Our Finished DIY “Patio”

Let me first start out by explaining why we call it our “patio”. Initially we had a 3 phase plan for this project, what you see here are phase 1 and phase 2. We were going to extend this around the other side of our deck and make a larger section that would actually act as a patio. After working on it up to this point we decided that we could not bear to do anymore. This was the most physically draining, back breaking project I could ever imagine. We now have a 2 phase plan. Done! So it’s not really a patio, it’s more of a walkway and we are okay with that. This is the after photo:

And this is the before photo right after we had the Sugar Maple removed that was leaning on the garage. There are wood chips over the rocks, but it gives a good idea of what we were working with before, messy, dirty, hard to walk on, shoot out the back of the lawn mower and break husband’s ankles river rocks. I thought I hated these rocks before we started this project, boy was I wrong. Trying to remove them took as long as actually making our new pathway. It was unbelievable. It’s a big improvement though we think. It looks much much nicer and is so much easier to walk on. No more rocks getting suck under that gate to prevent it from opening. Oh yea, I know you see that sad, sagging gate back there. That story is coming later.

So onto the details. We started the dreaded rock removal Memorial day weekend and I believe we finished phase 2 right around 4th of July. We only worked on it over the weekends and had a trip to Chicago in there, so its hard to estimate exactly how many hours/days it took, but I was originally thinking we could do it all in one weekend due to the convincing sales pitch of the HSN host. Simple. Easy. Quick. Grandmas can do it. Lies.

We purchased the Pathmate cobblestone molds and the Odjob mixing barrel from HSN. If you care to see how easy they tell you it is, you can watch that here. Ima sucker apparently. Believe me, anything involving concrete is not easy to do, we learned this the hard way. They fail to mention with their “no heavy lifting” statement that you still have to go to the store and buy bags of concrete and transport them home somehow without breaking an axle. 60lb bags are not light. There is no way on Earth I would have ever been able to do this project solo. Steve did all of the heavy lifting, mixing and pouring. It was back breaking and he is strong guy.

Anyways, rock removal was less than to be desired, we are still finding loose rocks, but once we had it “good enough” we leveled the dirt with a metal rake, it didn’t have to be perfect because the concrete forms to the surface underneath, so as long as it was close enough we were good. We used Charcoal colored cement stain from Home Depot $6/bottle and Quikrete concrete mix 60lb bags that we got on sale for $2.50 a bag (this is all the will fit into the Odjob mixing barrel). Each mold took an entire 60lb bag and there was some left over with each bag. It was wasteful and at first we were using the second mold to make rocks from the leftover mix, but eventually just started abandoning the leftovers because it was slowing us down too much to try to save it. Pro tip: If you are going to try a project like this make sure you have a place to dump the extras. We figured out that an 80lb bag will fill 2 molds pretty close to perfectly, so if you aren’t using the Odjob mixing barrel, the 80 pounders would be a good option. This is phase 1 (still drying):

We mixed each bag, poured it into the mold, smoothed it out, let it sit for 30 minutes, removed the mold, rounded the edges with a trowel and repeated the process. We found that the soupier the consistency of the mix, the easier it was to fill the molds and smooth them out. However, the soupier the mix, the longer it had to sit before removing the mold. HSN recommended the fast drying cement which is $5 for a 50LB bag. The Odjob only comes with instructions for 60LB bags. This is an issue that I’m not the first one to comment about after doing some online research. By purchasing the 60lb bags of the regular Quikrete, this allowed us to cut our cement costs in half. Slower process, but saved us almost $70. I’d also like to point out that we stretched our dollar by using 1/3 of a bottle of stain per bag of concrete vs the recommended 1/2 bottle. This saved us another $30. And since estimating 1/3 of a bottle when pouring is not a very accurate process, we ended up with sets that varied in color. This turned out to be a very cool effect though, since the sets were different colors we mixed up stones from one set to another and achieved a varied look through out. I think it looks more natural and less like poured cement this way. Happy accident.

Since we were working with an irregular shaped space we made extra sets of the molds and once dry we moved the individual rocks to fill the space. This is how we got the rounded shape. It’s not a perfect science. We spent a lot of time sitting on the ground moving the rocks around like puzzle pieces to see what the best fit was. We are happy with the outcome and actually like the rounded, less uniform space better than that rectangular space by the gate that is in the original mold format. This is Phase 2 in progress:

We had a little white dog walking in the fresh cement incident right after I took this picture. He was doing so well with going around the wet sets, but we blocked him off and he had places to be. He got washed down good after that and was not happy about it, but we didn’t want to risk him getting any cement burns on this paws. This reminds to me to stress the importance of wearing gloves when working with concrete. Exposure to your skin will cause burns. It’s not fun.

About a week after pouring the last set and all of the stones had completely cured and were in their final place we swept all purpose sand into the gaps. It made a huge difference and immediately made the whole surface feel sturdy and strong, no more wobbly stones. This will also hopefully help keep the weeds out.

In total we are figuring that we made about 27-28 full molds. Which means that since we used 1 – 60lb bag per mold, minus about one bag from saving the leftovers, and 1/3 of a bottle of stain per mold, we used about 27 bags of Quikrete and roughly 9 bottles of stain. We also purchased 2 trowels for about $5/each and 2 bags of sand $3/each. That puts our cost total at around $200. This doesn’t include the water necessary to mix the concrete or wash the tools, with our last water bill were guessing about $25 for that. So in total our estimate is $225. Over all it was a lot cheaper than purchasing paver stones or hiring someone to do the installation. If we had it to do all over again…? Hard to say at this point. The wounds are still too fresh, but we do love the final outcome.

The Privilege of Electricity

So this is not what I wanted to be writing about this morning, but due to the current situation I feel it’s necessary. We’re going on 48 hours of no power. Hottest recording-breaking streak of the year, to be more accurate since the year 1920, and our power goes out right at the beginning of it. And it remains out indefinitely. Let me put it into perspective for you guys.. I went to work over an hour early this morning just because. Follow me here?

I want to hurt people. Especially the people who live across the street from us. Why? They haven’t lost power yet and it’s probably safe to say they are in the clear at this point since the rest of our city is in the dark. In fact, they never lose power when we do and they like to stand out in their front yards gazing at our houses like it’s some sort of phenomenon then will quickly retreat back to their air conditioned homes at the first sight of life on our side of the world as they laugh and shake their heads in relief. They aren’t the only ones though, none of the surrounding cities or counties have had any issues, just lucky us. This is the second time this year we have lost power for hours on end. It happened last summer too. Clearly it’s a chronic problem (that I wish would have been disclosed to us before purchasing our house).

I heard that our mayor recorded a message and was sending it out to the residents apologizing for the outages. We didn’t get that call. You know who is getting it? All of the people with power. Thanks Mayor, super glad you are making those calls count. I’d love to have a little chat with the mayor and ask him why our power goes out when the sun is shining. We had serious storms earlier this week and we went unphased. Its only when the sun is shining, when the rest of the world enjoys the privilege of electricity. And I say privilege because it truly is a privilege apparently. Our power went out last month for almost 24 hours in the beautiful sunny 72 degree weather. And last year during the same sort of lovely weather. Those times didn’t hit us as hard though since the temperature was comfortable enough and we could open the windows without being punched by the 100+ degree temps.

This will be the second time in two months where we will have to throw away everything in our freshly stocked refrigerator. Its like they know we just went grocery shopping. The city of Ferndale/DTE will be getting billed for damages.

I heard by word of mouth this morning, because as you know I couldn’t watch the news, that our substation finally blew and they are being forced to actually fix the problem now instead of just putting a bandaid on it. And what gets me even worse is that the effected areas are generally only the side of the city that pays higher taxes. We’re paying more to live here and constantly having to deal with this. I don’t know why the mayor thinks it’s ok to let his residents continually go without power. I can only assume he lives elsewhere, perhaps in Royal Oak where they pay half our tax rate. Or maybe he lives across the street from us. It’s tough to say for sure.

DTE is saying that 5,000+ are currently still without power in our area and due to “crew availability” and “weather conditions” have no time estimate when it will be restored. Here’s to an awesome 90+ degree weekend.

Hello.

In an effort to make our front door a little more welcoming I’ve been crafting up a bit of neighborly cheer for the world to enjoy. Our front door was looking pretty sad before with a miniature sized wreath that has no business being on a front door. At the time I thought it was better than nothing, but compared to what’s going on up there now it probably looked ridiculous. I wanted to put our Silhouette SD die cutting machine that we purchased for our wedding crafts (this for example) to use and thought this would be a great opportunity to use the adhesive-backed vinyl that Silhouette sells. $7 bucks for a 9″x10′ roll. Of course the machine can’t load anything over letter-sized but that is a story for a whole other day entirely. Let’s just say trial and error and some wasted vinyl later I had a design cut out ready for our door. hello. It’s simple, cheery, welcoming. I thought it was perfect. I do have to admit I found some inspiration on the web ie: this. Cute right? That’s what I thought too. Let’s also just say that if I had been able to figure out how to cut something longer than 11″ this would have been a lot nerdier with curly brackets or html tags. That’s right. One day.. it will happen.

Anyways, once I figured out how to apply it to the front door I realized that my initial thought of how I didn’t need to use the recommended transfer paper was completely wrong. I managed okay with this simple design, but if you had something larger that’s more detailed it sure would be tough to get everything applied perfectly. So with you all as my witnesses, I recommend using the transfer paper if you are working with the Silhouette’s adhesive backed vinyl. Lesson learned.

By the way if you are interested in seeing the Silhouette machine and all of its die cutting glory in action I have a video here. I think its pretty neat, but as stated above I am kind of a nerd like that.

In addition to my cheery little hello to the world I have been in production on some wreaths. That’s right, some, because I can never just do one of anything. I have way too many ideas for that. So it’s always some. The one I am sharing today is what we currently have on our front door, which was formerly this wreath that I made a few years ago to liven up my apartment door. So off with the eucalyptus, on with some iron rubbed bronze spray paint, made a few fabric flowers out of muslin, added the blue bird back in and tied a pretty little bow to hang centered on the door with ribbon from our bridal shower. Seriously you guys, I save everything. I can’t stand trowing something away when I know I could use it one day. Not always sure what I will use it for or when, but I know it has future potential. (With that being said, you will need to prepare yourselves for the post about how messy my office/craft room is. It’s in the works, be warned.) Total cost for this wreath = $0. I already had everything on hand, the wreath, spray paint, glue, fabric and the bird. You can’t get better than that and it’s really cute. I hope our visitors enjoy it.

And I forgot to mention.. I was also considering doing a no soliciting decal instead of hello. I am not sure what the deal is with our neighborhood, but we must get 10 solicitors a day. It’s really annoying. Anyways the cheerfulness won and we went with hello. But if you guys have the same solicitation issues that we have, it might be something to consider. “Hello, please don’t knock if you are trying to sell me something.” or “Hello, keep on walking.” You know, something along those lines. Or you could just buy a more polite version on etsy. I am a big fan of these.

Kitchen Update – Part 1: The Backsplash

Steve and I have been very busy working on updates to our house and this time we were focused on the kitchen. We decided that we really wanted to put in a backsplash behind our sink since the plaster was getting ruined from the water. A few months ago our kitchen looked like this. I had started painting over the dragonfly paint color with Behr’s Perfect Taupe, you can see it on the soffit below, but I left the wall alone while we were deciding what we were going to do with it. We finally decided to paint it to match the rest of the room and that we would stay in the tans and browns and add a pop of red, trying to tie it into the rest of the main floor but still have its own design identity.

I found these curtains at Target, well it was actually one curtain that I cut in half and made into two curtains with my handy mini sewing machine. It only took me about 5 hours to figure out how to thread the needle and get it to run properly, not to mention a fair amount of cursing during the process. We also updated the recessed light to a hanging pendant found at Home Depot and upgraded our cabinet pulls from simple handles to the Nantucket cup pulls, bought on overstock.com. It was starting to look much better, but still the backsplash needed to be done. I think we looked at tile about 27 times before we finally made a decision, but it was well worth it because what we ended up picking out matches our tan floor tile perfectly and the borders match the tiles and our concrete counter top to really tie everything in.

We purchased tan ceramic subway tiles from Home Depot to the tune of $0.30 a tile, which works out to $1.80 a sqft. And since we only needed 5 sqft plus a border this was a very affordable project for us. The border we used for each end under the window had thin rustic tan tiles that surrounded square brown glass tiles. These were also purchased at Home Depot for under $5 each. We decided to use an adhesive tile mat rather than mastic to speed up the process since you don’t have to wait 24 hours for anything to set, just stick the tiles on and you are ready to grout. So we got to work by removing the white molding under the window ledge, then placed the adhesive mat on the wall. This space only used about half of the mat in the package. We were ready for tile.

We started with the border, then laid out the tile so that the end tiles that would need to be cut to fit into the space would be the same size on each end. Then we applied as many whole tiles as we could using 1/16″ spacers to make sure that every tile was evenly spaced. Steve was working the tile saw while I was placing and measuring what needed to be cut.

Once we had all over our tiles in place we pressed them firmly on the wall to make sure they would not be going anywhere anytime soon. The adhesive mat claims that it is stronger than using mastic. I even tried to pull one off and trust me, that thing was not going anywhere.

So now we were ready for grout. We used an Alabaster colored grout from Home Depot because we wanted it to be as close to the tile color as we could get. We removed the spacers and used painters tape around the edges to save our wall and counter from getting grouted. We then applied the grout with a rubber spatula and once the grout was on I used a damp sponge to remove as much excess as I could while trying to make sure that each space was filled in.

When wiping off the excess of you end up with a film on your tiles, you can see it in the above photo, this is normal. So a few hours later I came back for a second round of grout removal. And voilà! We absolutely love it. This was one of our quickest, easiest and most affordable projects and it really makes a huge difference in our kitchen. I would definitely recommend using a sealer on it to protect from staining and caulking around the edges to further protect from water damage.

Patio Progress: Phase 2

We’re getting there.

We managed to start Phase 2 and get eight more sets made last weekend. Once they completely dry we are going to rearrange them to fill the space more evenly and we’re guessing we’ll need to make about three more to finish filling the space in. Half of our time has been spent clearing out all of the old river rocks that used to occupy this area. Those rocks are the bane of our existence. We hated them then and we hate them even more now. We’ve learned that removing all of the river rocks before we start laying new sets makes production much faster and easier on us. Of course an entire day was devoted solely to removing the second half of the river rocks, but it made the next day so much easier. Eight sets is a new record and we spent less time than previous days of only getting six done.

Isn’t this new set-up really going to look nice? I think so and it is miles easier to walk on. And Linus agrees.

DIY Ottoman

This DIY Ottoman was a project we worked on last summer after seeing it on Young House Love. I’ve always loved the tufted ottomans you’d find at Pottery Barn and thought this would be a cheap, but decent option for us until we feel like shelling out for the real thing, I don’t see that ever happening though (unless we win the lottery).

We followed the steps more or less in the tutorial, but found that the frame was not sturdy to say the least. Steve moves it around a lot depending on where he is sitting (couch or floor) and it was not holding up to the stress. So we reinforced the inside of the legs and the legs to the base with metal L brackets and screws from Home Depot. This made a huge difference, it can withstand all sorts of moving now.

Originally, we had it covered in a camel colored faux leather like this, but when we got a new couch in the fall it clashed something horrible so we switched to a white faux leather, similar to this. I had my concerns about using white and now after living with it for almost a year those concerns are still around. It’s dirty all of the time. I am looking at new options for upholstering that will hide the dirt better and make it easier to cover. The white faux leather is nice and strong, but it is also thick which made it difficult to staple the corners down and impossible to make matching buttons. I don’t think a regular fabric is going to be able to live up to the job, but I would love to do something like the swatch below. Maybe if I use enough Scotchgaurd..

I see some changes in this ottoman’s near future.

Garage Sale Madness

Oh how I hate garage sales. Actually let me clarify, I love going to garage sales, I hate hosting them. It’s been a few years since I participated in one and apparently that was enough time for me to completely forget how much I completely detest them. I’m not sure what I was thinking exactly. Maybe the fact that were having a city-wide sale so we don’t have to have it at our house, or the fact that its only 5 hours long instead of a whole weekend swayed me. But now that I am committed to this I am really thinking that 5 hours or a weekend, its still the same amount of prep and its still the same amount of work whether you’re having it at your house or somewhere else. Having to transport everything to the sale and then set it up on site at the crack of dawn might even be worse, especially since you can only sell as  much as you can fit in your car. I took two days off of work to gather everything, clean it all up, price and pack it up. Set-up starts at 6am tomorrow, wasn’t aware of that when I signed up. Thanks mom.

All I know is that I can’t see my living room or dining room floor and these have been the most exhausting days off I’ve ever had. We better sell a lot of stuff. Depending on the sales I could be feeling a lot better tomorrow at 1pm, or much worse. We will see tomorrow, that is if the weather holds out for us. That’s right there’s an 80% chance of thunderstorms, especially in the morning.

For you I was made

Just one of those days..

Yesterday was just one of those days where we both felt like life was beating us 10-0. For those of you who live in Metro Detroit, you know that its hot out. Like seriously steamy. For those of you who don’t, we’re talking upper 90′s. HOTTT. I got home from work to a sweltering house, no air conditioning, to find that our water wasn’t working. Last week we had no power for almost 18 hours thanks to some neighbor on the block behind us. God only knows what they did, but their house was roped off like the bomb squad was in there. Anyways, no water, inferno hot. I felt so so bad for the dog. He looked at me like he wanted me dead. The cat doesn’t seem to mind the heat too much, but I know it’s a front. She had to be burning up.

I managed to make dinner and we decided that we had to go to Home Depot to buy an air conditioner. So we got to HD and it was of course a circus. Everyone and their brother had the same idea as us and the overstock of AC units were flying off the shelves at a rapid pace. We struggled with the decision of which one to buy 5,000 BTUs, 8,000, 10.. 12.. I don’t know these things. I just want to not be sweating my a** off when I’m sitting on the couch under the ceiling fan. I don’t think I’m asking for too much here. Trying to get the guy working the department’s attention was like competing in the Olympics. It was fierce. FINALLY we nabbed him, made our decision and got the heck out of there.

Home at last, installation began promptly, but progress quickly came to a screeching halt as soon as we looked at the instructions. Why do those things have to be so difficult to assemble, really we have to take it apart so that we can put it all back together, REALLY? And honestly could the instructions they provide be any less descriptive?! Please LG, please make your font size and minuscule, confusing diagrams smaller. Wait, that’s not humanly possible. Before we knew it, it was after 11pm.. we were dripping in sweat and getting attacked by bugs flying in from the open window. Well, mostly Steve was getting attacked since he was the one hanging out the window. (I was trying to swat them with the fly swatter. Go team.) The frustration got the best of us and we gave up in an annoyed, way too hot, super irritated, this is impossible kind of way. We knew we had hours more work left so this thing wouldn’t fall out of the window since it was made for windows spaces that don’t exist in normal houses. I’d really love to give LG a piece of my mind. Hmm, maybe I just did.

Anyways.. that was our overheated night last night. Installation continues tonight. I dearly hope for everyone’s sake it gets completed. High of 98 today.

However, one good thing about all of this is that DTE is offering a $25 rebate to their customer when you purchase Energy Star AC units. Yes, please.
It’s good through Dec. 31, 2011 and only while the funds last. First come, first serve.
More info about that here.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Last summer I painted some Malma mirrors from IKEA ($1.99/each) that I found in the basement with my mosaic supplies. I never got around to mosaicing them but I thought they would be perfect for our bedroom wall to fill the space since we don’t have a headboard. So I painted eight of them thinking it would be just enough and it ended up looking just a little bit sad. So now that nicer weather is here again I took another four mirrors out to my paint center, a.k.a. the garage, and got to work. Then I took the original mirrors all down off the wall, remeasured so that the spacing would be consistent all the way around (oops on the first try) and put them all back up. I used a laser level, a yard stick and a pencil to get them up there looking good and level. How did I get them to stay level? Glue dots. I placed one glue dot on the back at the bottom-center of each mirror and with my level on top to make sure they were good I pressed it to the wall. Works like a charm. I know, I am a genius.

Price for this wall makeover: $5
Paint: Already had it on hand
Mirrors: Already had them
Glue Dots: Already had these too
Picture Hangers: $5

Love it!

MALMA mirrors from IKEA

Before

After

By the way, look how cool this idea is on IKEA Hackers. Our mirrors might have another transformation in their future. Heck, we already have the paint to do it.