2014: A YEAR IN REVIEW

Wow, how did it get to be December 31 already? It seems like the year just flew by. Come to think if it, since I was 25, they all seem to have flown by.

It was a good year on the blog. I've been doing this since April 2009 and I wrote (a few) more posts this year than any other. I hope to keep that up in 2015, but I never like to set a schedule because I don't want to start writing stuff that you don't want to read.

Anyway, let's take a look at the highlights of 2014 on The Impatient Gardener.

JANUARY

To keep myself busy during the cold winter months before I allow myself to really start dreaming of gardening, I made this really simple little magnetic chalkboard for the inside of the pantry.

FEBRUARY

I wrapped up what was probably the biggest indoor project of the year when I put the finishing touches on the small hallway outside the kitchen. For such a small space it sure was a pain to fix up. In the end it got smooth walls, a fresh coat of paint all over, a fun blue planked ceiling, a new light and a new thermostat. It wasn't pretty, but in the end it was so worth it, even though I still find drywall dust in odd places.

MARCH

The ugly vanity in the ugly bathroom got (another) coat of paint. I still hate it but it's much better navy than it was pickled pink. I'll be happy the day that the vanity, and the rest of the bathroom, are tossed out.

APRIL

Finally, after what seemed like the crappiest winter in history, it was time to garden. Indoors, anyway. For the first time, I started a lot of things from seed last year. Overall, I really enjoyed it because it helped the gardening bug a little and I had a lot of success with some of the things I grew from seed (and not so much from others).

MAY

The garden finally came to life (albeit slowly) in May. I was rejoicing in every swelling leaf bud and bit of green I could find.

JUNE

I showed off the wood planter we built. It ended up being heavier than heck and way more expensive than we planned, but it was still a fraction of the price we would have paid for something similar. It was a really satisfying project.

JULY

In July I finally finished up the back yard garden renovation I'd been working on. By creating a little more form in the shape of ovals, I defined the space much better and finally made the edge of the property much nicer to look at.

AUGUST

It was a pretty good year for containers and I shared some of the progress in August.

SEPTEMBER

I grew a perfect tomato. I grew very few tomatoes last summer, but this one was damn near perfect.

OCTOBER

Thanks to growing parsley from seed, I had a welcome abundance of it. I saved the harvest in a variety of ways and we're still enjoying it.

NOVEMBER

I experimented with a new way to ward off deer this winter. So far it's been successful, but since we've had no snow, the deer have plenty of other food to eat. We'll see what happens the rest of the winter.

DECEMBER

I added a little color to the drab landscape by decorating the outside containers. I'll enjoy them until March.

Not bad for a year. How was your 2014?

Smooth operator

I am basking in the glow of a finished hallway, folks. After a weekend of painting and a few finishing touches, the hallway is looking so much better.

It was a weekend of many projects (I hope to show you the others soon), but I felt like I was running from one thing to the next. At one point I had four paintbrushes drying in the sink. The priority, though, was the hallway. Sometimes you just need to finish something up to cross it off the list, you know?

You would think a 6-foot hallway wouldn't take long to spruce up, wouldn't you? But with five doors and six doorways there was so much trim to be painted. And trim takes a long time to paint.

But let's get to the fun part. Here's what it looked like when all this started.

And here's what it looks like now.

Here's what went into it, in the (somewhat nonsensical) order we did it in:

1. Sanded and painted the wood plant ceiling.
2. Replaced the light.
3. Sanded the texture off the walls.
4. Sanded all the trim.
5. Removed the closet doors to paint them in the basement.
6. Did a final scraping on the walls to get the areas the sander missed.
7. Primed the trim and wainscotting.
8. Painted the wainscotting (Benjamin Moore Gray Husky).
9. Moved and replaced the thermostat.
10. Skim coated the walls.
11. Primed and painted the walls (BM Mascarpone in matte finish).
12. Painted the trim (BM Mascarpone in satin finish).
13. Hung up a piece of art, sat back and gave myself a big high five.

I wouldn't mind installing some beefier crown molding like we have in the kitchen, but I'm still smarting from our epic crown molding failure and I'm not ready to go down that road again. Replacing the doorknobs is also on the agenda, but all in due time. I have the glass doorknobs from my grandmother's house but retrofitting pre-drilled doors with antique door hardware is remarkably difficult, not to mention expensive. We did replace the kitchen doorknob with one of the antique knobs. When we redid the upstairs we put in reproductions and I'd love all the doorknobs in the house to match someday. 

Antique glass knob on the kitchen door. (Can you see me taking the picture?)

But those are minor details. For now I'm just enjoying the "new" hallway. In fact, I'm finding excuses to linger there a little bit. Perhaps the biggest compliment came from Mr. Much More Patient who, when he came home to find the hallway finished, said, "I should never doubt you." Aw, thanks honey. Wait, what?

How to skim coat a lumpy wall

If you've been following the progress of removing the wall texture in our small hallway, you've probably figure out by now that the remaining texture in the house (in the downstairs bathroom and the den) will be professionally removed. This was a messy and time-intensive project. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that texture is not in my face every time I walk out of the kitchen, but we'll be saving our pennies to hire a pro to remove and replace the drywall for the other rooms.

Here's the semi-before picture that shows the evil texture.

This was my first attempt at skim coating, so I started where all good DIY projects start: Google. I watched a bunch of Youtube videos that were at least somewhat helpful and then I went for it. Rather than rehash everything that people who know more about it than I do have said about it, here are some of the tutorials I referenced. And below I'll tell you how I didn't do what they told me to do.

Sawdust Girl's tutorial
Ugly Duckling House tutorial
SF Gate tutorial

We started with a relatively flat wall, but it was far from perfect. Between various sanders and the paint scraper (by the way, the scraper worked much better and was far less messy than the sander so if I were doing this again—and I'm not— I'd have started with the scraper), we were able to remove most of the texture. Unfortunately I sanded a bit too much in some spots, sanding off the paper layer of the drywall underneath. That was a bit messy.

Anyway, that was all cleaned off and vacuumed (get yourself a drywall bag for your shop vac). Some of the tutorials I read said to prime the wall with a sealing primer before I did anything else. I couldn't find any real reason for this but I did it anyway. I figured it would help seal up some of those frayed bits of drywall I had pulled up with aggressive sanding and possibly protect the wall board from moisture since I planned on using a pretty wet mix. Later I realized this might have only applied to people who had removed wallpaper  and had to seal in any remaining wallpaper paste. Basically, I'm not sure if you need to take this step, but I was in the better-safe-than-sorry camp.

I used just less than a quart of Zinsser's Cover Stain primer. It is oil-based (so a pain to clean up your brushes) but it dries in 30 minutes, which is nice because you can get going on the next step right away.

I used lightweight joint compound for my skim coating. I can't tell you why. Some tutorials suggested it, others didn't, but it sounded good to me.

For the first coat (I ended up doing four), I mixed it up to be very thin, which seemed to be a running theme among the tutorials I watched or read. Then I applied it with a paint roller and smoothed it with this magical tool called a Magic Trowel from Sherwin-Williams. It cost $25 but I think it was key to this turning out OK and I highly recommend seeking one out if you're going to be doing any skim coating.

That first coat didn't do much. Frankly, my walls just weren't very smooth and needed a bit more filling than such thing layers would provide. If I kept applying such thin layers I would have had to do about 10 layers. That wasn't going to happen.

The next layer was much thicker. I still watered down the joint compound, mixing it with a drill mixer attachment, but this was significantly pastier than the first coat. I could scoop some on a trowel and it wouldn't fall off immediately. I scraped that on the walls, attempting to fill in some of the low areas. This is where I noticed an immediate improvement in the wall.

I did the first two coats on one day, putting a big fan on them to dry them completely. The next day I came back and did two more coats: another thicker one followed by a very thin one. By this point I was really sick of messing up more stuff (because you can't rinse out your stuff down the sink so I was spending a lot of time in a snowbank trying to clean my bucket, etc.), so I skipped the paint roller application process. And that was really messy. Let's just say it was a good thing that I  thoroughly covered the floor and all the molding. That stuff was everywhere. The good news about joint compound is that it wipes off easily if it's still wet and sands off without much work if it's dry.

When all four coats were dry, I sanded everything just to make it as smooth as possible, vacuumed off all the dust, and primed again, this time with Benjamin Moore's latex Fresh Start (which is my favorite primer for typical applications). Then I followed it all up with the same paint that's on our living room walls: BM's Mascarpone in a matte finish.

So how did it turn out? Well, see for yourself.

See how it's a bit bumpy on the bottom?

If you need a little view of how far we've come, check out the ceiling (the CEILING, for crying out loud) in the den in the background of the picture.

I think we can agree it's not perfect. I think I'd also say it's one million times better than it was before.

It's smooth but not flat if that makes sense. There are definitely some lumps and bumps. Until I hang up a bit piece of art to cover them I'm calling it "character." I've inhaled a lot of drywall dust lately folks, just go with it.

You'll note that the new thermostat, which is like crack for my gadget-loving soul (I have checked the temperature in my house from my phone approximately 15 times today in case you were wondering), has been mounted and it's not in the middle of the wall. Hooray!

So that's where the big hallway project is for now. I have to finish painting the trim (there is so much trim in this stupid little hallway!) and then it's onto the next project.

Oops, I broke that? Aw, shucks. :)

First off, thanks for all the thoughtful comments on the ugly bathroom post. You guys all had great ideas for further improvements in there on the cheap and I'll definitely be putting some of them to good use.

OK, time to fess up. Who has ever "fixed" something with the secret hope that you actually make it worse and you have to fix it for real?

I have never done this consciously, but I will admit that there have been times when I've not been too upset that my DIY fail ended up being what I really wanted in the first place.

Remember the wall sanding operation that I took on in the hallway to get rid of the hideous texture a few weeks ago? Well, that's still going on (the last phase of chipping and smoothing before skim coating can begin) but one small improvement has taken place that I am very excited about.

The thermostat was, for some reason, put smack dab in the middle of the one large wall in that hallway. It has irritated me to no end because I always thought that would be the perfect place to hang a nice-sized piece of art.

So I asked Mr. Much More Patient, who handles all DIY projects related to electricity in our house, if he could please move over a bit. I'd love to offer you a tutorial on how he did that but here's how it would read:

1. Go to Home Depot and buy a big spool of some plastic-coated wire. The brown one. 
2. Drill a small hole above the light switch (with the knowledge that the switch must be attached to a stud so therefore there's a stud there). 
3. Remove the vent cover and peer up into the wall with a flashlight, noting that previous owners used 2-inch long nails to fasten the wainscotting to the wall and rarely hit a stud.
4. Try to feed wire down the hole you just drilled and get frustrated when it gets caught on the electrical line until clever wife (that's me) suggests using a wire hanger to reach in there and grab it.
5. Feed wire down the side of the vent to the basement.
6. Then do something in the basement for awhile that I presume involves hooking up wires to the furnace but I don't really know.

Anyway, in the process of moving the location of the thermostat he opened up the old one and about 14 pounds of drywall dust poured out. As it turns out, drywall dust is not good for devices with wires. Cleaning that thing out ended up killing it.

Because like much of the rest of the country it's freezing here, having a non-functioning thermostat is not an option, Mr. MMP had to run to the hardware store for the cheapest thermostat he could find and I had to get on the computer and order up something we've been wanting for awhile: a Nest thermostat.

Poor little Nest thermostat having to live in it's box for another week or so.

The Nest appeals to the gadget geek in me but it's also supposed to help you save quite a bit on your heating and cooling bills. The reviewer on Engadget tracked his bill over a year with the Nest and said he saved $70 even though he had already been using a programmable thermostat.

The Nest arrived the other day but Mr. MMP said we're not allowed to put it up until we're done skim coating the wall. So for the time being the cheapie is up in the old place but the wires are all run for the new location.

Speaking of the wall, here's a peek at what it is looking like now. I actually took this picture (complete with hideous sconce) for the bathroom post the other day, but it's a good look at the hallway on the right, juxtaposed with the wall texture in the bathroom, which is what we removed in the hallway. The new location of the thermostat is over that light switch.

You'll notice that I've painted the wainscotting, and we've finished scraping and sanding down the walls, so this weekend I'll start the skim-coating. 

One more thing: I'm sure a bunch of you are bound to point out that it is not a good idea to have the thermostat directly over a vent. I agree. Since that vent is quite large (those old-fashioned vents are actually one of the more charming features in our house), it's actually under the original thermostat location too, and there's really no where else to put it. Also, we keep that vent closed most of the time anyway (we don't really need to heat our hallway). It's not perfect, but it'll work.

So yeah, I may have accidentally broken the old thermostat by not protecting it when I was sanding, but in the end I'm going to have the thermostat I wanted in the place I wanted. Tell me that's not a win.

Questions I'd like to ask the previous owners of my house

I wanted to lay around and do pretty much nothing this weekend. The gravitational pull of the couch was particularly strong, so it's a good thing I published that to-do list last week. There's nothing like having to have something to write about on a blog to keep you honest.

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I tackled the ugliest item on that list: those damn hallway walls.

I knew sanding the texture—created with massive amounts of joint compound—off the walls in the hallway was going to be an ugly job. But some jobs just stink so much you can't properly prepare yourself for them.

I taped off all entryways (amazingly there are four in that hallway), put a drywall bag in the shopvac, donned the respirator (and looked really, really hard for work goggles to no avail), tied a scarf around my head and went at that wall with the belt sander. And 80 tons of superfine drywall dust was released into the air.

This is the view looking down from up on the stepladder. That's how dusty it was in that little hallway. 

There were a few areas where I had to use the smaller sander, which was far less efficient and there are two skinnier areas where no power sander will fit, so I have to figure out how to deal with that.

Unfortunately, it's not like I got the wall perfectly flat and smooth, so I'll have to skim coat the walls, which is a bit nerve-wracking because I get the impression that drywall texture is one of those things that requires a fair bit of skill.

Of course all of that sealing of doorways still didn't keep that damn dust from getting everywhere, so I'll be cleaning that up for weeks to come. Even the bedrooms upstairs have a fine layer of dust on them.

And this is how I looked:

But the whole time I was doing this heinous task I kept wondering what possessed the previous owners to do this to a wall?

I'd love to sit down with all the previous owners of this house and hear what went into all the decisions that make me shake my head. This is a hypothetical conversation, of course, because several previous owners are long since dead, including the cobbler who somebody once told me haunts the basement. I can only assume that he moved out when he saw all our stuff all over the place down there because I've never run into him.

At the top of my list to ask about would be the textured walls. I suspect that the renovation that put drywall on the walls (replacing the original plaster) was at least partly DIY and they discovered that applying drywall texture was hard to put on unless you just slathered it on  with a trowel and called it stylish. And I can only assume they were so sick of the project by the end of it that they didn't think anything of never priming or painting the walls.

I'd also love to hear the thinking behind painting out all the original paneling and the stairs without doing any prep at all, including sanding or priming.

And I'd love to hear about the idea that led to drywalling over the cedar lining in the closets (that we discovered when we demo'd during our renovation).

Of course I don't think I'm immune to the same kind of questioning. I can envision a future owner of this house (way in the future since I pretty much plan to die here and join the cobbler ghost dude) having a few questions for me, too.

Questions such as:

• What is with you and white and gray? You do know there are other colors you can paint walls, right?
• Why did you turn the entire yard into a giant garden with a little grass in between?
• Why is there still dog hair in crevices in this house even though you haven't lived here for 50 years? (Answer: That's the power of Newfoundland fur, people: It has staying power.)
• You know I'm STILL cleaning your crap out of the basement, right?

So, what would you ask the previous owners of your home if you could? And what do you think will befuddle future owners of your home?

Let there be (a not ugly) light

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you had a nice New Year's Eve and a great first day 2014. I was happy to get the house completely de-Christmassed. As much as I like the decorations (and I really just got them up about a week and a half ago), it's still nice to reclaim the house.

Last weekend, when I was supposed to be taking down the Christmas decorations, I got involved in a few other projects that seemed like way more fun. It was nice to check a few things off the to-do list that have been lingering there for quite some time. 

We have a very small hallway downstairs that is a total nothing space. It's not really offensive, but it's completely blah, and it's been on the list to get a little love for quite some time. 

Here's what it has looked like since we bought the house (other than the blue stripe on the ceiling, which was a color test and the yellow tape on the trim in preparation for painting).

Nothing to get excited about right? The kitchen is the doorway to the right, the bathroom is to the left, the two doors on the left that you see are closets and straight ahead is the sunroom/den/back room (I really have to decide what I'm going to call that room so I can quit with all the slashes). This is taken from the living room.

The ceiling was the same pickled knotty pine that was in the kitchen before I painted it (the first time and the second time when I realized it really needed to be semi-gloss). The wainscotting is a continuation from the living room and you notice that the walls have the hideous plaster texture on them. Oh, and let's not forget the light. It was a cheap plastic light fixture that had one big thing going for it: it wasn't a boob light.

About seven hours later, here's what it looked like. I love that this was one of those projects that didn't take too much time and made such a big change.

I painted the ceiling with the same method I used in the kitchen. First I sanded the whole thing. It's a pain, but it's key. Then I primed with BIN shellac primer. When I did the kitchen I just spot primed the knots with BIN, which seals the knots from "leaking" through the paint and then primed the entire ceiling with a standard primer, but the hallway was so small I just did the entire thing in BIN, which has the advantage of drying in 45 minutes. 

Then I followed up with two coats of semi-gloss paint. The first coat was Benjamin Moore Bird's Egg, but it turned out a bit too intense for me. So for the second coat I made a custom blend (this is not something I like to do because it's impossible to replicate the color in the future, but I really wanted to finish up this project that day) that was a mix of the Bird's Egg, Wythe Blue and Mascarpone, all of which I had on hand. That lightened up the Bird's Egg just a touch and the Wythe Blue added a bit of greeny gray that I liked as well. 

When the paint was (more or less) dry, we installed the new light, that I had purchased way back in spring. It's a capiz shell globe that I picked up on a great sale from Pottery Barn Teen. I was rather surprised when it showed up and found out it was only the shade, without a light kit, and I had a hard time finding a light kit that would work with it. I ended up finding one for a pretty good price from World Market, but it was irritating to me that it didn't come with one.

This is just stage one of what I'd like to do in the hallway. I want to paint the wainscotting the same Gray Huskie that is in the living room. Then I want to get rid of the icky wall texture. While just replacing the drywall is the easiest way to do that (and what we did in the living room), this is a small enough space that I'm going to try just sanding it all. It's going to create a hideous mess, but I don't think it will take that long. Once that's done the walls, all the trim and the doors will all get a coat of Mascarpone like the rest of the trim in the house (except the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom). And I'd really like to move the thermostat over a touch so I could fit some art on that wall. 

There's more work to do but I'm happy it's on the road to looking like more of a space and less of an afterthought.