Home Office Inspiration

Mr. Mel and I always planned to have a dedicated home office space. But we figured that we'd wait til the basement was done, then relocate the guest room downstairs and make the upstairs third bedroom into our office/craft space. It all seemed to be going swimmingly...until Mr. Mel decided to work from home!

Mr. Mel is what I like to call a "dabbler". When people ask me what he does for a living, I usually say, "he's a businessman". Truth is, he directs several companies, does financial and corporate consulting, accounting, and real estate investment. He's a busy boy!

So the plan to do the office was sped up. Time to get to work!

This is the room now. Besides plunking the furniture in it when we moved in, we haven't done a thing to it. It's not huge, just over 10' x 10' with a small alcove. It's the guest room but has quickly become the drop zone  for random crap. What...like you've never seen kitty litter boxes and a carpet shampooer before?!

The wall colour will stay as is, Benjamin Moore Limesickle. It's a fairly neutral colour and can look more grey or green depending on the light and accent colours.

Mr. Mel has given me carte blanche with this room. He's happy as long as he has a place to sit and work. Ok by me!

I made a list of what this room needs:

• two workstations/desks.
• desk large enough to use as a sewing table.
• credenza or buffet. The room has a double closet so we have lots of storage space, but I want something that can hold printer, copier, fax, random office supplies.
• chairs.
• desk lamp(s).
• curtain panels.

These are some room schemes that have inspired me and will work with my wall colour:

Kendall Wilkinson Design

Liz Carroll Interiors

Muse Interiors

Photograph by Keith Scott Morton

I hope to have this room together pronto as I need to reclaim my kitchen table!

Paint Booth

I paint in my garage. I prefer to park in my garage. I store stuff in my garage.

I have had a few unfortunate over spray incidents when working in there so I decided I needed some sort of booth to work in that would protect my projects and belongings...and my freshly epoxy'd floors, of course! When I painted my parent's dining set, I rigged up a hideous makeshift booth from tarps, zip ties, and bungee cords. It did the job, but it was dark, ugly, and hard to put together and take down.

I thought I might get creative and build my own out of PVC pipe and poly.

Source

But, seriously, this seemed like too much work for something that I would have to set up and take down each time I wanted to paint something. Not to mention that I needed a good sized booth to accommodate larger furniture pieces.

Ebay to the rescue! I bought this 10x10 pop up gazebo with 4 removable walls for $150 (including shipping).

It's light, bright, sets up quickly, and stores easily in it's own bag. It's perfect. It looks so silly set up inside the garage! ha ha

Time to paint!

Epoxy...Part Deux

Welp, the weekend is here and it's time to tackle the other side of the garage floor. Mr. Mel kindly moved all my junk treasures to the finished side for me so I had a clear area to work. Isn't he sweet?

Okily dokily, so this is pretty much a repeat of the first epoxy application, only this time it's only about half the size...yay.

Here is the before:

Compared to the finished side...yowza!

And here is the after:

Now Mr.Mel and I are headed out to the lake for the last time this summer. The weather here has been amazing and we are gonna soak up all the sunshine we can before the snow flies!

My Epoxy Adventure

It seems that all I've done this year is work in my garage!

A couple more projects and we'll be set for winter. I have already insulated the walls, organized my tools, moved my stairs, and did a major purge of all things unnecessary. Time to tackle the floor.

After much research, I decided to use an epoxy finish on the floors. I wanted them to look clean, and hated the look of the bare concrete. I considered having a pro apply a commercial epoxy but, when I found out that *all* epoxy will wear out eventually, decided that the cost wouldn't make sense, if I was only going to have to do it again in a few years. And that's a key piece of information: epoxy isn't permanent! I know, I know, I thought it was, too. Bottom line, it will wear down to the original surface simply from driving on it. How long that takes will depend in how much you drive on it. For the average homeowner, you'll have to consider touching it up about every three years. On the plus side, it protects your floors from all sorts of staining and pitting.

I picked up four Behr Premium 2 Part Epoxy kits from Home Depot. Each kit comes with everything you need to finish a single car garage, including concrete etcher/cleaner, roller and brush. As luck would have it, the rep from Behr was there at the time and was very helpful, with all sorts of good advice. First thing he recommended was to buy a little extra. I have a three car garage (about 1,000 sq ft) and each epoxy kit should cover a single car garage....buuuuuuuut they don't. Not really. So, he said I should definitely pick up an extra kit so I didn't run out.

Ok, I just have to mention this because it struck me as funny when it dawned on me...my garage is bigger than my first apartment! ha ha

I figured I would do the garage in two parts. The double side and then the single side. That way I can move all my stuff to each side of the garage and wouldn't have to take it outside.

With all the construction going on around us, the garage is always filled with dust so, before I started, I swept, vacuumed and pressure washed the floor.

The first step in the kit is to apply the etcher. Wet the floor, sprinkle it on, brush with a stiff brush, and let it sit for 10 minutes, then rinse the floor. This helps the epoxy bond to the concrete.

Once the floor has completely dried, it's time to apply the epoxy. Mix the epoxy according to the instructions, and then it's basically like painting a wall. Cut in around the edges, then roll on the finish. I am applying the colour chips they've supplied so I'll do my floor in 1 metre square areas so I can make the finish as consistent as possible.

Wait about 24 hours before you move anything back onto the finished floor, four days before you drive on it. The Behr rep recommended laying down cardboard where car tires will be driving, for the first few weeks. And here's my finished floor (well, half of it, at least)!

I hope to tackle the other side next weekend, as long as the weather Gods keep being good to me.

Delish - Camp Food

Since I was a kid, I have been going camping with my family. I've always loved it. Mr. Mel and I have made camping a *huge* part of our summer, also. It's so nice to get out of the city, sit at the lake, go fishing, and have late night campfires and marshmallow roasts.

There is the standard camp food fare: burgers, weenies, beans, etc. and I have no problem with that. But, I like to stir things up a bit and often plan meals ahead that can be thrown into Ziploc bags and tossed into the cooler. Not all simple food has to taste simple!

This weekend, I brought a few of my favourite recipes...and I thought I'd share with you.

Easy Steak Marinade

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 cloves minced garlic

2 tbsp dijon mustard

1/4 tsp each salt and pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp of dried rosemary or thyme

Place 4 steaks (I use sirloin) ina large Ziploc bag. Wisk all ingredients together and pour into bag. Close the bag, getting rid of the air, and mush the steaks around a bit so they are all well coated in the marinade. Refrigerate for up to 2 days. 

Grilled Asparagus

1 bunch (10-12) asparagus spears

dash of salt and pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

Cut or break off the woody ends of the asparagus spears. Toss all ingredients together in plastic bag. Cook in disposable aluminum container (covered in tin foil) on BBQ set to "high", for 20-25 minutes.

It's Perfect Just How It Is

I am often on the look out for furniture that is begging for a facelift or make-over. But this table was pretty perfect just the way it was. And, for only $80, it's hard to go wrong!

Remember this table? While I loved it, I just wanted a change. So it's been banished to the basement until I find a new home for her.

This table works great, and is just what this room needed! It's on casters so it'll be easy to roll out of the way if we need more space.

I am working on some big changes for my living room, stay tuned! I am still hunting for an area rug for this space, what a daunting task!

Moving Stairs

Among the valuable lessons learned during construction of our house is that, often, common sense isn't all that common.

Exhibit A: Our garage stairs.

Given that our garage is laid out like this (note: this is not to scale, just to give you a general idea)...

...and given that our contractor understood that one of the vehicles we drive is a big-ass truck, I am at a loss as to why they would have put the stairs encroaching on the one parking spot that would have accommodated our truck. Ugh...men.

As a result, we have had to resort to parking the truck at an angle that takes up the ENTIRE double side of our three car garage. Aaaaaaaaaaaannnnnd, because we have three vehicles (ridiculous, I know, I know), it means that one has to be parked on the driveway. That sucks rocks when you live in a climate that gets to
-40 in the winter (uh, yeh, that's a bone chilling 40 degrees below freezing) and an average annual snowfall of 60". Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...............

After living with the garage this way for almost two years, I finally got on this project. I thought I should wait until the outside temperature was eight-hundred million degrees and the humidex was hovering around 99% and I had no one to lend a hand; cause that's usually the best time to do this sort of thing (please note the intense sarcasm). It took some muscle, and my potty mouth got the best of me at times, but I managed to reconfigure the stairs to face the opposite direction. It's a huge improvement!

Logic...gotta love it!

I've got another garage project on the go as we speak, I hope to update soon!