Flashback to 3 years ago

One week from today, we will be heading to Livermore, CA for the summer.  Neither of us have been anywhere in California other than San Diego, so it should be a great time!

Since we have a dog and need to have a car in Livermore, we are driving across the country...again. Here the route that we plan to take:



If you look back on our original cross country road trip, we wasted a lot of time. We got a 2 hour later start than planned, meandered around Knoxville during lunch, and then took ourselves on a walking tour of Vanderbilt. Since we now have a few cross country trips under our belt and don't have much we haven't seen before or want to see until we hit California, I think our first couple of days this time around will be much more efficient.

The first night, we plan to make it to Fort Smith, AR, which is right near the Oklahoma border. We may go crazy driving through all of Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, and almost all of New Mexico the next day.  Each of these days is a little over 12 hours, but I'm sure will take us a bit longer with stops.

Gallup, NM is up next, and then we will drive to Santa Barbara and spend the night. This will be a shorter day and we plan to skip Los Angeles and go above it, through Palmdale, CA. We plan to have a mini vacation in central California and stay one night in Santa Barbara and one night in San Luis Obispo.

From San Luis Obispo, it's just about 3 hours to Livermore. If you have any recommendations for things to see along our route, or good podcasts to listen to, let me know!

Every week or so, I like to make a room-by-room list of every single thing we need to get done, just to really stress myself (and William) out. One room that we don't have a million things to do in anymore is the den. Other than decor, it is finally coming together. Last weekend, I tackled a project that had been looming over my head for a few weeks now: the fireplace.  When we moved in, the fireplace had a mantel, but it was so ugly, we just ripped it out and never replaced it. It had a decorative routed edge and was painted with some weird textured, multi-colored paint. I wish I had a photo, but I don't. I'm not sure what look they were going for with it, but it was just plain ugly. The brick was already painted, which was fine with me.  It was covered really well and it seemed to be a decent paint job. The only problem is that the paint was a dingy off-white color, much like a lot of the trim in the house. (Why do people do this? White looks best!)  The hearth was also a mess. I'm not sure what it's technically called, but instead of being nice, square tiles, it has those red, cracked, misshapen tiles. It also looked like someone had polyurethaned over it or done some type of glaze gone wrong.

Similar to this, but with yellowing, peeling polyurethane on top. Really beautiful!

For this project, I decided to try a project from Young House Love and just paint the entire thing, except for the firebox because we have working gas logs. For the hearth, I painted 3-4 coats of white paint. I haven't done any type of glaze or top coat, and it may not need it. You can't use polyurethane on white paint because it will turn yellow with time.  The paint I used for the entire project was Olympic no-VOC kitchen and bath semi-gloss. Only one thick coat was needed on the bricks since it was already painted a similar color. It looks great on the bricks and the hearth, and has a nice sheen without being too glossy. We also use this paint for our trim. I love it - it looks great and there are no fumes!

Dingy bricks getting covered with white!

After a few coats on the hearth

We decided to go with a simple mantel - no routing or decorative edging, just a rectangle. I went back and forth on painting vs. staining but William convinced me to stain it, and I love it! We have a white couch and white curtains, so I'm trying not to add too much more white. First, William cut the piece to size and I used our orbital sander with 220 grit to smooth it out. To stain it, I used Minwax dark walnut. I haven't sealed it yet since no one really touches it, but I may put a coat of Waterlox on it just for good measure. To secure it, we are just going to use some liquid nails (glue). We will be wall mounting our TV and the mantel will just be used for some decorative items - if we were actually placing the TV on it, we'd probably look into securing it differently.



Hopefully my image quality will improve when I get a new phone - my current phone's camera is definitely on its way out! Even though we made some big strides on the fireplace with this quick project, there are still a few more things to do in this area:

• Mount the TV above the mantel


• Add some trim around the hearth to clean up the look


• Caulk area between bricks and side trim


• Glue mantel and waterlox


• Decorate mantel and hearth

So far, this fireplace makeover has been very cost efficient. The paint was $15 and we have tons leftover for trim around the house. The mantel piece was around $7. I used stain that we already had, but you can buy a small jar (and still have a ton leftover) for less than $5. The glue and waterlox we'll be using is something we already have on hand, too.  Overall, I'd roughly calculate that we spent less than $15 for the entire project considering we mostly used what we have and how much we have leftover.

Update: The fireplace paint held up pretty well, but I have done an additional coat of white paint on the hearth to be safe. I have also purchased some satin Minwax polycrylic and plan to do a clear coating on top of the hearth only. I would also suggest priming your surface, first. I use Kilz multi-surface primer and it works very well! 

Well, we did it. We removed our in ground pool! The pool was actually one of our main hesitations with buying this house.  It was an old, vinyl liner pool and needed repairs. It needed a new liner, a new light ($400 just for a pool light. I wish I was exaggerating), some deck repairs, and possibly other maintenance. There aren't many people who still work on vinyl pools, and it was going to cost at least $3000, probably closer to 4, by the time it was a swimmable pool, not to mention monthly cleaning and maintenance.



This is the realtor's photo, which makes it look slightly okay. Once the water was out, it was bad. There were also a lot of cracks in the deck.

We were not up for that, especially for a pool we didn't really want that badly. So, after getting a few quotes on removing the pool and filling it in for anywhere from $3,000 to 10,000, we decided to DIY it, just like we do with almost everything else!

First, we emptied the pool...well, actually, we just let it dry up and empty itself. Next, we removed the liner with a basic utility razor blade, and folded the liner into the deep end. We did take a few minutes to rescue some frogs that were living in the couple of inches of remaining water. Our pool had a vermiculite (basically, sand) bottom and side, with the side surrounded by a metal sheet to hold up the sand, which we left for the time being. Since it isn't a concrete pool, drainage isn't an issue.

Next, we rented a jack hammer from Home Depot and William painstakingly jack hammered the deck.  This is one part that in hindsight, we may have looked at hiring out. I wouldn't think it would cost too much to hire someone to do a couple hours of jack hammering, and someone who does it a lot would probably be more efficient. Not that William wasn't efficient, but it is tiring, painful work and caused a lot of blisters.

The fun part was up next - we rented a "mini" 7,000 pound excavator from Sunbelt Rentals. We went back and forth on whether to get a skid steer or excavator, but in the end, the excavator was the right decision.  It helped us dig up the concrete, even the parts that were still in large chunks. It also has teeth, so it allowed us to really dig into the small hill surrounding the pool. It did have a blade, so we used that for leveling the yard as best we could.  We also had 20 tons of dirt delivered, and the excavator did a pretty good job of moving that around, though the skid steer would have been faster.

A glimpse at how ugly the pool was once the water was out

The hardest part was the metal walls. We didn't realize this, but the sheets were anchored in with large metal bolts. We dug around each bolt and William cut through it with a reciprocating saw that had a metal blade attached. We tried to remove the metal completely, but ended up just folding it in and burying it.

Now, the yard is basically a sand/dirt pit where the pool was, so we will be figuring out a landscaping plan soon. We are so excited to have it gone and done with, and for MUCH less than we would have spent having it done professionally. Having an excavator for a few days was pretty fun, too!

Before leveling and adding more dirt, but already looking much better!

The approximate cost breakdown:

• Jackhammer rental and saw blades: $115


• Excavator rental and gas: $400


• Dirt: $200


• Total so far: $715 

We do need to put in grass, which will be an expense, and will probably buy some more plants. We are mulching a portion along the fence and back, and have a free source for mulch, which will cut down on costs. We also plan to do 2-3 raised garden beds. Even with a few hundred extra dollars put into the landscaping, this is a huge cost saving compared to having a professional remove it OR having it fixed and having to maintain it regularly.