The Well is No Longer

We have a giant ficus tree in the back yard that really needed a good trim because it was starting to touch the roof. We got a couple of bids (I was shocked at how much the price ranged!) and when the man we ended up hiring to do the trimming mentioned he did other types of removal jobs too, I got really excited.

About 0.0001 seconds later I blurted out "I have a well!"

Kyle took down the well's roof the same day and that ended up being the easy part. The brick base was really, really sturdy and completely full of dirt and very prickly plants. The girls spotted a little nest of (quail?) eggs though that was kind of cool. No scorpions that I could see, but there were a lot of spiders. Bleck.

Kyle ended up having to use this little lifter machine thing to get the brick up and out.

After seeing all the work that went into this one, I was glad we hired a pro to take care of removing the well (let me know if you want Kyle's contact info- he's great!). I'm not sure we would have even been able to do it ourselves without the serious machinery. 

There's still a project for me here though - I need to pick up three or four rolls of sod now to fix the smallish hole we have left in our lawn. I'd take a dirt patch over a faux well any day though. :) 

(I can't believe it's gone! Yay!)

How was your weekend? Are you in the middle of any excited projects? I love hearing about what you guys have going on.

DIY Concrete Planters

Oh man, I am getting SO excited for tomorrow's big event! Local friends, are you coming to the Phoenix Garden Party that The Home Depot is putting on, hosted by yours truly? If you're going to be anywhere near the Glendale Home Depot tomorrow (Saturday) starting at 1 pm, please drop by! The event is going to be amazing and so fun (and it's FREE!). If you have a minute to RSVP, feel free to click on over here, but it's not totally necessary. We would love to see any and all of you! I hope you can make it.

To get myself all geared up for the big party tomorrow, I've been doing some gardening projects around my house. You all know I've been dying to try a DIY concrete planter for a while now. Well, this was the week! I felt the call of the DIY and I answered it with a big ol' bag of concrete.

So before I jump in to the tutorial, a little word to the wise - you might as well make five (or ten!) planters if you're going to the trouble (and mess) to make one. It's only a marginal amount of more work to make multiples, and I think these would make really cool hostess or house warming gifts! So why not?

Here's the pretty simple how-to:


Most importantly, you'll need a bag of this inexpensive, great and easy-to-mix concrete (huge thanks to my local Home Depot guy for recommending this particular brand. Dude knew his stuff!):

And you'll need a lot of PLASTIC containers (metal will work - I used several - but wow, what a headache!). A little trip to my closest Goodwill store was pretty fruitful for container gathering!

The trick is to find containers that have an interesting shape or pattern on the inside, so that the outside of your planter will have a cool imprint or shape. You'll also want to find more simple containers that fit inside the bigger outer containers, but that leave at least an inch or two gap between the two.

Before you start, you'll probably want to wash all the containers and then give the insides a brushing of any type of oil or Pam you have on hand (this helps the concrete pop out easier later).

Then it's time to mix the concrete, which might feel mildly terrifying, but I promise it's super easy. You'll want a garden trowel and long mixing utensil (I used an old metal serving spoon) and a 2.5 gallon bucket for mixing the concrete. Don't forget to put everything on a big tarp or heavy drop cloth. This is definitely an outdoor project, and gloves and masks are a must.

You add concrete to water (or water to concrete) with the trowel, stirring, stirring, stirring, until you get something close to pudding consistency. This brand of concrete is quick set, so pretty much by the time it's completely mixed (lump-free), it's ready to be poured.

You'll need to pour the bottoms of the planters first. If you want a drainage hole, stick in a dowel or cut a piece of cardboard tubing down like we did to the exact depth you want for the bottom of your planter, and pour concrete around that.

With this brand of concrete, which dries unbelievably fast, you'll have to work quickly. Once the bottoms are poured, you put the inner container in the outer container, resting on top of your drainage hole form. And then while holding the inner container centered and in place, pour concrete in the space between the inner and outer containers to make the side walls of your planter. You can use a cup to help pour the concrete in, if needed.

Sort of shimmying the container after pouring helps the concrete settle and smooth out beautifully. And a couple of soft drops on the table or ground helps air bubbles come to the surface. This specific concrete will be dry in, like, an hour or less (but be careful - it gets crazy HOT while it's curing!). The planters will pretty much just plop right out of the container molds, especially the plastic ones. It's awesome.

The concrete is a really pale gray right now, but I know it will weather over time.

These planters were both made with metal outer containers. The spiral one was a special sort of nightmare to work out of the mold! YIKES. But kind of cool right? The one on the left was made with a colander!

This one was made from the purple plastic container and it could not have been easier to get out! Easy breezy.

I started to get experimental after a few of the more simple planters. For one shallow container mold, I hot glued palm fronds to the sides of the outer container.

I love how organic and textural the pattern is! 

I found two glass spheres at Goodwill too and thought they would work well for making concrete garden sculptures. We filled one up all the way and a second one up about 3/4 of the way.

When they were dry, we put them in a plastic bag and chipped off the glass.

I love them and I want to make a giant one!

With the left over concrete in the bucket that was starting to dry up, I rolled out little balls and flattened one side before they dried.

I put a little construction adhesive on the flat sides and glued the little nubbins on to one of the planters we made from a plastic popcorn container. 

It's sort of funky, and I like it. :)

Everyone should have a concrete planter with nubbins. YOLO.

If you're lucky enough to live in a place that actually gets moisture (slow single tear for myself), you can grow moss on your concrete planters with a little bit of moss from your yard thrown in a blender with buttermilk for a sec. You paint the mixture on the planters and the moss should grow pretty fast. I tried this in Brooklyn and was surprised at how well it worked on some too-new terracotta pots we had on the back porch.

Anyway, fun, right? I'm sort of feeling like concrete is my jam now. I want to concrete all the things.

DIY Extra Tall Baseboards

I love tall, chunky baseboards and I'm not ashamed to say it! :) Beefy floor boards = instant character in a room. Custom milled tall baseboards are insanely expensive though. Luckily it's easy to replicate the look by layering a few pieces of much more affordable moulding. Here's how:
After we installed the plywood wide plank flooring, I started nailing up the 8" primed pine boards that we used for baseboards in the rest of our house. These boards come in 12' lengths and cost right about $20 each (so about $1.50 per linear foot). I loved the way they looked in the rest of the house, but in here, with the wide planks being basically the exact same width, the chunky floor board looked super dinky.

So I used some moulding I already had on hand to create a custom stack of trim. We layered on my door and window casing moulding on top and a simple quarter round trim on the bottom of the pine board.

Here's a view of the profile:

Pretty, right? I love that it's simple still.

I used my new favorite finish nailer to install all the trim and it could not have been an easier process. The only tricky part was cutting out the notches for the outlets (of which there are many!), but my Dremel Saw made that just about as straight forward as could be.

I used a miter saw for all the corner cuts and then lots and lots of caulking to fill in the gaps and cracks and nail holes before painting:

I am not the biggest fan of caulk with shiny silicone in it. This stuff though - the straight ALEX caulk (no PLUS) - is the very best for caulking trim work and prepping before painting.

Once everything was installed, caulked and dried, we painted the moulding the same color as the walls (BM's Chantilly Lace) in semi-gloss in the Advance line. So clean and new looking!!

The casing trim is also about $1.50 or so per linear foot and the quarter round is really, really inexpensive. Maybe $0.30/ft? So all in all, less than $5 per linear foot for 12" high floor boards is a total steal! I really, really love how these baseboards turned out.

DIY Custom Chalkboard Paint

One of the sad casualties from the move was the glass in my beloved scroll mirror. :(

This mirror has had a prominent place in our past couple homes - I love its unique shape.

The movers accidentally knocked it over when they were loading the truck in Brooklyn. Luckily, there was no damage to the brass frame or to the composite wood backing.

I can always go and get more mirror cut, but I wanted a chalkboard in our kitchen and this spot over the garbage cans was that perfect place. The frame just barely fit, so I was worried a traditional black chalkboard would be too dark for the space. My sister reminded me I could custom mix chalkboard paint colors, and there was no looking back!

Here's how we turned my old mirror into a chalkboard:

The backing board was in good shape so we just needed to trowel on joint compound to create a new, smooth surface to paint.

It's just like frosting a cake, but significantly less tasty.

One of my readers gave me this tip for smoothing joint compound. Rather than sanding the dried compound (which is an unbelievably dusty undertaking) using a damp grout sponge and "wet sand" the compound by smoothing it with the sponge. It is SO easy to get a silky finish this way, and there's absolutely zero dust. Works great on walls and for small applications like this one.

If you have any air bubbles or spots that need touch ups, I like to water down the joint compound a lot. It's easier to put on a small amount when the compound mixture is thin.

After the joint compound is completely dry (maybe wait an entire day or two?), it's a good idea to give the surface a coat of primer (like Zinsser) before painting on the chalkboard paint. Then to make your own chalkboard paint color, you just need a bag of unsanded grout, which you can find at any hardware store, and a bit of regular latex paint in any color you want.

I wanted my chalkboard to be a medium gray, so I mixed some Chelsea Gray and some Brushed Aluminum together until I got about what I wanted. To make the regular paint chalkboard paint, I added two tablespoons of the unsanded grout for every cup of paint. It's important to mix the grout in really well - clumps are no good here! An old whisk works great.

I gave my primed backing board two good coats of my custom chalkboard paint using a foam roller.

Once the paint was totally dry (only about ten seconds later in the AZ heat!), I smoothed out any bumps in the paint with a fine grit sanding block. Then Heather and Gracie helped me condition the chalkboard surface by rubbing the entire surface with chalk. This helps make the chalkboard more easy to erase - the chalk sits on top of chalk rather than getting into the pores of the painted surface.

We put the frame back together (there are eight individually cast scrolls!) and hung it up in the kitchen. I love having a place to write up a weekly menu.

It's a fun place for the girls to doodle, too. Last night we had a lot of our extended family over for a dinner party to celebrate Michael's mom's birthday and the girls decorated the chalkboard for the party.

It's a little big for the wall there, but I still love it. I have lots of art hanging in our kitchen right now (to make up for the current lack of shelving) and I like how the chalkboard is a part of that. It all sort of works well together.

And I think the gray is a little more subtle than black would have been. Since I used half Brushed Aluminum, which is the wall color in the living room, I think the chalkboard doesn't feel too imposing, even though it is huge on that tiny wall. :)