Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

I gave my parents framed pictures of Brad and me as one of their Solstice gifts this year. Perhaps it seems less narcissistic if you know that they have been asking for a new picture for years. The one my Dad has on his desk at work is my senior yearbook photo from high school! That was a very long time ago.

I wanted to give the photos to them in nice frames, but of course I didn’t want to just go out and buy them. Digging through my piles and piles of old cheap frames (as you do) I came across two mismatched IKEA Ribba frames from my old apartment, and had a vision of updating them by blocking off patterns in glossy and flat finishes.

What’s awesome about this is that I was able to do it with materials that I already had on hand so the only cost of this gift was $0.38 to get the pictures printed at our local CVS. It was all pretty common materials – paint samples, polycrylic in gloss, painters tape. The only unusual item was liquid gold leaf left over from my thrift store lamp project, but that could have easily been substituted for just another color of paint.

The first thing I did was clean the frames and separate all the extra stuff – glass, hanging hook, mat – and put it away somewhere I would have to rack my brain and search to be able to find them when I was done. Then I covered everything with a coat of primer. Working on a gross-ty old house, I’ve found that sometimes it is best to do a coat of primer before patching things up, because it exposes all the defects that are sometimes hard to see when you start.

I probably would have used spray paint if the season was warmer. Instead, I dug through the many paint samples that we’ve tried out for our walls, and picked out a color for each of them that they would like. I chose a charcoal gray for my father and a very light lavender for my mother. Much cheaper and less wasteful to use what you already have on hand!

I brushed this on, and painted the backs, as well, because I don’t know if they’ll put these where you can see both sides, like on a desk or something.

Next, I wanted to block off patterns for the liquid gold leaf. I racked my brain for what I could use to cut strips of tape down to nice uniform shapes, since I don’t have one of those fancy, self-healing cutters matts that I see the real bloggers using. A flat surface where I could lay it all out, but wouldn’t mind if I got it sliced up from the X-ACTO knife… like a board… for cutting things on.

(I’m not making a joke. It legitimately took me a little while to figure this one out.)

I used a cutting board. I laid out my tape in long strips and used the frames to mark their own length. I then marked even measurements right onto the tape and cut out small diamond shapes down the center.

I carefully placed the strips down the side of each frame, smoothing as I went to get a good seal. This left a row of diamonds down the center and two exposed stripes on either side.

I covered the tape with another coat of the base color to help seal those edges, and then put on two coats of liquid gold leaf. I carefully painted the inside edge, also. I like the shine of the gold in this project, but it would have worked just as well with another color of paint.

Next, I wanted to create some variation in the finish by blocking off some areas from the glossy polycrylic. I cut some more strips of tape in a chevron pattern (this IS a blog, after all) and placed them between the diamonds. Because the stripes along the side had been made just by placing a strip of tape down the center, my little chevrons fit in there perfectly.

Oooh, I like the phrase “my little chevrons.” When Sage and I finally come out with our DIY-blog themed country music album we’ll totally have a song called My Little Chevrons. It’ll play just after our hit single, That Bloglovin’ Blog.

But I digress.

I also decorated the front of the frames with a few triangles.

I then put on two coats of polycrylic and let it dry overnight. Peeling off the tape was difficult, as it attempted to take off extra poly or paint along with it. But I took it off carefully and only had to patch up a few places. I suppose that’s why people invest in real stencils.

Here is how the finish looks when they are all done:

It was tough to pick up the impact of the variation in finish in a photo, and it was also my first day of using my “big kid camera,” a DSLR. So these pictures don’t do them justice. In person the glossy-flat contrast looks pretty cool, and adds depth and interest without competing with the pictures, as a more decorated frame could have.

It makes me want to try out glossy-flat blocking on other items. I have the tendency to want to add color and pattern to everything in the house, so this might help me to keep things a little simpler.

Thanks for reading!

(Sharing at Creative Craft Sunday)

We were not originally in the market for a fixer-upper. We thought we’d find ourselves a nice condo or small single-family home that maybe needed a little repainting. Or maybe it was a just a tiny bit outdated, but we would tackle that over time.

But then we realized that we actually DON’T LIKE SHARING, so a condo was out. And none of the single family homes we could afford had room for us to grow. So when we came across a three-bedroom fixer-upper in a great town right near our families… we were ready to think outside of the box and take on the project.

Oh, what we didn’t know then…

That was greatly helped by the fact that, although there was a lot that we wanted to change, the house was livable. The walls and roof were all in one piece, the heat worked, the water ran. What more can you ask for?

I’m looking forward to sharing a lot of the progress we’ve made, including our “big” initial renovation. At some point, I’ll also write up all of the precautions that we took before making the purchase to understand the full scope of what we were taking on. At first glance the investment looked pretty scary, so we spent a lot of time and money on many many different inspections, and a lot of time in negotiations.

And you’ll have to bear with the photos in this post. When we bought the house I had no intention of sharing it on the internet, so I was only taking pictures with my cell phone to remember it myself. I wasn’t trying to get every angle or every detail, and I certainly wasn’t worried about those small extras like focusing the camera.

Here is the house as we first saw it:

Here we have broken seals that made most of our windows practically opaque. See all that fog? That’s what happens when the seals don’t work.

Broken Seal - Plaster & Disaster - via and (c) FreeFoto.com

Get a job, seal. (image via FreeFoto.com)

Here is the floor plan we started with:

There were a ton of small, boxy rooms which did not flow well for us. To go from the kitchen to the living room we had to wind around through the dining room or through the hallway. (And, let’s be honest, we mostly eat in the living room in front of the TV, so this was a real pain.)

The wooden porch in the front was rotting, which was starting to cause damage to the house. It wasn’t used because the driveway has a pathway to the kitchen door, but not to the front porch. However, it blocked a lot of the light from the big windows in the living room and dining room.

And the color choices didn’t help with the light situation. Here is the view of the living room from the dining room, with the front door partially hidden in the left of the image:

That shaggy, blue-green, smelly carpet ran through most of the house. And the walls were various shades of gray and beige making everything look darker and dirtier than necessary.

The windows were vinyl replacement windows, so an extra few inches of gray framing blocked even more light. And with their broken seals they leaked a ton, causing a cold breeze.

You can’t see in the picture, but the walls are not plaster or drywall; instead, they are made from a material called luan board, which is like a really thin plywood or a wooden cardboard. Over the years it had warped so you could see cracks where the boards came together, and some of the walls bowed in different ways. It was also harder to patch holes made from hanging art, so it was pocked or still rocking the old nails and hooks.

And this picture also doesn’t show the ceiling fan, which came right out because it was probably not a good idea with our 8 foot ceilings. You can see the wires from where it was removed.

Here is the view of the dining room from the living room, with a “disapproving Brad” for scale:

The dining room was tiny, with hardly enough space for a table for four. All the built-in storage (usually a good thing!) felt really imposing because it was all around you in a small space. The storage was also in terrible shape, with painted hinges, drawers that stuck, doors that didn’t stay closed, and shelves that were unstable.

The one window in this whole front area that got good light – that east-facing window in the back of the picture above – was small and off-center, and also had a broken seal. (Dammit, seal.) All of the finishings were really cheap – builders-grade lights, flat vinyl baseboards with peeling paint, boxy window cornices, and “industrial” wall grates.

The kitchen deviated from the established color scheme:

In here, we had a vinyl floor, laminate counter, laminate backsplash, and walls all in different shades of yellow. To be fair, the orange curtains helped pull it together. The room was really small, because a looming yellow wall cut it off from the rest of the house.

We also have handles in the middle of the upper cabinet doors. We didn’t notice that in our first walk-through, but once you do you can’t unsee it. It drives me absolutely crazy. Why?!

But the problems were not just cosmetic. The faucet didn’t work well, and the dishwasher leaked constantly, causing rot under the floor. Some of the veneer was coming off of the cabinets, and the laminate counters were falling apart in places.

Also, none of the outlets were GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) outlets, which basically means that we were a lot more likely to get electrocuted if something went wrong here. Nowadays GFCI outlets are required in all places where there is water, like bathrooms, kitchens, and basements, but apparently that wasn’t the case when this house was done.

The hallway resumed the standard color scheme:

This is the “main drag” that runs down the center of our house and connects nearly all the rooms. It was super dark and depressing. Beyond the fact that it has no direct access to natural light it was only lit by two dim recessed fixtures on either side. Even in the daytime it was very dark in the middle.

This is where all the various shades of paint used in the house came together. In the hallway alone, we had six different shades of gray and beige. In a few places, we even changed color right in the middle of a piece of trim. You can also see our shiny brass doorknobs, painted-over brass hardware, and cheap hollow-core doors.

The carpet was pretty beat-up, and was creased in some places. You could also hardly open that door at the end of the hallway because it dragged across the carpeting.

The bathroom was one of the better spots:

The vinyl floor is a neutral pattern that mimics tile, and while the vanity is made fully out of beat-up laminate, at least it is white. The tile looks like nice white tile in this picture, but it is actually a deep salmon-pink that was coated in white enamel many years back. You can see some places where it has cracked and peeled, but overall it is in okay shape.

But don’t get me started on that ceiling…

I have many feelings about the bathroom ceiling…

…

Maybe we should just move right along. I’ll do a post on that in the future.

All three bedrooms are about the same size:

Up front, across from the kitchen, was a room was so green you could film a move in it and set it anywhere. Even the doors and closet were painted green to match. But it has a big window and hardwood floors – even though the pretty wide-board pine is punctuated by a big stripe of some other type of wood entirely. This is the room that I took over to be my office/dressing room.

The room we chose to make our “master” bedroom has the only south-facing window in the house and real hardwood floors. Still, it is pretty small, and we’re only able to fit a bed, bedside tables, and one dresser in the space. We also had to do something about the vinyl replacement windows and cornices.

This last bedroom smelled awful, with something weird coming up from the brown carpet. I still have no idea what it was. It smelled like death and toxic chemicals. It has only one window that opens to the outside, and another that overlooks the three-season porch in the back. It is also the only room with crown molding and real wood baseboards – but of course they were painted several different colors.

So, now we’ll move along to the three-season porch:

This room has its plywood under floor exposed, which in a rare stroke of decorating genius and foresight is painted this year’s Pantone color of the year. So it is very current and trendy.

It is also quite musty, and is not insulated or heated beyond the wood-burning stove.

This space was built with three windows on either side, but no windows facing south to the back-yard, where you find the best light and view. It is a major missed opportunity that we hope to rectify down the line.

Finally, the basement:

Here we have a lot of space, relatively high ceilings, laundry, a utility sink, an extra room framed out, and also a bonus bathroom (installed without notifying the town, apparently, but fortunately now grandfathered in for us). It has a door out to the garage. The furnace, water heater, and oil tank are, in the words of our home inspector, “fully depreciated in value.” We’re just hoping that they can hold out until we make the switch over from oil to natural gas, which we want to do soon.

I think there is a ton of potential in this basement, but with so much work to do on the rest of the house it will have to wait for a good long time. The stairs to the basement are also quite treacherous – narrow, steep, and low – so we’ll need to do something about that if we want to make the basement good living space in the future.

If you’re still here, thanks for looking at all these ugly old phone-camera photos! This house has so much potential but it is kind of hard to see it in these pictures.

For a sneak-peak at the progress, you can check out my house tour, where I’ve put up a few more recent shots. This is after a renovation, decorating, and a whole lot of DIY efforts. The tour is pretty sparse now, but I’ll be adding more and more as I do some posts on all the work we’ve done. So stay tuned!