The problem...

(I'll tell you the problem with blogging about my house...I don't want to tidy my house up enough to take pictures.)

Things I Love Thursday: Christmas Lights

Twinkle lights, Christmas lights...whatever you call them, I love the sparkly joy they bring to dark winter nights.  Today brought the first real snowfall for us in the Midwest, so I thought I'd share some Christmas light pictures from my yard. I've left the Christmas lights up just for this purpose!

 

 

 

 

Next week, I'll hopefully be back on track with some home decor/DIY stuff! :)

Some pictures from Chicago

Well, blogland, I'm feeling a little under the weather. So for now, enjoy some pictures I took in Downtown Chicago this weekend!

The Smurfit-Stone Building behind some trees in Millennium Park

Cloud Gate (a.k.a. the Bean) in Millennium Park

Things I Love Thursday: Waffles

I'm not really sure how much I love waffles, but I do know that I've been watching a lot of Parks and Recreation, and every time Leslie eats a waffle, I am desperately sad that I'm not eating one.

Thanks, NBC, for this amazing show. About waffles.

Image from this blog.

Oil-Based Pros and Cons

When it actually came time to build our new shelves and paint our old ones, I decided to used oil-based paint to do it.  Obviously, there are pros and cons to any product, and oil-based paint has a lot of cons. You probably already are naming them to yourself, since virtually no one uses it now except crazy old me. But I do often use it on furniture, and I'll go ahead and tell you why.


First, the Cons: ( you know these)

• It's stinky and has all the VOCs. (Okay, I really don't know if that's true, but it sure is stinky.)
• It has a long dry time, as in, 24+ hours, and is therefore prone to drips, and you don't get that instant gratification that we all love.
• It is a pain to clean up. Bring on the paint thinner/mineral spirits when you're using oil-based paint or force yourself to use disposable everything.
• It's hard to find because no one (but me) uses it any more.

Now, the Pros: (this is the good stuff)

• It has a long dry time. I know I just said that was a con, but that also means it's pretty self-leveling, leaving you gorgeous smooth finishes, and also means you have working time for mistakes, fixing those drips, etc.  My bookshelves were full of bubbles from the foam rollers (though I did my best to smooth them out) but by the time it was dry, there were no bubbles left. Amazing. A paint that fixes my mistakes. (Not really)
• It dries rock hard. Okay, so I haven't done scientific tests on this, but I do know that when I paint furniture, especially horizontal surfaces with it, papers, magazines, etc, do not stick to it, and that is what I'm looking for when I'm painting tables, bookshelves, and desks. (**Though I do have a couple of water-based options for this)

I realize the pros list seems pretty short, and I'm no expert, but I have painted a lot of furniture, and my goal is always to find something that won’t stick to magazines and papers. 


The 2 solutions I’ve ever found for this (so far) are oil-based paint or polyurethane, more specifically, Minwax’s water-based Polycrylic, but I’ll do another post on that later.  (Though, I did just read in Young House Love, that they used a new alkyd paint by Benjamin Moore that's water clean-up and sounds great! I'll have to test it one day and report!) One reason I chose not to use Polycrylic this time is that it is another step. Sure, oil-based paint has a long-ass dry time, but I just have to step back and let it dry, not get out another set of tools to put on the clear coat.

Now, oil-based paint is hard to find. I use floor paint (like Valspar’s Oil-Gloss floor paint) or Rustoleum. Rustoleum has limited colors, and even more limited colors that come in a satin finish. The Valspar floor paint can be tinted to pretty much any color, but only comes in gloss. And I mean gloss. About 6 years ago, I got some tintable (well, they tinted it for me) satin-finish oil-based paint at a local paint store, but I haven’t tried since then.

(I really do want to test this new Benjamin Moore paint and report! My concern isn't just durability, but magazine-stickiness. You know what I mean.)

My tips for using oil-based paint: Stock up on mineral spirits. Be willing to ditch your brush. Open a window and put a fan blowing out in it (to suck out the stinky air!). Put on lots of cheerful music to help your sanity. Enjoy thinking about how great your project will be when it's done.

New Year, New Bookshelves

I realize you don't really know me yet, (unless you're a friend of mine who I've sent to this blog), and I'm just jumping right in the middle here, but that's okay. Every year, my husband and I throw a New Year's Eve party (a New Year's party?). It's our thing. So much so, that two years ago, we moved into our new house (after having worked on remodeling it for 2.5 months while living with my mom) on New Year's Eve day, just so we could have a party here that night. Pretty much every item in the kitchen was chosen for its availability to be installed before New Year's (more on that later).

So this year, because we love living stress-free lives (that's internet sarcasm), we decided that the New Year's party would be much better if we could rearrange the living room. (Brian wants me to say that I decided, and he just didn't say "no".) Of course, this involved building a new set of built-in bookshelves, and then I couldn't not repaint the existing ones (like I've been planning to for months), which involved removing all the books...etc etc etc.  You know how it goes, you just want to move the couch and end up disarranging your whole living room.

So here are a few before and in-progress pictures (we're not quite to the after, yet).  I've got some finishing work yet to do, but I'm still pretty excited!!

Before:

After/In Progress:

 

 

Our original living room layout worked, but it was slightly cramped. I know it seems odd that our loveseat is now in front of one of the sets of bookshelves, but trust me, the living room is so much bigger now!

 

I will get some better pictures when I have the shelves more properly filled/arranged.  We do plan on taking the bookshelves behind the loveseat all the way to the ceiling and putting proper sides, etc on them.  My designer friend, Valerie, from Vj Interiors has lots of plans for things I need to do to this room, too!  I also hope to post about the construction and painting, as well as where I plan to move my gallery wall (whose pictures are now in a pile in the spare room).

 

But for now I am so happy! New bookshelves, new paint, and new layout make for one satisfied gal!

 

Christmas Subway Art Pillow - Cricut Word Collage

While I'm working on a post about some new bookshelves I'm working on, here's a post over at my sewing/crafting blog, The Modern Seamstress, about an awesome Christmasy subway art pillow I made with Cricut! Gosh, I love Cricut. I'm not sure how I lived without it.

Christmas subway art pillow, made with the Cricut Word Collage cartridge and EasyWeed vinyl