This is the last day of Spring Break and it’s been a busy one. Rather than spending our time on the beach or going away to anywhere that other people are doing the manual labor, we were DIYing it ourselves for both the savings and the experience.
We had two projects going on:
1) Building a deck. Technically this is my husband’s project and I am sure you will hear more about it over at The Handyguys Podcast. I won’t put too much about it here because he will be your best source for all the gory details – like when to outsource and what steps he did himself given his availability. Needless to say, the deck did not get finished in one week especially since he could only work on it over the weekends and half the time it rained. (Posts and footers were done before this week and we outsourced having the gravel put in since we found a great guy who could do it quick and cheap!)
Here’s where we are as of today:{Excuse the misty morning fog.}
2) Painting my older daughter’s room purple. If you’ve been following this blog, you know we painted my younger daughter’s room last summer. Now, my eldest wanted a color change, despite the fact that we’ve only lived here six years and I have several other rooms I want to paint and I did paint hers pink a couple of years back. My soon-to-be 14-year-old HAD to have purple. And, to make her point, she tried covering the pink with posters. Then, she labeled them WITH SHARPIE MARKER. UGGGGHHHH. AND, that’s not all. She had her friends sign their name on what was left of the pink walls – again with SHARPIE! Do you know how hard it is to cover marker like that?
As you see in the progression of pictures below, we tried two coats of paint from a brand I won’t mention that touted primer and paint in one can. One coat and you could still see the marker clearly. Two coats, it started to cover it up. At that point, we just switched to covering everything Zinsser BIN primer which is made of shellac. But, it actually dissolved the marker which then imprinted the black or blue onto the roller which reprinted the images like stamps as I painted. I found the best method was to roll quickly and lightly to get that first coat on (and this stuff dries FAST and doesn’t come out of anything easily). Then, I went back over the worst spots since the marker graffiti was only in certain spots.
After it all dried, we proceeded to the purple paint (x2 coats) which worked great over our primer. Having my girls help meant multiple touch-ups to the ceiling paint —– but we got it done!
And, while my husband decided during the week to outsource laying gravel under the new deck construction, Lindsey and I decided to outsource cleaning up our fingernails and toenails to the local nail salon (which has a great deal BTW – $35 for a mani-pedi) where the ladies removed the rest of the primer and paint from our hands and feet and fancied us up for Easter! Yeah!
And, then we ran a 5K on Saturday! See pictures over at Genesis Moments. I am uploading them now.
