What Ya Got Cookin'?

Last week while my husband was baking some cookies, the baking element went out in our oven—snapped in half and even shot some sparks!

I decided to shop around online to find a replacement and a good deal. The manufacturer has them available for about $50 (not including shipping). I found a replacement on Amazon.com for less than $20 ...SHIPPED! Took a few days to arrive, but it's in and the oven works again!

Now, about that brownie craving...

Stain & Pain

I've been looking at stain choices for the flooring. I'd really like to go a little darker than what we currently have. Here I have sampled Dark Walnut (on the left) and Provincial (on the right) by MinWax.

Shot with flash

Shot without flash

It's weird how it looks so different with and without flash. I'm leaning toward the Dark Walnut. In person the Provincial looks similar to what we have currently and I'd really like a change! I am planning to water-pop the treads to enrich the color.


In other project news, I have finally completed finish coating the balusters. I had to paint THREE finish coats on them for complete coverage. Despite having primed them with Kilz stain-sealer, I still had some bleed through of the original color/stain.


I haven't worked on the house much in the last ten days—I don't like to work on my projects when my kid and husband are home, and my carpal tunnel has really been giving me fits! Hoping to get in the mood to make progress tomorrow...

Squeak No More!

Today I focused on silencing my staircase. Many of the treads are quite noisy when going up and down, and I thought I'd address the ruckus before I get started on refinishing them.

In researching how to deal with my problem, I found something cool on the internet called the Squeeeeek No More system. It comes with some jigs that countersink special screws into your flooring to eliminate squeaks. It works with linoleum, carpeted, and hardwood floors.

Here I am silencing a noisy tread!

The kit is available online, including at the manufacturer's website and Amazon.com, however I found mine at Lowe's in the hardwood flooring department for about $20. The manufacturer's website also has a few demonstration videos that illustrate how to address squeaks in the different floor coverings. Check em' out!

**UPDATE! Hubby noticed that the stairs no longer squeaked to which he commented, "I always kind of felt like the squeaky stairs gave our house character!" Alas, I guess our house has no longer has any character.

Continued Progress!

I've continued to make progress on my project. I painted the walls I've been working on with a flat finish coat, and have continued chipping away at paint around doors, baseboards, and stair risers.

Here you can see I just have four more risers to go! I am really pleased with how the skirting on the wall is looking too.

Unfortunately my carpal tunnel affliction isn't letting me work on this as much and as aggressively as I'd like. I am hoping to get some primer on these stripped risers this week!


**UPDATE! I bought one final can of that spray on texture I told you about, hoping that the first two I'd gotten were just duds. With this final can, I shook it FOREVER and ran it under some hot water for about 30 seconds or so. At last I was able to get the product to perform the way it was supposed to and actually managed to spray the entire contents onto my walls! I am beyond pleased with the results. It gave me exactly the look I was going for!

I Giveth, and I Taketh Away

Today I primed a wall...

...and destroyed another.

Hot Mess Tuesday

As always, I have my fingers in a few simultaneous messes today. Let me show you what I'm up to!

First we'll start with the stairs. I've continued to scrape them and get the skirting cleaned up as well. My husband has been pretty good about the destruction and messes I've been making lately. Wonder how he'll handle seeing the stairway with missing spindles? It's a necessary evil—I need to scrape the underside of the railing before I can put my new spindles in.

And speaking of spindles, I have another finish coat of paint to put on them. Here they are with one coat of primer and one coat of finish. Looking good!

I sat on the floor of my screened porch and painted the spindles while my little one sat on the other side of the door jabbering and making this hot mess. And to think she told me she was making SOUP! lol...

Here is a candlestick lamp that I am refinishing today as well. I am stoopid* and didn't make a before picture. It was cream with a crackle finish. The brown will fit my decor much better. Maybe I'll be bright enough to take an after shot when it's done...

*intentional misspelling to further illustrate my point

And lastly, this final hot mess was the inspiration for today's blog title. Let me explain...


You may recall that when I stripped the wallpaper off the other day, I had some wall damage that needed repaired prior to painting. In repairing the wall, the wall's texture was smoothed. I like my house's rough walls! I didn't want to go to the trouble of getting paint and adding sand, so I thought I'd just get a can of wall/ceiling texture and dial down the spray to a fine mist. If needed, I'll sand the texture down a bit prior to painting.

Here's a shot of what I was able to get done before my can of texture malfunctioned after just a couple of squirts:

Definitely one hot mess! At least, I'm assuming this mess is a malfunction? Anyone??

Now where's my receipt?! This thing's going back! Grr...

Back to Work

Finally got back to my projects after a long holiday weekend of traveling. I must be getting old—it took me TWO DAYS to recover from the trip! Gah!

Today I started repairing the wall I scraped last week. While I waited for that to dry, I decided to start priming some of my stair risers. Here's my pooch showing off my work!

Once I finished that up, I decided to start picking at the closet door at the bottom of the steps. I suspected that it had been stained at one time as well and that the paint might readily come off. My suspicions were confirmed! Made one heck of a mess, and thought I'd put my kid to work (actually, she volunteered!). She was pretty good at vacuuming my mess when she wasn't using the hose to suck on the hem of my shirt! She thinks she's pretty funny...

You can see here that the door is pretty well stripped; just some fine detail work to wrap up. Some of my wall patch work is also visible here.

And lastly, I finished priming my balusters today! I'm getting pretty excited about this little project. My brother-in-law loaned me his air compressor and nailer and I am really looking forward to getting them installed!

Guess that'll do it for today. My back is screaming at me, "Enough! No more for today!"