New York Renovator

I saw this photo at GadgetTastic, and it made me do a double-take.

It’s a real table. Ingenious! But knowing me, I’d probably knock off the drips whenever I pull my chair in. I’m clumsy and my furniture has to be very durable.

Hat tip Enfotainer.

I love paint! When I first moved to this house, the walls, trim, and even parts of the floors had all been painted white. Talk about ugly! So that was the first thing I did, paint everything and add some color.  I added some bright colors to my walls and trim and spruced up the place very inexpensively (as compared to a gut-and-remodel). I even tried some painting techniques on some walls– lightly sponging diluted white paint onto yellow walls; blotching greens and reds for a different room.

Paint can save a ton of money, and it’s the least expensive decorating activity I know. It won’t save enough for Las Vegas vacations, but it’ll put a dent in the decor budget! So I’m always looking for cute new ideas to tide me over until I can get new walls, lol. I saw “doodle wall art” at My Insanity and was floored. Isn’t that beautiful! What a great idea, and doodling is “in” these days. Plus, when you grow tired of it, just paint over it! Love it!

Photo is from My Insanity, too. It’s a great blog to peruse for neat little things like this.

I hate paint cans. They are designed to slop paint all over the place when you tip them to get your paint out. GRRR! And dipping a brush into the can is not any neater, because the paint excess dribbles into the lip of the can. This makes resealing the lid a messy task. Here’s a tip I’d read in an old home improvement magazine: Punch holes in the lip of the can, with a nail!

Just take a simple nail and hammer a few holes around the lip. Any paint that pools in the lip will drip through your new holes and back into the can. This makes sealing the lid easy, because there is no more river of wet paint sitting in the lip. Another tip– if you are going to be painting again later in the day and don’t want to hard seal the paint lid back on the can, lay a layer of plastic wrap (Saran Wrap) over the open can. Then, take your can lid and press firmly over the can (don’t hammer it back in). This will keep air out of your paint can for a few hours. Of course, if you intend on leaving your paint job for more then a few hours, it’s best to hammer the lid back on securely, to keep the paint fresh.

I’m not going to go into a magazine-article rendition of curb appeal here. There are enough resources and how-to’s out there, and most would give better information than I. However, I am a homeowner and a home admirer, so I’ve put a lot of thought into curb appeal. As spring starts its arrival and our plans are taking shape for a new growing season, curb appeal is on my mind a lot. Plus, I’ve been looking at all the recent homes up for sale in the area. Curb appeal is a primary component of what sells and what doesn’t sell, I think.

Curb appeal means different things to different people. At its most basic, curb appeal is the emotional impression your property gives to a viewer. A well-done, well-designed paint job, a healthy roof and maintained house siding, and landscaping materials all contribute to curb appeal. I’ll cover some the basics, the things that have grabbed my attention when looking at homes.

1. House structure
There is only so much you can do with house structure, of course. Who can throw $20,000 for a better front porch or a new addition to “balance” out the home’s symmetry? I know I can’t, even thought I’d love to! But make the most of the structure you have. Do you have an ugly picture window or a porch with broken rails? Fix the rails, and paint the window trim a bright color.

2. House design
I’m talking about color and accessories, here. I can’t tell you how much I love a festively-colored house. I hate hate hate white siding with white trim. No house, no matter how bad, deserves white siding with white trim. Give the architectural details of the house some panache! The best way to do this is with color! Even the ugliest siding looks better with brightly colored paint. Paint companies have made choosing colors very easy– they offer “three in one” paint schemes, with a color scheme of colors that compliment each other. Paint goes a long way for adding curb appeal. Also, make sure your house has a light by the front door, and house numbers. These are like jewelry on a graceful neck.

3. Accessories
Outbuildings are helping in adding curb appeal, but they aren’t always practical and affordable. I have the tightest of budgets, and we were able to put together a lovely arbor at the side of the house property. I have some growing Rose of Sharon and Lilacs that will overshadow the arbor in a few years. This will give that side of the property a “secret garden” look. I can’t tell you how beautiful such small touches are. Our “secret garden” is a work in progress.

Also, add small pots of colorful annuals by your front door. Keep the sidewalks clean of debris, and add a few simple plants along a walkway. Some folks even install old bricks on each side of the walkway, and that looks really classy. Little touches are everything when it comes to curb appeal!

4. Landscaping
Landscaping is virtually ignored, I think. Everybody still seems to have the “Branson private golf course” mentality of a vast lawn engulfing the little speck of a house in the center. My property was like that when we bought it– a golfer’s haven. I, however, hate scads and scads of golfballs strewn about my yard. I do not like lawns. I like great big beds of perennials and shrubs, all native to New York. I especially love shade gardens. I personally believe that the “cottage” garden looks is much nicer then the “business park” look. Any landscaping done today seems to be in the “business park” style, and it looks awful. You know them– they are the round mulch beds with prickly barberry, spirea, purple dogwood, weigela, and arbor vitae. All floating in an ugly sea of dyed-red cedar mulch. Boooooooring! And they look so dry and and impersonal. Plus, everybody has the same thing.

How about a bed filled with lilac, peonies, and lavendar? Purple coneflowers, hydrangea, summer sweet, and daisies? These are easy-to-care-for perennials, and are traditional old favorites.

Be creative! That’s the important thing about curb appeal. Curb appeal is supposed to show off your property’s personality, which is a reflection of your own. Cookie-cutter curb appeal is not true curb appeal.

I love stripes. It is so Victorian. Stripes are neat and clean and so versatile. I once lived in an apartment that had once been a Victorian hotel (back in the late 1800s when sulfur spring spas were so prevalent in Upstate NY). Very little had been done to the place. It had beautiful oak parlor pocket doors, oak floors, exquisite door hardware, and the loveliest striped wallpaper I’ve ever seen.

I’d written about our striped walls in our Entry Hall and downstairs bathroom. Both those rooms have striped wallpaper. Doing these rooms was my first experience installing wallpaper. After these, I felt I had enough experience to tackle our Dining Room ceiling (yes, I wallpapered the ceiling), and the stairwell and upstairs hallway. The stairwell and hallway were very difficult. We had to balance on ladders on the stairs to reach up to the ceiling, and I ran out of wallpaper toward the end. Also, my cat found the wallpaper to be a nuisance, and promptly shredded it. (I have since banished the cat to the outdoors. What is it with cats shredding wallpaper and curtains?! grrrr). It cost me $450 to paper that area (including the tools). Yow.

Needless to say, I wanted stripes but not wallpaper. I don’t know where I got the idea to paint stripes, if I read about it somewhere or came up with the idea myself. It would take a little more time and effort, but I figured out a way to make the stripes neat and clean. And it would cost me a fraction of what it cost to wallpaper.

I first scrubbed my bathroom walls and wiped them dry. I then applied a mildew-resistant paint made especially for bathrooms (the special paint is for darker, moisture-laden areas). I painted the walls in a cream color because, although I wanted my stripes to stand out, I didn’t want them to assault the occupant. I painted two coats of this paint (including the ceiling).

Now for the tedious part: with a ruler and a pencil, I measured and marked 1.5 inches all around the room. I started in an inconspicuous corner, just in case my final stripe was too thick or too thin (I was to lazy to pre-measure the entire room and divide the measurement by the size stripe I wanted. I was looking to make the bathroom nicer, not perfect). My bathroom had been rewalled with sheetrock by the previous owner, so this made it much easier then drawing on bumpy and uneven plaster. My walls are not straight (remember this is an 1855 house we’re talking about), so obviously my corners are not straight. But this wasn’t a problem. The final stripes in the corner do blend into each other, but it is not noticeable.

After I had drawn my stripes, I took blue painter’s tape and covered every other stripe I’d penciled in. I pressed the edges to make sure the paint wouldn’t seep into the white stripe. This was another tedious and laborious job…. but it was better than wallpapering!

Once I was happy with my taped-on stripes, I walked away for a few hours. I wanted to get away from the project and forget about stripes. Sometimes it is best to leave your project for a while, then come back to it fresh for a fresh perspective. I did this to ensure that I liked my stripes the way they were. I wanted to be sure they weren’t crooked (well, just not too crooked- remember 1855 and all that), weren’t too thick or thin, etc.

Thankfully, I liked everything the way I had done it, so I was ready for the next step.

I got my paint (green– I like dark green) and a sea sponge. I mixed some water with the paint, just enough to make it a little loose, but not too runny. One good way to tell if your paint is too thick is when it makes a suction noise when you blot it on and there are gobs of paint left on the wall. It is too runny when the paint drips after application. It took some work for me to get the paint just right. I didn’t add much water for the paint to become loose the way I liked it.

I took my dampened sea sponge and dabbed it in the paint, then blotted the walls. I didn’t need to be too careful, since I’d taped over the white stripes to protect them from the green. The blotting was quick and easy. I did find a few drips here and there that I had to collect. I found that smaller, lighter applications of paint was more easily controllable than big blots of thick paint. The blotting effect gave the walls a beautiful look of wallpaper without the mess of paper.

After I did my walls, I let the paint dry a little and carefully removed the blue painter’s tape. Then, I painted my trim and baseboard.

Not too shabby, don’t you think? This was a savings of hundreds for us. All it cost me was the price of the paint (and I got it at the discount table at Home Depot!), the painter’s tape, and the sea sponge- total $40. Compare that with the $450 I spent on wallpaper, and I’d say it’s a great deal.