The Long Journey to Counter Tops

Counter tops.  What to I have to say about counter tops?  You don't usually think too much about them. Well Kitchens need them. Ours NEEDED replacing. I think there are LOTS of ugly options. Pretty options are mucho mooolah. ($$$$$$)  

That's the short version. 

[If you don't like reading, scroll to the bottom to see the final picture]

(I made these large so you can see better.  The lighting is not good, sorry)

Please excuse the mess, it's a construction site after all. :)

The deal is: Our house is 50 years old.  The kitchen is 50 years old.  The original oven and range were barely working. They were that awesome (ly-hideous) extra special shade of burnt orange/brown. Oh yay.  So obviously, those had to go.  I wanted to keep them and paint them for nostalgia. Daniel wanted to use them as planters.  So we tried to sell them on Craigslist.   No takers. None. Zip. Nota. A whole lot of Nothing. So.....we "sold" them to a recycling place for about $20.  Ok, well now they are out of our carport. Hip, hip, HOOORAY.  The hubs is much less annoyed now. I feel like I have betrayed them, but it wasn't working out. You have to know when the relationship is over. Ya know?  

Yeah, so back to counter tops. Ours were a lovely beige laminate, not the cool kind with metal trim. Just plain pinky-beige.  They had to go. Oh, I said that already? Sorry. 

So we did "research."  I used pinterest.  I found this stuff. 

It had some pretty terrible reviews. I believe bad reviews are a direct consequence of people using the product incorrectly (usually) but I wasn't going to do a bunch of irreversible stuff to our counter tops to have it not work. NO, not going to happen. The hubs is NOT on board. He hated the idea. 

So, I got another idea (from pinterest, of course) 

I said to my self, "Self, this is a great idea! It will look so industrial cool and vintage-y at the same time."  This was my plan. Now to convince the hubby.  Well I did, kind of, but everyone else we mentioned it to said "poo poo."   I read lots of reviews on this too. Some said it worked amazingly.  Some said it cracked after a little while.  I finally found a lady (the Pioneer Woman, I believe) who put several different counter tops in her home.  Concrete being one of them. She said that it was nice, but that she couldn't cook easily on it. Now, I am no Pioneer Woman, but I did want a low maintenance counter top I  could easily cook on and it was clearly not going to be concrete. :-( 

So the hunt continues. 

Copper? 

Looks nice. Really expensive and stains easily.  (The hubby hates stains)

Stainless Steel would also have shown lots of scratches and fingerprints etc. I did not want to have to buff my counter tops every day. No.

I loved the look of the recycled glass (but, $$$$) Not for us. 

So we turned to the ever popular granite (after quickly ruling out marble $$$$)

We looked online,  at Home Depot, at a place near in Kennesaw, at a place way up in Alpharetta:

Expensive, and not exaclty what we wanted. (sorry for the horrible pic! eek!) 

There is purple in this one. A no-go with the Hubs.

This one was nice, but  I wasn't sold.  (Confession: I dislike decorating with black.)

This one had a lot of olive green tones. As I was looking to paint the walls baby blue, this was not going to work. 

There were a lot of ok options, but nothing I loved. Nothing I thought would fit in with the "image" I felt our kitchen would have. (Wow, how pretentious does that sound) I felt that the kitchen would not look "put-together" with these options.  Re-sale value is top in our minds (because even though at this point Daniel says we are never moving again, if we have three kids this house is going to get small fast, however, that time is still a ways off so no worries) so we wanted to pick something that looked nice and would keep looking nice for years to come. 

Ugh. Rock and a hard place.  Budget and Value. The great balancing act. 

So we went to Home Depot, (people there knew our names there for a while.) We were just looking at options when a very nice Orange Apron swept us off our feet.  He sat us down and sold us on (my favorite, but very expensive) Silestone. Woah. Bet you didn't see that coming. It was on sale. (my favorite word!) 15% plus if we opened a home depot credit card we could get it for an additional 10% off and have 24 months with no interest.  Usually I just say NO to all that credit card mumbo jumbo but when he worked out how much the monthly would be and the total.  I was drooling. We went home and thought about it. Asked for some wise counsel from parents and friends. 

Then we did it. We bought our counter tops. This was a big (huge!) purchase for us, but one we were excited and ready to make. 

 Here is my proud husband in our kitchen with our brand-new counters!! Yay! We chose Silestone in Merengo, it's a dark gray that I thought would look nice with the other colors I had in mind. The close up is not a super close up, but I'll post one of those when I post the "done" kitchen pictures.  

So that's it for now. 

Love,

Sarah

The Concrete Staining Saga: Part 2

Today I am going to share the actual staining process with you!  This was definitely the easier of the two steps.  So if you didn't catch the last post and want to catch up on the stain prep part check that out here.

*Before I start I want to say that we had some fabulous help on this project.  Joseph, Daniel's mom and Jeff were all a HUGE help on this.  Also, this is a wonderful marriage builder, especially if you are quite particular or hangry.  You know your Mother-in-love loves you when she can stand to hear you fighting with her son about the way stain is applied to the floor.  She is a wonderful woman.  You'll see more of her in my next post! While I'm at it, all of our friends and family were so supportive and helpful with all of our house projects! We owe them so much thanks!*

Alright, on to the concrete stain,

First, we prepped the walls by taping up some brown kraft paper on the lower part of the wall.  Sorry for the horrible picture below, but I think you can still see the paper taped to the wall!

Next, you mix up the acid stain. We just followed the instructions on the bottle.  With something so specific, I wouldn't play with the proportions.  Some might not even need water added, but ours did. We put it in this sprayer we bought.  This is almost exactly the one we have, might be a different brand.  It was really easy to use though.  The color we used is called coca-cola.  We got it at JR Industries in Woodstock, GA.  There is likely an equally wonderful place near you that sells concrete stain.    

As you can see, this was a two person gig for us.  I don't think you need two people, but it definitely made it easier.  Daniel pumped it and made sure the pressure was high enough that the sprayer worked properly.  I used the sprayer to get an even coat.  I was quite liberal with the application, I didn't want to miss any spots.  *Make sure you plan your starting spot with your exit!  Don't back yourself into a corner!  We choose to start near the far corner almost opposite the stairs, then worked our way along the back wall.  After finishing one "row" we went back and filled in some holes.  We were nervous that there were some oil spots that didn't come clean during the grinding process and they were kind of beading up instead of accepting the stain.  I just put more stain on those areas, but this probably wasn't necessary because the way the stain set in wasn't a solid color anyway so it was barely noticeable when completed.  I didn't fill in the holes everywhere because we were worried that we would run out of stain and we wanted to finish this project that night!

If you look closely, you can see that the stain almost looks green in one spot.  Well, that's because it is!  When it reacts to the (air, cement, water?) it bubbles and turns green then turns the red-ish orange that it's supposed to be.  Not sure why it does that [I wish I did, sounds like a cool science experiment] but it turns out looking quite lovely!  

This is what it looked like right after we finished.  You can see the thinner spots dried quickly and then other spots looked like little lakes.  

We left it for a couple of hours to dry.  And in fact, we left it 24 hrs, because we didn't do the final step until the next day.  

The final step Daniel did solo.  This reduced the amount of feet that could leave permanent marks in our new floor.  In the last step Daniel sealed the floor with a clear sealer we also got at JR Industries.  This was an easy roll-in-on process.  He did two coats.  The floor now has a nice matte shine to it.  It isn't glossy and slippery but it still has some sheen. :) 

^Daniel hard at work ^

A view of the matte finish. 

Waiting on the floor to dry.  The view of our "completed" basement. 

I use air quotes because everyone tells us (and I know this to be true) a house is never done. 

But for now, this is a great start! 

We are very happy with the results! What do you think? Would you try something like this? Do you think it would have looked better in a solid opaque paint? Should I have used glitter? ;) 

Tell me what YOU think! 

Thanks for reading!

Love,

Sarah

The Foster House--House Tour (before)

Ok guys, bear with me, this post has a LOT of pictures! 

The Foster house.  Our house.  <3

       

This "F" came from one of our dear friends, he said "Now
you have a big F in yard" :)

Our cute little front porch

Our ultra retro kitchen....yeehaw. 

The door from the kitchen to the carport.

Our bathroom.  The only room in the house to have prior renovations. 

We think that the shower area, which is HUGE, used to be a Cinderella tub. 

something like this was probably in that shower space.
 (picture from retrorenovations.com a great source for retro inspiration!)

Another angle of the shower

I was so stoked about the new house!!

Daniel's closet.  The Master has two closets this size. 

The closet I claimed had only shelves. yes, has is past tense. 

This is a wide angle of our room.  Two great big windows! 

This is the guest bath, dubbed the "blue bath", the original wood floors

blue blue blue!!!

view from the hallway

The guest room closet was painted green....

the "office"

the Hallway

The dining room after we removed the light fixture

The back deck that we have high hopes for....someday soon. :)

The living room, with it's big ole' window!
You can really see the smoke damage around the vent. YUCK!!!

SO,  I hope that gives you a good idea of what the house looked like before.   I am excited to share with you in the coming days and weeks what the house looks like now!!!

Love,

Sarah