Mark and Kimmi

Thursday, July 2, 2015

From backyard "eye sore" to "eye candy"

To say that it's been a little while since I last blogged would be an understatement. In fact I spent the past 5 minutes trying to figure out how to even write a new post! It's been over two years and I had completely forgot how to do it.

So what has prompted me to brush off the cobwebs from this blog? Well it would have to be the fact that this blog has been getting some increased traffic as of late. A few years ago I built a table for our kitchen, I posted a blog post about it (Best table ever) and that post has made it onto Pinterest and has been viewed lots and lots of times. (1,245 times to be exact). I'm glad that people are finding inspiration from my project because that's what Pinterest has done for me for many a projects as well. So I want to continue to pay it forward by posting about what I've been up to around the house. I think I will try to make this more of a project blog now but I'm not making any promises because let's face it, I'm really busy with work, projects, life, and soon to be school. To top it all off I'm lazy, so sitting down to write tends to seam like a daunting task. regardless.... here we go.

The "Murder shed"

Probably the number one draw to us buying our house was the yard. It's not huge by some standards but for Utah it's quite large. (0.6 acres) sadly It is in need of a great deal of work which I will get to as the years progress but like the house as a whole it has great bones and even better potential. Same goes for the shed. It's like most any shed. it's about 12 feet wide by 10 feet deep, I use it for storing my lawnmower, fertilizer, wood chipper. shovels, rakes, ext. But let's face it. it's hideous. A friend of mine actually commented when seeing it "wow, that looks like the kind of place you go to get murdered." He has a point. Also, there is no hiding from it. The murder shed is in a very prominent place in our yard, and it's painted red! it is highly visible. I knew that I had to start here.

First I ripped off the old roof and the trim:

We had a very wet spring this year so I had to use tarps until I could get the tar paper down and the new roof installed. Next, I really wanted to add double doors. One day I would really like to own a riding lawnmower so I knew a single door would not cut it when that day finally comes. Thankfully I found a cheap $50 double door off KSL classifieds. I had great fun cutting out the old door and window and adding the new doors. these double doors are technically "interior" doors but I didn't really care since it's just for my shed.

I painted the doors a fun color (Thanks wife for picking it) and I got kind of crazy with the roofing paper by just covering the whole exterior with it. When I ran out of the black tar paper I found the deal of a lifetime at Lowes for the white plastic stuff you see covering the rest of the shed. normally the roll is $95 but I got it for $4!!! It was such a good deal I bought two rolls..... I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it all but I couldn't pass it up. Then started the most time consuming part of the whole process. Trim. Lots and lots of painting, cutting, nailing. filling in nail holes. painting some more. The trim pieces are 1"x 6" common board from lowes. I painted all the trim front and back before I installed it onto the shed.

Since I removed the window from the front of the shed I knew I would like some natural light (to tide me over until I ran electricity to the shed.) once again I found some cheep windows of KSL and installed them both on the back.

Next came the metal siding and the concrete pad. If you can see in the first picture the old shed had a lot of discoloration and hard water stains from the sprinklers. I decided that adding the same corrugated metal to the bottom 3 feet would avoid this in the future. Corrugated metal isn't as hard to cut as I was first worried about. I just took my standard circular saw, turned the blade around and it cut really well. I also didn't like dirt and grass leading up to my shed doors so I tried my hand at pouring a small concrete pad. I dug the hole, built the forms and got some left over gravel from a new home construction down the road.

I made the concrete pad slightly sloped to accommodate wheeling in and out my lawnmower. lastly came the Ceder siding. I found a company in Kaysville that sold eight food beveled siding. It wasn't overly expensive either. Even though I had to make a few trips due to insufficient stock, and a high number of split boards I liked them a lot. they were nice to work with and replaced all the boards that had larger then expected splits. The hardest part of the ceder siding was the triangle section above the door. I swear no mater how much I measured and played with my angle finder I ended up having to climb up and down my latter 7 times to get the cut to fit correctly. It's definitely not perfect. but I kept telling myself when I got frustrated "it's just a shed, it's just a shed, it's just a shed."

Lastly came the ceder sealant. I used just a clear sealant from Lowes. I think it was by Thomasville and a gallon cost $14. Kimmi Helped a great deal with this part. She nearly painted the whole thing. I was very grateful for her help. So here you go. the final product from 3 months of working on it on Saturdays and a few hours here and there during the week.

I love the final result. I added a little pergola to protect the doors from adverse weather. I think it's my favorite part and what I'm most proud of. So now it no longer looks like a "murder shed" I'm very pleased with how it now looks. If others are wondering where I got my inspiration. I will link my wife's pinterest board appropriately called "for husband" Pinterest idea page

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Garage that Mark Built

Posted by Mark:

As we've been remodeling our house I have relied heavily on the vision and design provided by my wonderfully talented wife. Kimmi does a great job choosing paint colors and tile, light fixtures and door hardware. There was however, one project she was almost entirely hands off and let me do whatever I wanted. The Garage! I've been looking forward to the garage remodel for years. I am a firm believer that garages should be used as God intended..... for cars and tools. I cringe a little when I drive past a home with cars parked in the driveway and a garage stacked to the rafters with boxes and and junk. I've of course used mine for storage too but it's always been temporary. I've even blogged previously about when I got all of our junk out of the way and was able to once again park in the garage.(Past post about garage) As you'll see in the before pictures below, the garage was dark, dirty, and entirely un-user friendly. It was my quest to change that, many months have passed and I have finally gotten to a point where I feel I have accomplished my vision. Will there be additional changes and additions? Yes, but for now I feel I'm as close to perfection as I need. My deepest thanks to Kimmi for letting me invest so much of my time into making my garage one of my most favorite rooms in the house. I look forward to many hours of fun spent here.

Here is a few before pictures. sadly I didn't officially document the before aesthetic. I instead had to rely on a few photos I had taken for other reasons. The first was a picture of when we were once again able to park in the garage due to months of using the garage as a staging area for items in our kitchen we were remodeling. the other two pictures is showing the large mountain of old cabinets and carpet we ripped out when we first moved into the house.

The first order of business was to epoxy the floor. This was also the most time consuming project. It wasn't painting the floor that was bad, it was the preparation. I washed, rewashed, grinded out rough patches, swept, and swept some more, then washed, and washed some more. it was vitally important the concrete was clean so we could get the correct bond between the epoxy and concrete. thankfully the epoxy is doing well thus far. However If I were to do this part again I would rent an industrial size, walk behind, grinder because my little harbor freight grinder took a beating and it took me an entire Saturday to grind out all the stains and chipping cement. I would also have bought the larger pack of epoxy. I bought the amount specified for a 2 car garage, I should have bought the 3 car garage pack so I had lots of extra and I could have made it extra thick. oh well. I had the help of my dad and my little brother for this part. My brother was nice enough to snap a photo of me smoothing out any air bubbles.

Next I needed to paint the walls. I wanted to get rid of the dreary cinder block look and so I painted the walls I bright white. Cinder block is not the funnest thing to paint. It just SOAKS in paint so it took almost 8.5 gallons to get the room properly covered. The result was worth the effort though. I also bought myself a utility trailer so I'm able to pick up large loads of lumber and such without need of a pickup truck. Not wanting to take up valuable wall space with this trailer that folds in half and can be stored vertically on casters I built a system using a hoist, steel cable, and pulleys to store it in the rafters. It works awesomely, if you're bored and want to see it in action you can go to this You tube video I made of the process. Video of trailer in action

Here is the hoist that lifts the trailer, I built a box to house the unit in the rafters

Here is the hoist mounted.

Running the steel cables to the trailer.

Trailer lifted to its highest point and a good view of the newly painted walls

Any good garage needs some good workbenches. I bought a bunch of lumber and built these great workbenches that are quite solid. I also put them all on casters so I can easily roll them into the driveway when the garage needs a good cleaning.

Below you will see the finished product.

One main problem with my garage was its lack of electricity The entire garage only had ONE outlet. Who only has one outlet in their garage??!! This was unacceptable so I installed 9 more outlets as well as installed a few florescent lights above my workbench. Let there be light!...and power.

I've always wanted a bank of lockers, So when the Bountiful Temple was remodeling their locker rooms I bought a bank of eight.... not exactly sure what I'm going to store in them but they look cool anyway.

The only problem with epoxied floors is that you get sad when the cars bring in snow, salt, and grime from the wet winter roads. I can't wait for spring when I can bring in a hose and mop to make them nice and shiny again.

I built some more shelves above the workbench and installed a few peg boards for all my stuff. I have collected a bunch of licence plates from both Australia and the USA so I thought it was about time to display them. the wood dresser on the right is a project I've been working on. lots of sanding and paint stripping yet to be done on it. Until then it will continue to be stored in the garage. I'm glad I left at least one empty space on my wall so I can still store random objects. I also had such a good time hanging my trailer in the rafters I decided to hang my bike up there too.

This propane space heater is a must for winter garage projects. Got it at the DI for only $10. great find.

Proudly displaying flags to two of my favorite things.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Hallway Cabinets

Posted by Mark:

Summer is coming to a close and I realized that I have a few mini projects I need to get done before it gets too cold outside.

One of these projects was to refinish the hallway cabinets and drawers. Personally I'd prefer not to sand and paint when its too cold/wet/windy outside.

I'd say that one of the many positive features of our home is the exuberant amount of storage we have.
In our main floor hallway we have a bank of cabinets/drawers. mostly they are filled with odds and ends but if also serves as the main storage for our linens and household cleaning products. We were not the biggest fan of the door color nor the door hardware so we decided to change this fact. The sheer number of doors (8) and drawer fronts (12) have kept me from tackling this task sooner but finally I buckled down and started. Firstly, here is a picture of the before:

First order of business is of course sanding. And what a better place to sand down for hours on end than Midway, Utah. My family has a place up in Midway and I enjoy going up there immensely. I'd probably go up there more often, but while I am relaxing up in the Heber Valley, I have the festering knowledge that there are projects that aren't being completed back home. I had the realization that I could combine the best of two worlds and bring the project with me! It was genius in my opinion. One weekend we packed as many doors and drawers that our car could handle and headed up to Midway. While Spencer napped, Kimmi and I busted out our sanders and got cracking. I was grateful to have Kimmi's help because it made things go by really fast. Here are some pictures of our progress:

It was then time for primer and paint. As a man, I have long since relinquished all input on paint color to Kimmi. I have learned time and time again that Kimmi is the designer and always chooses the best color for the job. She chose a bright orange leaf color and it turned out quite nicely. We also picked up our new handles from the cheapest and best place we've found for hardware, Ikea. We both like the end result very much.

One more project down, 400 more to go.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Ahhh things to do in North Carolina. Part Two

One day we decided to make a trip down the island. We all jumped in the cars and headed to the Bodie Island Lighthouse.

Let me tell you, we were so disappointed once we got to the lighthouse! We had no idea it was being restored! Here's what we expected to see courtesy of the internet:

But here's what we found! Scaffolding! Oh well... its was still fun and nice to get out.

We continued on with Marks brother Alan and his family to the Roanoke Island Aquarium. It was a small aquarium, but fun, and the kiddos got to run around!

We also spent a lot of time in our house pool:

Part Three coming soon!