Four in 48: DIY Renovations You Can Finish in a Weekend

Looking for more than a mini makeover for your bedroom, backyard, or kitchen -- something beyond new throw pillows and furniture? Get that wow-factor in just a weekend by renovating the more enduring fixtures in your home. With the right tools and a bit of basic knowledge, you don't even have to hire a professional. Do it yourself can be doable. Below, I've outlined four DIY transformations perfect for the weekend warrior.

 Living Room

Stand up to scuffed floors by refinishing your room's hardwood base. With the right sanders, you won't have to give a carpenter a cut of the work.

 

MISSION: Refinish the hardwood floor.

TOOLS: Pry bar, drum sander (rentable), hand sander, hammer, sealer/stain

PLAN: First, confirm that the floor is at least three-quarters of an inch thick (so you don't sand down to the subfloor).

• ·         After you've removed all furniture, curtains, and artwork from the room, cover light fixtures with trash bags; tape over outlets, switches, and vents; seal any doors with a plastic sheet and masking tape; and vacuum the floor.

• ·         Using a pry bar, remove the shoe molding, taking care not to damage the baseboard.

• ·         Beginning in the room's center with a drum sander, move from one end of the room and back, overlapping with each pass; repeat on the other side.

• ·         Use a hand sander in corners and around edges. Repeat multiple times using smaller grit sandpaper, working down to 120-grit and vacuuming between each pass.

• ·         Wipe the floor with a dry cloth before applying sealer or stain to the newly refinished floor, following the manufacturer's instructions.

• ·         Reinstall the shoe molding and buff the floor, if desired.

Backyard

Create a patio and grow your yard's appeal without throwing green at a landscaper.

  

MISSION: Lay a stone patio.

TOOLS: Shovel, steel rake, plate compactor (rentable), level and leveling rod, rubber mallet, polymeric sand, push broom, pavers or stones of your choice

PLAN: Use marking paint to designate your patio outline, then excavate the area six inches and smooth with a rake.

• ·         With a plate compactor, tamp down the surface.
• ·         Working in batches, add and tamp gravel to a final depth of three inches. Use a level and leveling rod to guide you in grading the area at a rate of half an inch per yard.

• ·         Beginning nearest the house, arrange pavers across the base, hitting each with a rubber mallet to secure it into the gravel. Maintain a consistent gap between stones.

• ·         Spread polymeric sand over the pavers and use a push broom to sweep it into the joints, taking care to fill them completely.

• ·         Lightly water the sand to permanently lock the pavers in place.

 Kitchen

 

Cook up an open kitchen by adding glass panes to your existing panel cabinets.

MISSION: Replace cabinet doors with glass fronts.

TOOLS: Screwdriver, jig saw or router, clear silicone caulk, glass clips

PLAN: Unscrew the cabinet doors you plan to change.

• ·         If you have a router, use it to cut away the back edges of the grooves holding the center panel in place. Otherwise, use a jig saw to carefully cut out the center panel of each door; apply thin molding to cover your rough cuts and paint to match.

• ·         Take your frames to a local glass shop or hardware store, where they can measure the openings and cut the glass to size.

• ·        On the backside of the doors, run a very thin bead of clear silicone caulk into the grooves, then press each pane into place and allow it to set overnight. For added security, anchor the pane with glass clips set no more than 12 inches apart.

• ·         Screw the doors in place.

Bedroom

 

Spark new life in the bedroom by swapping a run-of-the-mill fan for a beautiful chandelier.

  

MISSION: Replace the ceiling fan with an elegant light fixture.

TOOLS: A-frame ladder, screwdriver, wire cutters and electrical tape (for installing wire nuts)

PLAN: No need to feel wiry about working with wires -- switching out old fixtures for new ones is safe as long as you remember to cut the power in the main electrical panel.

• ·         Detach the existing fan by unscrewing the blades and canopy; removing the wire nuts, noting which wires connect to which; unhooking the down rod; and unscrewing the bracket.

• ·         To install a chandelier, attach it to the ceiling fan junction box using screws provided. The ceiling fan box can hold at least 35 pounds.

• ·         Match the white (return), black (hot), and green (ground) wires, and then twist and cover each pair with a wire nut.

• ·         Slide the canopy into place and screw it on. (If your fan included a light operated by a separate switch, you may see an additional red wire -- cap it with a wire nut, then replace the double light switch cover with one made for a switch and a blank.)

• Before diving into any of these projects, be sure to do your homework by asking questions of reliable sources (like the experts at your local home improvement or hardware store), take safety precautions, spend time prepping and measuring carefully, and, of course, anticipate at least a little chaos.

What are some other weekend projects you've done yourself? Any tips newbies should keep in mind, or things to otherwise avoid?

Chris Long is a Home Depot store associate in the Chicago area, and writes online about truck rental tips, carpet cleaner rental tips, and other equipment tool rentals. To view Home Depot’s truck rentals, click here. Their carpet cleaner rentals can be found here.

Mixing New and Old for a Refreshing Look

If you are living in an old home and thinking of fixing it up, a refreshing interior design idea is to work with contrasts. An older home may have exposed brick. Rather than covering it up, leave the old brick wall uncovered and use it as a contrast for modern decorations. However, there are a few things you will need to do first:

Clean the Wall

An older brick surface will often need cleaning. A brass brush and lots of water works well and is cheaper and less messy than sand blasting or power washing. It does not stain old brick like muriatic acid can either. You will need a number of these brushes – as they wear out relatively quickly – and several hours of free time. Make certain to cover the floor with a plastic drop cloth. As with all such projects, work on a small, less conspicuous section before venturing on to the entire wall.
To keep the water from running off your plastic sheeting, place a 2x4 barrier under the plastic in the shape of a ‘U’ and run the open area of the plastic up the wall wrapped in a 1x2 to create a basin. Using a nail gun, nail the 2x2 to the mortar in two places. When you have finished, just remove the nails, as later you will be filling cracks with grout anyway. Another option is to stick the lip of the plastic to the wall with a cheap silicone caulk. It will peal away and you can clean that part of the wall last.

Repair Bricks and Mortar

When you have completely cleaned your old brick wall, you will want to fill in cracks and missing mortar. Buy a coloured grout that matches the old and weathered mortar, testing in an inconspicuous area first.

Preserve Your Work

Two good choices for sealing an old brick wall are polyurethane and silicone. Both will give the brick a clean appearance and protect the brickwork. Polyurethane gives a slightly shinier appearance, while a silicone sealer tends to deepen the brick color but will not otherwise be noticeable. In each case, you will be working with irritating and volatile materials so make sure you work with the windows open and on small spaces of wall at a time. Take breaks in the fresh air after each patch of wall you finish. Ideally, you will do this job in the summer and leave the windows open for a day after finishing the wall.
Consider a bright and modern look to contrast with your nicely cleaned, repaired and sealed brick wall. Using your nail gun, you can drive cement nails into the brick to hang supports for modern chrome light fixtures. For securing more substantial objects, use a tool such as the Makita LXT202. This 18V LXT Combination Drill & Impact Driver Kit is excellent for making the holes for anchoring heavier items such as a built-in bookcase of lightly stained mahogany.

DIY? Not likely if you're under 35.

The Daily Mail in the UK headlines DIY? Not likely if you're under 35.

Around 50 per cent of people aged under 35 admitted they did not know how to rewire a plug, while 54 per cent did not know how to bleed a radiator and 63 per cent said they would not attempt to put up wallpaper, according to Halifax Home Insurance.

Other basic jobs, such as putting up shelves, were beyond 45 per cent of those questioned, while 36 per cent said they would not even attempt to do gardening themselves.

Instead 42 per cent would pay a professional to do the work.

The study also found that when the under-35s do attempt to do a job themselves and it goes wrong, it costs nearly three times as much to fix as problems caused by other age groups.

Does the same age group in America have such a low skill level? If so, even with all the free Home Depot classes, then this should be boom times for any professional who is involved with home maintenance or home decor.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design gallery
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Oh, Those Lath Walls!

Recently, we repainted our bedroom. We have an older home, built in the late 20s and the walls were kind of a "Cafe Flesh" pink. They were a little tired looking and the lath had cracked in several places. We chose topaint the walls a dark gray and light tan for the woodwork. We kept the ceiling an off white. Prep was the hardest and took longer than painting it ourselves.

In the right kind of light I see imperfections in the repair of the cracks. I thought texturing over the cracks would do the trick, but I was wrong. Now I want to do a better job and learn how or have a professional do it, if I win the lottery.

I came across a interesting article a while back titled What's the difference between a great and not-so-great paint job? In it Jay Johnson explains the difference between a AAA paint job and a schmear job. The AAA paint job is the "Top of the Line painting, employing very professional crews, a lot of wall and trim prep before the paint is applied, and a very careful paint job."

The schmear or dab-on paint job that's done by a handyman or a day laborer to give a wall three coats of paint and pronounce the job "done." In an apartment, this is often accomplished "on the cheap" when tenants move out and you freshen up the place before the new tenants move in. We sometimes call the paint job "landlord issue" when white paint has been amateurishly applied to the walls of an apartment or new home.

The author writes about skim coating, which I see was an option for us or we could have used a taping system on the cracks.

Skim coating is a great way to make walls uniform in a room, particularly when you're mixing new drywall surfaces with existing, older walls. In skim coating, you take a fine plaster compound and you actually plaster the walls. The skim-coated wall surface feels cooler to the touch than sheetrock and it's smoother than bare sheetrock. It gets sanded between coats. It's very dusty to do this, but once the dust settles and the room is cleaned up, the paint is beautiful when applied.

If you click the link to skim coating there are a whole number of comments about whether skim coating is necessary.

I also came across a local Oregon man, Edwin Brown, who must have years of experience. He offers you the benefit of his experience on his website Plaster-Wall-Ceiling-Solutions.com . Brown has skads of information for the DIY about cracks, fixing holes and sagging ceilings and how to fix them and how to do skim coating.

I'll know how to do those walls better now!

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design gallery
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