Caulking Tips and Tricks

Check out my the topic of my newest obsession by heading over to the newest obsession page!

`

Yeah, it's kinda boring, but you might find it useful anyway! Leave me and comment and let me know!

Coco-Chocolate Comfort

It's cold and I was craving something warm, gooey and chocolaty.  So I wandered into the kitchen and started mix'n stuff together. My creation is a bowel of warm, comforting, coconutty, chocolaty, goodness. Quick and easy to make! Oh, and it's Paleo!

Needs:

Shredded coconut, I used this kind

Almonds, I used these blanched almonds

Special Dark Chocolate kisses (or other type of dark chocolate)

Flax seed

Sea Salt

Milk (use organic, if possible--coconut is especially yummy)

Vanilla

Butter (grass fed if you can)

Honey

Put coconut and a handful of almonds into a food processor, and process until it is a nice fine, crumbly texture, like this:

  

   

Place into a bowel and stir in flax seed, a sprinkle of salt and dark chocolate. 

Pour milk over the mixture, and add some vanilla.  Microwave for a minute and stir. Nuke for another minute and half, or until mixture thickens. Top with a dollop of butter and a little honey. Stir and enjoy!

  

Let me know if you try it and if you like it! My Sweetie and I sure did!!!

Recipe by Kathy Hutson 

Stair Makeover--Part 3: Sanding (Otherwise known as Torture!)

I wanted to give you a quick update on the stair makeover.  Progress has been slow going, mostly because I've allowed myself to get distracted. Still, we've gotten most of the sanding done. Now it's all down to touch-ups.

My Honey, took pity on me and did most of the sanding. Have I mentioned before how much I love that man???

Please ignore the sanding dust halos. 

Here's another pic, just because I think he's cute. :-)

I had to go back and add some more wood filler to the edges of those two stairs my Sweetie is standing by, and I'm still not sure that they will be as smooth and even as I want. We need to add some screws to a few of the treads to keep them from squeaking, so I'll be adding filler over those, and doing a few more sanding touch-ups. Then I'll be caulking followed by painting! Yay!

More updates soon, so stay tuned!!!

Oh, please feel free to ask any questions.  I'll be happy to try and answer any you have!

Ugly Builder's Stairs--Part 2: Attack Those Gaps!!!

Well, the stairs are still ugly…but, it’s time to try to tackle the gaps!!!  There are almost as many gaps as there were staples!  I knew that my cheap self did not want to go the molding route, so I had to come up with a workable alternative. I looked all over the web for inspiration, and I came across low expansion foam. Ding, ding, ding!!! It is supposed to be sandable and paintable, so I thought I would give it a whirl and hope it worked. 

As you will see, I have some pretty big gaps to deal with. One at the “landing”—if that’s what you can call my little turn in the stairs—is particularly big, and we weren't sure if the foam will work or if we will end up needing to do a wall patch since it is where the base of the wall meets the stair. In my usual fashion, I charged ahead with the foam to see what would happen.

Above mentioned big hairy gap!

Another of the larger gaps.

Now, I've never used this expanding foam before, and I found it has a wee bit of a learning curve. It takes a second for the foam to push up the straw at first, but once it gets there it is off and running! Watch the straw to see when it is actually getting close to the tip, and then start moving along your area you want “foamed”. 

I put blue painter’s tape along the wall. I was afraid the foam would mess the wall up, so I was going with the better safe than sorry adage. 

Here is a tip…don’t add a little more because it doesn't look like it will expand to the edge, ‘cuz it will, and if you add more it will way over fill!!! You can cut the overfill with a utility knife, but I found that it didn't always cut cleanly. Of course, that could have been due to a dull blade, but who has time to replace a razor in a utility knife??? Not I, let’s just charge ahead and funk things up so it takes longer to sand (“Because I just love sanding,” she muttered to herself sarcastically.)  Moral of the story, for the love of Pete, change your blade!!!

Just a few of my overfill areas.

When trimming areas of overfill, slice the area down to the edge the gap closest to you, so you aren’t trying to press the foam between your knife and the wall.  I just found this to be more effective.

As you can see above, I would just slide the knife along the tread, then along the wall. I would do this several times and then pull the foam away using the tape. If it was being stubborn, which it sometimes was, I would just use the flat head screw driver to coax it loose, if necessary. 

Pulling away the tape and foam.

I was unable to get the foam cut perfectly flush to the wood. Believe me, I tried. I may have been better able to do so if I used a razor blade by itself, but I would have inevitably severed a finger, or five in the process. I really don't have time for that amount of cleanup. Here are a couple of pics demonstrating the way most of  it looked when all of the foam had been trimmed:

Former big hairy gap! :-)

It is difficult to see in the pictures, but in many of the areas the foam did not slice cleanly, as I mentioned above. It sort of has a gnawed appearance.  

Here is another tip, make sure you really have the bottom of your painter's tape stuck to the wall, otherwise you may also have this issue: 

Oops!!! Guess I get to play with some joint compound. 

My stairs are in rough shape. There are gouges (some were already there, some came from prying the tack strips), a few of the treads had very uneven top edges on the tread noses, not to mention all of the lovely holes from the nails and staples. I addressed, or attempted to address, these issues with wood filler.  I have no idea how it will hold up on those tread nose edges, but I guess we will find out! Here are a couple of pictures showing some of the many areas I used the wood filler: 

I figured that I should let the thicker areas of wood filler dry for 8-12 hours. I want to do everything possible to keep it from crumbling away when I try to sand it. I also tried it over a really, really rough area of the foam just to see if it will stay during sanding. I did discover that it takes the wood filler much longer to fully dry over the foam...at least 24 hours.  I haven't tried to sand it yet, so I'll let you know how that turns out. If it stays put and sands smooth, then I will use it over more of those rough areas of foam. 

Next, it is time to tackle sanding! I, in my thriftiness, tried doing the sanding with a hand sander...the kind powered by your actual hand, not electricity. I got two of the steps partially sanded, remembered just how much I hate to sand, and decided that being thrifty in this case was for the birds. I went to Lowe's and bought this beauty!  Once I get done with this dreaded step of the process I will report back.

Ugly Carpeted Builder’s Stairs: The Makeover

We are contemplating a move, and so I decided I should probably do something about the stairs that have ugly, stained beige carpet that I inherited when I bought the house.  I had thought of several different things to do to make them nicer. In the end, if we are going to sell I knew I needed it to be fairly "vanilla" and not too "me."  Because what I really wanted to do was a brown paper flooring treatment.  I love the leather-look it gives!!! 

What I'm going to do is paint. The usual dark brown treads and white risers. Safe, classic, nice. However, because I have to put a spin on things, I'm going to make chalk paint & use that! Have I ever done this before?  That would be a big 'ole no! Have I ever even used chalk paint for anything, much less make my own?  Again, the answer would be no!  So you have a wonderful opportunity to learn from me and all the mistakes I am most likely to make!

I am a researcher by nature and I looked at every DIY stair tutorial out there...at least it felt like it. However, the ones featuring builder's stairs that I could find generally used copious amounts of molding to deal with gaps and huge spaces.  Ummm...have I mentioned that I am on the frugal side?  I admit that may be a massive understatement. Anyway, molding is expensive, unless you just have a bunch hanging around, which I do not.  This means that I must get creative to find other, cheaper, ways to deal with whatever ugliness is lurking under the carpet.

So, here is my tutorial on my bumbling, start and stop stair makeover!

Step One: Carpet Removal

Supplies needed when pulling up carpet:

Large flexible trash bags

Heavy leather gloves

Angle (AKA diagonal) pliers

Lineman pliers (really any plier that works)

Flat head screwdriver

Hammer

Utility knife & extra blades

Coffee can or med sized container to hold staples & small trash

Wood glue

So…first you take a deep breath & mentally prepare yourself for ickiness. Put on your gloves, grab your utility knife & decide how many stairs your want to remove the carpet from at a time. I found that doing one or 2 at a time made it easy to fold and shove the carpet and pad in a garbage bag…but it is really up to you.  Once you decide this, use the utility knife to cut the carpet. I found that cutting just under the edge of the tread nose easiest. Next, grab your pliers or screw driver and pull on an edge of the carpet at the bottom to grab a handful. Just pull, and keep pulling until you pulled the carpet loose up to where you cut the carpet. You may find that it is not completely cut all the way across, so you can do that now that you have it loose.  Sadly, I did not think about taking a “before” picture, with the nasty carpet on, but just use your imagination.

Next just pull up the pad & sigh with dismay at the millions of staples the idiots used to tack the carpet and pad down with. Ok, time to tackle the biggest pain in the ass so far…the tack strips. 

Now, I found that some yahoo used a 2 inch nail on every third or fourth strip just to make my life more difficult! Hopefully you don’t have that issue. I used the flat head screwdriver to pry up the edge of the tack strip enough to try and get the claw of the hammer under the nail to pry it up. Really, I struggled with this. It was hard to get the angle needed to pry with the hammer without risking damage to the wall. Then my Honey came home, heard my muttering and cussing and did the rest for me!  Love that man!!! His method was similar to mine, but more forceful. He jammed the flat head screwdriver under the tack strips not thinking about marring the wood at all.  I think I was being too delicate. So just do what you need to in order to get them up. Sanding and wood filler will help with any gouges or scrapes from your efforts...at least that is my theory. 

Once the tack strips were off of a tread, I then began the removal of the millions of staples on each tread and riser.  Ugh!!! There were sooooo many!!! I would remove the carpet, pad, the tack strips and then the staples a stair at a time. That way I didn't hurt myself on the stupid tack strips. I'm clumsy. Another massive understatement.

If you are like me, you will find yourself in all kinds of positions trying to get a good enough purchase on the damn staples to pull them out!!! Let’s just hope no one was watching. Sheesh! Some of the staples broke close to the wood, if there was not enough staple left to grab hold of, I just nailed that sucker flush to the wood! 

There were a couple of treads that had cracks in them, so once I was done removing the last staple (big celebratory "Yay!")  I used some wood glue and spread that over the cracks, trying to work it in pretty well, and then wiping off the excess.

Here is how they look sans carpet, tack strips, and staples.

Ya see those huge gaps between the stairs and the wall?!? Ugh!!! Time for a little rest and beer or wine to prepare for the next step!