The Finished Coop

 

We finally finished up the coop this weekend. Well, enough so that the chicks can move in. We still need to build the shelving for the other side of the shed and build the outdoor space. But my patience had run out on having indoor chickens.

The finished interior coop takes up half of the shed. Nugget and Gladys love it! They love being able to run back and forth and fly up (they actually fly up to the top of the wall and sit up there and we have to rescue them..). Their new space is more than 4 times as wide as the playpen. Plus they get to play in the hay, which they love!

Hand Prints and Lemonade

Today was the first nice day in about 2 weeks. It has been raining and cloudy every.single.day. Which has been good and bad. Good because I sit down at my laptop and work all day. Bad because I haven't been able to get any painting in.

I decided to paint the Twilight Room closet because it is a huge closet where I could be storing all of my excess office supplies, which are still in boxes. It took me almost all morning to clear out the boxes from the area, and then clean the closet (vacuuming and Clorox wiping). 

I then put two coats of Kilz 2 Primer on the walls, door, shelf and ceiling. I used two coats because the dark colors of the hand prints showed through very clearly through only one coat. And there were hand prints everywhere! The Kilz also took care of the weird smell that the closet had (I'm assuming it's from being shut for so long).

Once that dried, I painted the shelves, trim and ceiling with my favorite white paint. For the walls I used Benjamin Moore Lemonade, which we had leftover from our apartment painting days (same as the other rooms... paint calculator told us to get 2 cans, we didn't even use half of one can). I normally would have painted closet walls white, but I had more yellow paint than white, so I figured I might as well use it. It means that if we ever change the wall color I'll have to paint the closet as well, but hey, it's yellow. It'll cover easily. It wasn't easy painting a 7' tall, 23" deep closet, with a 14" shelf and a lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling. My neck and arms were killing me by the end of the day and I was covered in paint.

I was very happy with how it came out. The yellow looks much better here than it did in the apartment. Less neon-y. And it definitely looks a lot better than the hand prints!

Mirror Refurbished

The previous owner left the mirror in the upstairs bathroom. It was old and ugly.. stained brown, with the wood chipping and peeling from being in the bathroom for so long. And the back was covered in paper, which was disintegrating. But, we needed a mirror in there.

I found one at Ikea that I liked and that matched the glass shelf and candle holders in the bathroom (the picture is the shelf, not the mirror... apparently they discontinued the mirror. It was only $20 though). However, when we were actually in the store, R hated it. Not sure why. He just did. So I didn't buy it. That was months ago. The mirror had been taken off the wall when I was painting and rather than hang it back up (and resign to the fact that it was staying), we had it propped up on the counter.

Back in December I tried painting it white, just to see what it would look like. With a coat of primer and a coat of paint, the stain still bled through. And you could see the cracking. It looked horrible. So now rather than just an ugly mirror, we have an ugly mirror that is half painted white.

Finally I had had enough of it. The rest of the bathroom is done except for the stupid mirror. I took it outside, put newspaper and painters tape over the glass and spray painted it black. And I have to say, I love how it came out! It looks almost identical to the Hemnes mirror from Ikea, which I liked, but was $50.

Laundry Room Before and After

Finished Laundry Room

I think this will be my cheapest room makeover in the entire house. And that's mainly thanks to the major discount I got on the wall paint. Originally $35, on sale for $5. As long as you're willing to be flexible, there are amazing paint discounts you can get!

Washer - $0 (given to me by a former client)
Dryer - $0 (given to me by a former client)
Wall Paint - $2.50 (the other half of the paint will be used in the upstairs Hall)  

White Paint - $0 (I had some leftover from other rooms)
Cabinet Knobs - $3

Rug - $0 (was in our Master Bathroom in our apartment, but didn't fit in this bathroom) 

Iron/Ironing Board Holder - $0 (I bought this about 3 years ago and we never got around to hanging it up in our apartment. I love having somewhere to put the ironing board and iron now.. they always seemed to get in the way!)

Yup. A $5.50 complete room transformation. The new cabinet knobs match the ones in the bathroom (because the cabinets also match). The washer and dryer were very generously given to us by clients of mine. We were remodeling their house and part of the remodel involved relocating their washer/dryer to the finished basement (as opposed to in the middle of the Kitchen where they had been). But to conserve space, we decided to go with a stack-able unit. Which meant that they had no use for their old washer and dryer. When they heard that we finally closed on the house, they asked if we needed a washer and dryer. At the time, we were just going to use my parent's or the ones in the basement. But who could pass up free appliances! And ones that were only a couple years old? The only catch was that we had to pick them up that weekend because demolition was starting Monday. More good luck... we already had the UHaul reserved to move out of our apartment. So all we had to do was make a quick trip down to Deep River to get them!

The wall cabinet is a huge help. It has three shelves, so I'm able to store household essentials and additional cleaning supplies in there. There's room for all of our backup laundry detergent and fabric softener, dusting supplies, Febreze, lightbulbs, laundry supplies, etc. If you know me, you know I have a lot of cleaning supplies... And they all fit in here!

Our $250 Total Room Remodel

That almost sounds impossible. Especially when you remember what we were dealing with. But we made it happen. 


Toilet - $179
Faucets - $20/ea ($40 total)
Countertop - $2
Floor - $25 (vinyl tiles and luan)
Wall Paint - $0
Primer/White Paint - $5
Cabinet Knobs - $10