A Peek at Life as a Natic

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.

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?

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.

Sunday morning I woke up and began working on the office again.  I had a few more cuts to do and then began working on the molding for the inside of the boxes that we made – this will make sense when I post the pics

After a few hours of work, I headed back upstairs to get dressed to go out to dinner for our Anniversary at no other than —— Capital Grille.  If you haven’t heard before – I FREAKING LOVE THAT PLACE!

Dinner was simply perfect.  Literally.  We got there and they had a table setup near the windows like I had requested with rose petals on it for our anniversary.  They congratulated us throughout the evening starting with the rose petals on the table, then a complimentary champagne toast, a picture of us together which they print for you, and finally an additional complimentary dessert.  We ordered the calamari (of course – simply the best in Atlanta - I guarantee it!), Caesar salad, drinks, steaks, parmesan truffle fries, lobster mac and cheese, and finally dessert.  I could not get over how perfect our meal was.  The calamari was just amazing with its spicy flavoring, the steaks were incredible and absolutely perfectly cooked with such flavor, the truffle fries… incredible!  They had such a complex flavor and such a perfect crunch.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  The lobster mac and cheese was absolutely incredible as well.  And of course.. my favorite dessert in the world – the flourless chocolate cake topped with espresso.

If you have never been there, GO – just bring your wallet or better yet someone elses   It is not a cheap dinner by any means, but it is 100% worth it.  We are realizing that going on a quieter day is better as well.  It was not very hectic, was very quiet, the service was impecible, and you got the full feeling of the dinner you come to expect when you visit there.

On Friday afternoon Kevin came over to give me a HUUUUGE hand working on the new office.  He had many of the tools to get the job done and there was no way I would have gotten this done without his help.  Thanks man!

After working for a while, we got ready and headed up to Cinco’s in Suwanee for a drink and an appetizers.  Shortly after we decided to head over to a bar that a friend from high school owns over in Buford… until they were charging a cover to get in.  I am assuming that this is because the moron Southside Steve (from The Regular Guys morning show) was going to be there.  Since we didn’t have cash and didn’t feel like finding a bank to do so, we headed to the best place on Earth – TACO MAC!  We sat down for a few drinks and Spence met us up there as well.  We headed home at about 12:30 or so and passed out sometime around 1:30.  Since Kevin was going to help me out Saturday morning as well, they both just spent the night at our house.

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 .

Now that we have a bedroom set on order Alisha is back in home decorating mode… which unfortunately means that I have to do more work

We picked up paint on Saturday as well as a shower door film (thanks for the idea Mike and Aubree).  Alisha saw Aubree and Mike’s shower doors and saw that they had put a film on it so that you cant see into the shower – at least not as clearly.  She liked the idea and decided to pick some up so that we could do the same at our house.  This was a total pain in the ass!  It would not have been so bad if we just put it up like normal, but she wanted to add a strip about an inch above where the film stopped.  I knew it would look great so i sucked it up and did it but not without many curses.  Trying to make a perfectly straight line for this while on the glass was a total pain! While that is true, it does look great!

Because we have the new furniture on order, we decided to paint the room while we had less furniture in it.  I spent ALL day Sunday taping the walls off and painting.  It was miserable.  Well after a good 9 – 10 hours of sweat equity the room looks great and so does the bathroom… not we just need our bedroom set and heavenly mattress… damn i cant wait.  I have wanted a new bedroom set for YEARS!

Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of the home improvement at pictures.neilnatic.com or here. 

So last Sunday we spent the day helping Alisha’s parents paint their kitchen before heading back to our house to relax… well one of us relaxed J  I had to finish painting the guest bathroom and our bathroom before the homebrew party the next weekend.  We picked up more paint from Lowes and I got to work.  Before long I had the painting done and my dad had called to see what I was up to.  He wanted to come by and help me paint, but I was already wrapping it up but asked him to come over anyway to help me balance the washing machine.  When he got there Alisha had a little laundry list of stuff she has been dying to get done, so we started working away.

We balanced the washing machine (so it doesn’t come through the ceiling next week), we lowered the mirror in the living room to a more proper height, and then removed the mirror in the bathroom and replaced it with one we bought quite some time ago.

My dad guaranteed that Andrea (who always gives me hell about how high it was) would not notice that the mirror was any lower but we did it anyway.  The mirror in the bathroom was a pain in the ass!  It was one of the cheap mirrors that gets glued to the wall.  Unfortunately the glue works well and the mirror came down in about 3 million pieces.  In order to protect our hands and eyes we rocked garden / yellow rubber kitchen gloves and 2 pairs of Alisha’s sunglasses.  We looked retarted but it was better than losing an eye from a shard of glass as it shattered over and over.

It took us about 3 hours or so to do it all but after looking at it, it was well worth it.  Thanks dad for helping us out… and by the way, Andrea noticed the mirror WITHIN the first minute she was there for the homebrew party :crackup:

Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of from home improvement to home brew at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.

Sunday was no less busy than Saturday was.  Man, what a busy weekend this had turned out to be.  Because something is wrong with me, I cannot sleep in and woke up early again on Sunday.  I decided to head downstairs and bottle up the beer that I brewed 3 weeks ago.  This took about 2 hours or so (took longer than I had expected because it was my first time).  I now have 45 bottles of lovely brown ale homebrew sitting in Envy’s room carbonating.  I am supposed to wait about 2 before I can place them in the refrigerator but I am sure I will sneak one before then to give it a taste.  This time is supposed to give them time to clear and carbonate properly.  I cannot wait to taste one that is done carbonating and is nice and cold!  The worst part about home brewing is the time it takes to drink them!

After bottling my beer, I grabbed the landscape lighting and headed outside to set them up.  Damn did I under-estimate this job.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into!  We were placing one light on the left of the door, one on the door, and another one on the right side of the door.  Since they are hardwired I had to run the cable underneath the sidewalk that is heading to the front door.  Since my neighbor had done it I figured this would be fairly easy.  Yeah … I was wrong.  I tried digging two holes and spraying water in there to soften the dirt… didn’t work… By this time I was shoulder deep in the mud puddle that I had made and decided that I needed to head out to Home Depot.  Looking like I dove in a watering hole I bought a PVC pipe and adapters to make the PVC pipe a “hose” by adding an adapter to attach the hose and a nozzle on the other end to direct the water.  Since I took the Prelude to pick this up, I had to have the pipe sticking out of the sunroof of the car.  It was interesting for sure.  After about another hour or two of fighting with this contraption, I finally reached the other side and finished up the wiring and set it all up. 

Once I showered and ate some food I made a deal with Alisha that I would go with her to make the curtain rods if I could brew my next batch of beer before we headed off to bed.  We then got ready and headed out to buy the rods.  Once we got home we had to “sew” the curtains to the extra fabric that we bought so that we could hang them in the living room.  Alisha was SOOO happy with the results of our work.  It really did come out great!  Take a peek at the before and after.

After cleaning up the mess we made getting the curtains hung, I began to brew my next beer.  It is going to be a Chocolate Espresso Russian Imperial Stout!  I cannot wait for this one to be done.  I hope it turns out as great as it sounds.  After brewing and adding to the fermenter until midnight I pitched the yeast and we headed off to bed.

It was an excellent weekend and we really got a lot of stuff done.  The house looks great!