Tag Archive for: home improvement

Before and (Almost) After

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by Susan McBride aka Mrs. Fix-It

By special request, I’m back to (almost) finish up my home improvement tales. The to-do list has gotten rather skimpy, which makes me quite proud; although I still have a little ways to go on my re-vamping of the guest room project. Still I thought I’d share some “before” and “after” pics to show you what’s been done. Okay, first, an old pic of the minty green room:


The Victorian chair is to the right-hand side (I know, you can barely see it!). It’s covered in a really pretty leaf and lily pattern that just didn’t work with the new color scheme. The ottoman’s in front of the window since the cats used it as a perch to look outside. It doesn’t match the chair except that it’s green. I bought it for about $10 at a really dusty “antiques” shop near where my grandmother lived. You can also see the white-washed dresser bought for about $60 at an antiques mall, when I just needed something pronto to fill the room and to store away old manuscripts. Also, the window has no curtains, just a mint-green sheer I got for about $5 at Linens-n-Things and draped around a little metal rod.

Now for the re-done chair, for which I used Waverly fabric that was on sale for $15 a yard (and I needed three to cover it and the ottoman). Happily, since the curtain panels are Waverly, the dye lot in the chair fabric and the curtains work together great! Note the matching white paint on the ottoman’s feet. I tell ya, that epoxy spray paint for appliances has the perfect sheen! What a lucky mistake using that turned out to be.

Not bad, eh? You can kind of see the toned-down color of the green paint on the walls behind it. Below, you can glimpse the curtains that hang from the re-purposed wooden curtain rod I spray-painted. And there’s the rehabbed dresser newly dark-green and now with feet! I think I mentioned before that the “feet” were made from a pair of drapery finials I got at Lowes for under $4. Ed cut the pointy tips off, which worked beautifully!


The dresser isn’t quite finished yet. It has a spot on the back where you can tell some type of molding used to sit. I remembered my mom had a piece of molding to put over a doorway and had never used. So she donated it to my cause, and here’s what it looks like, although it needs to be cut down (it’s 62″ long!) and painted. But when it’s done and attached to back of the dresser, it’s going to be gorgeous!

It’s amazing what you can do with a little elbow-grease, paint, and fabric…and a creative mind! I can’t wait to get the room completed. Another weekend of work, and I think it’ll finally be done! Weeeee!

P.S. The dresser is finished! Here’s the proof:

I Love the Smell of Paint Fumes in the Morning

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by Susan McBride

I’ve been on a home improvement kick of late, fueled by the long To-Do list on the side of our refrigerator that’s ever-growing. With so much going on since Ed and I bought the house almost four years ago (deadlines, health crisis, getting hitched, et al), I’ve put off unfinished projects around the house and yard. So long as things seemed clean and neat, I ignored what could be ignored in support of my sanity. But with promo for The Cougar Club winding down and a little time on my hands before a new deadline dropped in my lap, I could finally tackle what I’d been putting off. Like the human tornado I am (or, at least, my husband thinks I am!), I jumped in with both feet.

I went for the easy stuff first, like sanding and touching up paint on door thresholds shredded by Max the Cat (who thinks the entire house is his scratching post). I put two coats of Haze–aka, light tan–on the bare white vanity in the upstairs guest bath to match the walls (hey, it breaks up the white between the tiles and the sink, and I’m a woman who likes color!). I’ve mentioned to Ed that it’d look really good to cut molding to frame the oversized guest bath wall mirror (something I’ve seen them do on HGTV)–and would I kill to replace that old “Hollywood” style lighting fixture, too!–but since hubby’s the one who wields the table saw, the mirror-framing will have to wait.

My mother dropped by last weekend to help paint the guest room, another thing I’d been meaning to do and hadn’t. The rest of the house had a color makeover long ago (well, all except Ed’s “man cave” in the basement which was “Bisque” and still is). The third bedroom was always a vivid mint green, kind of like toothpaste, which matched my old comforter set well enough so we left it alone. Ed got a little sad when I said, “Time for the minty freshness to go!” He remarked that glancing in the room always reminded him to brush his teeth. Ha ha. I found a more neutral shade of green with a hint of gray in it, and it looks gorgeous. The old comforter set got laundered and taken to Goodwill. Rather than buy something new, I dug into the linen closet for a quilt my grandmother made me long ago, with scalloped edges trimmed in olive green and a circle of pink flowers and green leaves at its center. It looks perfect on the guest bed and the cats have already taken to burrowing beneath it (something I’m sure my cat-loving grandma would appreciate!).

Continuing on my “Design on a Dime” theme, I had Ed cut the old wooden curtain rod from our master bedroom (left behind by the former owner) so it would fit the guest room window. I spray-painted the rod and finials white (accidently using appliance paint which smells awful but covers beautifully!). Ed hung it up last night, and now I’m dying to go buy curtain panels, which I want to coordinate with new fabric to recover the old Victorian armchair and ottoman (er, I kind of got white paint on the green ottoman seat when I was spray-painting the feet!) Okay, so one project seems to lead to another, but it’s all going to be gorgeous when I’m finished!

My home improvement crusade wasn’t limited to the inside. Nope. I tackled a few outdoor projects as well, starting with clearing out leaves from flower beds and the basement window well off the patio where I encountered a garter snake that had the nerve to hiss at me! Geez, his head was as big as my pinky so I was less afraid than I would have been if I’d run across a giant spider. Animal lover that I am, I used a dustpan to scoop him up and toss him into a patch of ivy. Ed and I saw him again on Easter before heading over to my folks’ house! He slithered across the driveway and let Ed take his picture before he disappeared through the grass. I’m sure it was his way of saying, “thanks.”

But I digress. My yard work continued with some trimming and weeding, and I dug up a dead bamboo bush growing near the back fence, replacing it with a trellis and jasmine plant. I can’t wait for the jasmine to cover that sucker and create a wall of yellow flowers and vine! FYI, the “bamboo” bush wasn’t really bamboo at all. It was some kind of distant relative to a houseplant and didn’t ever live up to the promise of growing to 6′ x 6′ within three years. In fact, it didn’t grow but a few leaves beyond its original 1′ x 1′ self. A rotted trellis in another garden bed was replaced by a metal trellis, and now the clematis is growing thickly on it. I planted viney flowers that are supposed to naturalize in an empty area of that same bed, and I trimmed out dead branches on a pear tree and a maple (well, the ones I could reach that smack Ed in the head when he mows).

Getting out of my desk chair and moving like that has tugged on muscles I forgot existed. I’ve enjoyed transforming pieces of my world inside and out (although the tree pollen’s about to kill me! Benadryl, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways…although you seriously make me crave a nap). Ed’s afraid that if I don’t chain myself to my keyboard again soon, I’m going to build a room addition to the house. Hmm, not a bad idea. Maybe that screened porch I’ve been daydreaming about, one with a comfy chaise so I can lounge and read while the cats watch the birds at the feeder….

Er, does anyone have Mike Holmes’ phone number handy just in case I need some help?

Are We Done Yet?

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by Susan McBride

Before I met Ed and we bought a house together, I didn’t have cable. I never watched TV much so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Once we put our names on a mortgage and combined our worldly goods (okay, mostly my worldly goods and a few of his that went into his basement Man Cave), I realized the addiction that is HGTV. I think the first weekend after Charter turned on our cable, I watched 12 hours of a “Design Star” marathon. Needless to say, I was totally hooked. When I went through my breast cancer stuff and was forced to take mandatory bed rest, I probably watched every HGTV show ever produced.

And it’s like the “Harry Potter” movies for me: I can watch the same shows over and over and over. Scary, isn’t it? I love to see ugly rooms transformed in under $2,000 (“Designed to Sell”) or even under $500 (“Design Cents,” although sometimes I think the folks who had the cheap re-do should ask for the money back). Never a fan of clutter, I adore when Tabitha on “Get It Sold” instructs hapless housesellers to pack up their crap. “Look, you can see the gorgeous hardwood floors!” she’ll gleefully exclaim after boxes of plastic kids’ toys and endless wedding photographs are sent to storage.

The bad thing is that all these shows keep inspiring me to whip our house a little closer to perfection. It’s almost there, really. I’m just figuring out what to do about the large bedroom window now that we’ve gotten rid of a huge old armoire (and an equally huge old TV), moving a few things around so our room seems twice as big. Do I go for the $692 custom lined drapes with walnut rod and rings? Or do I go thrifty and order the $79 per panel silk dupioni drapes from Pottery Barn? (Honestly, I’m having trouble deciding! I keep telling myself the $692 would be helping the economy, right?)

Then there are the shrubs in front of the house that were overgrown when we moved in (I swear, the doctor who owned our house before us didn’t trim a shrub or prune a tree in three years). I had Dave from Ray’s come out last week and give us an estimate to cut the bushes off at their ankles and dig out the roots. Once they’re out of here, we can repair the window frames and screens that have been smothered by evergreen boughs before the grinder comes and runs over my tulips and daffodils.

Oh, yeah, and I still want to remove the oven hood and spray it white with appliance paint (it’s the only thing in the kitchen that’s original and it doesn’t match anything), and I’d like to get all the windows washed, inside and out.

All the while, my husband keeps saying, “Are we done yet?” Which is kind of funny considering the list on the side of the fridge which is full of “future projects.” Do men really think a house is like a steak? Is it ever really done?

Perhaps I can blame my drive to decorate, landscape, and fix what needs fixing on HGTV (or, as likely, the joy of having anything to distract me from a fast-approaching deadline). Whatever the cause, I’ll promise this: when Clive and Tabitha and Lisa LaPorta finally beautify the last cluttered, paint-peeled, ill-landscaped house in America, I will take down the “to-do” list from the fridge. And we will be done. For real. Maybe.

P.S. I’m in Houston today at the Texas Library Association convention as you read this. I’m also signing stock at the Blue Willow Bookshop, shooting a segment for “Wild About Houston,” and signing at Murder by the Book tonight at 6. So any further home improvements will have to wait ’til I get back.