You need to be hella impressed

It doesn't look like much. In fact, it's probably hard to figure out what you're even looking at at all!

What you are looking at, is the granite on my desk, and the black trim that we're putting on the edge. It's oak, that has been stained black. For the record, staining oak black is a lot more difficult than you might expect! There's an ebony stain out there, that accomplishes little more than a really deep brown.

Google is my friend. Friends call me to google for them. This is true.
If you don't want me to know something, make sure it never makes it to google!

Having said that, I found all kinds of ways to stain oak a deep black color. There's the good old way. Paint. But I figured if I was going to do that, I'd just put crappy pine up there. I wanna see that wood grain that I paid 10 times the price of pine for!

Then someone suggested rusty nails in a jar full of vinegar.

Really? Well let me find those rusty nails I was saving for something important first.
-sarcasm-

So that's out of the question. As I don't have the patience, faith, or a jar of rusty nails.

The third and simplest suggestion was India ink. Score! Fast forward a few days, and you'll find Gene and I, both in line at Michael's with a coupon in hand and each a tiny bottle of India ink.

Surprisingly, a tiny bottle will do many boards. Awesome.

Anyway, so last weekend, we were working on the island, when we got stuck. You see, we bought some high gloss black granite, which for the record, you can NOT cut face side down. (hard to mark black granite). So we had 2 pieces with scratches on the face. We only had ONE piece spare.

The high school geometry came out in me, and somehow I figured out how to recut the tiles to work.

Then I marked the tile wrong and I still had a big scratch right next to the sink
*head desk*. -insert existential meltdown here-
Gene wanted to leave it as it was as you could only see it from 7 out of 8 angles.
Lana wanted to strangle Gene for such a suggestion and succumbed to the idea that I'd be looking at it every day for the next 15 years.

Lana won.

Since that tiny 4 x 12" piece held up the whole process, we moved on to cutting some trim. Something you should know, is this is something NEITHER of us has done before. Something else you should know is oak trim with India ink stain, etc etc, isn't cheap. OK, It cost a lot less than a new liver, but a lot more than say, a super awesome pair of flip flops.

(can you tell I really miss my flip flops?? Right now I just sound like ... flip *thump* flip *thump* - I have one more week with this boot).

Anyway, so we dragged out the compound miter saw that I got for Christmas 2 years ago. yep. and last year I got an air nailer for trim. I'm trying to decide what to ask for this year for Christmas.... I'm thinking an upright belt sander.

Very carefully we cut the trim to maximize the pieces with the least amount of waste, and we rocked that saw! We ended up with literally 3 pieces left, all under 1 foot long each. The desk has an odd little triangle pieced corner. I guess we did it to not look so harsh, but I knew when we did it, it was going to be a major pain in the butt to cut the trim.

But it wasn't! The pieces were so tight that the fit and held themselves in place without glue.

Damn we rock.

So in the end, we did it! One more thing we can say we'd never done before, but with patience, accomplished. Don't be scared... just try. They're only power tools that can cut off your hand. (just ask our friend Bobby... aka... stumpy).

Home improvements

re-read yesterday. yep. pretty much feel the same way.

I've been a busy bee already today, and yet, I still feel like not enough is accomplished. Went to the bank to deposit an insurance check from the flood, bought my furbabies some food (they get pissed when you don't feed them, went to sutherlands and bought beadboard paneling (more on that in a min) and went to the PO to mail a box. Mail is too expensive. bleh. Now I see why ppl prefer gift cards.

Because the issue with the plumbing was a recall on our plumbing like, 15 years ago.... we have to replumb the house before the foundation goes up this fall. It just so happened, that gene was talking to his boss, and his boss just so happened to have a kit that will plumb an entire house.... at about 1/4 of what it would cost is in a store. :)

So right now, there's no water in the spare bathroom. blah. BUT, he spent the weekend under the house and it's close to being done. Water will have to be shut down for a while while he hooks everything back up. I told him, that if we're going to do that, we might as well get a sink for the spare bathroom. We'd intended to use an old cabinet and make it into a vanity, but honestly, it was turning into a lot of work and was going to cost a lot more money buying what I really wanted, which was a vessel sink.

So then while at Home Depot, I happened across this:

I've always liked this style. It's not as deep as a regular sink, but enough for a toilet brush, some TP and maybe some hand towels. And it was on CLEARANCE.

Gene and I were just saying the other day, that whenever we needed something, we just sat patiently and wait and it comes to us.... much cheaper. This has happened to us dozens of times since we found this house. I think a higher power is helping us along a bit :)

So anyway, the bathroom in question, only has tile done in it (floor), nothing else. SOOOO before we can put in that vanity this weekend, I have to get the wall behind it ready, which is the beadboard I bought. I'll be installing that tomorrow hopefully, if the weather cooperates with me. It needs to be painted, which it will be white, and then the walls above are going to be a pretttttty orange color, that amber gave me left over from her remodel. I'm hoping there's enough of that orange to paint my laundry room too.

Once we get the walls done, then we can start looking to get the shower tiled. I'm really not looking forward to that part. LOL. Who wants free beer and can tile really well????

Any takers?

LOL