Girl Scout Mural

Lexi's Girl Scout troop has been working on their painting badge. This meant, I was involved. One of the options for the culminating project was to paint a mural.

So.. why not?

Here is what they did.  Isn't it so cute :)

 Really, it wasn't hard to do this. But is seems daunting to a lot of people, so here is a tutorial.

1. Take a picture of the group.

2. Using photoshop or another photo-editing software take out the background, and compress the photo into one layer.Then add the layers that you want to include. Notice that I have a number of typos in it.. I did fix the file prior to using it, but I guess I didn't save the corrected one.

3. Make a transparency. This might have been the hardest step as NOBODY makes transparencies anymore and I don't have the right kind of printer to do it at home.

4. Now, find one of those old fashioned overhead projectors and get a large piece of paper. I used a special heavy duty art paper called RendR from Crescent. It's a no show heavy paper on a roll. It's expensive, but worth it for a long-term project.

5. Trace the image.  Have your child proof your work. Thankfully Lexi noticed that the I had the troop number wrong! (That's why you use pencil!!)

6. Take it to the kids and have them paint themselves. Use solid colors. Can you imagine how chaotic the mural would be if I had let them try to give themselves faces and details. I had the girls use a special solid poster paint that doesn't make a mess!! It's called Playcolor. It's paint that dries in about 10 seconds... unless you use it really, really heavy.. then it takes 30 seconds.  I love how each girl is represented in a different color and that the colors blended when overlapped. We talked about how this was like making new friends :) !

I was sorry that two of the girls weren't there for the painting portion, but that's the way it works when you are dealing with kids. I decided that it was better to just get the mural finished without them.

After the meeting, I finished up the mural by adding a layer of black paint to the green text and outlining the girls and the logo.

Now all I have to do is go hang it in the hut!!

The REVEAL!! A Refinished Bathroom makes all the difference.

I'm thinking that I just did a $10k upgrade on our house this weekend.

Really.

It made THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE!!

I was planning on getting a new shower curtain and a rug, but we had a request to have the house
shown this morning and there was NO WAY I was going to say no to that!

So here it is!!

Yes, this is the same bathroom!!

Let's revisit.

A side by side comparison.

It's incredible! You don't even see it as the same bathroom!!

Now I just PRAY that the people who look at the house today appreciate my hard work and can look past the stink of the epoxy! But to make me feel good... let's take one more look at the finished bathroom!

Whatever it takes to give an old bathroom a new life.

Whatever it takes to give an old, outdated bathroom new life... or it could be called...

 

Whatever it takes (okay within reason..) to get this dadgum house to sell!!

 

This week, our realtor suggested that we really consider painting the bathroom.

 

I've thought about it at least a jillion times over the last 8 years. But, to do it, you have to have a couple of days for the labor and then the smell is sooooo soooo bad, you have to be out of the house for I would guess a week!! And you have to be able to let the stuff cure.

 

So, since we no longer live in the house...today was d-day.

 

Consider this to be tutorial should you ever want to take on a project like this.

 

1. clean. This isn't a quick clean, this is a full out, scrubbing every inch clean.  Get your comet and a scouring pad and scrub every surface that you are planning to paint. Rinse. Clean with lime-a-way. Rinse. Dry.

 

2. Using 400 grit sandpaper, go over every surface.

 

3. Wipe everything off.

 

4. Get a tack cloth and wipe down all of the surfaces. This gets rid of all of the last of the residue. It also leaves your hand nice and sticky. great.

 

5. This brings you to this step... see the pictures below. a completely clean ugly bathroom.

 



This took an hour.

At this point, I highly suggest deciding that your bathroom doesn't really look that bad and that if you only got new bath towels, everything would be much better.

If that doesn't work. Prepare the epoxy.

Note... once you have activated your base you have a six hour window in which to use the quart. It's just a quart, but my is it an expensive quart, so you don't want to waste it!!

 

6. Using your brand new 1 1/2 or 2 inch tapered paint brush (don't buy the cheapest one, but don't spend much either!) start painting the grout lines. Don't forget to "feather" your lines a couple of seconds after you paint them.. you don't want heavy paint edges that you have to try to cover later!

 

7. Take a break. Actually it's gonna stink so bad that you will know when 5 minutes are up because you will be light headed or dizzy or something... the instructions say paint for 5 minutes and then go outside for fresh air for 5 minutes. THEY ARE NOT KIDDING!! I actually used my timer on my phone and set it for 5 minutes. Painting this way takes FOREVER. But better to be safe than woozy!

 

8. After a couple of hours of painting the grout lines, go back and using either a little foam roller or your brush, fill in the tiles. I liked the foam roller, but the paint is thin... so it drips. bummer. However, in the end, I used the brush more, because I liked painting a little heavier with the brush.

 

9. Paint the tub.

 

10. Paint the sink.

 

11. Close your can of paint. Put your paint brush in a ziploc bag. zip it up and put it in the refrigerator. (okay, I don't know that I would do this if the fridge had food in it. Yeah, I would, but I'd double bag the ziploc..) Now, go away from the house. Like at least a block away.  Sidenote: When I pulled up into the driveway I could smell the epoxy!!

 

12. After at least an hour, come back and start everything again.

 

After more than 6 hours of painting, I used every drop of the quart of paint. I have 2 coats on a lot of the tile, and 1 coat on some. Tomorrow morning, I'll start again. ugh.

 

But for now, I'll leave you with the in progress pictures!!

 

Yeah. It's worth it. Dadgum. I sure wish I could have done this 8 years ago!

(oh.. and on the off chance you were not feeling sorry or at least a little sympathetic towards me for having to spend a GORGEOUS Saturday locked in the bathroom smelling epoxy fumes... I did this after getting up at 4:30am and running 15 miles.) 

I'd like a rockstar sticker now.

Thanks.

The Table Project.. Part 1

A family member is getting ready to move into a new apartment. She needs a new table. We found this one for a great price, but the finish was an uninspiring putty color. So.... yep, I said I would paint it. And that began THE TABLE PROJECT. Cause you just can't paint the sucker. It had to be sanded.

I was really hoping that all it would take would be a light sand to knock the finish off. But alas, NO!  The putty color immediately started pulling away from the blue if you picked at it.  I'm guessing the putty color was latex, the blue was enamel. Cause they sure didn't bond well! Of course, they bonded well enough for me to have to work hard to get the paint off though :)!

A couple of hours and lots of hand sanding later, I was covered in green/blue/putty colored dust particles.  But the table looked great.  I really wish I could just poly it and go from there.  It looks really, really cool in person. But that's not the desired finish, and since it isn't my table (it just feels like it now!) I'll finish it the way the family member wants.

And that's leads us to part 2. The paint job. coming soon.