Kitchen Countertops and Backsplash

You guys - we have a new kitchen. Seriously, look at the before and after pictures of our kitchen, and the changes are drastic. I thought when I redid the cabinets, that was drastic. But now that we've redone the countertops and backsplash...wow, it looks completely different.

When we moved in, and for the past 3 years, we've had a laminate countertop and backsplash. Here is a look at the kitchen post-cabinet rennovation - pretty good, right?

But I wanted a countertop that better matched our updated cabinets. We have about 50 square feet of countertop, though. We also live in a duplex, which means that whatever we do to our home isn't necessarily going to translate well to home value. So anything we spend on our home has to be weighed with that in mind - ultimately we do things that will add to our personal enjoyment but don't cost an arm and a leg. Which means that the expense of adding real stone countertops was going to be outside our willingness to pay.

As I looked into alternatives, I found this company: Leggari. They do custom epoxy countertop kits (and floor kits). But this isn't your grandma's epoxy (did grandma use epoxy?). They say it was designed to be used in aircraft hangers, so it's some sturdy stuff. They send you a kit of everything you need to do the counters. I didn't get many in-process pictures, because you need to go quickly when working with this stuff, but there are number of videos on their site if you're interested in how we did it. I'll give you a basic rundown here:

1. Tape and plastic off EVERYTHING. You don't want this stuff on your floors or cabinets.

2. Prime the countertops with a two-part primer (rolled on with a nap roller) and let it dry to tacky (about 1 1/2 hours).
3. Mix and pour out a two-part epoxy base on all of the countertops.
4. Use a paint roller like a squeegee, and spread the epoxy over the entire countertop, trying to get it approximately even (it self-levels), going over the sides so it flows evenly when it drips.

5. Once the epoxy base color is on, you mix and pour your accent colors on the wet base one at a time (we used two colors), trying to mimic stone patterns.
6. With everything still wet, you take your roller and roll back and forth, up and down, blurring the harsh lines you created with the accent colors (when we did this, we started too soon at first, because our base coat layer was thicker than expected, so we waited a little while to start).
7. Let the epoxy dry, taking a paint stick to the bottom edges every so often to stop drips from forming on the underside of the counters.
8. The next day, mix, pour, and roll the top coat in a similar fashion to the base coat.
9. Let everything fully cure and harden for about 7 days before you put things back on the counter.


We ran into a snag after everything had dried. I screwed up, and waited too long to scrape drips, accidentally creating a lip at the bottom when I did it once (see picture below). I should have waited and just sanded the drips off the bottom.

Notice the "bump" at the bottom

I ended up sanding that out flat (by hand!), and my artist wife went back and re-painted the sides where I had done that. Made it nice and flat and pretty again. I had a little extra topcoat in the containers, and mixed/rolled that on over the sides. This is what it looked like when everything was dry and we took the plastic and tape off.

We also took the opportunity to replace the kitchen faucet with one that has a pull-down sprayer and has a motion-activated feature.

New faucet pre-backsplash

After we finished the countertops, we moved on to the backsplash. We played around with a couple ideas, including doing subway tile (P.S. tile is expensive!). We finally decided on a nice, relatively inexpensive mosaic tile with an unsanded white cement grout. I bought a tile cutter, a trowel, a float, and a sponge, and over the course of two Saturdays, we first put up the tile, then grouted everything as well.

Putting up tile

Backsplash completed without grout

For the island backsplash, I ended up having to improvise, and cut a lot of tiles lengthwise, because I ran out of the skinny tile rows.

Backsplash on the island

Here are the progress shots of grouting, with my beautiful co-grouter.

First section grouted

Beautiful co-grouter

Ultimately, this kitchen is completely different from when we first started, and I love it.

Before and After

Lighting Post 4 of 3

When I wrote my last lighting post, I technically wasn't finished. Okay, even now I'm technically not finished. However, I am done with the bulk of my lighting adventures. You might remember my previous three posts, where I spray painted some lights, swapped out a chandelier and painted a fan, and completely redid all the bathroom light fixtures (including splitting one fixture into two), and painted the other fan.

In my last post, I mentioned I needed to replace all the dome lights. And...I did. It really did take about 10-15 minutes per light. I changed out six of them. The last thing to do will be to replace our bedroom light with a small fan, and replace the gumball light in the playroom with our bedroom light. (yes, there will probably be a 5 of 3 post in the future). Here are what the lights looked like before:

And after:

The Doors

This is what our doors used to look like. Flat, golden oak color, dark brass door knobs, shiny brass hinges. I knew when we moved in almost three years ago, this was something I was going to change. I have always felt that panel doors look so much better than flat doors.

Our front door and our garage door were already both 6-panel doors, so I thought it best to stick to that scheme (I think I would have picked them anyway - they're classic). I toyed around with the idea of buying solid-core doors, at least for the bedrooms (to help reduce noise), but ultimately just went with hollow core panel doors throughout (much cheaper).

Fit jig over door and tighten it down, then route out the hinge

Depth gauge

Now, I'd heard that if you don't buy pre-hung doors, it can be difficult to get new doors to fit just right in old frames. So to help me with my endeavor, I purchased a couple of jigs. One, from Ryobi, to do the hinges. And one, from Irwin, to do the door locks / handles. The Ryobi tool was fantastic - it takes out all the guesswork. It comes with a router bit and a built-in depth gauge for it, and has positive stops to adjust the template for different-sized hinges. It also is able to do both rounded and square hinges (those rounded bits are removable inserts). All I did was line up the door I'd removed with the new door, drew some lines with a square to match them up, then used the router template to mortise out perfect slots for the new hinges. That made it super easy to do the hinges. 

Irwin tool with hole saws

The Irwin tool wasn't as good as the Ryobi. I did the same thing: lining up the old and new doors and drawing lines, then attaching the jig. This one has two holes where you screw in the door lock screws to hold it in place. Then you use the included hole saws to cut the door handle space (starting the hole on both sides so you don't blow out the other side), then the door lock hole. The biggest issue was that the jig didn't stay put very well. To keep the holes lined up, punch the center drill bit through, then switch to the other side and ignore the jig, using the center hole as your guide instead. And having a drill bit that switches between the two hole saws isn't ideal, as those things can be difficult to separate from the hole saw. But the biggest issue was the plastic template that was included to cut out a space for the bolt plate. The router bit got so heated up in cutting the space, that it melted the plastic jig. I had to be really careful I didn't go outside where the original lines had been.

By the way, here's what happens if you screw up in measuring, and measure from the wrong end of the door. You accidentally drill the door handle hole in the wrong spot. This was a $31 mistake.

After I got a few doors on, I realized that my doors were slightly too wide, when compared to my original doors. So I pulled them off and planed them down slightly with a hand planer, then sanded them smooth. This was something I had to do even later on, when a couple of the doors started sticking (I ended up planing those in place, though).

I also tried painting the doors in place - not a great idea. It took too long and I had to tape everything, etc. So instead I took them off and painted them in the garage (though I did the shiny topcoats while they hung). I wanted to do something different than just white doors, and felt matching the doors to the other woodwork I've done in the house would look pretty good.

I used two coats of General Finishes brand milk paint. The Dark Chocolate color matches their Java Gel Stain, which I used on the cabinets and banister. Then I added a couple coats of Minwax Fast Drying Polyurethane Satin Finish for a topcoat. 

For the hardware, I replaced the door knobs with satin nickel handles, and added matching hinges. 

Here are some shots of the final products! I am really pleased with how they turned out.

Upstairs bedrooms/bathroom

Front door/garage/half bath

Half bath to the laundry room

Upstairs toy room

Banister

I am on a quest to eliminate all golden oak coloring from my home. The next item on my list was my banister. I used the same process I used on my cabinets: sand, java gel stain, and polyurethane topcoat. This took a while to sand because of all the individual posts with all their little grooves. But I finally did it. Here are the before pictures (notice the change I made in the baseboard on the stairs from this post).

And the after:

Painting the Walls

Next we moved on to the walls. Well, let me rephrase that. We actually painted the spare room (now the baby's room) and the big girls' room last year. In fact, we painted the trim in those rooms too and used the wrong paint, so we will need to go back over them in the future. Not to mention that we will also need to paint the trim and walls in the office too. Here are the before and after of their rooms:

Panorama of the Girls' Room when we moved in

Much lighter blue with white trim (and bed)

Funky brown accent wall in baby's room before

I researched the crap out of making the painting process easier. I patched walls like crazy, textured them, primed them, and THEN we painted. By the way, priming the patched spots is really important, because it keeps you from getting those flat-looking spots that look like a different color.

We edged around the ceiling in each room first, which I did by hand with a brush (often on a very tall ladder), then rolled the walls while the line around the ceiling was still fresh. To roll the two-story walls, I had to use a very long extension pole. We painted the upstairs living room and hallway, entryway, kitchen, and dining room gray (which ended up looking a little bluish-gray in the light), and are very happy with how it turned out. Here are a few pictures of that.

I keep taking on huge projects - hopefully my next ones will be a little smaller. But the difference is amazing. I love the new white trim, especially with the newly painted walls.

The Trim!

If there are two things I really don't like doing in regard to housework, it's sanding and painting. Guess what the majority of my house projects have been this past year or so? Yep. Sanding and painting. But this time, I tried a different approach. I now have an air compressor and a brad nailer/stapler, so I decided to take all the trim off and sand/paint it, then reattach it later.

It actually has been a relatively simple process (just time consuming). As usual, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on the subject, then went to work. I bought an inexpensive pry bar from Menards (local hardware store chain), and while we were watching TV one night, went around the room, prying off baseboards and removing nails.

The trick is to first get your bar under the trim and lift up - that will pull the trim away from the wall enough to slide the flat end in there. Then you push it down as far as possible, and rock the bar back and forth gently. If it is getting stuck on the carpet, put the bar back under the bottom of the trim and push it up.

I like to use the curved end once it fits, because it seems like it is better for pushing out the bottom portion of the baseboard. Then I removed the nails from the boards and the walls. There are a couple holes on the pry bar that make for perfect spots to brace the pliers when you pull out the nails.

Anyway, once those were all removed, I replaced them until I was ready to paint. The baseboards were actually relatively simple. The hard part was all the door and window frames I didn't remove. I figured out that there are exactly 26 window/door frames in my house. I decided that I hated painting, and wanted to come up with a better way to do it.

Turns out, there is a great product called Bulls Eye 1-2-3 primer. It says you don't need to sand or degloss at all, but I still lightly sanded any big bumps away. Let me tell you, it sticks great. I did two coats of primer (only need to dry an hour between coats) with a brush, then a coat of enamel semi-gloss (and another light coat for touch-up) using a roller that I used like a squeegee to help avoid brush marks (the paint said not to thin it). With the second batch of trim, I actually used a paint conditioner, which I think helped get a better finish.

After I finished most of the frames, I moved the baseboards into the garage piece by piece, marking the backs so I would remember where to replace them when I was done, then going through the same painting process as the frames. It's much easier to paint a horizontal surface, by the way. I wish I was spraying it on, but it still went okay.

After I got everything painted, I took it back inside and matched it up on the correct walls. I sanded or cut off any drips on the sides/backs so everything would line up properly, and went about reattaching it to the walls with 18-gauge brad nails. It took a few times of messing up to get the right pressure and technique on the nailer so I didn't have to pound in tiny nails with a hammer and nailset tool.

After

Before

One thing that was weird was that along the stairwell, there was a piece of (different) trim all along it. I didn't think anything of it before, but after I removed it, I wondered why they had done it that way. It looked bizarre, and it wasn't the same as the other side of the banister (stair-side). So instead of putting it back, I replaced it with some shoe rail. I'm planning on staining it the same color as the banister (same as the cabinets).

Baseboards don't line up with the floor

The house originally had carpet in the downstairs living room / dining room, but was replaced with hard floor at some point, so this was a good opportunity to lower the baseboards to match the floor. Then it was a matter of carefully caulking top (and bottom for the hard floor), allowing extra time to mess up of course, filling and sanding nail holes, then touch up painting everything.

Painted baseboard caulked along the floor

This post probably seems really long, but trust me - doing this trim took longer. I legitimately took a year to do this. I would do 2-3 door frames one weekend, then nothing on it for a while, then more door frames, then a window, then I took off part of the trim, then painted it, then more trim, then painted, etc. etc. If I ever do this again, I will take everything (including door frames) off the walls and spray them. I will not hand paint anything except for touching up.

Random: Collar Hack

I am required to wear business casual attire to work. Typically, that means a collared, button-down shirt and slacks (though sometimes it's a polo). I like to look nice, so of course I wear clean, ironed shirts, but the collars always bugged me. I don't like button-down collars, but I also don't like my collar spread across my shoulders like I'm John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

So I learned a trick from a friend, about how to get a buttoned-down collar look, without having a button-down collar. Here it is:

This is a stainless steel collar stay, paired with a very small neodymium magnet. I bought a big pack of these collar stays online for a few bucks, and some magnets from Michaels (or Hobby Lobby, can't remember). The trick is to swap out your collar stays for these, and use a magnet inside your shirt to "pin" your collar to your shirt where you want it. That way, my collar always stays where I want it to. Enjoy!