Monthly Archives

June 2016

Baby Smied’s Anatomy Scan

Posted on June 29, 2016

Talking about a different sort of DIY project today 🙂 I cannot believe I’m writing this, but as of this week, I’m just about at the halfway point in this pregnancy.

Whaaaaaat?!

Time feels like it has passed so quickly since we announced. I sometimes get overwhelmed and feel like it’s going too fast (baby is very active now, which is UNREAL to feel), because there are a lot of things about parenting I don’t feel prepared for, but this baby won’t wait. He/She has a deadline and if it’s anything like me, will be on time or early!

None of this is to say that we’re not excited. We are so excited to meet this little person, see what they look like, what the gender is, what their little personality is like, who they are. But, this is also a new venture for the both of us and that can be really terrifying when you don’t fully know what to expect. New parent jitters are REAL, and overwhelming at times, but normal I’m sure.

We recently had our anatomy scan to see how baby Smied is growing. I had the MaterniT21 blood test done back in May just for peace of mind, and it came back with no chromosomal abnormalities, which was a big relief. Despite the technology and testing we have available these days, a lot of low-risk pregnancy is just waiting, growing the baby, and hoping that everything is going okay in there. While I’m SUPER thankful to be in the low-risk category, it’s nice to have some reassurance once in a while – so we were really looking forward to seeing this little one on the screen.

We had to leave for the appointment at 6:30AM – so, so early. We were so tired.
Source: U of M Health

Our sonographer was great, even though the baby was not cooperating. Halfway through, she made me get up, jump/dance down the hallway, and chug ice water to try to get the little one to change their position. Thankfully it worked, and we were able to get a good look! It was pretty amazing to see this whole little person (who was just a little blob on our first ultrasound) kicking their legs, flexing their spine, clenching and unclenching their fists, yawning…moving like a real, coordinated person. Once everything was finished, I asked “if there’s something wrong, will you let me know, or do I have to wait for the report to get to my midwife?” She answered “yes we tell you now, and no, there isn’t anything abnormal”. Everything looked fine, and baby was even measuring a little big for their gestational age (yikes!) – we hired a Doula last week, too. Between my midwife, the staff at UMich, and our Doula, I’m feeling more and more confident that we have a great team assembled to help us through the prenatal and birth process.

Had to get baby Smied some Michigan gear!

Look at how much this little one has grown in just 10 weeks! I can’t even wrap my head around it.

We are thrilled to know that everything looks great, and little Smied is healthy. I feel like it’s safe now to start putting together a nursery, and buying things for the baby. We didn’t find out the gender – but we’d love to hear your predictions! Boy or Girl?

DIY Decor

A New Look for Old Wicker Furniture

Posted on June 24, 2016

In my Welcome Sign tutorial, I talked about how we were recently gifted Jeremy’s Grandma’s old wicker furniture. We were pretty excited to get started on this project, because both Jeremy and I had the same vision for the furniture – this look (sans the striped pillows/curtains):

Black Wicker + White Cushions. So clean, classic, and easy to decorate around for different holidays/seasons.

This is what we started with:

The furniture itself needed a little TLC, but it really wasn’t too bad. I didn’t go to the lengths of re-wrapping the legs with wicker, because we wanted it to look like heirloom furniture – not brand new. With this project, you want to take the steps you would to refinish any old furniture:

Clean + Prime + Paint + Top Coat

CLEAN:
We started by taking a stiff-bristled brush and gently scraping off loose paint. Be very light-handed with this, I made the mistake of thinking I needed to scrub harder than I did, and snapped a few pieces of wicker before I learned this. We finished giving it a once-over with the air compressor hose, this was able to knock off any stubborn loose paint.

PRIME:
Oh trusty old Kilz, how I love you. I bought four cans of their white oil-based spray primer – one for each piece of furniture. Since these were going to be indoors on a three season porch, we didn’t need heavy duty exterior primer. This will give you good coverage, hold up to temperature fluctuations, and hold the top coats of paint really well. I followed the instructions and sprayed one thin coat, let it dry for one hour, then gave it a final coat. Kilz has amazing coverage and has never failed me.

PAINT:
I did a lot of Googling before I started this project, and most people said that the way to go with wicker was an oil-based primer, with latex paint on top. It makes for a durable combination, which is what you want for furniture you plan on using a lot. Luckily, I had almost 1/2 a gallon of Benjamin Moore Onyx latex paint in the basement to use. When refinishing wicker, you never, Ever, EVER want to paint with a brush. Don’t do it. Always spray the paint on, it gives a much cleaner finish. We opted to use our paint sprayer attachment for the air compressor.

One caveat – these sprayers are not meant to be used with traditional latex interior paint, it is too thick and can clog up your equipment. So before we started, we had to make a large batch of thinned paint. We simply mixed 4 parts paint with 1 part paint thinner, and let it run through a straining funnel. If it can run through the strainer smoothly, it will run through your sprayer. This worked perfectly.

Wear a mask, gloves, and eye protection for this part, and cover your yard with a dropcloth if you don’t want spray paint shadows on your grass! Much like the priming process, we did one coat on the furniture, let it dry for an hour, and re-coated. We did thicker coats with the paint sprayer since we had to thin it out initially.

TOP COAT:
The furniture looked SO much better when we were finished with the final coat of paint – almost brand new! But in order to keep it looking that way, I suggest giving it at least two coats of sprayable polyurethane. This will keep the finish lasting a lot longer, and minimize the chance of paint cracking or chipping off. We bought two cans of Mixwax Helmsman Spray Polyurethane in Satin – all of the reviews I read said that this left the nicest finish, and won’t yellow over time as some polyurethanes can.

You want really thin coats with this, so two cans was more than enough. I followed the instructions (once the last coat of Onyx was dry), sprayed one light coat, let it dry for and hour, and re-coated. If you’re going to be using your wicker furniture outside, do at least three coats to be safe. Let this top coat dry for at least 24 hours before using your furniture.

Now that the furniture itself was done, we just had to find some white cushions to finish the look. If you’re like us, at this point in the project you’re thinking “Whew, the hardest part is over. Cushions can’t be that expensive, right?”

And you’d be so wrong. Just like we were.

Cushions are stupid expensive. Like more expensive than the furniture itself – sure, ours was free, but even if we’d purchased it the cushions would still be the most expensive part of the project. There is nothing I can do about this, but I feel it necessary to complain because seriously, these are glorified butt-pillows.

We looked at Home Depot, Lowes, Pottery Barn, Ballard Design, Homegoods, At Home, TJ Maxx, Macys, Kohls, Target, and 1.2 million other stores. Most places either did not carry white cushions, or if they did, they were $90 for a freaking lumbar pillow. No bueno. Thankfully, we stumbled on a sale Memorial Day weekend at Pier 1…and they had exactly what we were looking for, for great prices: the Cabana line in Cream.

We bought the standard settee and chair cushions, and a few pillows, and did a happy dance through the parking lot all the way back to our car because Hallelujah! We had something to sit on, now! There are a ton of other items in the cabana line, but these were the ones we considered – I’ll bet that there are more amazing summer sales coming up soon for the 4th of July.

I’m just about 5 months along and realize that children + cream furniture are a disaster waiting to happen. So, before we even set these on the furniture, I did three coats of Scotchgard just to be safe. It’s a fail-safe product and gives me the peace of mind I need to keep these cushions/pillows clean.

Woohoo! I love the cozy feel this new (to us) furniture gives our front porch. Most importantly, Murph approves – it is now his favorite “room” in the house. A big thank you to my mother-in-law Loree for letting us have these pieces! I’m still looking for a side table, rug, and other accessories, but it’s really coming together. Enjoy your weekend!

DIY Decor

Summer Vibes

Posted on June 19, 2016

I’m really loving this super-summery weather here in Michigan lately! We did have one day of melt-your-face-off 95 degree heat, but other than that it has been perfect outside. Nothing is better than being able to throw open all of the windows in the house, make an Arnie Palmer, and spend the day outside.

We’ve spent a lot of time the last few weeks ripping out all of the front/side landscaping to start from scratch. So far we have:

Endless Summer Hydrangeas
Boxwoods
Japanese Maple
Peonies
Lavender
Salvia
Creeping Sedum

It looks a million times better, no? Plus I love being able to cut fresh flowers for the house. Peonies + Hydrangeas = gorgeous. I just wish peonies bloomed longer, they’re a lot like avocados: not ready, not ready, not ready, not ready, not ready, n-READY! Too late.

We also took on a little side project with my nephew, he’s been asking forever if we can plant sunflowers at the house. Of course I can never say no to that sweet little face. So I spent a week sprouting the seeds, and then he and my niece came over to plant the seeds in their own containers – how cute is their little handwriting?!

These days I’ve been trying to find ways to give the house a summery feel. I took off the bow and garland from my St. Patrick’s Day Burlap Wreath, and made a simple little navy/white bunting for the front door.

We also set out some of Jeremy’s summer beer coasters – how ~~cute~~ manly are these? I’m considering putting up a tutorial on how to make these – if you’re interested, let me know in the comments!

I also whipped up this new chalkboard – inspired by a current pregnancy craving of mine 🙂 Watermelon is the BEST in summer, pregnant or not.

How are you enjoying this beautiful summer weather?

Home Improvement

This Old Kitchen (Progress) – Part II

Posted on June 13, 2016

So, this post was delayed a little bit by a few newer projects, as well as our big announcement! You can read Part I of this post here.

Let’s start with a little refresher.

BEFORE:

There’s really just a whole lot of NO going on here.

AFTER:

Still in progress, but much less MAKE IT STOP! happening now.

Let’s continue talking about how we got here – today we’re talking countertops!

Part II: Tinted Concrete Countertop Overlay
The gray laminate countertop was durable, but so, So, SO ugly. I also knew the 4″ laminate backsplash had to go. It made the walls behind it feel so small and closed-in, and I knew we’d be putting in a subway tile backsplash next that I wanted to run flush from the countertop. My inspiration has always been these two photos:

I love the look of soapstone or black granite with crisp white cabinets in a farmhouse, but we’re not quite there yet budget-wise. So for a quick livable makeover, I opted for a black-tinted concrete countertop overlay. I was inspired by the tutorial I found on Little Green Notebook, she made it seem so easy! We ordered the Ardex Feather Finish concrete powder, as well as the black tinting powder from Amazon. We had about 30 square feet of countertop space to cover, and one bag of each was plenty. Ardex is not sold in stores unless you have a distributor nearby – you can search for them here.

While we were waiting for the powders to arrive, it was time to do some prep work. The first thing we did was ~~attack~~ remove the 4″ laminate backsplash. If you have countertops like we did, you’ll notice that unfortunately they usually screw this backsplash into the countertop through the bottom, before they install the counters themselves. This makes it near-impossible to just unscrew them from underneath, and trying to pry them off will only damage the countertop you have left. To get around this, we slightly pried each section away from the countertop enough to expose the screws. We then used an oscillating saw with a metal blade, and cut through each screw as flush to the countertop as possible, and finished grinding down the screws with a dremel tool. It’s okay if you scuff up the countertops a little, since you’ll be doing an overlay. You just don’t want the huge holes that prying might cause.

Woohoo! So much better already, and we haven’t even started.

Next, we needed to scuff up the surface of the countertop, so that the concrete had something to grab on to. I used a wallpaper scorer for this, and gave each surface a rough score 3 times each. Finally, make sure each surface is clean with a wet sponge. If the surface is really dirty or greasy, clean with a mixture of 1/4 cup TSP: 1 gallon water. Wear eye protection and gloves if you have to use this solution, because it is serious stuff! The countertop will look rough when you’re done, but that’s good – at this point there’s no turning back 🙂

Now is the exciting part : time to lay down some concrete! Be sure you’re wearing disposable gloves for this part, if you don’t want stained hands. I wish I had more pictures of this process, but we finished the project 4 months before I started blogging. I’ll do my best to describe the rest from here! To get the dark color we wanted, we mixed the following ratio:

1/4 cup tinting powder : 2 cups ardex powder : (about) 1 1/2 cups water

It will look like a thin black cake frosting. Yum?

You want to mix this up until you get the consistency above, then let it sit for 5 minutes. I know this sounds counter-intuitive because it would seem like letting it sit would give you less time to work with it – but it’s actually the opposite. After 5 minutes, mix it up again. This will give you about 15 minutes of working time, which should be enough to do one coat on about 10-15 sq. ft. of countertop.

Take a trowel (we used a magic trowel – highly recommended!), and spread on a thin layer of concrete. It’s like icing a cake. Don’t overthink it, smooth it out the best you can, but remember that small ridges can be sanded after each coat. The vertical edges are a bit tougher – I found the trick to this is to wait to do these until the countertop itself is covered. This gives the concrete mix enough time to set up so that you can just grab some in your (gloved) hand at the end and rub it along the sides without it falling off. Let this coat dry completely, about 1 1/2 – 2 hours. Then it’s time to sand – we did a rough sanding with an orbital sander and a 120 grit pad in between each coat. You want to put on at least 3 thin coats of concrete to completely cover the surface.

Once you’ve finished your last coat, give it a once over with the 120 grit, then follow it up with a 220 grit to get it really, really smooth. (Pro tip: if you’re doing a kitchen countertop with a sink insert, don’t be dumb like us. Remove the sink before you do this. We didn’t and I’m not thrilled with the results around this area).

Done!

Just kidding. You have to seal these bad boys unless you want your every move in the kitchen documented on these porous, easily stainable countertops. To do this, we chose two different sealers:

511 Impregnator Sealer + Safecoat Acrylacq (Satin Finish)

We did 3 coats of the impregnator/sealer, and 3 coats of Acrylaqc. Acrylaqc is a food-grade, stain resistant sealer, so we thought this was our best choice. However, it’s been over 6 months now that we’ve lived with these countertops, and it hasn’t proven to be as stain-resistant as advertised. We’ve got some spots that are left over from spills which is a HUGE bummer, but it blends well enough (it almost looks like well-worn chalkboard) that I can deal until we save up enough for stone.

If I could start over, I would have finished everything off with a clear, 2-part epoxy top coat. I think this really would have made these countertops super stain resistant, however, that is my only regret. We’ve had no issues with surface scratches or chips.

It took about a week start to finish, but looks much so much better!

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