Megadayoff: Episode 3

I finally painted our bathroom.
I've hated it passionately since we moved here in July.
The walls and ceiling were painted mint green.
GREEN CEILING! In the bathroom??
Every time I turned the vanity light on to do my makeup, my skin had a sickly green glow.
Not good.

With Pat gone to work, I got started taping and painting.
This was a big job for one day!

It took three coats of white ceiling paint to totally hide all of the green.
I was super picky about it, because the lights are so close to the ceiling, and so bright that they would show any green.

For the walls, I used the leftover paint from our bedroom.
Sherwin Williams: Gray Shingle
I love it!

Pat is obsessed with Snoopy, so our bathroom has a bit of that theme going on.
The gray works with the black and white and occasional pop of red.

I have a lot of spots I'll need to touch up since they were very sloppy with the green. It's in the tile grout, and on the door frame. That will be a project for another day.

Green painted grout!

I also stripped and painted the wall mounted heating vent.
It doesn't look perfect, but it's was a bit damaged under all the layers of paint, and a new one costs about $40 for that size.

Blends into the wall.

This vent had about 10 coats of paint on it. Apparently no one ever bothered to take it off the wall when painting.
I removed the paint by boiling water with some baking soda. It came right off.
It was a pain trying to get in every line of the vent, but I used tweezers and an old toothbrush and it off pretty easily.
The metal was damaged and pitted, so it did need to be repainted.
I decided to paint it metal color. Imagine that!
I hit it with a spray on primer first, and then a coat of chrome spray paint. Boom. Done.


The next project will be to redo the vanity.
I read this post about how to give it a dark look for a pretty low cost.
It will take a few days to do, and I'm excited to get started!

I'm still not happy with the giant mirror, ugly counter top or the floor colors. However, they will be fine for now. There isn't anything functionally wrong with any of them, and the cost of redoing that can't be justified at the moment. (If I do get that counter-top kit for the kitchen, I'll hope to have enough left to do the bathroom too!)

Megadayoff: Episode 2

Today felt very short.
Partially because I slept in until 10am!
And partially because my Dad is coming over for dinner.
This was not a megadayoff at all!

I'll still tell you what I did, which was not much.

I worked on reorganizing my dresser drawers!

Such a mess!
These drawers are so deep, I can almost fit two rows of clothes in them.
Sometimes when I dig, I get excited because I find clothes I haven't seen in ages!
I'm constantly just wearing the things on top.


I just flipped the clothes sideways, and organized them by type of clothing. Long sleeved, short sleeved etc.
I want to look into find a new way to fold the clothes to maximize the height and space, but I ran out of time.

One drawer down!

Megadayoff: Episode 1

Pat is still in grad school, doing one class a semester.
This semester his night class falls on Tuesday, which is my day off!
I'm calling it MEGADAYOFF. He leaves for work around 7am, and comes home around 10pm.
At first I was a little bummed because on Tuesdays I would always make a nice dinner since I had tons of time.
Instead, I decided that each MEGADAYOFF would be devoted to a project around the house.

This MEGADAYOFF I decided to tackle something that has bothered me since we bought the house in July.
This is a seriously outdated 80's look celing fan in our kitchen.
The whole kitchen needs to be updated. I can't wait to get rid of the ketchup and mustard look the previous owners had going on.
I decided to start with the fan since I was pretty sure I could complete it in one day.

Obviously make sure the power is off to the fan.

Remove the lightbulbs, and glass shades.

Remove the screws holding the fan blades in

Remove the scews holding the bracket to the fan blade.

I put on a coat of Kilz primer on the fan blades. I didn't want to risk any horrible fake wood showing through.

I didn't worry too much about the side facing the ceiling.

Spray paint the brackets. This took about three thin coats, letting them dry between coats.
(Apparently I forgot to take a picture of this part.)

You can take down the drum of the ceiling fan, but since it was just me, I left it up. It looked like it would be more of a two person job to put back up even if I didn't kill myself taking it down.

Carefully tape and paper a large area around the fan base if left on the ceiling.
Make sure you have a tarp over anything under the spray area.

This was also about three thin coats of paint.

I put two coats of white semigloss on the fan blades. I went with semigloss because it should be easier to clean when they're dusty. Plus I had that sitting around.

While everything was drying, I ran to Home Depot and bought new glass shades. These were about $4 each. I splurged and treated myself to some new dangly bits for the fan pulls. I didn't NEED them I suppose, but they matched!

Carefully start to reassemble the fan once everything is totally dry.

This was only about a $20 project! Can of spray paint, and 4 glass shades! Boom! Done!

Before

After

It was a great day...aside from when I locked myself out of the house in painting clothes. I had to go to a neighbor's house to use the phone. So embarrassing!