Mad Scientist Monday #22: Renovations to the Lair

Day 288
If you have seen this movie from the 80s you know how many things went wrong with this house and how much money they kept spending to repair it.  Determined NOT to go down that road (of course our house isn't that old either) we have been wanting to make some low budget renovations.

If you want to see a tour of the house used in 'The Money Pit' movie adventure over to the Between Naps on the Porch Blog~I love her movie house tours.

Our first decision was to rip up the downstairs carpet and paint the cement floors.  We live in the desert and  quite frankly having carpet where sand blows in the house almost constantly is just a waste.  We saw the evidence of this one we pulled up the pad and there was sand all underneath, ew-no wonder no matter how much we vacuumed it just still felt dirty to walk on, ew.

Click image to be taken to the IMDB site for  more movie info.

We regularly scour our local Habitat for Humanity's ReStore to get ideas on how we can incorporate inexpensive projects to change the look of our home.  If you have never been in one of these stores not everything is used, I often see new tags on large things like kitchen cabinets.  Its like a candy store to walk around and see the old hardware and fixtures.  For this renovation we were able to get some painting supplies and will be heading back to check out their trim for the edges of the walls and where the floor meets the tile.

By far the hardest part of this renovation was moving everything out.  We worked on one room at a time and since it took less than a week to harden and dry completely so 2 weeks were not really too big of a disruption.  After pulling the carpet and padding up we had to scrape up the tacking strips and glue bits along the edges.  We filled in any gouges or cracks with a cement filler~we did find some long cracks in the sewing lair but they were not that wide and we felt like they were not a function of the foundation cracking but a more natural result of cement drying~cracks happen.  And if the cracks do widen we can see that with them being painted and visible now.  Once the cement filler dried we then sanded that down.  After laying on 2 coats of a mildew, water resistant primer and letting that dry for a few hours it was time to put on the turquoise.  We did put 2 coats of this down as well.  Both of the paints went down smoothly with a roller and were really consistent and even.  Neither of these paints smelled hardly at all and they both cleaned up quickly with water.

We did not put on a top sealer yet, we are going to wait and see how this holds up, my girls and I are VERY sensitive to smells and chemicals which could trigger asthma attacks.  Right now we have found some little nicks that we will be touching up this weekend but those are from moving furniture back in and are seeing it stand up well to traffic and spot cleaning.

We chose turquoise because we love bright colors, you can see our walls are painted similar to what we see in the desert around us every day~dark green, golden yellows, an orange spice~so we decided on adding in the color of the sky at our feet to the mix, with over 300 days of regular sunshine and these bright blue skies to see in Albuquerque we wanted to bring that indoors to remind us of the beautiful things in life.

Primer: Zinsser Bullseye Primer for all Surfaces
Paint: Behr Premium Low Luster Enamel Porch and Patio for Cement
Cost < $150

Trim and some sort of ceiling tiles to be added in later.

My sewing lair sits in the front room where you walk into the house.  I was tired of this area looking jumbled and disorganized when clients come over so we moved everything out, painted and then moved things in selectively getting rid of a lot of clutter and arranging the largest furniture pieces in ways that made the space look more open.

One more future project will be to repaint these file cabinets.  I am thinking some bronze or silver spray paint.  These cabinets were originally in a corner behind my large cutting table and were not easy to open and search through. 

Here you can see the view of my desk towards the front door.  I placed a painted piece of MDF (Med. Density Fiberboard) across 2 bookshelves to consolidate space and give me easier access to patterns and books stored on the shelves.

I painted the MDF that I used for my desk an Ebony Glossy Black.  I don't normally incorporate black into my color schemes but I am in love with this desk now.

Originally I had these tables combined into a large cutting table but I decided to separate them and I am finding that I enjoy working with the multiple cutting areas more since I generally have more than a handful of projects going on at a time.  You can see I have a better view of the Frog and Lizard Terrariums now and this weekend I noticed that they were more actively coming up to the glass and watching the outside world too.

Here is a view of the overall space and how I have the light table, my serger, sewing and then planning areas all comfortably spaced out with a large walkway to the right side from the front door.  My family even likes this space better and my girls kept coming in and digging through patterns and books or just to sit in the chairs and talk.  The only other piece I think I might add is a small bench for clients but we shall see, right now I am more than happy to have the open areas for now.

I have been decorating my space with bouquets of roses from my garden every day and they look stunning against the black desk~its just such a nice clean and calm color.

Surprisingly even with all the moving around the sewing continued here and as you can see by my lack of blogging I have been busier than ever.  

What will you create today?