Lake House Bathroom Update

I've had an on-going knock down, drag out fight with the leaking bathroom sink at the lake house for several years.  This year the sink has been winning the fight and by late spring I was emptying the overflowing cool whip container underneath the sink on a daily basis.  You can read about that post here.

It got to the point where we had to bite the bullet and replace the entire sink, vanity, pipes and faucet.  Believe me when I tell you I did not want to tackle this project.  Just tearing out the old sink and vanity resulted in a huge hole in one wall and part of the floor tiles broken and chipped.  Sigh....  Fortunately I am pretty good with spackle and quickly fixed and repainted the wall.

Our lake house is located 30 miles from a major city and the only close place to buy a new sink and vanity was a little store in town that apparently stocks only leftover items from the 1970's.  When Louie came back from town, my heart sank when I looked in the back of the truck and saw an ugly dark wooden vanity.  We were at the point of no return and I didn't have any choice, so I told Louie to go ahead and install it and I'd do the next best thing - paint the whole thing later!  If you look closely you can see where the floor tiles are now missing even though I tried to cover them with a throw rug.  LOL!

One word of advice - never buy an old faucet from the 1970's, even if it's quote-unquote new in the box.  Louie went to all the trouble of installing it and checking to be sure there were no leaks.  Then the very first time we turned it on to actually use it, something snapped off inside and the entire faucet broke, resulting in water spraying everywhere.  Did I ever mention how much I despise working with water and plumbing?  So back into the car we went, drove all the way to town, went to Walmart and got another new faucet.  Back to the house, uninstall the broken faucet and then install the new faucet.  I don't even want to tell you how pissed off we were by that point.

Anyway, the 2nd new faucet worked, so Chablis and I removed all the hardware from the cabinet, filled in the holes and quickly applied 2 coats of white paint to the vanity.  Then she distressed it and now we have a new bathroom vanity we can live with.  With no leaks!!

Note the nice patch job I did on the wall.  :-)

I'm not making any promises on when the floor tiles will ever be replaced.....

 

Linking up with

Beyond the Picket Fence
Craft Frenzy
My Repurposed Life
Sunny Simple Life


Tin Can Utensil Holder

In between painting the cabinets in the kitchen, Chablis and I also worked on some new items to decorate the kitchen with as well.  I saw this tin can idea from a guest post over at A Repurposed Life and thought it was so cute.  I made mine a little differently, but it's basically the same thing.

I had made chili the night before, so I kept these 2 cans because I liked the size of them.  I washed them with some dish soap, let them dry overnight and then coated the outside of both cans with 2 coats of clear polycrylic....

I grabbed an old board out of the garage and painted it with a coat of white paint and then a coat of blue paint and gave it a light distressing after it dried.  I drilled a small hole in the top of the board and threaded some twine through it to hang it up.  And finally I used small zip screws to screw the cans onto the board.  I attached the screws from the inside of the cans onto the board and they were small enough that the screws don't stick out the back of the board.  Then I just hung it up on the end of one of the cabinets....

Cute huh?  Did you notice how I gave you just a little glimpse of my kitchen?  You have to come back tomorrow for the full reveal!

 

Yesterday I just happened to run across a post by the original blogger over at Knick of Time and I wanted to give credit where credit was due.  Go over and visit if you have time.

 

Linking up with:

Beyond the Picket Fence

Craft Dictator

My Repurposed Life

Funky Junk Interiors

Lake House Kitchen Re-Do Part 2

I'm continuing on from my post the other day about re-doing our lake house kitchen.  If you missed the first post, you can go back and read it here. 

The paint I used for the cabinets was Glidden High Endurance in the color Windy Sea Breeze.  It's a super pale sea foam green. I taped off the hardware on the cabinet doors instead of completely removing each hinge.  That saved a lot of time and if I got a little paint on some of the hardware it wasn't a big deal, because afterwards I just sanded all the hardware a little bit anyway. 

The day we started on the cabinets it was cold and raining outside, so we just spread plastic tarps on the counters and kitchen table and then painted all the doors inside the house.  All the doors and the outside of the cabinets needed 3 coats of paint.  I placed fans around the room to speed up the drying process between coats.

The backsplash behind the stove had a line where the original home owner had pieced the 2 laminate sheets together.  It always bugged me the way it looked.  Chablis suggested sticking a shelf in there.  Why didn't I ever think of that before??

We went out to the garage, found and cut down an old piece of wood, painted and distressed it and nailed it in place.  It worked perfectly!

It actually took us 4 whole days to completely remove, clean, sand, paint, distress and then re-install all the cabinets.  It helped that after the first day the sun came out and it warmed up, so we were able to move the tarps out onto the deck and paint the doors outside.  We were able to paint more doors at a time, plus the sun and wind helped to dry them quicker.  We also had to sand everything down before we started and then between the 2nd and 3rd coats of paint.  The whole process was very time consuming.

We let everything dry really good overnight, and then each morning Chablis would lightly distress everything we had done the day before.  We then re-hung the doors as we completed each section of the kitchen.  It was nice to see how it was coming along and it helped me to feel like we were making progress.

 

 

The next post will show the completed kitchen - please come back on Friday and take a look!

Lake House Kitchen Re-Do Part 1

I've been waiting   putting off painting the lake house kitchen since we bought this place eight years ago.  I just hated the dark cabinets and really tacky wallpaper trim.  Every spring we'd open the house and I'd say that this was the year we'd paint the kitchen and every fall we'd close up the house and it still hadn't been done.  It was one of those projects that needed to be done, but it's hard to do that sort of thing when the fish are biting or friends are visiting or I just plain didn't have the energy for it.

This year we started off with a bang and repainted the back hallway.  Chablis kept prodding me to just move on to the kitchen and get it over with.  In a moment of weakness I relented and agreed to at least paint the ceiling and pull down the trim and paint the fascia over the cabinets.  But when we tried to tear down the wallpaper, I discovered that it must have been applied with the strongest wallpaper glue ever invented, because it would not budge.  We were not off to a good start and I wasn't happy about it.  So we moved on to plan B -isn't there always a plan B?? - just paint over the damn wallpaper!

 First we repainted the ceiling with 2 coats of white.  I even removed the blades on the ceiling fan and gave them a much needed washing. 

Then Chablis started to paint the trim and fascia.  With both of us working, it didn't take long to paint everything.  It looks better already, don't you think?

I could already see what a difference the lighter paint was going to make and I got a little more motivated to start on the cabinets.  The next thing we did was start removing the cabinet doors.  This was probably the most time consuming thing and took both of us because the doors are heavy and it was hard to hold the door up and use the electric drill at the same time.

Once all the doors and drawers were removed, we had to wash them down.  The cabinet doors were grungy and caked with years of kitchen grease.  I tried a couple of different products to clean them up, but discovered that soft scrub and dawn dish soap applied with a kitchen scrubby worked the best. 

 

Once they were cleaned I set them outside on the deck to dry in the sun and we attacked the cabinets.  I figured it was a good time to clean them all out, get rid of stuff we didn't use anymore and then wipe them all down inside.  I kept going back and forth, trying to decide if I wanted to paint the inside of the cabinets too.  I'll be honest with you - laziness won out.  These cabinets are huge and deep.  I would have had to literally crawl inside to paint the backs of some of them.  That made my decision in the end - wash the insides down and forget about painting the interiors.  And I'll tell you something - in the end, I was glad that was what we did.  They look fine.

 

Come back for the next post to see the painting transformation!

My Snoopy Collection

Are you familiar with Charles Schultz and his famous comic strip Peanuts?   When I was a kid, it was my favorite comic strip.  They used to publish these cute little paperback Peanuts books, and I bet I owned most of them.  I am sick that I ever got rid of them.

 

 

Every once in awhile I'll run across some Peanuts memorabilia at a garage sale or an estate sale and if it's a reasonable price, I'll buy it.  I take most of my collection to the lake house.  Here's some pictures of some of the things I have....

 

These Whiteman candy tins came with the small snoopy's in the next photo.  I stuck magnets on the tins and have them hanging on my refrigerator.

 

Another candy tin....

I like the glasses and often use them....

A cute little candy jar....

I have quite a few coffee mugs, including some vintage FireKing mugs.  The FireKing ones are my favorites and hard to find...

 I have all the mugs lined up on a shelf over the kitchen sink...

Pez dispensers....

 

Does anyone else collect Peanuts stuff?  I love all the characters, but Snoopy and Woodstock are my favorites.



My Little Helper

We have a bathroom sink at the lake house that has this damn persistent leak that is driving me crazy.  The biggest problem is that the cast iron sink itself is so old that the bottom of it has rusted out.  I really like the big, old fashioned sink and hate the thought of getting rid of it, as well as having to go through the mess of tearing everything out and replacing it.  I have been sort of nursing it along ever since we bought the lake house.

The slow drip has gradually turned into a trickling brook.  I have a cool whip container under the sink, but it's to the point where it fills up daily and if I forget to empty it, well, let's just say the bottom of the cabinet is starting to rot out.  Sigh....

Last week I got some plumbers goop and decided to give that a try.  Petey, my dachshund, is never far from my side.  If I'm sitting on the sofa, he's laying next to me.  When I go to bed, he lays at my feet.  If I dare to put him in the back seat of the car, he will whine, loudly, until I move him up front and let him sit on the passenger side.  He's a big baby. 

He kept circling me, giving me advice....

He kept telling me I was doing it all wrong...

He is very patient and will wait until I'm finished.  He's not too good at helping, but he's a very good supervisor - kind of like my husband.   :-)

I think I'm losing the battle....

Crap....

BeeAnn's Lake House Hat Rack

The other day Louie offhandedly mentioned that he'd like someplace to hang his hat and sunglasses when he walks in the front door at the lake house.  Chablis and I were out in the garage working on some signs for the kitchen and as I was digging around in a can and looking for some old screws, I pulled out a dock cleat.  "Hey, this would be a great hook to hang a hat on," I said.  And so Chablis whipped up this cute little number....

Now when Louie walks in the door he happily hangs his sunglasses and hat on the hook.

Chablis has been making and selling signs, as well as repurposing furniture.  Most of the things she makes are one-of-a-kind and unique.  Check out her FB page and LIKE it.

Handmade Hiking Sticks

A couple of weeks ago we were hiking and geocaching at Kentucky Lake and we all picked up different sticks along the trail that we were using as hiking poles.  Go check out the story here.

We liked the cool shapes and colors of the sticks we had picked up, so we decided to keep them.  They were all very strong and sturdy, yet lightweight.  The bark had naturally peeled off of all of them and the wood was worn smooth.  We wiped them down and then simply applied a couple of layers of polyurethane to each one.  Now they are sitting at the lake house, just waiting for our next hiking adventure.

I like the way they look, sitting there in the old minnow bucket.

Norman Rockwell Prints

I'm a big fan of Norman Rockwell.  He was a famous 20th century painter and illustrator whose works graced the covers of The Saturday Evening Post Magazine, Look Magazine and the Boy Scouts of America.  I liked the simplicity of his work, and how he depicted the American culture at that time.

Last year I found a book at the library book sale about Norman Rockwell and it has dozens of prints of his illustrations.  It cost me a quarter!  That was a quarter well spent.  I've since carefully removed many of my favorite paintings and framed them to hang at the lake house.  Most of my favorites have something to do with water or the scouts.

"The Stay at Homes" is my absolute favorite print and I could never find a copy of it anyplace.  Imagine how thrilled I was to see this on the last page of that library book I bought.

This "No Swimming" print is a cute one and I especially like it because Norman revisited the idea many years later and did another illustration of the same boys, all grown up.  How cute is that?

I have these prints hanging in the lake house bathroom....

And here's the print of the boy scout that I liked so much....

These are just a few of my favorites that I have hanging around the house.  Are you familiar with Norman Rockwell?  Which ones do you remember and like?