Shoe Storage Bench

We're a shoes off in the house family, but never had a good place to put the shoes.  Our house has two closets in the entry, which should provide plenty of room, but they don't work well for us.  They're dark, small, and frankly there's just too much stuff in them.  Shoes would get buried under other shoes, and we'd spend far more time than I'd like each morning trying to find matched pairs.  I told my husband I thought a bench with drawers for the entryway would be great, but I wasn't finding much that I liked for a price I was willing to pay.  There were a lot of benches with sort of cubby holes, but I worried that the baskets in the cubbies would just end up all over the floor, and we'd be in the same place we started.  I kept my eye out on Craigslist, and finally found one I liked!  One small problem:  it was missing its top.  I told my husband I had a plan.  He was skeptical.  I told him it could be my Christmas present.  He rolled his eyes, and said ok.

I bargained the seller down $10, and finally had a place to store shoes!  For about a month, it sat, topless, in my entryway.  The kids used it for its intended purpose anyway, and suddenly, our shoes had a place to call home.  When the holidays were over, I finally got around to making a top for it.  I went to the fabric store, and spent far more time than was really necessary choosing fabric.  It was all so pretty though!  The Jo-Ann's was having a sale on upholstery fabric, and I had a 20% off coupon, so the prices that originally had me questioning decision to make my own top turned out to be not so bad after all.  I walked out of the store with three and a half yards of this.

 I also bought three yards of foam.  That the foam was more expensive than the fabric just about blew my mind.  Then I was off to Home Depot to buy a board to fit the top.  There was a nice guy working in the lumbar section, and he cut a the board down to the exact right size for me.  I had my daughter with me, and she was not pleased about the sound as the saw met the wood.

Then it was off to select the paint for the bench itself.  I thought I nice grey would work, but when I got home with it, my husband suggested trying to match the lighter brown in the fabric. Fortunately I'd just purchased a test pot of the grey, so I was only out $3.  I brought a swatch of the fabric with me, and found a pretty close match to the lighter color.  I brought it home, and my husband said "oh, so you decided to stick with the grey?"  Bah.  It matched the lighter color almost perfectly.  Not grey.

To make the top, I put the board on top of the foam, and cut the foam to match. I cut the fabric a bit larger than the board, so I'd have enough to stretch around the foam.

 After I flipped the board over, I used packaging tape to hold the fabric in place while I secured it to the board.  I used upholstery nails to attach the fabric to the board.  I thought about getting a stapler gun, but didn't want to spend the money for a one time project.

Then it was time to paint!  Can I just say I hate the trend of making furniture look older than it is, and dirtier than it is?  I scrubbed the bench down, and quickly realized that the grimy looking spots were that way purposefully.  I don't get it.  The new paint looked good though, and covered it up nicely!

 Two coats worked for most areas, with just touch ups needed for some stubborn parts.  I could not figure out how to get the drawers all the way out though, so ended up just painting the front and edges of the face of the drawers.

To attach the top, I used four small hinges.  We don't lift the top to the bench very often, but I like having the ability to get behind the drawers if necessary.  It also makes the top easy to remove if I ever want to change the fabric.I just screwed straight though the fabric.

 Mission shoe storage is complete.

The Chess Table, aka When DIY Goes Wrong

Once upon a time, I bought a chess table cheap off Craigslist, and attempted to refinish it all on my own.  Sometimes things just don't work out according to plan.

 It all started with this little guy.  Cute, structurally sound chess table in need of a home and some love.

I totally misread the Craigslist ad though, and overlooked that it was only 15 inches tall.  That's barely taller than our kitten, Thor.  Thor is unimpressed.

At first I was in denial.  Certainly I could just find some short stools or chairs, and this would still be a great table!  Alas, my thrift store hunting left me empty handed.  I found one chair that would work, but chess is better played with two.  So then I had the brilliant idea to just get new legs.  A search of Home Depot, and I came home with four of these poplar 26 inch sticks.  The pre-made table legs all seemed to grand (read expensive).

I also walked out with two small jars of stain.  One in a color called Kona, the other Golden Pecan.  I started sanding, in preparation for application of what I thought would be beautiful new stain.  I sanded and sanded, and developed a new callous on my thumb.  Someday I will invest in a hand sander.

So the color on the can of Kona looked like a dark brown with darker areas of the grain almost black.  When I opened the can, I thought "wow, this looks really dark, I wonder if I should trade it for a different color.  But I want to stain this now! I'm sure it will be fine."  Someday I will learn that it is better to get it right than get it quickly.  That stain was black.  The instructions said to wipe off in 10-15 minutes, I started wiping in off after 5.  You could barely see the wood grain.

I carried on though, thinking that once the lighter squares were the Golden Pecan color, it would look better. It didn't.

Google told me that stain stripper likely wouldn't work on new stain.  I tried anyway.  It sort of worked.  It lightened the stain at least.  My options were to leave the thing in the garage for a year and try stripping it again, re-sanding the whole thing, or just carrying on.  I chose the later.

I went back to Home Depot and chose Black Cherry.  It looked like a warm dark brown.  I opened the jar at home, and the stain looked purple.  Having totally failed to learn my lesson with the Kona, I applied it anyway.  Yep, purple.  Argh.  At that point, I decided to just stick with the Kona.  The Kona over the Black Cherry ended up looking ok though.  I pretty much started wiping the stain off as soon as it was applied, but the purple under the black ended up looking fine.

I attached the new legs, gave the whole thing a coating of polyurethane, and called it done.  I'm calling it the daddy long legs chess table.  I suppose not every project can work out.  After the holidays, I may start cruising Craigslist for a game table again.  This time, we'll just put our existing board on top of it.

Craigslist find turned homework desk

Two or so weeks ago, I was searching Craigslist for a table.  We want to put a chess table in our developing game room, but really don't want to spend several hundred dollars.  I'd seen one on Craigslist that was just a regular end table, but had a hand painted chess board on top.  They also wanted $500 for it.  It gave me the idea of maybe buying a card table or larger end table, and painting on the chess board myself.  I hoped to find one with a drawer or two, so we could store the chess pieces there when we weren't playing.  My husband was less sold on the idea, but wasn't going to stop me from just looking, and I was sure I could convince him to at least let me try if I found a cheap enough table.  So as I'm looking, there is an add for a desk/table that catches my eye.  It was only $20, but wasn't what I was looking for in a game table at all.  But I do need a desk in our study, and thought it might make a nice table in the entry way too.  I thought about it for a few hours, then mentioned it to my husband.  He rolled his eyes and told me to just get it.  For $20, it was worth taking a shot.  I texted the seller, and arranged to pick it up after the kids' afternoon sports were over.

 This is what it looked like when we got it home.  You can't see the color really well here, but the bottom was painted a greenish blue, and the top was a lightly stained wood.  There was a spot on the top that looked like something hot had been left there, and the stain sort of melted and was peeling away from it.  The paint on the legs was a bit cracked and peeling, so even if I wanted to keep the color, a paint job was called for.  But then my plans were derailed by my older son.  He saw it, and immediately asked if it could be his homework desk.  I am a sucker, so I said yes.


 I asked him what color he wanted to paint it, and first he said rainbow stripes.  I told him that was beyond my painting skills.  He asked if we could do stripes at all, and I conceded that stripes on the top might be possible, but the bottom would have to be all one color.  He chose black, white, and grey stripes on top, with a black bottom.  First though, we had done a google image search for striped desk, and found this one.  It satisfied my son's desire for rainbows, but made me want to cry at the thought of taping off all those stripes.  After reading the blog, and learning it was all done with tape, I was almost willing to give it a shot, but decided that without a glass or fake glass top, the edges would get gummy too quickly in our house.  So on to black and white it was.  I took the desk outside to begin sanding it down, and found some bonus items in the drawer!  Potentially useful items included several lighters, some mini-cigars, and a screwdriver.  Neither of us smokes though, and the lighters were empty, but hey, the screwdriver works!  And I have always been of the opinion that you can't have enough screwdrivers.  There was also a lonely poker chip, and scorecards from an unidentified game.  Off to the trash went everything but the screwdriver.

 I went to Home Depot, and asked for a sample pot in black, and one in white.  As they were mixing the black, I wandered over to the "oops" paint shelf.  I should have looked there first!  There were quart sized cans of black and an off-white for $2 each!  The sample pots are only $3ish, but they are a lot smaller.  Lesson learned.  Always check the oops shelf first.  I always wonder how cans end up there.  The custom mixed stuff always comes with a "not returnable" label, and the paint guy is always careful to remind me that they can't refund me if I don't like the color once it is mixed.  Are other customers just more pushy than me?  Are the oops cans ones that customers left behind or forgot about while they were being mixed?  Or are they really oops cans, where the computer added the wrong amount of a colorant, or the employee used the wrong brand/size/finish paint?

I chaperoned my son's field trip one morning, then had the rest of the day off, so started things off.  I gave everything a good sanding, and then just jumped in.  The black took 3-4 coats.  The white top took 3.  I sort of messed up the white top at first, when I inadvertently went back over a coat that wasn't all the way dry.  The brush pulled up some of the paint, and there were gummy paint strings all across the top. I walked away for about an hour, then came back and sanded those down, and started the next coat.  When my son saw it, he was immediately mad, thinking I was not going to do the stripes.  I explained that it was easier to do the base all one color, then paint the stripes on that, rather than try to do stripes of every color.  He seemed satisfied.  He also changed his mind about the grey, and decided just black and white would work.

After a bit of discussion regarding how wide the stripes should be, he decided they should be exactly the width of the painter's tape.  Made it easy for me, as I just cut two small tabs of tape that I then moved down the table as I added strips of tape across the desk.  No tape measure needed!  I started painting, and my son was skeptical.  He thought it would all end up black.  He liked it when we pulled off the tape to reveal the stripes.  There were some areas where the black paint bled under the tape, but nothing too bad.  Some of the spots I touched up a bit with a small brush and the white paint.  If I knew I was doing a stripes project again, I'd go with the heavy duty painter's tape, but I just used the roll I'd bought when I painted the door.

With the paint on the top and base done, it was time to paint the drawer.  I thought I'd paint it white, and do the pulls black, but my son disagreed.  He waned the drawer striped too.  I was not about to try to paint vertical stripes on the drawer -- too many curves and corners for me to feel confident about taping it.  Then he asked if we could do the front rectangle face black, and the surrounding area white.  That seemed much less labor intensive, so I agreed.  He wanted the pulls black too.  I think they blend in a bit too much, and doing them white, or going to the store and choosing some silver or white would have been a better choice, but as he reminded me, it is his desk, and his choice.
I put a few coats of polyurethane on, and was surprised how hard I found it to get the coats nice and light.  No matter how thin I tried to apply it, I ended up catching drips off the side.  I may try a spray-on poly next time.  But the end result was nice and shiny, and I hope it will help make the desk more cleaning friendly.

I moved the desk in to the living room, and now we are on the hunt for a chair to go along with it!  I hope my son will enjoy his striped desk!

The saga of our new door, or, how hard can this possibly be?

Back in the first week of August, the glass on our front door cracked.  The next day, one of the cracked sections fell out.  The door was old, needed a lot of work if we wanted to keep it, and we didn't really like it all that much anyway, so we decided to replace it.

What should have been a short process led to us not getting a new door until a few days before Halloween.  Home Depot dropped the ball a few times, by not returning phone calls, and not communicating between the retail staff and the installation team.  Then, once our door was finally ordered and delivered (one month after we ordered, rather than the two weeks they had estimated), we had to send it back, because they had pre-drilled holes for the hardware, but those holes didn't line up with the existing spots on the frame.  This was fairly obnoxious, as they require that an installation team come out and measure everything before you can even order a door (we have to pay for this), so I am unclear as to why the correct measurements weren't available.  We finally got the door installed, and the handle now sticks, and the deadbolt requires almost enough force to break the key to get the key to turn in the lock.  I am not pleased, and really don't think we'll use the Home Depot's installation services again.  Every person we dealt with was exceedingly polite and apologetic when things didn't work out they way they should, but there were just so many missteps, that I don't think we could confidently use them again.  Additionally, I felt as if we were being pushed to purchase an entire frame and replace the perfectly functional glass panels on the sides and top of the door frame.  The door we wanted to buy was actually a few hundred more than the one we ended up buying, but we could buy it only if we also replaced all of the panels around the door, which more than tripled the price.

The door was finally installed, but we had to paint it ourselves.  We debated between a dark green and a dark red for a while (turns out we had plenty of time to decide).  Our house has red brick, and we recently replaced our black shutters with forest green.  I was a bit worried that a red door with the green shutters would look a bit too Chirstmasy all the time, but I was also having trouble finding a green that I liked.  I took several walks around the neighborhood looking at doors, and almost all of my favorites were red.  So I brought home something like 30 red paint chips from the store (still Home Depot, I like shopping there).  We rejected most of them right away once we had them out in the sunlight, and narrowed it down to 3-5.

We decided on Raw Cinnabar, from Behr.  I had read a few blogs from people who painted their doors red, and almost all seemed to mention that the red they choose was not what they expected when they started painting.  So I bought a sample pot of the Raw Cinnabar, and of another red, Tuscan Rose, and painted some cardboard swatches.  We brought them outside, and still liked the Raw Cinnabar the most, so I bought a quart!  I think I probably could have just stuck with the sample pot, but wanted to get the paint & primer combination, and it will be nice to have extra in case it needs to be touched up later.


I started by taping off the hardware.  I really want to replace it -- not only does it now not work smoothly, but I think it is the original hardware from when the house was built, and it is showing its age.  I was shocked at how much replacing the door handle will be though!  The least expensive option I saw at Home Depot was $93.  Ugh.  I started to tape off the glass, but the oval shape made that very difficult, and I figured I would just be careful, and wipe off any mistakes.  That turned out to be an ok decision, but it was nerve wracking working around the edges!

I had purchased a small roller, but ended up using just the brush and a small foam brush.  There were so many small areas and trim areas, that by the time I was done with those, it felt like 80% of the door was done.  It seemed like a waste to use the roller for the small areas left to do.  Looking at the picture now, I see that there was more unpainted area than painted, but I swear getting to this point took 45 minutes, and the rest of the door took 5.

I finished the first coat, and let it dry for a few hours before shutting the door.  I was really excited by how well the paint & primer combination gave such good coverage.  I was trying to make the paint coat as thin as possible, but even after just one coat, there weren't many glaring areas where the door color still peaked through.  Up close you could definitely see that a second coat was needed, but from the street, it looked great!

As I began to paint, I realized that the door was going to move, and I didn't want to have to hold on to it the whole time.  I looked for something heavy to put behind it, and used our huge Rubbermaid storage tubs - one filled with flour, the other with brown sugar.  That seemed to do the trick.  I also realized as I started painting the top that I was in danger of getting a bit of the red paint on the white trim, so I added a few strips of tape to the top of the trim.  I also added garbage bag drop cloths to our floor.

For the second coat, I did not bother pulling out the rolling pan.  I hadn't used the roller yesterday, so decided to avoid the potential mess that comes when I pour paint out of a can, and just dip the brushes directly into the paint can.  I think it turned out well!

5 miles and new curtains (almost)

5 miles yesterday.  It was warm out, but really windy.  I ran mostly laps around the ponds at our local park, but it seemed I had a headwind no matter which direction I ran.  My pace showed it too - it was a struggle to stay under 12 minutes/mile.  6 miles next week!

We looked for curtains for the kids' rooms today.  I didn't really like any we saw, so I took the kids with me to IKEA to look there.  The two boys found fabric they really liked, and I found some cute stuff for the fat little rabbit's room.  The trick is, it was just fabric!  Now I have to figure out how to sew it into curtains.  I don't think it will be too difficult, just a couple of straight seems, right?

Oldest boy's choice:

Middle boy's choice:

Fat Little Rabbit's: