What does a Garden Gnome do when she is not gardening, in the kitchen or doing genealogy? Well the answer might just surprise you so read the entries to find out more. This blog focuses on everything we do to make our house a home. There will be a strong emphasis on home energy efficiency and do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. At the same time there will also be crafts, knitting and crocheting projects along with any other little tips we do to create that down to earth, I want to be here home. Please enjoy your visit :)
Whenever you are redecorating or making over a room there are little details that need attention to create the final polished look you want. The floor or wall HVAC vent cover often needs to be updated either by painting as we did in the kitchen make-over or simply replace them. There are benefits to doing both. If your vent covers are in good condition then a frugal choice is to paint them. This allows you to custom match the paint choice to the rest of the room as well. Even if your vent covers are in good condition you may want to replace them with wood covers if you installed wood flooring. If your vent covers are in need of replacement you have a few choices: metal, wood and plastic. All can be custom painted to match your decor if desired.
Pictured is the old vent cover (top). It was metal in a brown painted finish accented with rust spots and paint splatters. It would have been easy to simply clean up this cover then spray paint it. However, this room is directly above the furnace room. The vent cover was not sealing out the heat as much as we would like. There is a damper in the vent going to that room a fair amount of heat gets through even with the damper closed. We decided to replace the vent cover with a plastic vent cover (bottom).
The plastic vent cover is nice, clean looking and rust proof. It also came in at $3.99, $3 less than the standard metal vent covers. I can remember first seeing the plastic vent covers thinking I wouldn't want to use them. However after owning 3 houses with HVAC vents I can honestly say I would choose either wood or plastic vent covers over the metal any day. The wood vent covers of course are based purely on aesthetics designed to match existing or new wood flooring. The plastic vent covers can easily be thoroughly cleaned without having to worry about rusting. The plastic vent covers also have a better control mechanism for air flow.
When I decided on a flooring for the room that was to be the craft room I chose laminate flooring. I thought this would be a great choice for a craft room providing easy to care for, low care clean up. At the same time using hard flooring fit with our eco-friendly ideal of removing all carpeting from our house. Carpeting is a huge dust and allergen magnet as well as costing continual electricity to keep clean via vacuuming.
A laminate floor is a floating floor with quarter inch space around the perimeter for expansion. While this is a DIY project we had never done it before and because the house is already listed we needed to get this room in showing condition in the least amount of time. The flooring was hired out but I kept a close eye on how it was done.
A thin padding is laid on the subfloor. This serves to help reduce noise while cushioning the floor. The flooring comes in tongue and groove panels that need to be snapped into place. Really it is more like tapping them into place to form a tight fit.
Once the flooring was installed, the new baseboard was installed. The only thing left to do was the final clean-up. I swept the floor then damp mopped it with a solution of Murphy's Oil soap. I am quite pleased with the overall results. The look is clean, crisp and definitely what I was after. Don't you think it just looks gorgeous?
Next up for finishing this room is the replacement of all the electrical outlets and sealing the trim seams so they don't show. We are now down to the final finishing touches for this room. I'm saddened that this will not be my much coveted craft room. It just has such great creative vibes already! Instead the room will be staged as a bedroom for the sale of our house. However, I am very much encouraged by how this room came out so will be using these lessons learned in our new home.
Changing out light fixtures is one of the easiest, low cost ways to update the look and feeling of a room. There is such a wide variety of light fixtures available that can fit the needs for any decor. With the advent of the energy efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs there are more of these fixtures that can use these bulbs as well. We chose to install an enclosed ceiling hugging light fixture in the was to be craft room and a matching one in the adjoining hallway.
When CFL first came out they were not to be used in pot lights or enclosed fixtures. That has changed. We bought 2 - 13" swirl flush mount light fixtures that can use 2 - 60W incandescent or equivalent CFL bulbs (1). Changing out the light fixture was as simple as turning off the power then connecting the base of the new fixture (2). Turing the power back on was a success (3) so it was time to put the globe on. Here's where we hit a bit of a problem. The inner threaded pipe to hold the globe on was just a little to short so we had to wait until the next day to buy a longer piece. The following day my husband bought a long enough threaded pipe to cut a longer piece for each light. Once the threaded pipe was in place the globe was put in place and secured (4). I really like the nice clean looking results but especially like the fact that the new fixtures now use CFL bulbs. It is a win/win solution all the way around.
Changing out a light fixture is an easy, low cost DIY project. The two rules are to always work with the electricity off and to always follow the wiring directions. Once the light fixture is in place test it with the intended light bulbs. Do not use bulbs that are above the recommended wattage. Before putting on the globe wash and dry it well so it will add a nice sparkle once installed.
A few days ago I showed a simple way of taking a free black and white clip art image and selectively colourizing it. This is a method to further customize clip art to your digital scrapbooking layout or you can print out the completed graphic then use a Xylon machine to turn the graphic into a custom made sticker.
Pictured is the selectively coloured clip art I showed how to do. I started with a simple free black and white clip art found online. After downloading the image I opened it in Photoshop®. The image was in .gif format so I clicked select all the copied and pasted into a new image to colourize. This kept the original file as a .gif for later use and created the new colourized ,jpg file. The tools I used to selectively colour the image were the eyedropper to select colours from the colour palette and the magic wand to select the area I wanted to fill with the colour. It was a simple as colouring with pencil crayons except I was using a digital medium. The end result was a customized graphic suitable for on this blog and digital scrapbooking.
I admit to often having several images open in Photoshop at any given time. As I looked at the colourized image fully intending to close it I thought I could make this image a bit more interesting by texturizing it. I used the magic wand to highlight the area I wanted to apply a filter from the filter gallery. Essential this method is the same as colourizing except using filters rather than colour. The filter gallery contains several filters to give various effects from simple texturizing as in the pale green and darker green to shading techniques and everything in between. The best way to decide on the look you want is to open filter gallery and play with the various options. I used sketch/water paper for the box in the can, label, small grey tin and red tin, artistic/underpainting for most of the other items, and artistic/rough pastels for the pail and box outside of the pail. It's surprising how a little tweaking with texture can give a more interesting effect. This is a method you can use with any image you want to add a bit more interest to.
During our last Florida vacation we stayed in a house that had 2 solar tubes. I blogged about the solar tubes as being great alternative lighting. Once installed the solar tubes bring free lighting to dark areas like hallways, bathrooms and other rooms. I calculated the cost of installation for each solar tube to be about $370 (DIY) to $500 (installed) so based on energy consumption alone the pay back period would be 37 years if installed. If you factor in the cost of the light bulbs the pay back period would go down to about $450. Clearly at today's electricity costs in our region the pay back period is not enough of an incentive to install solar tubes.
However, Hydro-One in Ontario has indicated most of the SmartMeters across the province will be activated by late June at which time the new Time of Use (TOU) hydro rates will go into effect. Essentially this means from 7 AM to 9 PM on weekdays year round except statutory holidays, we will be paying higher electricity rates. This time period is divided into 2 usages - high and medium depending on the season. As a result of these changes it becomes even more important to not use electricity you don't have to. Strategically placed the solar tube(s) will eliminate the use of electric lighting in certain areas of your home. The key concept to remember here that not using the electricity is better than reducing the electricity usage via energy efficient lighting. The solar tube(s) can be fitted with lighting for night use where they will function as a normal light so can replace an existing light fixture. This will allow us to take advantange of the lower electrical rates in the evening hours if necessary.
The solar tube(s) also improve the indoor comfort of your home. In northern areas such as ours where we see winter and several months of grey days, the solar tube(s) amplify and allow extra light into your home. This makes your home brighter and cheerier even though it is grey outdoors. It helps to ward off the winter blues so common in northern climate winter months and may even help to alliviate SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Here is a video of the solar tubes installed in Ed Begley Jr.'s house. Ed is an environmental activist who uses several eco-friendly methods in his home.
Just a day before the news came that would result in major life changes we tore apart a spare room to turn it into a craft room. The news ultimately meant we would be selling this house in return for two houses. The problem remained that even though we decided to sell the house we still had to finish this room otherwise the house would not show well. The kids finished up the painting for us which left the trim and flooring as well as updating the light fixture. This is one thing to keep in mind that sometimes you have to spend a bit of money in order to sell your house.
The flooring arrived Friday morning but would not be installed until Tuesday as it had to acclimatize to the room. We chose a birch finish laminate flooring taber test IP=11,000 for heavy to moderate commercial use with 25 year warranty against wear, stain and fading.
Pictured are the 6 cartons of the laminate flooring and roll of underlay. We have never installed laminate flooring before so a friend who installs a variety of floors for a living is installing it for us. I will be keeping a close eye as to how this type of flooring is installed. We already have plans to remove all carpeting in the new house with possibly laminate flooring being installed in the 3 bedrooms.
Painting involves both prep and clean-up tasks. One of our kids and a friend volunteered to paint the room that was planned to be the craft room. The interesting thing about someone else doing something you normally would is you get to see a few other methods that work just as well as your methods. My designated painter has actually spent a summer painting during their college years so I thought everything was in good hands and honestly the room looked wonderful just with the first coat of paint on the ceiling. Checking the room I discovered a paint tray with drying paint in it. Now normally I would have washed out the pain cleaning the tray with the left-over paint going down the drain. They told me not to do this.
The trays were plastic so they said to leave the paint to dry then pull the dried paint off. The premise is the paint is not going down the drain and the dried paint can be tossed into the garbage with less mess and fuss. I was skeptical but they continued to use this method finally leaving me with two trays to clean up.
Pictured are the two trays with the paint in the process of being pulled off of one tray (top). A quick twisting motion loosens the pain making it peel away from the plastic quite easily. It took me about 5 minutes to fully clean the first tray (bottom). I seriously could not believe how easy this method of cleaning the paint trays was! There was no muss, no fuss. The paint just easily peels off the trays.
I don't know if this method would work using an oil based paint but suspect it would. It definitely works with latex based paint. The real trick seems to be the plastic trays. I know you can buy plastic paint tray liners and some people simply line the tray with a plastic bag, but this method eliminates using any liners. I don't think it will work using a metal paint tray. At any rate give it a try the next time you are painting and see what you think.
"Home is the wallpaper above the bed, the family dinner table, the church bells in the morning, the bruised shins of the playground, the small fears that come with dusk, the streets and squares and monuments and shops that constitute one's first universe." -- Henry Anatole Grunwald
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
Before & After
In Progress
Installed
New Light Fixture
Colourized
Texturized
Laminate Flooring
Before & After
