A Peek at Life as a Natic

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of Preston’s Nursery here

Preston's Nursery

Tonight we I applied Preston’s monogram to the wall above the crib.  It looks so good!  Check out all the pictures here!

We custom made his monogram from Uppercase Living and were excited to get it and get it on the wall.  We really wanted to have it here before the family shower but unfortunately it did not come to us in time   Alisha also had me take pictures of a few street signs that had his name in them.  We then converted them to Black and White and then just allowed the color of the street sign alone to come through.  They came out really good.  We then framed them and picked up a few shelves to hang on the wall. 

Watcha think?

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures Preston’s Nursery Painted at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

So this nursery has turned out to be a TON harder than I ever imagined… no … not the wood work – the paint!  Really?!?  Is painting really that hard?  Apparently so

So after the lines were all taped off I went ahead and through the high gloss paint on there to get the different sheens which will create the appearance of 2 different colors.  In reality they are the exact same color with two sheens.  Most people use a flat for the entire wall, tape off the stripes, and then paint the semi gloss paint in the taped of stripes.  Well, since it will be in a nursery, we decided to go with a satin paint and then use a high gloss to create the sheen contrast.  – yeah- terrible idea.  So after spending HOURS taping off the high gloss stripes and then painting them, we pulled some of the tape down only to find out that we could not see the difference in the sheens very well at all.  We then tried to put a high gloss polyurethane over the high gloss stripes to add additional sheen – no go!

Flash makes it look better... look at right wall

After debating on whether to give up on this project or move the tape over to the satin stripes (which is another 3 hours of work alone) I decided to do it right.  I took all of the tape down, moved it all over to the satin and bought another gallon of the paint – this time in flat like it should have been the whole time.  I painted the stripes as well as the rest of the walls (other than the high gloss stripes) so that it would all match.  I was through the roof livid to find out that we still could not see the stripes.  Talk about mad -  I was piiiiiissed!  I was so frustrated.  I wasted so many hours in this nursery and still dont have the look that we want and it is the paint that is giving us such a hard time!  Really?!?!

So after much debate I decided to bring the flat paint back up to Lowes and have them add an additional 25% of the color back into the paint.  Came back home and painted just the stripes in this new very slightly darker color.  Removed the tape and ….. PRESTO!  it worked!!!

Stripes Painted

I have no clue why the normal method for this type of look was such a failure for us… I just dont get it, but I do know that this worked for us:  Flat paint with +25% color next to a high gloss of the same exact color (other than the +25%).

It looks great and we are so excited about having this done.  I just need to retape a bunch of the stripes and fix where the paint decided to pull the paint off of the wall.  Unfortunately, this whole process took too long and the tape really started to adhere to the walls too much.

Check out the gallery for pics of the nursery in its current state!

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures Preston’s Nursery Progress and Lin’s Birthday Party at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

Nursery all taped off

Saturday morning my dad came over to give me a hand again on the nursery and the playroom.  We are getting close to finishing the nursery and making progress on the playroom.  Since Alisha is having people over for the family shower on October 10th, we are trying to have this all done so that everyone can see it.  Unfortunately that is not very possible and it became more evident today.

So we started out in the play room where Bobby and I gave up on the crown molding.  We spent some time looking at it and trying to get a few of the angles correct (they were not 90’s in a few areas) and started hanging the pieces.  It came out great and we moved on.  We were going to try to tackle the bead board but we ran into a few issues.  They come in 8×4 sheets which i had cut in half to make 4×4 sheets.  When this was placed on top of the base molding in the playroom, it came up too high on the wall   damn!

So we need to get those cut down some more before we can really continue.  In addition we found out that the chair rail I bought to go above the bead board is not thick enough.  In other words the bead board is thicker than the chair rail is so we will need to exchange that out for a thicker one.  Because of the issues with the playroom, we decided to finish off the nursery - or at least try to.  We headed upstairs to try to tape off the vertical stripes that we will be painting.  In short, we will tape of 8″ stripes below the chair rail and simply using the same color but a different sheen, paint vertical lines.  This creates a very cool and elegant effect.  It took about 2 – 3 hours to tape off all of the vertical lines.  What a chore.  We taped off half of the room  and made the marks to do the remainder of the room as we ran out of painters tape.  Figures right?!  Unfortunately it was getting a little late and we had to call it a day.  We got a lot done but you know me – i wanted it done done.  While we did that, Alisha spent some time redoing the guest bathroom decorations for those staying with us over the next few weeks.

Kara and Lin

Saturday night we had plans to head to a sports bar in Marietta called Mazzy’sto celebrate Kara’s boyfriend Lin’s birthday.  They had gone all out on this party and invited about 40 people or so, rented out the party room, had the Auburn and UGA game on the two big screens, and had food brought in.  It was a great time – other than the stress of watching the UGA game and the Auburn game for those that care for Auburn.  They both played  terribly but somehow managed to pull of wins.  A win is a win but damn… how stressful!!

We got the opportunity to meet Lin’s mom and some of his friends and had a great time.  The food was excellent, the beer was good, football is always great, and being around good people!  Thanks for the invite.  We had a great time.

With so much frustration trying to get this crown molding done, I asked Bobby to come over to give me a hand.  I had done a crap ton of research on making the cuts for crown molding and let me be the first to tell you that without finding the sites that I did, I NEVER would have completed this! 

Bobby and I spent about an hour and a half figuring out the cuts and cutting template pieces for the inside corners that we had to do and then got to work.  Before too long (okay it did take a while – as in about 5 hours) we had it figured out.  We got the nursery done and it started looking great!  With the chair rail up and now the crown molding this room was starting to come together!  The only thing left was to complete the vertical stripes underneath the chair rail using different sheens of paint and the nursery will be finished… yeah too bad it is not that easy – at all!

In the middle of our work we took a break and headed to Taco Mac with a 2 beer limit.  We didnt even make it to the second beer LOL.  We sat down, ate lunch, had a beer, watched some football and headed back to the house to continue working again.  We began working in the play room but our exhaustion brought us to a brick wall.  We got one piece up in the playroom and as we went to hang the second, we found that the cuts did not line up in the least.  We had no clue why.  It made no sense!  We pulled the first piece down thinking that we hung it wrong, nailed up the 2nd piece and realized that was not the issue at all – ugh… this led us to quitting for the night. 

We were tired beyond belief andhad gained some serious ground.  I was going to take the week to paint and caulk all of the molding so that I was ready to work again on Saturday with whoever would give me some of their time.  I hate being so dependant, but I am dying to get this all done.

Websites:  This crown molding would never have been done if it had not been for these two sites.  If you are concidering it, do not even bother trying to figure out the cuts without these:

1.  http://www.allwoodwork.com/article/woodwork/crown_molding_made_easy.htm

2.  http://www.extremehowto.com/xh/article.asp?article_id=60354

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures Preston’s Nursery at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

Preston's room painted - visit the gallery for chair rail pics!

Saturday was the day!  Earlier in the week I had gone to pick up the wood that we will need to complete the nursery as well as the playroom downstairs.  Our plan is to put chair rail in the nursery, paint sheen stripes below the chair rail, add crown molding in the nursery and the play room, as well as bead board with chair rail in the play room.  Yeah – lots of work!!

In the morning my dad came over to get a start on this whole project.  We are trying to get it done before Alisha’s family shower, but we dont know how possible that really is.  Either way we are going to give it a serious shot.  The worst part about these projects is that none of them can really be done on my own.  I always need an additional hand measuring, or cutting, or nailing… it kinda is frustrating.  I know that other people have lives of their own and I feel like I am always bothering them when I ask for help.

Well throughout the day we did pretty well.  We got the chair rail up in nursery and it looks great.  Now I need to caulk it and paint it.  We really tried to get the crown molding up in the nursery as well but we were confused as hell.  Seriously, we wasted about 16′ of crown molding before giving up for the day.  We were told it was a chore, but I had no clue.  The cuts just didnt make sense at all. 

Time flew by and we grew more and more tired and to top it off the damn mitre saw kept tripping my breaker so we had to call it a day.  I was not too happy about the ending and it just put a damper on a rather successful day.  I just get frustrated when things should be easy and end up being so darn hard -ugh!

btw, dont mind the wall color in the pictures.  The lighting is very poor in there and the color just comes out very off at times. 

Kevin and Mike's steak trumping Alisha's and mine lol

So after working all day we headed over to Mike and Aubree’s house to watch the UGA game, cook some steaks, have a few beers, and just relax.  The game was painful to watch and was a nail biter for sure, but it was still great to watch it with our friends.  Kevin and Mike had steaks to throw on the grill as well, but both of them were like 4 times the size of mine LOL.  They were massive!!!  It was a great night – Sunday was set to be another busy day!

Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of our new sink at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

So I have been wanting to replace our kitchen sink for quite some time now and this past Saturday was the day to get it done!

Trying to get this thing in!

We had a regular stainless steel double basin sink in the kitchen and I could not stand it.  I hated the double basin because I could not wash anything that was large as it didnt really fit in either basin.  Some sinks have a seperator that is only about half the height of the sink but ours was the full height making washing pots and pans more of a chore that it needed to be.  We have decided to go with a single basin, granite composite, black sink

Well, let me start by saying it may have been much easier to deal with the crappy sink than to replace it!  What a pain in the BUTT!!  It took us over 6 HOURS to replace that sink!  UGH – makes me sick just thinking back on it.  It was the biggest pain ever!  Dropping the original sink was not too too bad but it was no fun either.  It took us about an hour an a half to get it down (yes down – it is an under mount sink).  After doing so, putting the new sink in was 30 times harder and more challenging.  To start out, we could not even get the new sink under the cabinet.  It was larger than the original sink was and took some puzzle solving to get it in there.  After that, we determined that the holes to mount the sink were too narrow to mount the new sink.  DAMN!  We needed to drill holes into the new sink in 6 places.  It took about 4 times of trying to mount it to figure that all out.  They we found that the faucet hole in the granite was not in the right place on the sink – yep… had to pull it down again and get that drilled out too.

After all of that, we got the sink up.  Sunday morning I had to go to Home Depot to grab some more piping to close off the other drain piping permenantly - but we have two slight issues.  The faucet hole in the sink is not large enough so we need to pull the faucet down and drill out more of the sink to line up better with the hole in the granite.  The other issue is that we have a slight leak in the piping underneath the sink.  I cannot even watch  it leak – that is how slow it is.

My new office!!

The office is very close to being done now.  The desk has been moved in along with the lamp that we purchased.  Alisha went out today and picked up the little tree for the corner which we will put on a plant stand when we have a chance to run out and grab on.

All in all, I love it.  I love the color of the wood, the color of the walls, and the whole room in general.  The only issue that I have is that the panels in the middle took stain oddly in places but I have  a plan (which unfortunately will require several hours of work) to fix that.  I just don’t have the desire to do all of that right now.  Ill give it a bit before I do. 

The only other thing left to do is put the wall plates back on but we need to get extensions for the boxes as the outlets need to be flush with the wood and not the wall behind it all.  I purchased stainable wall plates, but just need to play with the boxes to make sure what I purchased is going to work on the outlets as well as the light switch. 

Soooo, what do you think?!?  Do you like it?

So Friday evening I took some more time to work on this future office of mine.  I pretty much lost my mind, patience, and time.  All in all, it looks okay.  I am not happy with the middle of the panels (the squares that are trimmed out) as the stain is just so streaked and looks terrible.  Because of the shower that Alisha is hosting for Aubree at our house on Sunday, I had to rush to get it complete so that we could get the house back together. 

With the walls not where I wanted them, I decided to say screw it and move my desk and stuff into the new office.  It looks great!  I will get some pictures up of the whole thing so you can all check it out.  We also moved the couch that was in the old formal living room into the old office as well as the table so temporarily set that room up so it didn’t look empty.  I am just in need of one more piece of hardware so that I can get network access in the new office.  I need a device that will wirelessly connect to my wireless network and provide me with network ports.  This is called an wireless ethernet bridge.  I can buy one easily but I can also use an old router and flash it with a 3rd party firmware and do it that way for free or cheaper and plus it will be fun

This project has been dragged out far too long, but it is finally coming together.  To fix what I am unhappy with, I am going to have to remove the molding from the squares, cut a new piece of red oak paneling, stain it, nail it on top of the existing one, and then put the molding back on.  Unfortunately there are three power outlets that I will need to cut out again, but whatever… Ill make it happen.  I’m just glad we got the rooms setup the way they will be for good.

A lot of people have been asking me recently what is going on with the office project that we had started quite some time ago.  Unfortunately – not as much as I would have liked 

I had the hardest time picking  a stain which I am sure you have seen or heard about and that really held everything up.  We tried 6 different colors from 3 different brands on scrap wood and none gave the color that I was really looking for.  I finally decided on using a Behr Cherry stain as it was as dark as I was looking to go but had a little more red than I was really looking for.  All in all is still is a great color.

I threw 3 coats of the cherry on the walls and it looked great.  The only issue that I was having was that the squares of paneling in the middle (surrounded by the molding) are showing wipe marks from when I wipe the stain away (which is required.. you cant just let it dry or it will be sticky).  I had Spencer over last night to give his thoughts and after giving those ideas a shot I called Bobby for his thoughts.  He decided to swing by last night and we tried another way of doing it.  I won’t know what the outcome of Bobby’s ideas were until later today but I am really hoping for the best. 

I am really tired of working on this project and it was not even that bad.  As a matter of fact I really enjoyed the woodworking part of it.  Who the hell knew that staining would be such a pain in the ass.  It is just painting… why is this so damn hard!?! 

Alisha is hosting a shower this weekend and we would really like to have the room completed.  I still need to do one more coat of stain on the panels and then polyurethane the woodwork ( this is currently up for debate – but requires a full day of the stain drying before applying), then the poly takes a day to dry, another coat of poly, paint the walls, and finally move the furniture in.  I have to say that I am not sure that all of that will be able to be done before the weekend but we I am sure going to try.  I guess I could save the poly for after the shower, but it is just so much easier when there is no furniture in the room.

So, the woodwork is complete for the office and now I am stuck on picking a color for the stain.  I would hate to have done all of this work only to realize that I picked the wrong color for the stain and now it looks terrible.

I picked up a Mahogany stain today and will be doing some test stains on some scrap wood to see what we come out with.  I hope this goes well.  I am so nervous.

Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of our office in progress at pictures.neilnatic.com  or here.

This weekend we put a pretty significant amount of work into converting our formal living room into an office for me.  This will allow us to turn the existing office into a play room when Alisha finally gets pregnant.  The formal living room was basically unused and we had a tough time spending money on decorating it and at the same time were really kinda bummed that we didn’t have a place for our future child to play while we are downstairs.  For obvious reasons, keeping the playroom upstairs simply will not work. 

Our plan is to build wainscotting to the future office using red oak and then stain it.  We will also need to replace the crown molding and window and door molding as well so that it all matches properly.  We will then paint the remainder of the wall space using the same color that we have in the formal dining room.

All of these pictures and plenty more are in the album (link is above) and are visible much larger.  Take a moment to flip through there after you read the post to get a much better idea of the room.

This is what the room started out looking like (or course with the base molding on the walls :)

After we removed the base molding we began cutting the 1/4″ red oak ply sheets to nail them to the wall to act as the first layer of wood

After cutting and nailing these sheets to the wall we began the task of prepping the red oak boards I bought.  The boards were over $2 per board foot cheaper than Home Depot or Lowes (or any other lumber yard for that matter) but lumber yards do not cut red oak down to 1×4 or 1×6 sizes so we had to take these random sized boards and cut them down to the proper width of 1×6.  Since they are all 1″ thick we just had to worry about the width.  The first board we got creative on and tried to just rip it down the table saw in which we failed miserably ha ha.  After much thought we found that we could get a guide for the circular saw and just run that down the board and get the sizes that we needed.  Since our night was coming to an end we just cut the boards and headed out for dinner on Friday night.

On Saturday we took those boards, cut them to the proper size and placed one 1×6 at the top of the ply sheets and another at the bottom of the ply sheets.  We then spaced out how we wanted the squares to be and placed another board vertically between the top and bottom boards to make squares.

Then on the inside of each square we are placing molding to add an additional level of character. 

The only thing that is left for the walls is to add a small lip to the top of the wainscoting which will be a 1×2 piece of wood that will stick out about 3/4″ from the wainscoting and then stain it.  Then we will have to decide on a crown molding style, window and door molding style, and possibly a base molding style although I think we will leave it as it is. 

A special thanks to Kevin Daly for spending so much time at my house this weekend to help me with this as well as letting me use his tools.  I cant thank you enough man.  It was the biggest help and there was no way I would have done this on my own. 

Another thanks to Bobby for stopping by to help when he did and Joe and Carol Solana for lending me the table saw and your truck.

For Christmas we got a set of gas logs for our fireplace and were eager to get them installed.  Alisha’s dad came over to give us a hand since he had just done his at his house.  In about an hour or so they were installed and running!  They look awesome!  It gives off a great amount of heat and can even be controlled via a remote control.  You can set temperatures for it to come on automatically or you can just manually turn it on or off.

We are excited to use our new toy often.  Now our heat wont just go straight up to the 2nd floor when we turn it on

On Wednesday Kevin took some time out to go with me to Home Depot and another better priced home improvement store to look at making some changes to the “formal living room”.

I was thinking about how much of a waste of money it is to furnish and decorate our formal living room being that no one will ever use this room.  It is just pointless.  In addition it would be nice to have an additional room when we do finally have a child (no news yet ) of our own so that we can allow them to have a playroom downstairs other than his / her bedroom.  With all of this, I am thinking that it will be nice to transform the formal living room into an office and then turn my office into the playroom.  The catch is that the office has to be done well in order for it to work.  Alisha and I were talking to Kevin and Ashley about it over some drinks and dinner about a month ago and they agreed and Kevin said that we should do paneling on the walls in there, stain it a dark color and make it a classy office.   

After our trip to some stores and looking through some magazines, we decided that we will do this by purchasing 4′x8′ oak sheets , 1×6 oak boards, 1×4, oak boards, and a fair amount of molding and stain it all to create a look similar to this… but with a dark stain and without the decorative molding under the chair rail. 

It is going to be a lot of work, but it is going to look excellent when we are done.  I would also love to do coffer ceilings in there to add an additional touch of class and luxury to this room like seen below but still a little different.  This will also be a fair amount of work as it is basically the same as the wainscotting but more molding and all done above your head   Andrea and Ryan have these in their new house and it adds such a great touch to the home.  I have always loved these ceilings!

Coffer Ceilings

I am really looking forward to getting this project started although it will certainly be at least a week and more than likely 2 before we can even begin to get started.  Thanks to a Christmas gift we received, this project will be much easier on the wallet . 

Thanks a shit ton Kev for helping me sort through what it is I want when I dont know what the hell I am talking about, and for your help when we do get started.  I will have to get a keg of beer set aside for you when you come to help.. in moderation of course.. I need straight lines :crackup: 

Alisha had ordered some products from Uppercase Living to add some additional decoration to our cozy home.  It has been over a month since we got them in and she would not allow me to stall any more .  Knowing how much I hate having to hang things, I knew for a fact that this would be quite difficult as I hate having to center anything on a wall.

After about an hour, we hung up 1 of the 4 decorations that we purchased.  Alisha tried to get me to hang at least one more, but I refused  This one was enough for one day.  It looks great, but it took a while to get it up there and correctly.

Many others have used products from Uppercase Living with a much easier time hanging them.  We ran into a small snafu that caused it to take much longer than usual.  They make an excellent product at a very reasonable price.  We still would recommend their product to anyone that is looking for a similar product.  It really adds a great touch to your home.

Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of our new bedroom set and mattress at pictures.neilnatic.com  or here.

Today was the day that we have been waiting for all these years.  We have been dying to get a bedroom set for several years now and we finally decided to go for it!  We purchased the bedroom set and mattress and both were scheduled to be delivered today. 

On Thursday Alisha and I were thinking about the new bedroom set when it hit me… we have nowhere to put the DVD player, DirecTV receiver, receiver (audio), and the Replay TV.  We decided that we had to exchange the chest out for the armoire.  Fortunately, I was able to get them to do that without delaying our shipping date. 

We were given time windows for the two separate deliveries (bedroom set and mattress), which unfortunately, meant that we had to stay at the house all day long.  The bedroom set was scheduled to be delivered between 10 – 2 and the mattress was scheduled between 2 – 7.    The bedroom set arrived at about 12:30 and was completely setup by about 2:00 or so.  The mattress showed up at about 6:00 or so. 

We are SOOOO happy with our bedroom set!  It looks great and really makes our room an actual room now.  Alisha has now budgeted about twice my monthly salary in decorations and curtains…. these purchases turn out to be twice as expensive as I would ever think

Be sure to check out our photo gallery for more pictures of our new bedroom set by clicking here or going to http://pictures.neilnatic.com .