#145 Part 2- Gettin' Trim

If you were excited to come back and check out my finished wardrobe doors today, this is not going to be your favorite post.  Looks like I’m going to need just a little more time this weekend to finish up a few last things and get the photos taken.  In the mean time- let’s make our way back to the Workout Room, shall we?

Many of you saw back on this post that I won the Paint the Wood Door battle.  What I haven’t shown you yet is that the rest of the trim is back in and looking great.

Before

After one coat of primer and two coats of a semi-gloss Decorator White Door & Trim paint, we brought everything back into the house to install.  Luckily we have a nailer (best tool ever), so it was just a matter of putting these guys back in place and shooting in a few brad nails.

Get in line ladies.

  Afterward we went back over the nail holes with a tiny bit of wood putty to completely hide them.  After a day to dry, I rubbed the putty lightly with 220 grit sand paper and put a dab of white paint on it.  Flawless.

 

Don’t these doors look so much better crisp and white?

The “Muscle Factory and Center for Super Human Research” (as the Hubs calls it), is coming along nicely.  I’ll show you some more of our progress in this room, as well as the wardrobe doors (I promise!) next week.  In the meantime, have a great weekend!

#146- Pump up the Jam

Quick reminder- one of the key selling points for us on this house was the ability to turn the lower level bedroom into a Workout Room.  While it sat as an embarassing storage dump for our first 6 months, we recently cleared the room, painted the walls, and removed all the trim and carpeting.  

So it was on to #146 on The List- Replacing the Flooring.  The carpet had to go because it had an unbeatable animal urine smell, but instead of putting new carpet back in, we decided to use something that would fit more with the room's use.

We found this foam flooring at wesellmats.com*, and even though it might not be the best choice for future home buyers, it's perfect for how we want to use this room right now.  We figured that in the future if we ever go to sell (Lord help us...) that we could just replace this one room with carpeting and stage it as a bedroom. 

The one thing that was important to us is that this flooring fit the room perfectly, to make it look like it fit the space.  We started by laying a pattern the length and width of the room so that we could figure out the best plan to arrange the tiles and not leave any too skinny scraps on one side or another. 

Unlike actual tiles though, this flooring was super easy just to snap in.  After a bunch of research, we found you can lay them directly on top of your concrete subfloor.

The tiles came with 2 straight edges per tile to cover up the zipper grooves on any straight edge sides.  The only tricky part was cutting around the groves for the corners, door jams and floor vents.  Hubs declared that this part was my job, while he plopped in the full tiles.  Why do I always draw the short straw?

 Here I am showing off my ingenious method (ifIdosaysomyself...) of first cutting a piece of paper to fit the corner exactly, and then tracing the paper onto the tile.  This works when laying real tile as well, and can save dozens of frustrating wet saw cuts.

Like a glove...

And here she blows once we had all the tiles in.  Although it was the end of the night, and I didn't even bother to pick up the scraps and cardboard for you all.  Sorry about that.

And yes, I do realize that the Hubs painted the trim white, but not the actual door.  His point was that this was a really nice, solid wood door, and someday we would regret it, as we could always replace the trim, but not the door.  I would argue that by the time we ever want this trim to be wood again, this 30 year old door will be even older and less energy efficient than it is now, and we'll want to replace it anyway.  Anyone care to take a side?  You all have been fantastic at moderating our DIY disputes.  If this wood door is bugging you as much as it is me (I'm getting a nervous tick), please weigh in to help my cause.  Or if you side with the Hubs, I guess you can feel free to say that too. 

P.S.- *Wesellmats.com in no way asked us to post about them, in fact they probably don't know we exist.  I just wanted to share that they are a good, cheap resource for this type of flooring. 

#145- Let's Get Physical...

We're really kicking it on the Exercise Room now, here's where you last saw it, with a new coat of gray paint.

 But we still had this gross carpet.  There's nothing that can keep you off the floor and away from sit ups like carpet that smells like cat piss.

And while the Hubs can sometimes take ridiculously long home improvement breaks, once he gets something in his head, there's no stopping him.  So like the time that I came home from work and found him tearing out the carpet in the Living Room....

This time I came home from work and found the carpet completely removed from the Exercise Room. 

Efficient isn't he?  He also removed all the baseboards, and got started painting all the trim white.

For a moment, he thought maybe we should just paint the trim, and not the doors.  Bad idea Hubs.  Bad Idea.

I mean, I love you, but seriously. 

So we made quick work of that and slapped up the first coat of primer.

Now we've just to scrape all the glue off the floors and get started with the new flooring option.  Let's hope Jay stays motivated.

#144- Gym, Tan, Blog Post.

By Jason.  (The Hubs)

Erin is taking a break from posting today, so you'll have to sip your morning coffee while reading about my soon-to-be gigantic muscles.

There's a room in our house that neither of us were too proud of. In fact, I'm surprised a TV crew from A&E's hoarders didn't show up with their cameras and staff psychologists. Remember this?

I've had a grand vision of turning this room into a home gym before we even purchased the house.

So, the other day I decided to get started. I began by clearing the place out. And yes, I realize the photo below still has two bar stools, a box of mystery items and several picture frames sitting on the floor. It will take some time to completely clear it out. Hoarding is a disease people!

Check out these walls. They look like someone wiped year's worth of boogers on them.

And don't get me started on the gold outlet covers.

Or the ghetto fabulous vertical blinds.

I know what you're thinking. "How is a guy supposed to get seven minute abs in a room with vertical blinds and booger covered walls?" No worries.

Blinds; gone.

Walls; covered in fresh swagger-colored paint.

Up next; tearing out the carpeting for some new foam gym flooring, which I've already ordered from wesellmats.com. I ended up going with 1/2" thick EVA interlocking puzzle mats. They're not quite as nice a commercial rubber flooring, but I think they will be a great alternative based on reviews I've read. More to come on that.

We don't yet know exactly what equipment will go in our new home gym/fitness center/muscle factory. Maybe our treadmill and a power rack with a nice weight set. Or maybe just a life-sized cardboard cutout of Chuck Norris. Either way, we'll be cut like diamonds. Come at us, bro. 

As long as I'm being honest...

Last week I shared with you the disaster that was my garage.  Usually I'd be ashamed to out myself and my hoarder tendencies to a large group, but it was surprisingly liberating.  Yeah, someone could have hid a dead body in my garage and it would have taken us months to notice, but you all still love me.  That or reading about our disaster makes you feel a little bit better about your own life.  If that's the case, then you are going to love this.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the workout room.

 Yikes.  Maybe this is more embarrassing than I thought.  Here's the deal, this room started when we moved in as the place we threw our boxes once they got unpacked.  Then as the boxes hit the dumpster, it became the place where decor that hadn't found a home yet lived.  And a little storage... And then the worse it got, the less we cared.  Until it became this.

It wasn't really a problem though, really.  It was hot outside, so I spent most of my work out time running outside, and the Hubs would lift weights at the gym so Ry could spend a little time with the daycare friends he loves there.  But now that the weather is turning, and it gets dark outside by 5PM, I've really been missing the treadmill in our home.

First things first, we had to give this room light.  Part of the problem was that this room came to us with this strange light fixture.  Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the ugly boob glass dome that went over it, but here's a shot of the light sockets.  Try as we might, we couldn't find any light bulbs that would fit this fixture.  Not at any big box store, not at the small ones either. 

So we did a little zero dollar DIY, and switched it out with this fixture that we removed from the eat in kitchen.

It was a quick switch, just shut off the power, unhooked the old one, reattached the new one the same way and fliped the power back on.  Luckily I had to clean a little path in order to get the light up.

And now that we can see what we're doing, we're going to make some big progress on this room.  Hopefully we'll have a lot to share with you after the weekend, and I can loose a little of the shame of this room.

How about you guys?  Any big plans this weekend?  Any DIY?  Seriously, I love hearing about your projects, it makes me feel like I'm amongst my people.  So lay it on me- let's chat projects.