The COVID-19 Diaries: The Living Room is PAINTED

The final room to be painted was the largest and most obnoxious to paint. BUT WE DID IT. I meant to take better before pictures but the kids were mid play so this what you get.

One thing I hadn't planned on was that I had been charting the kids's heights on this wall so Matt relocated it to their closet.

The other rooms in the house I did myself ('cause I like to paint, Matt was on kid duty) but this time I had to recruit Matt or else I would have been there forever. As it was we were up until about 2am one of the nights because we could only paint it at night since it's a common room the kids are in. It took us two nights to complete which was not too bad considering but we could have done it faster if we could have worked in the daytime.

This right here was the last sliver of that crappy paint of our whole house. Literally every room in our house had been painted this color that I have been painting over slowly over the past 7 years. BYE BYE CRAPPY PAINT COLOR. 

This was where how far we got the first night.

And then here it is done. Finally after all this time. Finally. Finally. Finally.

All of the pictures are still sitting in the office closet waiting to be put back which will have to wait since HOPEFULLY tomorrow we'll finish the outdoor patio cover project and we can spend the rest of the week restoring order and then next week planning Alice's birthday and then they will hopefully be going to their grandparents for the a few days so we can have some much needed alone time. We literally have left the house alone ONCE in four months to go to Lowe's. Not exactly a date night. Not that we are complaining, other people have it much much worse and we're blessed and grateful.

But also... it's a lot of time being with two kids people!

The COVID-19 Diaries: The Backyard Patio Cover Part 2-Painting the Structure and Sanding/Coating the Planks

So... we took a down day to figure out what I wanted to do with the structure before they put the ceiling on it. I went outside and took a few pictures of it empty and put it on my computer and started mocking up various versions of it to show Matt. 

Originally I was going to keep the joists the natural color and paint the planks white to look like a shiplap ceiling. BUT, I wasn't wild about the color of these joists and deciding to stain it a wood color would add an element of picking a wood color and I was terrified of that. 

Somewhere along the variations I talked out loud to Matt that the real star wood was the pine planks as they were and that maybe we should go for a scheme where the planks stay natural. 

I talked to Eric about it who in addition to being a genius is a director of photography by trade and knows about color and light so he said ok here, let's put the plank next to the fence that is the color you're thinking of painting the joists and see what it looks like. 

Beautiful combo right. So it was decided. I would spend the next day painting all of the structure that gray stain color and sand and seal the planks with a clear protectant stain.  

Matt watched the kids and I got to work taping the few things that had to be taped, sanding the posts and certain uneven joists and painting the structure. And yes, I know the wood looks nice here as it is but it wasn't that nice in person.

Around 4pm it was getting late and I felt like I would never be able to finish everything. I wasn't remotely close to finishing the structure and I still had about 15 planks to sand and seal. 

That's when I got some reinforcements! 

Alexa kept painting and Eric sanded while I sealed. We had quite a little machine shop.

The sealing is super simple, just needs an even coat on it. I put them on the trashcan makeshift work bench Matt made for me and just went to town.

The sun was setting but we were determined. We finished a majority in daylight and Eric brought out his set lighting and by 9:30pm we called it a night. Finally done.

It just looks so dang cool. Like something you'd find at some cool hipster coffee shop. It sort of made it look like metal which I like too. We are not cool enough for this cool structure.

And here's what the planks will look like with the structure. I know that whenever anyone comes over they will be like wow I love the ceiling. 

The next day the men worked on part of the ceiling and Matt and I tried to find the remaining pieces for the ceiling and were unsuccessful. I'll write more about that later! To be continued...

The COVID-19 Diaries: The Backyard Patio Cover Part 1-Inspiration and Building the Frame

Matt and I have plotted building a patio cover/shade over the backyard couch for a long time. The thing most lacking in the backyard when people come over is some substantial shade. We usually huddle around the dining table umbrella or the kids area umbrella but living in the valley means we need some serious shade if we intend to spend any amount of time out there. And being as we're in a pandemic and spending a lot of time at home, improvement projects are actually valuable. We thought about just sinking some simple posts and putting up a sail shade like the pic below but Matt said if we're gonna do it, let's do it with a more permanent solution. 

As I mentioned in this post the patio cover that was most inspiring to me was this one below. And I looked at a ton of iterations of patio covers on pinterest. I sent it to Matt's dad and our tenant Eric and both were excited to have a project and signed onboard to be genius and labor.

Over the course of the past few weeks Matt, his dad, and Eric have been planning it, talking about it, and starting it. Eric is nothing short of a genius and not only made a 3D model of the proposed plan but it had a sun path on it that showed what the sun would be under the cover during different times of the year. We all figure that it's not just the Fredrich backyard but all of ours, theirs too. On June 5, Matt and his dad dug holes for the posts and set them in concrete with brackets to hold the poles in place.

They had to go back to Lowe's to get more concrete bags when the 3 they had turned out to be not enough. Always estimate at least 3 trips to Lowe's more than you think!

In our discussions about the structure, Eric made some good points about my original idea. One of which was if we have a metal roof, it'll be hotter underneath than we want it to be and suggested having a layer of wood between us and the metal which we were down with. We were going to get some sort of either drywall or plywood and I had the idea when I saw this to do... shiplap.

Matt and Eric went to Lowe's and ordered the material and hand selected each piece and waited another week until June 15 for it to be delivered and then it turned out to be wrong since the ceiling material they had chosen and put on a cart, the pine planks, had been snatched from customers or someone and didn't make it to our house. Matt had to make another trip to Lowe's to talk to the manager about that and figure out a backup plan.

On June 16 Dan came over and the boys started building the main structure.

Since it's almost 19 feet wide we went with three poles and two posts in between them. 

They put up a large ledger board along the house that we'd be running the joists from (I learned a lot of construction terms in this journey). 

A few hours later while I toiled away on a different project, that of painting the play pen fence while Matt's mom watched the kids, the men had completed the first part of the project.

By the time the sun set we had one ledger board, two fascia boards, three posts, and 10 joists equaled the main structure.

The following day Matt's dad was going to come over to start the ceiling and roof and I had a moment of panic. If I intended to paint that ceiling white, I had better do it as the planks were on the ground before the roofing because after that it would be darn near impossible to get it done easily or accurately. I'd be working with little gaps and it would take forever. 

We decided to postpone the roofing and take a day to figure out what the ceiling plan would be and do it right... to be continued... 

The COVID-19 Diaries: Painting the Play Pen Fence

One of the projects I meant to do that I thought might be a long shot to accomplish in this pandemic would be painting the play pen fence. BUT, since Matt's mom was watching the kids and the men were already outside,  I decided in a fit of outdoor solidarity to go ahead and paint it. This is it before I sanded the posts and tops....

And this is after!

I painted it the color that the original inspiration patio cover picture was that of Sherwin Williams Black Alder. I thought it would be more black but it turned out to be a green/gray that looks like metal in the shade and just super slick and cool and very us.

 

Almost too cool. It made everything around it stand out so much nicer. 

It was definitely a project that was a lot of work and tiring but sooooo worth it. Alexa helped me near the end for awhile and I was grateful. 

The next mini project will be to paint the trim on the shed. I tested the window as you can see above and once the rest of it is framed in white it'll look a little more like this. 

As luck would have it the default color the shed came in that off white beige kinda matches the current house color so until we paint the exterior of the house, the shed will stay that color. Once we go for whatever grey we go with, it'll change too. 

So checking that off the list was a big win and helped me make decisions for the patio cover.

The COVID-19 Diaries: The Master Bedroom is PAINTED

The first time we saw the house in 2012, the following sign was on the door to the master bedroom. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK DANGER.

To say that we saw potential even when this was staring us in the face says a lot about Matt and my mental state. Optimistic or fools, who knows!

But what more did we need to know? It was literally the only house we looked at in Burbank that had a master suite with a bathroom and big closet.

When they flipped it and we went back to look at it, there was no hole in the ceiling and they installed carpet instead. Which we were cool with. 

As I'm writing this little retrospective, it's crazy to see how slowly this room has taken shape which has sort of been the case with a lot of rooms in the house. We could only buy a few things at a time and neither of us wanted to settle for temporary things in our bedroom and I'm so glad we never did. I had a design board from the beginning and we didn't waiver from the plan. 

Seeing these boxes always reminds me that I NEVER WANT TO MOVE EVER AGAIN.

We thought two of these was going to be enough, we were wrong and had to get one more. And to us, they were so expensive back then, $449.10 each. Know how much they are now? $599!

One thing we had been meaning to do was to anchor them to the walls which we FINALLY got to do in a task that I found almost more annoying than painting and moving the 800 books off and then putting them back. Wall anchors and I have a contentious relationship.

So this was the state of the room in 2013.

By 2014, fully pregnant with Alice, we had FINALLY bought a new California King Mattress and the Hoffman bed from Room & Board. 

By January 2015 we finally upgraded the nightstands.

We had by then also bought two Malm dressers to put in the closet which let us get rid of an old dresser and then keep this one to just Matt's stuff.

2020. And unlike the other rooms I did take some before pictures right before I started painting.

Oh yeah, pretty early on we replaced the ceiling light with a fan. A good good move.

2020 and finally finally finally the room has been painted.

Whenever we would talk about painting this room Matt and I would look at the bookshelves and shudder because we knew that would be a bitch. And know what, it was. I mean technically taking them all down and moving them to the other side of the room only took an hour max, it still felt annoying.

The whole room was a disaster for a few hours. But so so very worth it. 

Once we got to this amount of sliver left, I had Matt document the moment. 

And then I had the kids come "help" me roll a little bit. Wally had to be pried away crying.

Alice said this was more fun than playing with an iPad. 

And if we go back to this original plan, you can see we stuck to it pretty well.

We spent a few hours returning the books to the shelf. We made a game plan on a notebook and shuffling them around was tricky. In the end, it went like this... 

The paint honestly makes the room feel bigger. 

Ah... it's so nice in here now. Our special retreat from the world. 

The last room left to paint is the living room which I'll be tackling in spurts wall by wall at night when the kids go to bed because it's such an open area, we can't keep them away from it. I'll prep during the day then paint at night and it'll probably take a week to be honest. Very slow. But it'll be worth it!