California 2 Puerto Rico » Paint

The Gym is DONE!

Summer — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:34:05 +0000

I can hardly believe it, but the gym in our house is finally done! While we were in San Diego in Sept/October, we had the ceilings put in downstairs so when we got home, I started working on the gym since I am anxious to get back into shape after being pregnant and it sure it nice to finally have a permanent place to put our fitness equipment. This is what I had to do to finish our gym:

- Clean. There was annoying construction crap (spackle/drywall dust that took more then 4 floor scrubbings, stray concrete, etc) that I had to clean up.

- Paint. I painted the ceilings and soffits white, the walls light blue and one wall a bright blue.

- Install stripper pole. It might seem strange that I have a ‘stripper pole’, but it really is the best excersize and it’s super duper fun. Like playing on the monkey bars when you were a kid!

- Install entertainment center. 32″ TV mounted on the wall, hooked up to a Mac Mini so we have internet access, DVD player, Wii Fit and stereo system.

So, there are all sorts of fun things to do in our gym now! We have a treadmill, stripper pole, Wii Fit balance board, Tai Bo/Dance/Fitness DVD’s, yoga ball, free weights and jump ropes. And most importantly, we have air conditioning in the gym (This may seem like a given for a house in Puerto Rico, but most of our house does not have A/C.)!

While I would consider the gym as being done, these are a couple of little things that will be done in the near future:

- Trim out the windows. But I havn’t figured out how we are going to do that yet.

- Organize/hide all the cords hanging from the entertainment center.

- Install grande mirrors on the back wall.

And one last thing that we will eventually do:

- Install Brazilian teak hardwood flooring. We have just enough left over from when we did the upstairs, so whenever we get around to doing the floors downstairs we will install that in the gym. But we are pretty burned out on construction, so the polished concrete floors are just fine with me until we decide to open that can of worms .

Here is a walk through of our gym today:

Our Sexy Techno Bathroom

Summer — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:26:24 +0000

We are keeping the upstairs of our house somewhat tradition when it comes to the interior design, so we decided to get a little ~~buck wild,~~ ~~insane~~, um, creative, with the downstairs. For the downstairs bathroom, we picked out a dark gray (almost black) tile for the floors, light gray tile with oriental accents for the shower and a bold “cranberry” color for the walls. Well, that “cranberry” color turned out to be HOT PINK. Here is the progress of the bathroom and laundry room so far:

Every one that has seen the bathroom has laughed and made a “techno”, “nightclub” or “lets do drugs and get naked in here!” comment about our sexy little techno bathroom…haha. We were going for a more zen feel, but whatever, it’s hilarious. I wish we had the foresight and purchased a black toilet for this bathroom.

Faux Finish Paint – Summer’s Office

Summer — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 22:12:21 +0000

Before my last trip to San Diego, I wanted to get the paint done in my office. Unfortunately I was rushed, didn’t read the faux painting instructions and it wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it. So I abandoned the project, until today. Here is the base coat + partial paint that didn’t turn out:

I’m doing a faux finish that requires a lighter tinted paint (the seafoam looking paint) as a base coat, with a paint/glaze mix for the finishing coat (the darker teal color).

On my 1st try, I was rolling the darker teal paint on and then trying to manipulate the paint with cheesecloth, for a weathered look. Unfortunately I was getting roller lines and I ran out of cheese cloth about 1/10th of the way through…

So, I resumed the project today with a new game plan. I mixed the glaze and paint (4 parts glaze to 1 part paint) and cut up a terrycloth towel and used that as my paint brush.

I scrunched the towel into a ball, dipped it into the glaze/paint mix and “washed” the walls in a circular motion. It really was just like washing/scrubbing a car, and I like how it turned out (for the most part).

Here is the finished faux finish:

Now I need to paint the white walls (they’ve been primed already), and I’m thinking of adding a pearlescent additive to the white paint to give it an interesting shine. I’m also going to paint the window panes white.

After the white paint, I need to pick out baseboards, outlet covers and hang all of the dohickies that go on the wall (which I need to get right the 1st time, since I’ll be drilling into concrete to hang anything in my office).