1. A must-try tutorial for laminate furniture. 

via

2. A strange solution for the selfie-taker with no friends. (Can you imagine carrying that around?!?)
3. Hell, by personality type.
4. This light must. be. mine. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Some people ask me when I work on the house stuff. It really depends on the schedule that day and the project at hand. I rarely pull out the paint during the day, especially if it's oil based, because by the  time I get into the painting groove, the babe wakes up.  
I spray paint, stain, scrub, sand, and whip out the heat gun during the day for various projects. Painting is typically my middle of the night project. Not so this week because I had helpers! And not just any helpers. I had The Moms. They deserve a proper noun because they're like an invincible force, ready to put a chokehold on a house project. Like what. 
This week, they showed their prowess at the miter block while I stood aimlessly nearby and took photos. 

And then, bam, the tile surround is done and The Moms drop the mic and move on.
I spent last night doing last minute paint touch ups, sanded & stained the stairs, primed a plank wall (photos soon!), and puttied the wood seams until the wee hours of the morning.  Flooring comes tomorrow! 

Y'all know I love Restore. It's like Disneyland for me, plus the proceeds go to a great cause. Win-win. We designed the living space in the basement to be separated from the storage room by a large doorway. A couple months ago, I was checking out Restore and I found some pocket doors from presumably a 1920s Victorian home. They were a perfectly matched set, had great hardware and the price was right. They're a different style from the original panel doors I have in the rest of the house, but they weren't overly ornate so I knew I could make them work in our basement.


I could have left the doors alone and they would have been fine. But they were a bit glossy and a touch red for my taste and I knew once they were in place, I wouldn't be able to mess with them. A couple weeks ago, I put one of the doors up on the sawhorse and started sanding just to see what transpired.
That turned out to be a terrible idea. 
The wood underneath was in great condition, but sanding through all the finish on the doors was really tedious. I sanded with 60 grit paper on my orbital sander, which got a lot of the finish off. I switched to the heat gun and then to Citristrip. I didn't have the tools to get in all the inside crevices and 6 hours into the project, I wasn't even finished with one side of one door.
Yikes. I had opened a can of worms and there was no turning back. I didn't want to buy a whole set of tools to scrape the inner corners and knew I wouldn't have time to finish the doors by myself. I remembered a sign I had seen for Greg's Refinishing in my comings and goings. Even with the street sign, it was hard to find because it's small and set back from the street and I drove past it several times before I found it. I dropped the doors off and asked them just to strip them for me so that I could sand and finish them myself.  The inside of their workspace was super cool. 



Within a couple of days, I brought the doors home and they looked fabulous.
I sanded them down and finished them off with my trusty Danish oil. I have used this stuff on my china cabinet, front door and various refinishing projects.
I enlisted help from a budding local artist with nimble little fingers to get in the corners and edges.


I'm glad I went this route, even though it was an unexpected expense. Greg's Refinishing even took a little of the price to make me feel better about the 6 hours of worthless toil I had spent on the doors.

I used the Danish oil to refinish the original doors I already had, so all the doors will be finished in the same color. The carpenter is installing all the doors this week and it's going to be rad to see the doors in their new homes. It's been a busy week of painting the trim, basement walls, closets & laundry room and staining the boards & doors.

We're nearing the finish line of our basement project! Now comes the fun stuff like doors, paint, cabinets & carpet. That's my jam. 

Last week, we were in Boston. While I was gone, the basement ceiling was painted and the spray foam insulation was blown in.  I had my "spies" at the house sending me progress shots but...gah!  It was so hard to be gone, especially knowing that I tend to have some neurosis regarding paint colors. 
I had decided against black for the ceiling color because it would make our already-low ceiling feel even lower, even though I know black would hide our crazy pipes well. I was aiming for a light gray that would read as an appropriately-aged white...but NOT cream. No yellow tones on the ceiling because it would look terrible with everything forever. Not that I am an extremist.
We arrived home in the evening and I made a beeline for the basement to check out the ceiling color.  



We also painted all the trim this weekend and it feels so good to have that done!



Genevieve was a great little paint helper.


All the drywall is up and they're finishing up the taping and mudding tomorrow and then it's time to paint.











I plan to paint Wednesday and then the trim and doors go up Thursday & Friday!  
I love progress.