And On the Fifth Day...

Starting to see some grass breaking through!

 I am still surprised by how many grass seeds seem to just be sitting in the dirt doing nothing.  Hopefully in another week I'll have more than just little clumps of new grass.

How to Plant New Grass

What spectacular weather, eh?

The prior owners of our home had a 22' by 4' garden in which they grew different spices and had a nice rosebush.  Because of the layout, we tore up the garden last fall when we moved in - the garden blocked access to the rest of the yard for our dog and even when she did get by, her cable would get caught in the plants or the rose bush.

The garden was separated on one side by landscaping stones, so the first job was to remove these.  Ugh, what a pain.

Say goodbye to a fun weekend!

The prior owner had made a frame of concrete and set the stones in the frame.  He then added mortar to join the stones together.

The first step involved using a trencher to dig up the garden and the yard by a few inches on each side of the stone.  I then started jamming a gigantic railroad spike into the mortar between stones to break up the mortar.  My neighbor suggested I simply use his sledge hammer, slam it into the stones, and this would break up the mortar and free the stones from the concrete base.  He was right - I wish I had talked to him about this prior to spending my Saturday jamming away with the railroad spike.

Hello sore back

The culprit

Each stone weighed 40 or 50lbs would be my guess. 

That took up my Saturday.  On Sunday, I spent the day preparing the former garden area for seeding.

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I was surprised at how rocky the soil was, even in the area where the garden was.  I quickly built a sifter out of some metal screen and left over chair legs.

Searching for gold

I then dug up about 6" of dirt across the entire area, dropped it into my sifter, and sorted out all the rocks (I also found some old paper, pieces of glass, and some brick).  I then used the good dirt which had fallen into the trash can and spread it back out over the entire area.

It's important to try to level out the area where you are planting new grass as any mounds or depressions will likely remain once the grass has taken root.  This can cause uneven drainage.  I used a shovel to pat down the dirt and create a pretty smooth plot.

New grass needs to be left alone to sprout and grow roots, so I also needed to put up a fence to keep the dog out.  The prior homeowner had left 24' of fence which was about 4' high, so I cut it in half and used spikes to create a perimeter.

Off limits!

I bought a small bag of Scott's grass seed along with Starter Fertilizer.  I was convinced I would just spread it by hand, but I read enough warnings online to decide otherwise.  I bought a hand spreader for $15 from Home Depot and I think the results were very good.

Once the grass seed was spread, I used the back of a rake to push the seeds down gently.

This had better work!

I used the spreader to then distribute the Starter Fertilizer, then hit it all with the hose.  The best recommendation I found online was to keep the ground moist - don't create puddles, but also realize that if it dries out, it'll die.  I plan to water the lawn twice a day for the foreseeable future and hope the grass fills in nicely.

I'll plan to post a new pic of the lawn every few days so that everyone can see the progress.  My real concern is keeping our dog off the area for long enough for the grass to grow in.  Different sites say it can take 5 to 30 days for the grass to really grow in earnest.

Update: June 2012 - save yourself a lot of time and effort and wait till it is warm to plant new grass!

How to Paint a Room

We decided to spend our President's Day Weekend re-painting our master bedroom.  The project really did take three days including all the prep work, painting, watching paint dry, etc.

Here's what our bedroom looked like soon after we moved in:

Before

 The previous color was something like a yellow-mustard-orange-brown mixture.  It wasn't terrible, but wasn't our first choice.

We first took a trip to Home Depot and bought some paint samples.  HD will sell you Behr 8 oz sample bottles for $4 in any color you want.  If you live close enough to a HD, as we do, it's worth it to pick up a color or two but come back for more.

We painted a small square with our first set of colors, but realized the employee had mixed one of the samples incorrectly.  It took another trip to HD to pickup more samples before we were even ready to begin really painting.  We did buy a bunch of the other supplies we needed on this trip so that we could begin prepping the room.

Decisions, decisions

We ended up choosing Behr Tropical Splash (540D-5) for the accent wall behind the bed and Frost Wind (540A) for the rest of the walls.

Preparing the Room
Now that we've painted an entire room, I'll let you know what you should do, not necessarily what we've done.  First, go to Youtube for some basic videos on how to paint - did you know that rolling paint sideways is more likely to leave streaks than painting up and down or at an angle?

Another good suggestion is to clean the trim around windows and along the baseboards.  At the end of the project, you'll have a nicely painted room and dirty baseboards will really stand out.

Applying painter's tape around the room is a painstaking task, but you'll really be doing yourself a favor if you do this very carefully.  I suggest ripping smaller strips of tape, maybe 18" long, and applying to the wall rather than trying to apply one solid piece that goes all 8 feet up the wall.  The slightest gaps can lead to paint on your trim or leave old paint showing.

If you are painting the ceiling, which we did not, you'll want to move everything out of the room and cover the floor with dropcloths.  We moved most things out and used old plastic furniture covers from our move to protect the carpet section by section.

You should take this time to spackle any old nail holes and gouges in the wall.  After the spackle has dried, you'll want to sand it down, then wipe with a damp rag to pick up the dust.  Sanding any significant scuffs is also a good idea.

Remove all the wall plates from your switches and power outlets.  Many websites will say to cut the power to these receptacles, but I didn't think that was necessary.

Lastly, if you have a floor fan you may want to move it into the room.  Air flow will keep you from succumbing to the fumes and will help aid in paint drying.

As you can see, before you are even ready to paint, you've already spent hours on trips to the store, cleaning, and preparing the room.  I'm glad we chose a 3-day weekend.

Hours of prep

Paint! or Prime, then Paint!I conferred with the internet and then asked the Home Depot employee whether we should prime first.  Most of the internet will tell you "Yes, you must prime first!" while select sites, with people who seem a bit more knowledgeable will tell you that it isn't always necessary.  New walls must be primed first.  If you are painting a wall that is currently dark and want it to become a light shade, you'll probably need to prime first.  If the change in shade isn't that significant, you could either use a paint + primer or skip priming all together.  Cheaper paint is thinner, so keep that in mind if you are undecided.

Painting shouldn't be too difficult, but it is tiring and there's a lot to cover.  If you went to Youtube, you probably saw that you should cover your rollers in paint, apply it to the wall in a "W" or "M" shape, then use the roller to fill in the paint in the shape of a box.

For the trim, I would suggest using a small roller and a device that is specifically for trim.  We started the project using a paintbrush for the tight areas, but we found the results were less than ideal. 

As you are painting, remember that you will be applying a second coat.  In a few areas, I think we kept rolling on more paint to get 100% coverage the first pass, but this can lead to streaking. 

In between coats, you need to let the paint completely dry.  Keep windows open, fans blowing, and it shouldn't take all that long.

For the second coat, take a quick walk around and identify if there are any areas that need fixing.  We found that the cheap paintbrush we used left some bristles.  We were able to pick these out with our fingernails and they didn't require sanding, thankfully.  If there are any big streaks or globs of paint that have dried, you may want to sand over these areas.

Apply your second coat, let dry, then... more work.

Getting there!

Finishing
Unless you are a real pro, you'll find that some paint may have soaked under your painter's tape or that you touched the white ceiling with your blue paint.  It's hard to avoid little mistakes like these - I imagine that you could avoid them, but it will probably add significant time to the job.

So, after we thought we were "done", we removed the painters tape and found there were a bunch of areas in need of touch ups.  We poured a little bit of paint into plastic bowls and went around with artist's brushes. 

Some of the light switches and power outlets took on some paint, but this was easy to scrape off with a fingernail.  The same was mostly true for the trim around the windows, doors, and baseboards. 

Boom!  Looking good!

Those are ruffles on the bed, not a wet spot!

Shopping List:
I would guess we spent between $150 and $200 on all of the supplies.  About $100 of that was on the three gallons of paint we bought.

• paint
• primer
• paint rollers - buy a few semi-smooth rollers for the first coat (and don't try and use one roller for the entire room even if it is the same color) then use a smooth roller for the second coat
• edging device (something like this)
• drop cloths
• extender bar to reach high places
• step stool (you'll need to be able to reach the ceiling with a short paintbrush for final touch ups)
• disposable paint trays
• metal / hard plastic paint tray to hold the disposables
• painter's tape
• artist's brushes

Shoe Bench

Building a shoe bench was one of the first projects I wanted to complete.  I needed a place to sit when I come through the door where I could change my shoes.  The shoe bench would need to have a drawer of sorts so that our dog couldn't easily get to the shoes and potentially destroy them.

My original inspiration was a Shoe Dresser on Ana-White.com.  The dresser was narrow and would fit along the wall of the foyer.  The drawer essentially tilts outward and is kept from getting over-extended by a piece of belt attached to the bottom of the drawer.

The shoe dresser was tall though, and wouldn't provide a place to sit.  I started the project by sketching out a project design on paper.  I knew the length and width of the project were limited to the space behind the front door.  Given the narrow space, a slide out drawer was unlikely to work, as the back of the drawer would take up valuable space.

I decided to use two 2x6 boards along the top, sides, and bottom.  All boards were joined using a Kreg Jig.  I think using boards along the bottom, rather than having four legs, makes the bench more solid.  I would say the hardest part about this project was fitting the face inside the frame.  Dimensional lumber is close to straight, but not 100% perfect.  This meant I had to sand down the edges of the face in several places where it just wouldn't fit into the frame even though the dimensions indicated it would.

The face of the shoe bench is make of two 2x8s, again, joined together by a Kreg Jig.  I fastened the face to the frame of the bench using three hinges I bought at Home Depot.  This enables the face to tilt forward.  I had to drill through part of the face to attach the handle, then screwed on plates for the magnetic closure.

Attached to inside bottom of the face is a 1x8 that goes along the length of the bench.  This serves as the floor where the shoes rest against.  As the face is pulled / tilts open, the shoes move along with it.  There isn't enough room inside the bench for the shoes to fall behind.

Akina: "Wow! Great idea!"

The face is held in position by a drawer magnet.  I love the lock/click sound!  I added bungee cords as a restraint so that the handle on the face wouldn't fall forward and ding our floors.  I added this kind of last minute, but it adds a nice touch.  The bungee cords are attached to the base of the frame and to the base of the face.  They are also run through another eye hook attached to the side of the frame so that the cords wouldn't get caught under the face when it tilts closed and to generate enough distance so that the cords would have enough pull.

I used some left over white paint to finish.  I thought I would stain it, but I think it looks better matching the floorboards around the front door.  I still might attach some sort of protective coating to the inside of the face, as dirty shoes might leave lasting marks otherwise.

Another project complete!