My house needs an underhaul: a budget project thread.

Thank you! And thank you for the suggestion of using blue -- you were right on. I never think of myself as fearful of color but sometimes I really can be so a good push is always welcome.

I think there actually is enough of the checked flooring to do all of it. I sent Mr. B and email asking about tearing out the old floor. That's sure to make him grumpy. Pointing out that it's essentially free might help matters though.

Budget to date: $32.00!

Oooh, Storypeople! Love him.

Yeah! Storypeople!

I have one that says "I'd probably have more trouble with the ghosts of my past, she said, if my memory wasn't all shot to hell".

That one cracks me up.

The floor is a go so I'll start scraping up the old one tomorrow!

But I have a problem....

The remenant I have is 3x19 so there will be a seam right down the middle of the floor. I could just ignore it and cover it with a rug -- sort of, or I could cut into 3x3 squares and play it up as gigantic "tiles". One seam or many? Which would look best?

Ignore it as long as the pattern matches up.



I just read this title thread as "My husband needs an underhaul"
I think I better get myself off to bed.

You're cooking. Carry on, nurse.

Oh I like that blue-purple color a lot, and it brings out the cute windows.
All shades of blue are so hip these days - just look at this Pottery Barn
bath!! The blue is a bit lighter but equally nice.

http://www.potterybarn.com/pbimgs/ab/images/p2/products/200830/0022/img76l.jpg

I love how it's going. I'm guessing many seams because 1 always looks weird to me. But it's a full bath so you need to make it functional so it can stand serious humidity and possible pooling on the floor without seeping to the underflooring.

Change of plans.

Becuase of the way the remnant is cut it would be difficult to get it in the bathroom without a lot of fuss.

But I stripped the top of the old vinyl flooring off and Mr. B assures me that I can paint the surface that is left!

I'm thinking paint and Blik.

Has anyone used Blik?

http://www.whatisblik.com/walldecals.html

It sounds pretty simple and I've read that you can use it on floors without any problem though I'm a bit worried that wear and tear would much it up.

I'd be worried about the wear and tear too, since Blik is intended for the
walls only.

Have you looked at cork? Those cork tiles are fairly inexpensive and
easy to apply. http://www.corkfloor.com/

But you can use them on floors, so they say.



They make them for glass and it's dishwasher safe and they make them for cars and you can use them on outside walls so they might be more durable than they appear.


Maybe if I sealed them in with a clear coat.....

how smooth is the floor now?

there are quite a few warnings about bumpy surfaces through the FAQ and other pages at their site

and



it might be easier to make your own stencil

and seal seal seal

it might take a while to get all the layers dry

a friend did something similar in her bathroom, and it took a bit over a week in total to get the basecoat, 2 coats of three paints, and and 3 coats of sealant to dry (a bit over a day each to be dry dry dry)

ohhh - I love how the green pops with that bluple paint

Even Mr. B likes the blurple and he was doing some serious eye rolling when I got started.

I was thinking of painting polka dots or something very anti-tile then thought blik might be easier. But maybe I'll do some blik on the roll down shade instead.

The floor is actually very smooth except around the edges. I'm going to run a sander over it just to get it as smooth as possible and then use a self leveling paint to make sure the surface stays smooth.

Maybe I'll just paint a fat black border and leave the interior white, then use the vinyl flooring I have to make a bath mat by gluing two sections of it back to back.

I spent the weekend underhauling my disaster of a kitchen.

My kitchen was sooooo awful. Terrible dark dark dark paneling everywhere with this hillbilly gingerbread trim. Seriously awful.

Fixing our kitchen means tearing down the garage, moving the driveway, knocking down an exterior wall, tearing everything down to the studs and starting over.

That wasn't going to happen this year after spending so much on essential construction.

So I bought some serious degreaser and scrubbed the living daylights out of the paneling, double Kilzed it and painted it stark raving white. Scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed the rattletrap cabinets, the tile countertops, the windows and the floor. Installed about $15 worth of Ikea wall organizers and voila!

I had no hope of anything beyond clean and fuctional but it actually looks pretty good. I'm even wishing I had taken the before photo that my mom had kept begging me for while laughing her head off at my kitchen woe.

So, may we see an after picture then?

(Your hands must be hurting like hell)

While we wait for Boomer's photos, can I show you my man's bathroom?
Here's the pink and green bath....
Ehbeth!


Boom, you underhaul like no one I've ever seen...
You go!
But, hey, my kichen walls finally have some paint on them!

caribou: That shower is made for two (if not more :wink: ).

You could hold a dance in my bathroom, it is seriously large (for a bathroom).

Well done on the kitchen underhaul boomer.

Oh my! That bathroom is fabulous!

I might get a photo of the kitchen later but really "pretty good" is only in comparison to the dank cave it once was. Now I can enter it with simple caution, not dread.

You've inspired me. I carpeted the stairs going down to the basement the other night (nice piece of carpet remnant and my virgin staple gun made short work of it), and tonight I've started painting a weird little alcove space in my bedroom. I have four cans of pink and lilac'y Oops paint in there - I'm gonna mix it up a bit - a coat that looks a bit like strawberry milkshake is drying right now.