How’s It Hanging?

We’ve been bad at updating lately. It’s not that we haven’t been chipping away on projects — it’s just that most of what we’re working on is in progress. Plus who really wants to see pictures of us plastering for the 23,408,324th time? Snoozefest. The things we’re working on right now aren’t super exciting, but whatever, we’re going to post ‘em anyway. Starting with the one project that we fiiiiinally just finished and are thrilled with.

Remember the vintage lighting fixture we found in a northern Pennsylvania thrift shop? It used to look like this:

It looked like this momentarily:

And then this:

After that, it got a serious facelift:

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a local specialty lamp store and picked up all of the parts we needed to wrap this project up because we were in a big hurry to finish up this project. This place ended up being waaaaay overpriced. We got a ceiling cap, 2 feet of chain, some silk electrical cord, and a socket for about $50. Blurgh — not great considering we paid $50 for the actual fixture itself. But we did save a ton of time by not waiting for things to be shipped to us.

First order of business: make the different parts match the fixtures.

We used the same oil-rubbed bronze spray paint that we used on the pendant itself. The ceiling cap looks so much better in ORB than glossy black.

We decided not to paint the chain and socket because we liked the way they looked:

The chain in old, so it has an aged, rusty look that we loved. And the socket is brass — not shiny, tacky, ’80s brass, but dull, aged brass. So we left it as is.

We threaded the silk wire through the chain, then connected the chain to the pendant:

Once the socket was wired up, here’s how the pendant looked:

And here’s how it looks today:

We weren’t sure whether we would hang the fixture at the top of the staircase or the bottom — both areas had crappy old fixtures that needed replacement. We decided to go with the top of the staircase to add a little drama to an otherwise boring area.

Bam. Success. Check out the way the light plays on the walls around the fixture:

We haven’t decided what color we’ll be painting the walls, but we plan on taking the lighting pattern into account.

We went with a long Edison style bulb so we get a nice overall glow without getting blinded when we look at the fixture.

That’s it for our vintage lighting fixture project. We had two goals when we started searching for lighting for the hallway: 1) we wanted something unique that draws the eye up to showcase how ridiculously tall the ceilings are, and 2) we didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it. We think we nailed both goals.

The entire thing cost us a hundred bones — $50 for the fixture and $50 for the parts. We did a quick check on our last trip to Home Depot to see what a standard off-the-rack fixture of a similar size would cost. We couldn’t find out as big, but we did notice that a lot of the nicer looking fixtures were well above $100. And ours definitely brings more glam.

What do you think? Did we do this fixture justice?

How We Cut a Rug (Buying Custom Made Rugs on a Budget)

There are two things that we think are incredibly difficult to shop for: 1) curtains and 2) rugs. We have a hard time agreeing on patterns and colors. Rugs are especially hard for us because our old house has big, oddly-shaped rooms that require big, oddly-shaped rugs. Total budget busters.

A few weeks ago, we went rug shopping for our office and hallway. Here’s what we got:

The curvy diamonds remind us of some Moroccan patterned rugs we’ve seen at West Elm and Pottery Barn. For a rug this size, we were expecting to pay $500ish, but we we paid half that price. Why? Because this is not a rug. It’s carpet.

We went to a carpet store and asked if they could custom cut a rug for us. We picked this pattern, and they cut it down to size and did a binding edge with a matching fabric. Viola! Custom rug in a non-standard size for $250.

The texture reminds us of jute rugs, but it’s super soft. And really easy to vacuum, which is huge for us since our dogs are shedding like crazy.

Speaking of which… In case you’re wondering how our painted floors are holding up to 2 dogs, check it out:

Our floors went from smooth-and-glossy to scratched pretty much the day after we brought Margot home in December.

We’re OK with it since painting was always a temporary solution. Just thought we’d throw it out there for any dog owners who are considering painting their soft wood floors. All the more reason to throw down some rugs.

We were a little worried that the patterned rug would clash with our patterned curtains, but we like how they look together:

As The Dude would say, “That rug really tied the room together.”

In other office news, we painted the trim and sealed up the brick wall.

Here’s how the brick looked before sealing:

The dry brick was shedding even more than our dogs. We’d dust in the morning and by the evening, there would be a thick layer of red and white chalk all over the furniture and floors. We couldn’t keep up with the vacuuming and dusting, so we decided to paint the wall with a clear coat of masonry sealer. Here’s what it looked like after one coat:

It looks much less dry and pasty. The red of the brick pops more, and — yay! — it’s not shedding anymore. We’re not sure if we’re going to do a second coat because the first did such a great job.

Here’s how our desk is looking these days:

New notepad from Anthropologie:

Recycled leather pen holder:

New printer — this is only living on the desk temporarily until we figure out a better place for it:

The black dresser is also temporarily in the office until we find a better spot for it:

We still need to make frames for our art. The prints are just leaning against the wall for now. It’s starting to look pretty finished, huh?

Also looking finished: our hallway. We fiiiinally painted the trim and threw down a runner so it’s officially done.

We ordered a custom runner from the same carpet shop. It didn’t photograph well because it’s still all curly from being rolled up. We were too excited about sharing it to wait.

This runner looks a lot like jute from a distance, but when you look closer, it’s a tan and light blue pattern:

The 2′x12′ runner was also $250. We couldn’t find any runners this long in stores, so we thought it was a totally fair price. We’ll post better pictures in a few days when the rug has uncurled itself. Stay tuned for that. We’ll be back soon with more updates!

Hallway Cabinet

Remember that huge built-in cabinet for the hallway that Bradley’s been working on since before Christmas? Well, it’s fiiiinally done. The painting and installation took a few weekends, but the as soon as the paint cured, we put this sucker to work.

We won’t go into the details of how the installation went because the whole process was a long and complicated pain in the butt. Tools were thrown. Curses were muttered. Fist were wrenched. And, somehow, Bradley ended up jamming his finger and now has to grow out a (seriously gross) black fingernail. If anyone’s interested in the sexy, nerdy art of cabinet-making, we’re making a floating cabinet for the office. We can do a from-start-to-finish instructional post on that puppy. (And, um, the next cabinet won’t take 3 months to make — we promise.)

Here’s a shot of Bradley screwing the cabinet into the wall:

The silver stuff up top is the insulation. No more drafty hallway!

I’d love to share the color of the yellow paint we got for the inside of the cabinet, but I can’t:

Apparently a lot of colors are being discontinued from the Valspar lineup, and this yellow was one of them. The Lowe’s employee who mixed our paint told us she had to eyeball it. They ended up wasted 4 gallons of paint because the color was off — too mustard, too buttery, not bold enough, too bold — but finally, we ended up with a color that we were happy with.

It’s was like sunshine in a can. Whatever the color is, we’re smitten. We’re even considering doing a yellow-white-and-grey bathroom to match.

Here’s how the cabinet looks fully installed:

Notice the massive gap along the wall and ceiling?

That’s because the cabinet is perfectly level and the walls aren’t. The trick to taking a cabinet and turning it into a built in is painter’s silicone. Check out how it looks after:

We’ll eventually paint over the silicone with the same grey as the cabinet and walls. That way the silicone will completely blend in and become invisible.

We splurged on some really fancy hardware for the insides. It took a little finagling, but we adjusted the hardware so the doors line up perfectly with the panels on the sides.

Here’s how the sides look before we put the doors on:

And after the doors are one:

We got a bunch of white baskets from Lowe’s to keep stuff organized:

And that’s it! Our 3-month-long-pain-in-the-butt cabinet is complete.

We’re determined to get caught up on all those projects we never posted about. If we don’t, we’ll keep getting heckled by our friends and family on Facebook (way to lay on the guilt, guys!). So coming up tomorrow: our super easy DIY headboard. Stay tuned!

This is the cabinet that never ends.

Yes it goes on and on, my friends.

Bradley started working on it after Christmas, and it’s still not done. And, since I’ve been swamped with projects at work that have me working weekends and holidays, this cabinet has been 99% Bradley work. He’s been out in the (unheated) garage in sub-freezing temperatures every weekend trying to get this thing finished. I’m pretty sure he’ll cry tears of joy when this project is over, because it’s been quite an ordeal.

Did we mention this is the first cabinet Bradley’s ever made?

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, though. Bradley’s painting that sucker as I write this. We’ll install it next weekend. Before we get into cabinet talk, check out the floating shelves Bradley made for the office closet:

They’re cut to fit our funky, angled corner.

It’s currently our catchall for whatever doesn’t have a home at the moment, but eventually this closet will be storage for all those office supplies and paperwork we don’t need on a daily basis.

Now on to the big cabinet project…

Our bathroom has zero storage, so the plan is to make a big cabinet to hold towels, extra toiletries and Costco-sized packages of TP. (We talked all about it in this post from August.)

(Yipes, remember when that hallway looked like a tornado went through it?)

Since this is going to be a custom built-in, Bradley started by taking measurements and drawing plans. This is what he gave me to photograph:

Yeah. I don’t get it either. So I asked Bradley for a better explanation of what he was planning, and he gave me this:

Still don’t get it? Me neither. Here’s the gist of it:

• The cabinet will go from floor to ceiling (just over 9′ tall)
• It’ll have 3 doors.
• It will be built mostly out of MDF to keep the cost down.
• The outside of the cabinet will be plywood (more expensive than MDF, but also much more sturdy).

Bradley put together a shopping list and we headed to Home Depot to get our supplies:

This was right after our spending freeze ended, so Bradley was on cloud nine.

We went with birch plywood for the outside of our cabinet. The plan was to stain it white — that way we could stain it and get a bleached-white wood look. We got back home, and Bradley immediately started making cuts:

The inside of the cabinet will be made entirely out of MDF. MDF is not the sturdiest thing in the world. It’s fine for shelves, but the edges need to be reinforced. Bradley’s plan was to do solid wood edge-banding using some 3/4″ thick poplar. Solid wood edge-banding — I had no idea what this meant — is basically gluing a strip of wood on the face of the cabinet. Like a thicker, fancier veneer.

This is how Bradley did it:

1. He used a table saw to cut 3/4″ wide x 1/8″ thick strips of poplar.

2. Then he cut a strip down to the size of the MDF shelf. He left a little extra room on the ends.

3. He smeared glue along the front-facing edge of the MDF.

4. Then he placed the poplar strip on top of the glued edge.

5. And he applied masking tape to hold the strip tightly in place.

6. After that, he used a wet paper towel to gently wipe up excess glue. He let the glue dry for 4 hours in a warm room. (He dragged each shelf into the house, let it sit by the fireplace, then dragged it back out to the garage 4 hours later.)

7. Finally, he removed the tape and sanded the strip down flush with the MDF.

Part of the reason this cabinet took so long is that there are so many edges that needed to be faced with wood. After a few days, though, things started coming together and we had something that resembled a real cabinet:

Or two cabinets, rather. Bradley built it in two separate sections that can be taken apart. That way, we can carry this beast upstairs a little easier.

Bradley picked up some hardware to install shelves inside:

Then he went through the long process of making each shelf:

It’s hard to believe how much time actually went into each and every shelf. Cutting, gluing, cleaning, drying, sanding. We definitely have a better appreciation of how much work goes into custom cabinets.

Here’s Bradley putting on the doors:

And here’s how the cabinet looks when the doors are open:

And here’s how it looks when the doors are closed:

No visible hardware! We decided to go with European hinges so the hardware is all concealed inside the cabinet:

Bradley ordered these hinges through his source at work, but they sell something similar at Home Depot & Lowe’s.

Once the cabinet was ready for finishing, we dragged it upstairs to the master bedroom:

We removed all of the hardware and prepped the cabinet for painting:

As Bradley removed each hinge, he labeled the hardware and its coordinating slot:

That way we just just pop each hinge back in place and not have to worry about readjusting each one all over again.

Next up: staining our doors:

Bradley got this white stain through his finishing supplier from work. Here’s how it went on straight out of the can:

We’re not sure if it was the cold weather or just the brand, but this stain was super thick and gloppy. Right away, Bradley thought something didn’t feel quite right, but he kept going with the door:

This is how it looked when he finished:

Blurgh. It was definitely not the cool, bleached wood look we were going for. And it was super streaky and blotchy in some parts. So Bradley decided to thin out the stain and try again.

He mixed the stain with lacquer thinner and gave it another shot:

It was a huge improvement as far as color goes. This is more the white-with-wood-grain that we were looking for. But it was still really streaky. And — here’s the weird part — the streaks ran sideways.

You can barely make it out in the photos, but the streaks weren’t running with the grain of the wood. There was something funky going on with the wood itself. Whatever it was, we decided to put the kibosh on the staining idea and went with Plan B: paint.

We loved the way our white-on-the-outside / teal-on-the-inside dresser turned out, so we decided to do something similar for the cabinet. The outside will be the same soft grey as the hallway walls. But the insides will be a super bold, super cheerful yellow:

I. Love. Yellow. I’ve been trying to talk Bradley into yellow paint pretty much from the moment we signed the papers and got the keys. Bradley’s a little color-phobic. Maybe it’s from years of living in NYC where everyone wears black and grey? After months of showing him Pinterest photos, I finally convinced him that a bright yellow, white and light grey bathroom would be crisp and clean and refreshing. So we decided to paint the cabinet to tie the bathroom and hallway together.

To save time — this project has already been going on for a month now — Bradley decided to use the spray paint gun instead of rolling on the paint. This has the added bonus of zero texture. The cabinet will look super sleek by the time we’re finished.

Here’s how it looks today:

We’re so close to wrapping up this project. Can’t. Wait. Here’s what we still have left to do:

1. Sand the inside and shelves with 320-grit sandpaper
2. Install the cabinet in the hallway
3. Give the insides and shelves 2 coats of polyurethane
4. Paint the outside of the cabinet and the doors grey
5. Give the outside of the cabinet and doors 1 or 2 coats of polyurethane

And then we can finally start using the cabinet. This means we can move a bunch of stuff out of our bathrooms and they won’t be disaster zones anymore. And that means we can finally — finally!!! — show you some more rooms in our house. We’re super geeked because we’ve been dying to share what the rest of our house looks like. But we’re also mortified because our bathrooms are gross and hideous.

We’ll be back with the big reveal on the cabinets next weekend. And, now that our big, overwhelming, time-consuming cabinet project is done, we’ll be back to updating more regularly with more small projects. Stay tuned!

Step By Step

Hey peeps! If you celebrate a holiday, we hope it was a good one. We took the low-key, no-pressure route — no tree, no decorations, no nothing. Except this one little thing:

We totally dorked out and did stockings for the pets. The two on top are Margot’s and Jabba’s. The green one on the bottom is Smokey The Cat’s. And the Hello Kitty stocking on the left is for Bradley’s boss’s dog Paulie. He’s staying with us for a week while his people are in Paris.

Not gonna lie: we had way too much fun with that.

Both Bradley and I have the week off — kinda. Bradley really has the entire week off. I have to work for a couple of days. Boo! Hiss!! Luckily I don’t have to go into the office. While I worked, Bradley knocked off a couple of projects from our To-Do List.

The first task of the day, was to prime the staircase and hallway outside the master bedroom. Bradley started by dusting the walls:

Next up: one coat of primer.

The staircase looks so fresh and so clean-clean with a coat of paint.

And the space outside the master BR looks so much better:

We’ll eventually paint the walls a different color. This is great for now. We were pretty tired of staring at plastered drywall on our way upstairs.

The next day, Bradley finished removing the staples from the stairs:

We’ve spent days — literally 3 full eight-hour days — pulling staples from the stairs, but we still missed a bunch. Whoever put down the carpet went seriously overboard.

Once that was finished, Bradley tackled the wonky stairs that lead to the guest bedroom wing of the house. This is how they looked before:

The wood is split on some of the steps. And the face of each stairs — the spots with the white spray paint — is looking a little haggard.

Bradley’s solution was to take some 1/4″ birch plywood:

Cut it down to fit the face of each stair:

And nail it into place:

He did that for all 3 steps that lead up to the hallway:

Then he used wood putty and silicone to fill in the cracks and gaps. This made the steps look more tidy:

The entire staircase area looks much better:

We’re almost ready to sand and paint the stairs, but it’s going to require some careful planning. The guest bedroom wing is basically our headquarters right now. The bathroom is up there, plus we’re sleeping in the guest bedroom now. And we’re working hard to finish up the office soon so we don’t have laptops and cables scattered all over the house. Since we’ll need 48-72 hours for the paint to cure, we’ll have to work the painting around a trip out of town.

We’ll be back with more updates tomorrow. We have a ton of projects going right now, and we’re really, really close to crossing everything off of our To-Do List. Come back soon!

Moving into the Guest Bedroom

We know we’re totally late on the whole Thanksgiving weekends update, but better late than never. We decided to have a low key, low pressure Thanksgiving. That’s code for “We were too lazy to cook a turkey.” We roasted a chicken instead. And the rest of our meal was made from stuff we had lying around the house.

Squash, mashed potatoes, green beans and roast chicken. And ice cream for dessert. Not bad for a very-last-minute feast. We even roasted a dog-friendly version of our meal for Jabba:

I tried to grab a picture of it but by the time I ran back with my camera, she’d already scarfed it down. I caught Smokey mid-scarf:

Canned cat food of the filet minon variety. He horked it down in a matter of seconds. Side note: we can’t wait to rip up that fugly linoleum. We’ve tried everything — even bleach — and it still looks dirty.

We decided to take Thanksgiving day completely off. The rest of our four-day weekend was spent wrapping up the guest bedroom. We gave the French doors a coat of polyurethane, removed the plastic film from the windows, and installed the custom door handles. Then we gave the trim 2 coats of black paint to match the floors and doors. After that, it was just a matter of vacuuming, mopping and moving in.

Here’s how the doors looked before:

And after:

View from the hallway:

We love how much light the hallway gets through the guest bedroom windows. And we’re still smitten with our DIY door handles. We were worried that the black-on-black would look flat, but the pop of texture really helps add some dimension to the doors:

View from the inside looking out into the hallway:

The closet doors are back up:

And, for the first time since April, we have a fully functioning closet:

It feels so luxurious not having to live out of cardboard wardrobe boxes. But even more than that, we’re thrilled to have a closet with doors. Our apartment in Brooklyn didn’t have any closets at all, so we installed an open closet system in the bedroom. Everything was always on display, which made for some awkward times when we had company over. Overflowing hampers happen.

Right now, we have 3 things in the room: a mattress, a rug and a chair. The mattress is on the floor, college student style:

We thought about gussying up the bed. Getting rid of the white duvet that we throw on the bed for extra warmth. Fluffing the pillows. Crisping up the linen. And then we realized, the mattress is on the frikkin’ floor. What’s the point of pretending we’re fancy? We like to keep it real:

We installed a ceiling fan a couple of weekends ago:

We’re not huge fans of fans, but we need a couple in our house. The guest bedroom is directly above the dining room, which is where our wood-burning stove is located. Having ceiling fans in the dining room and the guest bedroom will help circulate heat throughout the house.

As far as looks go, fans usual fall somewhere between bland and revolting. Anything even remotely attractive is way, waaaay out of our price range. So we chose fans that are really simple and plain in hopes that they won’t be too noticeable:

The chair is another piece from Bradley’s company. We snagged 6 of these puppies back in June — two with arm rests and four without. They’ll eventually end up in the dining room.

If you look closely along the bottom edge of the trim behind the chair, you can see that we need some touchup work on the floor paint. Apparently we didn’t get close enough to the wall in this part of the room. We’ll fix that when we paint the floors downstairs.

We also have to do a little touchup on the French doors:

Keepin’ it real.

We picked up a radiator pipe that let us move our tall, skinny radiator a few inches further from the curtain:

We were planning on making boxes for all of the radiators in our house so that they’re not total eyesores. But this one is so close to the window that we might just paint it and leave it exposed.

If we do leave it exposed, we’ll need to touch up some paint on the floor:

The other radiator — the short, wide one we removed — was super heavy and dented the floor a bit. We’ll also need to fix the big, gaping hole that the pipe pokes up from. You can see right down into the dining room through it:

We’re going to find or make some sort of cap to conceal that. And, finally, we’ll need to get a handle for the radiator valve:

It had one but it was so rusted that it broke when we removed the radiator. At the time, we played it off like we had the strength of The Hulk. It’s all fun and games till you realize you can’t find a replacement that’s the right size.

We’ll be back tomorrow with more updates on what we’ve been up to. Stay tuned!

P.S. Thanks for all the kind words about Margot. We’re completely smitten with this special dog, and we’re thrilled to have her join our family. Now if only we could get this potty-training business down…

Our floors are done!

We rolled on our second and third coats of floor paint this weekend, and we. are. done! Here’s how they look now:

So shiny! It’s hard to believe they used to look like this:

We’ve gotten a lot of emails & comments from people who are in the same boat — they were expecting hardwood floors and got ugly, old soft pine flooring instead. Our first word of advice: don’t panic! There’s hope. We’re going to share all the details of how we got our floors from gross-&-grungy to gorgeous. Remember that this is just what worked for us. It may or may not work the same for you.

It all starts with the right paint. Home Depot, Lowe’s and Cole’s (a local chain) suggested an oil-based primer followed by 3 coats of heavy-duty latex. The paint department employees at each of the 3 stores insisted that latex has come a long way and that the special (aka very expensive) floor paints are super durable. We were pretty skeptical, but decided to give it a show. We got a gallon of the recommended Benjamin Moore primer and paint to test out. Long story short: it sucked. And at $50 per can, that was an expensive lesson to learn. We’re still bitter.

So we decided to talk to a paint specialist instead. We went to a company in Brooklyn that sells only professional-grade paints, stains and other finishing products. These guys know their stuff. Here’s what they told us about painting soft pine floors:

• Never, ever use latex on floors. Ever.
  Oil-based paints are much more durable.
• Make sure the floors are squeaky clean before painting.
  We vacuumed twice, then used wet rags to scrub the floors. We tried using tack cloths, but they missed a lot of dust, left residue on the floors and made our fingers feel sticky. Wet rags worked just fine.
• We want the paint to soak into the wood, not sit on top of the wood. Sooo…
  
  • Sand the floors really well to make them as porous as possible.
    You can read about our floor-sanding adventure here.
  • Don’t use a primer.
    Yup. This totally goes against everything we’ve ever been told about painting. But we want the color to soak into the wood — not the primer.
  • Thin out your first coat for maximum soakage.
    Mix paint thinner into your oil-based paint to make it really runny. We did a ratio of 1/3 parts paint thinner to 2/3 paint and our first coat was very watery. Be careful not to splatter it on the walls. We have a little touch up to do in the guest bedroom from our overzealous rolling.
• Roll a paper-thin coat.
  This is a general rule for painting, but it’s extra important when painting floors. We don’t want any clumps or globs because they might peel up later. Our first coat was so thin, we were worried we that we thinned it out too much. That’s how we knew we were doing it right.
• Lightly scuff the surface in between coats.
  Don’t skip this step. It’s tedious and boring, but necessary. Glossy paint doesn’t stick to other glossy surfaces. Scuffing up the surface gives us a nice, rough surface for the paint to stick to. We used 320-grit sandpaper and an orbital sander.
• Second and third coats: use full-strength oil-based paint.
  Again, roll paper-thin coats and scuff up the surface in between coats. Depending on the paint and the floors, more coats might be necessary. Just keep scuffing and keep painting until the floors are covered.

Our paint guy also gave us a little insight about why you shouldn’t buy your floor paint at general hardware stores. The VOC content of oil-based paint is much higher than latex, and a lot of people are buying low-VOC paints these days. Hardware stores stock up on whatever is selling, so you might have to go to a specialty store to get a durable paint.

We picked up a 5-gallon bucket of glossy black oil-based for about $90. Compared to the $50-a-gallon Ben Moore latex paint, this is a serious bargain.

Time to get to work:

We used a paint mixer attachment for our drill to give the bucket a good mix. The attachment is metal so it’s reusable, and it costs about $8. After that, we poured a little paint into our rolling pan, added paint thinner, and gave it another whirl. Then we rolled it on.

Here’s how our first coat looked after it dried:

Not bad! It wasn’t textured at all and looked more like a stain than a paint.

We let the first coat dry for a full 2 weeks. This is definitely not a requirement, but we thought it might help the floors harden up a little more. Oil-based paints can take 3-4 weeks to reach full-strength. And, sure enough, after 2 weeks of curing, our floors were feeling way better. We tried scratching up the paint in the closet and in areas that will be covered with trim — it didn’t budge.

We also stomped around on the floors in sneakers and work boots to see how the floors held up.

We managed to make them super dirty, but the paint stayed put.

Next step: scuffing.

Not gonna lie: we panicked a little when we saw how much paint we scuffed off. The floors went from a glossy black to a very dull grey. And then we remembered that we have at least 2 more coats to throw down.

We vacuumed the floors and cleaned them with wet rags:

Then we rolled on the second coat:

This is where we started seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. The second coat rolled much more saturated than the first. We wanted a pure black — not a blue-black, but a black-black — and this paint did not disappoint. We were especially excited about painting the guest bedroom:

Those are the “old” floors and are in much rougher shape than the office floors.

With the second coat of paint, they were looking every bit as slick as the office flooring. Check out how the hallway looks with the black door at the end:

We were worried it would end up being too much black and the hallway would look really dark. The soft grey walls help keep things light, and we think the black floors and black doors look really old-school and sophisticated.

We let the second coat dry for 24 hours. This is how the guest bedroom looked the next morning:

And the office:

The floors were super glossy:

We think it adds a lot of dimension to the rooms. It also makes us want to hang our curtains, because we keep getting blinded by sunlight reflecting off the floors.

The best part is that the old floors still look like old floors. You can see cracks, imperfections and wood grain:

They have all the character you’d expect from 130-year-old floors without all the cracking, peeling and staining. You’ll never see that in new hardwood floors. So all you folks who emailed us about finding soft pine floors — embrace ‘em! They’ll make your house look and feel so much more unique.

We scuffed, vacuumed and mopped one more time, and then rolled on coat #3:

We’re going to let the final coat dry for at least a week before we go upstairs. And we’ll wait 3 weeks before we move any furniture upstairs.

A lot of people have warned us that black floors require constant cleaning, but we’re OK with that. We plan on throwing down some rugs, which will help. We also tend to hang out in socks or flip flops when we’re at home, so shoe grime isn’t a huge issue. We’ll just keep vacuuming and mopping like normal and deal with dusty footprints as they come.

And now for our favorite part of the whole project — the part where we realize how much money we saved!

Cost breakdown for painting our floors:

• 24-hour sander rental + sanding pads = $307.35
• 5 gallons of paint = $90 (we used less than half of the bucket, so we’ll count it as $45)
• Sanding discs for orbital sander = $20
• Paint rollers = $8

Grand total for 2 rooms + hallway = $380.35
Cost of buying hardwood flooring for 2 rooms + hallway = $3000
What we saved = $2619.65!

We’re seriously considering going to a bank to take out $2619.65 in pennies. Then we could fill up a room and swim around in money like Scrooge McDuck.

We should also mention that the estimated $3000 was for the absolute cheapest wood flooring we could find at Lumber Liquidators. And it doesn’t include tax. The total cost for buying wood floors for the entire house? $15,000. No thanks!

A few people have pointed out that we could have gone with an “engineered wood” flooring, but we’re not fans. No matter what HGTV says, fake wood floors never look or feel like the real thing to us. Either way, we’re guessing they would have cost more than 380 beans!

—

What we learned from our floor painting adventure:

• This could take a while.
  Painting floors — the right way — is a long process. Don’t go into it thinking it’s a quickie weekend project. It’ll end in tears. Speaking of tears…
• Get knee pads.
  They sell them at Home Depot in the same aisle as the the sanding pads….and now we know why. We’ve spent a lot of time on our knees the past few weekends. From scuffing the floors to scrubbing them clean, there was a lot of crawling going on. And, hoo boy, we are definitely feeling it now. So far, we’ve painting only about 1/4 of our entire house. We’ll be investing in some heavy-duty knee pads before we paint any more floors.
• Oil-based paints will stank up your house.
  Obviously this means you should wear a respirator while you paint. But it might also mean not staying in your house while the fumes clear up. We’re pretty lucky because we can hole up in the living room downstairs. We leave the doors closed all the time, so we never smell fumes in there. We also don’t have any bambinos running around to worry about. And, best of all, we leave for Brooklyn the day after we paint. By the time we get back, the fumes aren’t nearly as bad.
• Floor paint isn’t forever.
  While we love the look of our painted floors, we know this isn’t a permanent solution. We’re hoping to buy ourselves 5 years of use out of them.  After that, if we have the funds, we’ll revisit the idea of installing hardwood floors. Or we could just sand and paint them all over again. We love the flexibility!

Everything we need to know about home renovation, we learned from Mr. Miyagi.

Bradley and I are total children of the ’80s, which means two things: 1) we grew up with some very embarrassing haircuts, and 2) Mr. Miyagi was a god. So when it came time to sand our floors, we cued up this YouTube clip and took notes:

Sanding floors, painting houses, defending against attacks from those dastardly Cobra Kai — home renovation is serious business. Now if only we could find a teenage boy we could con into renovating the house for us…

On Saturday morning, we marched on over to the Home Depot tool rental department and came back home with this puppy:

We had the option between a heavy-duty belt sander and a disc sander. We went with the disc sander. According to our Home Depot guy, the belt sander gets a better finish, but it’s harder to use. There was a definite potential of shaving too much off if we didn’t know what we were doing. We’ve never actually sanded floors before so we decided to play it safe. The disc sander still gets a nice finish and it’s way more user-friendly.

The Home Depot guy gave us a quick rundown on the proper way to use the machine. Here’s the right way:

Wear a respirator. Keep the sander close to your body so you can use your body weight to steer it. Keep the cord out of the sander’s way, and keep both hands on the handles at all times.

Here are some wrong ways to use a sander:

1. Do not ride the sander.

2. Do not Superman on the sander.

3. Do not surf on the sander.

4. Do not read a magazine while sanding.

5. Do not let pugs sand your floor. Not without a proper pug sander attachment, anyway.

And most importantly:

6. Do not attempt to sand your floors with anything other than a sander.

Now that we have that cleared up, it’s time to get on with the sanding. We started with a quick check to remove any staples or nails we might have missed:

Then we loaded up the sander with fresh 36-grit sandpaper:

The lowdown on sandpaper:

• The lower the number, the rougher the paper.
• The higher the number, the less gritty, so really high numbers will smooth and polish.
• You can’t jump from a really gritty sandpaper to a really smooth sandpaper. You have to work your way up gradually to get a really even surface. So start with a lower-grit sandpaper, then go a little higher, then a little higher, and finish off with a high-grit sandpaper.

We started with 36-grit, then re-sanded with 40-grit, 80-grit and ended with a 120-grit. That means we had to sand each room 4 times total. And we had to do it in 24 hours. It sounds like a lot of work, but we were up for the challenge. After living with our crusty old floors for 5 months, we were feeling downright giddy:

We flipped the on switch and let ‘er rip:

We had at least 2 layers of paint to strip, but the 35-grit sandpaper ate right through it. We were initially a little nervous about getting too close to the walls, but the disc sander was great for getting right up to the edge:

The sandpaper is underneath the machine, so it didn’t hit our wall at all. We had to replace our sanding discs pretty frequently because the the paint gummed things up:

This isn’t something we planned for, so just a few hours after bringing the sander home, we were on our last set of discs. Oops! Bradley handed over the sander to me while he ran to Home Depot to get more. I was sweating bullets all day because I knew eventually I would have to SAND THE FLOOR! and I wasn’t sure I could do it.

The sander is big. And loud. I had visions of tripping and falling in front of it, and the 35-grit sandpaper eating up my face. Or worse — what if I lost control and the sander crashed through a wall? Or if I got stuck in one spot and it ate a hole through the floor? What if the “off” switch broke and I had to sand and sand forever?

I obviously watched too many sitcoms growing up because stuff like that only happens on TV. At the time, though, it all seemed very likely. But we only had 24 hours with our sander and I had no choice but to get over it. I took a deep breath, grabbed the handles, flipped the switch and started sanding. The verdict? It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It was sort of like using a vacuum cleaner. A really big, heavy vacuum cleaner that vibrates and shakes the entire room. OK, fine, it wasn’t like using a vacuum cleaner at all. But it wasn’t horrifying. I still have a face and our floors are intact. So I call that a success.

We vacuumed after each round of sanding to check out our progress. The sander actually doesn’t kick up dust into the air at all, but it does leave some dust behind on the floor.  Here’s how the guest bedroom looked after 40-grit:

Smooooth! When we first removed the carpet, we were so disappointed to find soft pine planks instead of a gorgeous hardwood, but the floors have really grown on us.

After the guest bedroom, we headed over to the office. This room was more of a challenge than the guest bedroom because it has hard pine flooring instead of soft pine. They’re harder to sand. There was also glue under the carpets, and those patches needed some serious work to sand off:

There was also this beast to deal with:

That radiator easily weighs 400 pounds. It’s massive. We thought we could just put it on the dolly and wheel it around, but that left gashes in the wood. To sand around it, we had to pick it up and waddle it over to the other side of the room. We went back and forth with it for 4 rounds of sanding. Still surprised neither of us ended up with a hernia from that.

Here’s how the office looked after sanding:

It was already dark by the time we finished, so we got to test out our new recessed lightbulbs:

It took us 3 trips to the hardware stores, but we finally found bulbs that sit really far back in the can and cast a nice light. The others all either sat out too far or looked too blue, so we returned them. We’re loving how the lighting adds instant drama to the room:

The little space right outside the office didn’t sand so well:

We went over it for what seemed like forever, but the paint never quite came off. We’re not sure if it’s just soaked really deeply into the wood, but we scuffed it so much that our paint will definitely stick to it.

By the time we finished all 4 rounds of sanding in the office and guest bedroom, it was 8PM. We still had the hallway to do, but we also didn’t want to piss off our neighbors. I did a quick check to see how loud we were being by running out to the yard and standing right in front of the fence that divides our property from our neighbor’s. Inside the house, it sounded like a tornado was happening upstairs. Outside, it was barely a hum. I had to strain to hear it. Looks like all our insulation and new windows helped soundproof the place as well as keep it warm!

We decided to keep going and finish up the hallway before going to bed:

We’d been sanding for over 9 hours by the time we finished, and we were wiped out. We didn’t bother cleaning up after we finished. On Sunday morning, we went back up to vacuum and take some daylight pictures:

And then we decided to go ahead and sand the dining room floors. Bradley spent part of Saturday prepping the room while I sanded. We weren’t sure whether we’d have time for the dining room, but we wanted to be ready just in case. Good thing, too, because we had 4 hours still left on the clock and that gave us plenty of time. Here’s what they looked like before Bradley prepped the room:

And here’s how they look now:

You can also take a peek at the afters in the “no” pictures above. My favorite:

I love the look on Jabba’s face in that one. Don’t feel sorry for her, peeps. That dog loves our shenanigans.

Coming up next:

We’re painting our floors! I’d better go brush up on Mr. Miyagi’s recommendations. Is it side-to-side? Or up-down? I forget. We’ll be back with more updates, so stay tuned.

—

What we learned from our floor-sanding adventure:

• Give yourself plenty of time.
  Our Home Depot offers a 4-hour rental and a 24-hour rental. The 4-hour rental is $20 cheaper, but we’re pretty sure we couldn’t finish up even one room in that amount of time.
• Buy more than you need.
  We could have saved an emergency trip to Home Depot by stocking up and then returning all the unopened packs for a refund when we took the sander back. Luckily there are 2 of us here, so 1 person could sand while the other ran to Home Depot. And that brings us to the most important lesson we learned…
• It takes two.
  Having 2 people around was a major help in getting 3 rooms and a hallway sanded in less than 24 hours. One person could sand while the other prepped the next room. We also traded off sanding duties every couple of hours. That way our arms could rest up in between sanding sessions, but we still plugged along at the same pace. Plus, the sander was crazy-heavy. It definitely takes 2 people to haul that thing up and down stairs. Partner up, people! Now show me….SAND THE FLOOR!

Our almost-done hallway.

Way back in April, our hallway looked like this:

Well, technically it looked a little worse, but we forgot to take pictures before we ripped out the burgundy carpet. Here’s how the same hallway looks today:

Yay! We love doing before-and-afters! We’ve been living with this project day in and day out, so we forget how far we’ve come. Seeing the befores makes us giddy.

We went with Olympic Horseradish on the ceiling (same as the office & guest bedroom) and Valspar Tempered Gray for the walls.

 
Source

We initially wanted to do something darker, but the halls are so narrow that we decided to keep things soft and light. We’re so glad we did because it makes the hallway feel super light and open. We love the way it looks. Here’s a view from the brick wall looking towards the entry:

We put two recessed lights down the center:

We still haven’t found the right bulbs — some are too white, some are too yellow, others are too long and stick out too far — so we put in plain old 60 watt bulbs for now. It took a lot of finagling but Bradley installed a dimmer switch:

We’re rocking a 75% right now. We’ll probably go lower once we get the right bulbs in.

The trimless windows are a pain to paint, but they looked pretty slick when finished:

So do the French doors:

We haven’t taken the plastic mask off the windows, which is why they look like a 2 year old painted them. They still need one more coat on the flip-side. We went ahead and hung them because we’re getting kinda impatient. We also hung the bathroom door:

It was awkward for a little while thanks to the close proximity of a window that overlooks the street:

So pretty with the hardware installed!

The door frame looks streaky because it only has one coat so far. We’re giving it 2 more thin coats this weekend. We’re loving how the door still looks old. You can see all of the texture and cracking:

It definitely took some time to fix this puppy up, but we’re so glad we did. We scraped off all of the old paint, sanded the door smooth, then gave it one thin coat of primer. After that, we did 3 coats of black paint. The trick to getting a smooth surface was sanding in between each coat and painting paper thin coats.

Check out the flip side of the same door:

I had to stand inside the bathtub to take that shot — that’s how small our bathroom is. We’re not quite ready to show the before pictures of the bathroom because it’s not a remodeling priority. It was redone a few years ago, so it’s not in terrible shape. Just kinda…blah.

How sweet does that hardware look? Spray paint works magic, I tell ya! Speaking of spray paint, lookie what made it into the bathroom:

I think my lookalike hook looks extra Anthropologie against the beat up door. Even Bradley ended up loving it.

We’re still not sure whether to paint the door white or not. Luckily we have our hands full with a bunch of other jobs right now, so we have some time to think about our next move.

What we learned:

• Low-VOC paints smell, too.
  We used Olympic, Valspar and Benjamin Moore paints over the weekend, and all 3 brands make an appearance in our hallway. Ben Moore was, by far, the least smelly. Olympic was the runner up — it smelled, but not so much that we needed respirators. Valspar was super stinky, but the smell was gone by the next day. Here’s the kicker: the Ben Moore cost almost twice as much as the Valspar! Valspar was $23 a gallon and Ben Moore was $40 and change. Next time we’ll put on respirators, crack a few windows and save ourselves twenty clams.
• Big box hardware stores don’t carry the good stuff.
  We went to three different hardware store chains to find a good floor paint. The paint department employees at Lowe’s and Home Depot didn’t inspire much confidence. They hemmed and hawed, eventually recommended an outdoor patio paint, but couldn’t answer the questions we had about it. Meh. Our local hardware guy recommended a Ben Moore oil-based primer and black latex floor paint. It was expensive. And it’s a good thing we tested it on our doors and doorways, because there’s no way it would last on our soft pine floors. It’s fine for doors, but latex just isn’t durable enough for floors. Totally not talking smack about Big Blue and Big Orange (we love them both!), but they carry standard items for standard houses.
• Next time we need paint for something special, we’re going to a specialist.
  We ended up going to Bradley’s finishing product supplier (aka the paint guy), and this guy has pretty much seen everything. He wasn’t confused by why we would want to paint our floors (instead he said it was the best method for soft pine). And he knew what he was talking about. Here’s what he suggested:
  • NO primer. Instead, sand the floors very well to make them porous.
  • Use an oil-based black thinned down with paint thinner to make it very runny.
  • Put down a suuuuper thin layer of black and let it soak into the wood.
  • Follow that with 2 more paper-thin layers of black, lightly scuffing the surface in between.

  He didn’t recommend a brand. Just that we should leave latex for the walls and do oil-based on the floors. We ended up buying a big bucket of high-gloss black from him.

Getting our paint on.

I edited down our pictures from the weekend and there was a definite theme going on: white. Kinda ironic since this is our first post about painting, but we’ll roll with it.

We planned on spraying on our primer coat with our paint spray gun. We took it for a test drive a few weekends ago with our DIY moulding project:

We were super happy to find out that the gun paints a perfect, even coat really fast. And not-so-happy to learn that it sends paint flying everywhere. It’s incredibly messy. So we decided to go the overkill route and spent half of Saturday carefully taping and masking everything we didn’t want to paint. Like our windows and our homemade concrete window sills:

And our just-painted-em-black doorways, plug-ins and light switches:

We then cleared everything out of the room, including one very heavy, over-sized radiator. We didn’t bother laying down tarp because a) we’re going to sand & paint the floors anyway and b) because taping wasted half a day and we were ready to get painting.

Bradley got a special outfit for the occasion:

I asked him to look excited, and that’s what he gave me. I also asked him to give me a supermodel pose and this is what I got:

He’s no Heidi Klum, that’s for sure. Or maybe he’s Heidi Klum with a broken hip. I don’t really know what he was going for there. Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, maybe.

Bradley got an extension attachment for the spray gun that let him spray the ceilings without using a ladder:

He fired up the gun, and started priming the guest bedroom:

He started with the perimeter of the room, then the ceiling and finally the walls. The guest bedroom walls were already a creamy-white color, so it doesn’t seem like a drastic change in the after pictures, but it felt like a huge difference to us.

Before priming, the walls had scuffs and marks:

After priming, everything felt so fresh and so clean-clean:

That’s with one coat of primer. Our spray gun gives us insanely even coverage!

While the guest bedroom dried, we emptied the office and prepped it for painting. It looked like a Dexter kill room by the time we were done:

Just as a refresher, here’s how the office looked a couple of months ago. This is after we ripped up the baby blue carpet:

And here’s what it looks like now. The office formerly known as The Smurf Room:

Not a hint of Smurfiness left. Thank. Goodness. Even the dark-&-creepy closet ended up looking really nice:

So how did we like our gun for indoor painting? I’ll put it to you this way: Bradley would marry the gun if he could. I might settle for a steamy affair, but only because my heart really belongs to the jackhammer.

It took us less than 45 minutes to prime all 3 spaces, including ceilings and closets. The pictures we’ve posted are after only one coat. We would’ve had to roll on 2 coats to get that kind of coverage. So we’re really digging our gun for that. We would have been priming all weekend without it. The only downside is the amount of spray that ends up on the floors:

Again, this is no big deal for us since we’re going to sand and paint our floors soon. But for someone with nice, hardwood floors, this is no bueno. If you do use a spray gun indoors, mask, tape and drape like crazy. Also, wear a bunny suit so you can bust out a supermodel pose every once in a while:

We waited until the next day before we cracked open a gallon of our ceiling paint:

I know what you’re thinking: it looks white. Well, it isn’t. It’s Olympic C151 Horseradish, smartypants. I used this same paint to update the vintage owl bookends I got for my birthday way back in June. It’s a warmer shade that looks white until you paint it on fresh white primer:

We chose Horseradish for the ceilings because it matches the colors we want in all 3 spaces. This way we have something that totally unifies the different rooms, even though they all have different palettes.

Bradley showed me how to cut the corners using a shield. We don’t plan on putting up any trim up top, so we have to get our lines as clean and sharp as possible. While I cut the ceilings in all 3 areas, Bradley rolled:

We decided to roll on the colors instead of spraying because we didn’t want to go through the trouble of taping and masking all the walls. We embrace our laziness.

See how it’s a warmer white than the super-pasty-white primer? The result is subtle, but we think it makes a big difference in the feel of the space. Bradley reinstalled the recessed lighting after the paint dried so we could ooh and ahh about how the lights looked with the paint:

Meanwhile, I admired the way the ceiling paint looks against the brick wall:

And against the original beam we uncovered back in our demolition days:

I also tried to get a good photo of the wrong lightbulbs we got from Lowe’s that we have to return. We accidentally picked up a box of floodlights instead of recessed lightbulbs, and they look pretty awful. Instead, I took a picture of a little speck creeping along our freshly-painted ceiling:

Eek! Baby spider! We’re having kind of an infestation of spiders right now. No idea where they’re getting in, but most of them are not making it out alive. It’s death by flip-flop for those unlucky enough to wander inside. And then there’s this big mama I found attached the outside of the house:

That thing was — I kid you not — the size of a semi truck. Or my thumbnail. I kinda forgot which one after I caught it looking right at me:

It turned around and I saw it’s big, googly eyes. Not gonna lie: I dropped my flip-flop and ran. Spider 1, Leena 0.

What we learned from this project:

• Paper > Plastic. We used both paper and plastic to mask our windows and sills. Plastic is a huge pain in the butt — it’s hard to cut, doesn’t tape well, and paint splatter takes forever to dry. Paper wins.
• We heart our spray gun, but it requires a LOT of prep work and a lot of clean-up time. We still highly recommend it for exterior painting, new construction, and priming gut-renovated spaces, but not so much for spraying color in interior spaces.
• We paid extra for low-VOC primer, but it was still super stinky. Next time we’ll go with the regular stuff, wear respirator masks and leave the windows open for a few days.
• Spiders: not cool. Ever.