White China
I’m looking for a lot of inexpensive white china. I would love to find this pattern or something similar. Does anyone have any ideas on where to look in the Brooklyn or Austin areas?
Ebay is proving itself to be rather expensive.
I’m looking for a lot of inexpensive white china. I would love to find this pattern or something similar. Does anyone have any ideas on where to look in the Brooklyn or Austin areas?
Ebay is proving itself to be rather expensive.
All of the light fixtures in our house have a copper patina finish. It’s interesting, because they actually get uglier when you dust them. The finish is unpleasant in every room in the house, but paired with the silver faucets and accessories in the bathroom it was downright unsightly. I forgot to take a before photo until I was already removing the fixture from the wall, so please forgive the bad picture.
We spent a few days browsing light fixtures and realized that we would spend about $100 to get the same look in a different finish, so we did what any sensible person would do and spray painted it.
After shutting off the power and disconnecting the wires, we were left with this.
We carefully taped off the part of the fixture that house the light bulbs.
After just one coat of Kilz and a few light coats of spray paint, the fixture was looking a hundred times better.
I have to be honest: I love it. It really goes with the light and airy vibe that we’re hoping to achieve in our new space. Plus, the picture shows what else we’ve been doing for the past two days. Things are starting to come together beautifully.
I think the best part of this project is that I was playing electrician/painter while Peter was cooking for a party. I guess we’re not the most traditional couple. He was excited because he got to try new things in the kitchen and I was excited because I got to learn how to connect all the wires. Win-Win.
So, what do you think? I was a little apprehensive about using something flammable to paint a light fixture, but after looking into it more and testing the temperature of the fixture when it’s warm, it should be fine.
Peter and I are finally both feeling better. We’re pretty behind on returning emails and phone calls so if you haven’t heard from us in a bit, we’re sorry and will get back to you really soon.
The bathroom project is being dragged out much more than I ever thought it would. This is partially due to us getting sick and being really busy and not have time to knock out as many tasks as we thought we would and partially because we keep finding other things to fix. About a week and a half ago we had to call a plumber to fix a leak mostly because both the knobs outside and the knobs under the sink that turn the water off no longer worked. I’m all for trying things ourselves but without the ability to turn off the water neither of us were going to attempt it. So on we go. I can’t wait to get to the accessorizing part of the project, but after painting the bathroom closet we submitted to the fact that the actual bathroom really needs a paint job as well. The previous owners decided to use a flat paint and it left the walls looking like this.
See all those tiny cracks?
And because the main readers of this blog are my dog-obsessed soon-to-be -in-laws, I will show you all this photo. Peter and I went over to our friends’ house for dinner on Saturday. In addition to cooking us a fabulous dinner, they invited our Poms over to play with theirs. Here is a group photo of the dogs with Anita and Peter working to get them to all stay still. Ours just look like black little smears. The concept of not moving is way too hard for them.
So much fun!
How was everyone else’s weekend?
I have to say that the most satisfying thing I’ve done in a really long time was to take our window from this
To this:
I’m not going to lie, a lot of happy jumping and a joyful trip out to the garbage can to chunk the rotting piece of mess away forever ensued. Obviously we need to put in a new window cover, but that will come soon.
I hope you all had a good weekend. I spent last week fighting the crowds at SXSW. Now that the event is over, I’m stuck in bed at home fighting a cold that I picked up somewhere along the way. Ugh, being sick on a weekend is the worst! There are so many more productive things that I could be doing right now.
Anyway, while I’m resting I’ll bring you a bit more up to speed on the bathroom makeover. Last week I showed you a photo of the bathtub after we had bleached and re-caulked the area. We made a ton of progress but there were still little tiles and grout lines that needed help. After searching the aisles of the hardware store for something that could help, I found this.
Using the grout coating pen was really similar to using a white out pen. You press the tip a few times to start the paint flow and then you draw along the grout. There were two problems that I had using this tool. First, my grout was not bright white so it didn’t blend well ( I could’ve predicted this issue). Secondly, the coverage is not great. I needed to go over dark spots of the grout repeatedly and I still ended up with uneven coverage. Here’s the best “during photo” that I have.
The above portion of the grout in this photo has been painted with the grout pen. The lower darker lines have not. When you look at the painted portion, you can see a messy-looking finish. Overall it helped mask the stains, but if I had to rate this product I would probably give it a C. It helped, but I was unimpressed by the messiness.
After painting over some of the grout and using a razor blade to scratch off bits of mildewed caulk that the previous owners had spread over the actual tiles, things were looking much much better.
Has anyone else tried a grout pen? Do you have any techniques that might help for next time?
