Distressed and Checkered..

...and I'm not talking about my past (necessarily).

I'm talking flooring, or "flooring", if you prefer. (Since my checkers are all on concrete.)

But, boy oh boy, was I glad to get these checkers in the past! An easy project but because of how much surface area we covered, it was rather time consuming.

Beware, Mutha Dawling (Grey Gardens alert!), this is a very photo heavy post.

To jog your memory, here's what we started with:


The entry and part of the living room.

This was taken during a tour we took of the house during the move-out. Try to ignore the big, honkin' trash can.





While you're ignoring the trash can, go ahead and ignore this area rug, too. And, the uh, newspapers. Thanks. 

  Then, after all the chiseling and sledge-hammering and grinding and swearing and blood and sweat, we cleaned up the mess:

And we had this:

(This was after all those concrete patches.)


Inspired by and loosely following Angelina's tutorial, I started by painting everything with Behr's Porch and Floor Paint in Swiss Coffee.

Then, the fun began. I taped off a 3 inch border in the dining, living and entry. I painted the border Stealth Jet (Behr's Porch and Floor paint).

I decided to paint the border right across the kitchen entry between the cabinets. I did that mostly because the kitchen had so many "Border Placement Conundrums" involving appliances that it started to boggle my mind and I figured this would be the simplest solution before I found something high from which to jump. I'm sure I should have thought this whole thing through more carefully, but I'm an impetuous clown. What can I say?
Moving on!

After conspicuous consumption of caffeine (and a break from the paint fumes), I finagled a decent border placement for the kitchen around the appliances and I taped it off and painted it. 

The next day, Big T. emailed me a sample layout and suggested the 16 inch size for the checkers. He also calculated a starting line for the dining/living/entry, and I based all of those checkers off that line.

I made a 16 inch square cardboard template and used a pencil to draw the pattern on the floor. This part was quite aggravating because neither the template nor the pencil-er was perfect (duh), so those checkers were not lining up as well as I wanted. Thankfully, because of the crazy, hypnotic power of a checkerboard pattern, my poor workmanship and lack of an Engineer Husband on site (ahem) to steer me straight is hardly noticeable.
Right?
Right?!
(just say, "yes", I'm begging you.) After the grid was penciled on, I marked a "B" on all the squares that got the black paint.

On went the Stealth Jet paint:

Initially, I thought I'd only be able to get the little pointy corners with a craft paint brush (that skinny purple brush you see poking out of the paint tray) but with practice I was able to use a 2 inch angled trim brush. Home Depot has these cool, stubby ones that fit my cool, stubby hands. Word.

Let's get checkering:

And on to the dining, living and entry:

Now, I know Angelina's tutorial (and a number of others) have you tape off the checkers. But, when I had taped off the border, little bits of the white paint came up. So, I played it safe and parked my butt on that hard, hard concrete floor and painted all the squares along the penciled lines, by hand.
I'll tell ya, Ma, my spine was ready to walk off the job by the last checker.

On to the staining.

To get a distressed appearance, I used a water based wood stain in a dark walnut finish. Wood stain on concrete, go figure. But it worked.
We started in the kitchen.

Now, I should have watered down the stain by about half so the kitchen ended up a little darker and with much more variation than I was going for but we're making it work.

The Boys sweetly volunteered to stain the kitchen:

And I finished the rest:

When the stain was dry, the floor still felt a little tacky. But after I rolled on a coat of low-gloss concrete sealer (Behr), the finish was even and smooth and the tackiness was completely gone.

I still have the baseboards to finish and install but company was coming (that's YOU, Mutha Dawling!).

I let the sealer cure for 36 hours.
Then I had to get some furniture in these rooms:

Whew!
A work in progress but we're done for now.

I think those sofas need a tufted ottoman. That might just be my next project because I don't think Big T. wants to miss out on all the fun tools I'm gonna want to buy before I tackle the baseboards.

Right Big T.?
Right?!
(just say, "yes". I'm begging you.)

Smooches and Squeezes,
Amanda



Linking up!

I didn't burn my boobs off!

Okay, that post title was definitely TMI but I really am giddy with relief. Not just about having narrowly avoided a ladypart scorching but having finished The Move! Woo Hoo!

We had overlapped the move dates so that there'd be a few weeks where we could be in both houses to give me time to get everything done. With Big T in the Middle East, it was up to Z., E. and Me to handle the packing, moving and cleaning. (Fortunately, I got to hire some muscle for the actual schlepping.)
The Move week was also crammed with camp preparations so it was a wild ride.

*A shout out to our friend, Cory, for volunteering muscle, time and his truck for the last of the boxes and hooha at the old house (also for moving Big T's car). Thanks Cory, we appreciate you!*

In the days before The Move, I really thought, like an idgit, that I'd get to spend the week The Boys were at camp painting the floors with an icy Diet Dr. Pepper at my side and the tunes blaring. What an idgit.
That week was spent finishing up at the old house and in the spare hour or so of free time, locating underpants and towels and setting up computers....blah.

So, getting the floors painted is my current project and I have about 2 weeks to git 'er done. Because that's when you'll be here, Ma! Along with a gaggle of cute nephews and one sweet niece (Hi Maddy!).

I've been patching holes in the slab in preparation for the paint. There are some big, honkin holes.

I'm using a Quikcrete product with acrylic fortifyer for most of these holes.


I did buy a trowel but these picnic supplies have been much handier. For starters, the "Quik" in Quikcrete ain't for nuthin'; you make up whatever amount you think you can use in 5 minutes. So, the disposable bowls are a real time saver. I use the plastic spoon for mixing up the little batches and the plastic knife is great for squooshing the concrete mix down into the crevices. The hammer and putty knife are for prying any loose bits out of the hole.



Handy, but I'd rather be eating potato salad...




First step is to clean out the big, messy hole (gee, that sounds dirty. Sorry Ma.) 
An old toothbrush and the shop-vac are necessary for this part, too.

Next, you gotta dampen the hole:


Ignore the water spill on the right. Oopsie!





Then you mix up some of the Quickcrete and smoosh it in the hole. I underestimated the amount of concrete I'd need, so I did this hole-patch in two layers. The first layer:


Awww, it looks like a star!


The next day I layed down the second layer:

I tried to feather the edges of the patch, so that's why it goes so far past the hole's edges. I used the toothbrush, dipped in water, for the feathering part. I also used the toothbrush to get a rougher, "broom finish" on the patch, after it had dried for a few minutes.
The paint I'm going to use on the floor suggests the "broom finish" or a sanded finish as a good grippy base for the paint to adhere.
Again, I'm sure none of this is The Right Way to do it, it's just the way I did it.

Other than a decorative stepping stone, made for Big T's parent's 50th Anniversary, I've never worked with concrete. So, I was a little freaked out about mixing it right so that it would set up and getting the "broom finish" and all that. I guess it's harder to mess up concrete than I thought because it set up like gangbusters and the finish looks pretty good, too. Pretty good for ME, of course. The pros would certainly be less than impressed with my patches but I'm painting over this, so I can be okay with not perfect.

In between the patching and hunting for underwear we've been learning the intricacies and complexities of the two bathroom showers.

I'm not sure what twisted, tortured soul installed the handles for the HOT and COLD faucets in this house but he or she is somewhere getting a big laugh.

There are two upstairs showers and neither one has Hot and Cold handles installed correctly. For the hall bath, the hot handle faces straight up and the cold handle faces straight down when they're off. There is a center knob that controls whether the water will come out of the main faucet or out of the shower head. This is a life saving (or in my case, a boob saving) mechanism in this bathroom. If you've incorrectly configured the handles, at least it's just your toes catching fire. Because, I forogt to mention, this house has an on-demand hot water heater and the hot water that surges from that sucker is positively searing.

Now, in the master bathroom it's not quite so simple. There are three big problems with the master shower and they all converged in an unholy trinity to almost burn my boobs off the first night we lived here.
The first problem is the size of the stall: teeny-tiny. I've seen bigger, roomier coffins. Also, the door doesn't latch tight, so every wayward elbow poke flings the door open.
Next problem is the water pressure. Like standing under Niagra Falls. Normally a good thing. Not so much a good thing here.
The last problem is that danged knob configuration. These knobs both point to the left when they're off, BUT the hot water knob does a total 360, with no "stop" position.
So, on my first night in my new house I reached in to the shower, turned on the hot water and cold water to get it ready and I was too tired from the move to remember how to get it back to "off". Which I didn't realize until I was all done and ready to get out and started fiddling with the knobs.
Bad idea.
I did remember to turn off the hot first, but I couldn't remember exactly where "off" was and all I could get the water to do was go from warm-ish to freezing. So then, stupidly, I started fiddling with the cold knob. BAD BAD IDEA.
Warm-ish to freezing is much better than warm-ish to SCORCHING. I sure tried to fix that problem while I was still IN the shower but the hot deluge sent me screaming out. I got the dang thing turned off and decided to punish it for the next week by only showering in the hall bath. Until last night.
This time I studied those handles and kept the hot turned as low as I could and...I didn't burn my boobs off! Whew.
I know you wanted this whole tale written down for you, Ma. And I was glad to do it.
I can't wait for you to try the showers out for yourself in a couple weeks but I'll be sure to give you a master class on correct knob configuration before you do!

The Move is done and the Showers have been studied. On to floor paint!

Smooches and Screamin',
Amanda

"You are not coming out until you clean up that mess."

We are finally cleaning! Hah-Lay-Loo-Yuh!

I think when I left you last, Ma, I was tired and frustrated because that thinset was stuck on reeeeeel good, like cellulite, and it seemed like only raw, animal effort and masterful hand-eye coordination with the chisel was gonna make it go away (also like cellulite). Come to think of it, much of this demolition project did make me think of an ungainly, dimply bum. Huh.

Anyway, after spending some quality time with a knowledgeable older gent in H.D.'s tool rental department (not that kind of quality, calm down dear), I decided to go whole hog y'all, and rent The Grinder.

Now, all the tile forums and DIY chat pages did say that The Grinder would be effective at "sanding" down the thin-set hills and craters but that the operator of The Grinder would be cleaning grit out of every crevice and off of every surface in the whole blasted house forever and ever.

Really all I heard was, "BlahBlahBlah...THE GRINDER WORKS...BlahBlah"
What's that? This thing will WORK? Big mess and all that. Got it. It will smooth out this lumpy butt of a floor?
Sold.

Really, I already grossed-up the whole first level (and a little bit of the second) with the sandstorm I created with Blades of Death, how much worse could The Grinder make it?

You're expecting me to say, SO MUCH WORSE, right?
I'll tell ya, it really wasn't so bad. But, mess is sorta relative and if you know you already have to wash every wall and every slat of every mini blind and everything else, well then, who gives a rip if there's a little more dust on there?

So, The Boys and I rented that Grinder and lemme tell ya, that thing is as heavy as a refrigerator. One of the  tool rental guys came out to the parking lot with us to give us a hand lifting it up into the back of the Matrix and was making cracks about people who rent big equipment and try to haul it away in little bitty cars, like I was trying to strap the thing on the back of my mule. Lookit, the seats fold down, pal, so stop rolling your eyes.

Once we got el Grinder back to MulberryHill House we worked for about 6 hours, just grinding away. We started off using it with the shop vac attached to it, which did cut down the dust but really slowed down the process because we'd have to clean out the vac's filter every 10 minutes. So, instead we opened all the doors and windows and just went for it. It was a huge mess, billowing clouds of muck and because it's Summertime in Oklahoma, beetles and bugs of all kinds got the Disco Party invitation from the lights and open doors.

Man, am I glad that's over. Because I never look quite so crazy as when I'm getting kamikaze, fly-by buzzings from fat, juicy June bugs; swatting the air, cussin' up a storm and getting madder by the second.
Not pretty.

So, today we cleaned. Mama, I've never been so happy (and willing) to clean in my life. It was marvelous to spend a day working at MulberryHill House and not have to beat poofs of tile grime out of my shoes and everywhere else and de-scuzz The Boys before getting in the car.

I wish I had fun and goofy photos of our day of cleaning, Ma, but our camera's batteries bit the big one. As soon as I grab more batteries, I'll put up some After The Storm pictures.

Now that the tile is out, it's time to move in!
Moving day is Wednesday!
Oh my.

Smooches and Squeezes,
Amanda