don’t tell my daughter) to use real tin ceiling tiles because I found a wonderful dealer online and realized I could afford them.  You see that’s what I wanted to begin with but I was going to put up the fake glue up kind and needed the ceiling removed.  Oh well sorry Misty. Embarrassed smile

Here’s a sneak peek.

280208408035388101_KCByo8Fg_b

This is my pattern


280208408035388094_vBOOHXNg_b


and this is the color “Bright White Satin”.  I ordered them from American Tin Ceilings click here to go to their website.

We’ll that’s it and it really wasn’t all that hard just tedious and messy.  Hope this helps you in a future project and be sure and come back to see what’s happening next in my kitchen.




Friday, February 24, 2012

Kitchen Renovation: Walls and Cabinets

Hello, blogland friends.  I’m just stopping in to give you an update on how the kitchen remodel is going.

It’s a big, big mess and driving me nuts but getting done slowly and surely. The upper walls are painted with two coats of white eggshell/satin paint that I already had and the bead board is up and has a thin coat of primer.

beadboard
First we lightly sanded the bead board as it is rough in spots.


beadboard1


Once it was nice and smooth my helper put it up for me.  You can buy this at Lowe’s or Home Depot already cut to the 32” that you need or you may buy the full sheets and they will cut them for you which is a little cheaper.


walls


You apply the base trim first and the bead board slides into the notch at back of trim. The top trim is made to slide in and be flush to the wall as a regular trim would stick out further and not look right.  To save money buy the pro packs of trim as they are almost half the price as buying the trim by individual piece.  I think a single eight foot piece of trim was like $1.15 a foot and the pro pack was sixty feet for $35.00


walls1


At the time I took these pictures we did not have the any of the other trim up yet.


walls2

As I said before I painted the upper walls with two coats of an eggshell paint that I already had bought at Wal Mart. The bead board and trim will be painted with Annie Sloan "Paris Gray".

You might ask, “But Peggy I thought you were painting with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint why are you priming?”  My answer would be for two reasons. First, it’s a kitchen. I want it to be very durable and ASCP is not cheap and having a base coat will cut down on how much chalk paint I have to use.  Plus…well my paint isn’t in yet and I’m chomping at the bit to get started! Smile


greased

My kitchen cabinets are the stock oak from Lowe's about ten years ago.  We have the doors all off and I am cleaning them with Greased Lightning which is great for removing grease and yucky stuff.


doors


We numbered them as we removed them (that is what the blue tape is in the hole) and after cleaning them I filled in all of the holes as I was not going to use the same knobs and handles.  I then gave them a light sanding.


doors1


doors2


I then applied some Kiltz primer to all of them and I recommend a foam brush as they apply the primer smoothly and you can just throw them away so no clean up.  Be sure to catch any drips but since I’m using ASCP I’m not worried about everything being super smooth or thickly covered.

Another thing I love about Annie Sloan is that it sticks to just about anything and you can just slop it on and it still looks great.

Okay, my next update will probably be sharing how we are making the butcher block style counter tops for one-tenth of the cost of the special ordered ones.

If you have any questions or suggestions I would be glad to hear from you I love to get comments.  Until next time ya’ll have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.
signature
P. S. If you thought I was going to share my cabinets with all the doors off let’s just say I’m not willing to share ALL my dirty little secrets just some of them. Princess


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