My last update on cement floor staining

So we finished the other half of the floor in our downstairs and I have some more things to recommend that I learned.

First---what I did different in the second room.
Instead of (per manufacturer directions) just putting on the stain and leaving it to dry randomly, I went back in and re-spread it after it was about half dry. Using an old broom that we had originally spread it around with I pushed the still wet spots around until the floor was again evenly covered and wet with stain. Then allowed it to dry all the way. In the end I think I got a slightly less mottled look than I did in the other room----a bit smoother and more consistent. I like it better personally.

Second--what I read after we did the first room and I would like to pass on.
Wet your floor down first---lightly. Not only does it allow more time to move around the stain before you get a "dry line" but it also supposedly reduced "blotchy-ness" I can see that it might have helped us to do that as we have a few spots were we can tell it was the specific spot were the stain was poured onto the floor. Another way to reduce "pour edge" is to use a sprayer---all plastic one---which we did not have. We could have done both these things in the second room but I wanted the two rooms to at least somewhat resemble each other so we didn't.

Anyway---as I said I am happy with the look but I now know a few things I would do differently the next time IF I did not want the same look. I will say for sure that if we decorated in the southwestern or rustic style, I would absolutely do it exactly as I did it this time. For a more modern look----I think I would apply the new things I learned when doing it this time like the water and the sprayer and re spreading halfway through.

Finished (with part 1)

So here is our floor completely finished with 3 coats of "wet look sealer" on it. Pretty nice. I still feel it's just a bit too dark but....I am much happier with it sealed.
You can see it on the one side of the room with the tan sofa on it and the other (slightly more mottle side) of the room gives a different perspective. I had to work so that the windows didn't show in the floor pictures. They are so shiny their like dark mirrors almost. (Dusting may be an annoying issue in the future......)
Overall it's MUCH better than what we had. The sealer is great even though I make dusting comments---so glossy and silky underfoot. Before it always felt, no matter how clean the floor was, that your feet were dirty and you needed to scrub them off before getting into bed. Now, they don't at all. Wonderful. I think I am almost more impressed with the sealer rather than the stain :-D
Now---we are moving all the furniture into that room and are going to finish the other half. We still need to caulk some molding on the ceiling, paint the whole thing, sand and clean off gunk on the floor then we will be ready to stain and seal again. Really this part is the quickest part. It sounds as if it will take a while but the caulking is almost done (just a few spots where so much furniture was stacked from the other room I couldn't get to the spots)and painting will only take a couple hours. The floor clean up will be a few hours too. No big deal. By next week---voila! A whole brand new downstairs. Yeah!
Then of course I need curtains, new headboard, rugs, pictures hahahaaha Never ending!! But at least that's the "funner" part that includes shopping and much less manual labor!!

We've already been asked a number of times about this since we started if others can do it and my answer is: Yes, it is easy. Yes, overall it looks good and Yes, even the most basic of "beginner" home remodeler can handle this project.
As I said---start with your garage floor (which is what I should have done) to kind of "learn" your stain. I think overall it will give that small bit of practice first. The cost is negligible. Every bit of this project is cheap. I have maybe $100 invested in the part I have done. That includes everything from sand paper to scraping tools to a new roller, dye and sealer. Definitely one of the cheaper projects with great impact. If you make your own stain using the link from the other day (or find another site) it would be even cheaper. I would absolutely practice on my garage with home made stain just to make sure it was going to end up being the color I thought it was though.

Thanks Robbyn for the nice comment :-)
By the way I like your new header picture---very attractive and almost the same color as my floor!

Have a great day all.

cement sealing

So as a continuation of our cement staining saga I will explain how we have proceeded from where I left off.

After allowing the floor to dry---some spots took longer than others---we did as the manufacturer suggested and scrubbed the floor with a stiff brush and clear water. Following with a wet vac and sucking up the dirty water. You can supposedly mop up the watery filth---but I don't recommend it. We just happen to own a wet vac but if you didn't it would be well worth renting one (or a floor carpet cleaner if you couldn't find a wet vac to rent).

Now to a couple of issues. I personally like a mottled look however some people would consider it to be not mottled but blotchy. Word use depends on your interpretation of the results I think. Anyway---where it puddled the stain did come out darker. It also was darker and lighter depending on wear patterns of our floor. Since it is a 30+ year old floor it is not in as good of shape as a brand new one and there are more "use areas" than a new one would have. I believe that I could go back with a sprayer and hit the lighter spots again if I wanted to make them a bit closer to the darker ones aka less blotchy. I won't however---as I said I like it. It looks a bit like old leather with all the crazing, color differences and the small (but few) cracks.

Secondly---as I wrote the other day I mixed the stain 50/50 with water. I think if I where to do it again I would start with more water. It was a bit darker than I would have originally chosen (too late to change now though) and it would have been easy enough to do a second coat. However I am not unhappy---just wiser if I ever do it again.

Lastly I have included a few pictures of it being sealed today. These pictures are of the first coat of Behr brand masonry sealer high gloss . I purchased it from home depot --about $24 a gallon and I used about 1/2 for first coat on my 24 x 12 foot room. I will put on at least one more coat but I have to let it dry for 4 hours before hand. The blue you see in the picture goes away as the sealer dries---though I worried a bit at first :-)
For this particular "mottled" floor the high gloss looks better and so each following coat will give it slightly more gloss with a maximum of 4 coats per manufacturer. I will do two--maybe 3 coats. We will see---it just depends on how much gloss comes through with each coat.

Overall it has been a cheap and easy way to finish the floor. Especially if like us you can't have carpet for some reason (ours is allergies but moisture or high traffic use also comes to mind). With a bit of practice and experimenting I think I could get much better at it and maybe achieve slightly more interesting and consistent results. A garage comes to mind as a great place to practice if you were so inclined--- then just cover it up with garage paint when your done :-) No one would be the wiser.

Cement staining ---again

So, after some prep work on our old (old old old) stained, paint dripped on, chipped up, bumpy cement floor----we now have put on our first application of concrete stain. (Shown in these pictures about 2 hours after and still drying)

Our prep work consisted of first using a window scraper blade to scrape off loose paint and carpet tack glue that had been dripped onto or applied to the flooring over the years. Then we hand sanded with some sandpaper and some water to keep down dust. We used a 35 grit paper made for a belt sander and a 50 grit disc made specifically for sanding cement counter tops. This helped to get up the rest of the paint and snap lines from old wall placements and some other oddities that wouldn't come off easily. We also had some cement "drips" that left bumps, so we smoothed them down too. Lastly we patched with cement (not concrete) the holes where we had removed nails from old wall sills and carpet tacking. Then we sanded those flush if they weren't already.

Now here are a few things I learned about applying the concrete stain. Yes, it stinks and worse---creates some fumes from the acid reacting to the concrete. So, use a mask suited to this and ventilate well---I didn't this time but will next time. I feel as if I have a bit of a catch in my throat from it--not bad but.... I of course was squatted down using the paint brush and pouring it from the bucket so I think I just got a bit more of it in my face since it fumed for just a bit after pouring. I was much more careful after the first couple of pours but will absolutely use a ventilator next time. Good thing the room wasn't large since it is important not to stop or you can get an very specific line that shows where stopping occurs. Notice the line we chose to stop at in the picture. It is where the sleeping part of our room moves into the sitting area so it was a good spot to stop. (We currently have all the bedroom furniture there so we can only do one section at a time).

Also, they say use an all plastic sprayer to apply it. We did not have one and so we used a paint brush to get up near the edges and an old broom to move the stain around with. As long as you keep a wet edge and a bit of puddling (they say wet---but no puddles) it is not a problem. We didn't have problems with the puddles (see some still in the pics where the floor dips) but they did take longer to dry.
Since I was using the Kemico brand---I mix it 50/50 with water for the first application. I can put on another application if I would like to darken it but I think, even after cleaning it when it dries, I will be happy with the strength of the color. We will then neutralize it with baking soda water and then seal it with something for a shiner look.
Overall---it looks "cooler" than I thought it would. I think I will like it and it does look as if the color matches the slate tile used in our hallway, which is good. If for some reason I decided I don't like it---tiles are in our future.
I will post pics after we seal it so you can see the final results. I think though that it is going to be pretty nice considering we started with such a beat up old floor.

Moving Along with some concrete staining

Sorry to be gone for so long. My computer has been fixed for about a week now---but I developed other interests while waiting for it to work again :-)

As you all know we have been/are remodeling our house. I did finally finish my tile work in my kitchen (including the hundreds of cut tiles---each 3/4") except that it is not grouted. I am still sampling and mixing for the correct color---put off at times as other things intrude. Each time I make a new sample board I have to wait at least one day for the tile mortar to set then I grout and wait another two days for the true color to come out. I need to make another sample board (again) of two or three mini tiles so I can try out some more different proportions of color. As soon as I settle on the right (read perfect) grout color---it won't take long to have a finished product. Yes, I am a bit of a screwball as I search for the "exactly" right thing.

Anyway---as we waited for the new computer parts to arrive and for sample boards to dry we have begun work on our bedroom. The ceiling is painted, the walls are almost finished being painted. One wall is missing it's paint since it is a different color and I forgot to buy it when I was at the paint store. Molding is going up and now I am about to stain the cement floor. Our bedroom is a converted open face basement. It was originally a business in the lower part of our house and had partition walls, millions of phone lines and plugs in the ceilings. It even had a very large non removable "NO SMOKING ALLOWED" sign on the old sliding door. All that is now gone---and looking much nicer I might add even in it's not quite finished state.
Anyway---as I said I am about to stain the concrete floor since we will not (because of allergies) use a wall to wall carpet. We could use tile for a slightly fancier look---but it is not in our budget right now and besides we have always liked the look of stained concrete. Long popular in California and Texas---we were exposed to it long before it became so hot through out the rest of the country and have had many "Stained concrete! I can't imagine not covering it up. Are you sure it will look good?" reactions.
Years ago, during a trip to Texas, I forayed into Dallas and bought Kemiko concrete stain in cola (scroll down to see colors) in anticipation of this time. Lately however, I was thinking I might like to add a bit of randomness to the color and, since it is very expensive (because of the danger) to ship acid stain chemicals through the mail---I searched for sites on making my own. The shipping cost can almost double the price since they are considered hazardous chemicals.
Here is one site on concrete staining: my search term was "homemade concrete stain"
There are other links and sites than just that one of course. Hope this helps some others get some ideas and maybe save some money. I will eventually show finished pics---please have patience since I do the work as time and finances are available (I do always finish though!)

Glad to be back---hope everyone is having a good winter.
By the way---it's almost time for PEA PLANTING here!

Not quite finished

Hope everyone's holiday time is going well. I know some of you have snow---hopefully it didn't create problems for you as it came down.

I just wanted to post a few pictures of our tile work in our kitchen. Actually my husband wanted to show some friends so I am putting them up before it is actually done. However---you can get an overall idea of what it will look like. I still need to finish the small cut tiles that fill in corners and edges and to grout but well....it looks kind of cool doesn't it :-) The edging at the top is some 1" aluminum that my husband cut and installed. It makes a nice "stop edge" since we don't have upper cabinets.
The color in the second picture is a bit more accurate though not 100% true. I have forgotten how to change my camera to daylight (versus indoors or fluorescent lighting etc) so I keep getting a bit of over exposure on my pics. I will figure out how to change it again eventually but until then--- well sorry but the pics are kind of bright.

Oh yes, here's the link back to my post on making these grids of tile: Making tiles
Yes, it was a bit tedious but as you can see---well worth it.

Have a super great holiday season whichever holiday you may be celebrating!!

Making Tiles

Back on July 4th (was it that long ago!) I posted about how I would like to tile my kitchen. Well, after much deliberation, and procrastination, I changed my mind. I thought maybe I might be going a bit to wild if I tiled the way I originally thought I might like to do.
I decided that a mixed up colored mosaic would probably be just fine and maybe a bit more conservative considering the colors I was using :-)
I had put off making the tiles because I wasn't exactly sure how to do about 120 sheets (each 12" x 12") of mosaics.
Now that we are having family come at Christmas I decided it was a do it "now or never" endeavor. (Good rhyme ) So I looked on line to find out exactly what to stick these tiles to as I make each sheet. The lower cost alternative seems to be contact paper---the kind used to line drawers with. While looking in some of the on line stores specializing in mosaic art I also found a plastic grid, 12" x 12" wide, that holds the tiles in place until you place the contact paper (or whatever you use) to hold them until the actual tiling job. Since it was only 9.95 plus a couple dollars shipping I purchased it hoping that it would make this whole business way way easier. After it got here (in about a week) I went to the store and bought a couple rolls of contact paper. Then the hard part began.
First I had to figure exactly how many tiles of each color I had so that I can makes sure the tiles have about the same percentage of each color. I don't want some to be all greens and others all blue----I wanted it a bit more overall uniformity with all my colors.
Then, I had to soak the tiles color by color to remove the backing paper. I did a few sheets at a time depending on how many tiles per square I needed. Case in point...red only requires 2 little three quarter inch tiles per foot square. But the darker green needs 50. So I only soaked a half a sheet of red versus the many many sheets I needed for my much bigger pile of dark green.
My next step is to count out tiles for each square. I am using a handy chart I made up with one of each color tile taped to a board and the number needed written beside it. I am using 13 colors and it can get confusing trying to remember how many of each since about half the colors are shades of blue or green. As I count them I put them into 10 sandwich baggies I have been using over and over. Fill, make, re fill, make, re fill, make, re fill. A bit tedious to say the least but....each tile would have cost 10 dollars more per tile to have the company do it. Now that is not why I did this though---originally I was only going to have one (just one, not 13) colors of tile. So it kind of snowballed to say the least. However since it takes me about 15 minutes to make one after prepping the tiles (which doesn't take long either) it has worked out o.k.
So I added some picture of my finished stacks, along with the grid we have been using. I have to admit the grid has been GREAT for doing this ---I wish I had bought two so my husband could do it too. It also had one more un intended benefit----it helped us to decide grout color. I would have chosen white however when we viewed the tiles in the black grid we realized that black grout would look much nicer over all. So we will eventually get them up and grout it with black---not white. The one thing I hate about the fact that it looks good with black is that black grout is awful to use. Very difficult to clean off the tiles and I don't look forward to it----but I must persevere for the sake of a beautiful kitchen wall.

Tiling

Well, as a break from the recent spinning, I am laying out my tile for my kitchen wall. I have "mulled" over exactly how I wanted it to look for a while now and with the counters finished---we can tile. The tile will not only look nice but also cover up the cement water that splashed onto the walls and stained them.
So...though I will probably be a while laying it out AND I decided to order a few more of a few select colors from Mosaic Tile Market....here is a sneak preview of what it will eventually be like. You can get somewhat of an idea of what I am aiming for with these pictures :-) Lots of color!

Have a great 4th everyone! * * * *

Oh yes----we are getting some little bitty rain showers lately. Not enough to grow grass but at least enough to turn some of it back to a light shade of green. More would be greatly appreciated though!

Time for something else

Recently since it warmed up a bit we decided now was the time to tile our downstairs hall's radiant heated wall. We have wanted to tile this wall since we first put in the heat system. Heating this wall was a project that we "made up" while installing the rest of the radiant heat system. Not much was written at the time about running pex through the walls to warm the house. One article was all that we could find---and the writer has also been experimenting to see how he liked it.

Well, as far as heating goes we have been happy with it. It works really really well. But after having it for a while we kind of felt that tiling would help give it more "mass" which would make the heat more spread out and not somewhat in strips on the wall. Not that it didn't heat the hall well---it did, sometimes too well, but everyone knows mass helps hold the heat longer. We had also bought a new control for turning the heat up and down (much nicer than our original "jury rigged" one) and needed to install it. Because this is a hydronic (water) heating system we have to drain the entire system to do any changes what so ever. Hence the desire to wait for warmer weather. One more thing was that the hall was kind of "blah" so we felt it would punch it up a bit more than paint would have.

With the delay in my lambs during the last couple of weeks I felt this was a good project to keep me busy, which it did. Though not in quite the relaxed way I had hoped it would.
We had found the slate at Home Depot a couple months back. It was a regular 12 x 12 tile. Very nice but installed in that size it would have looked too much like a floor was installed on the wall. So to keep it from looking like that I cut down each tile down to three tiles of not quite 4 inches by 12, then applied them to the wall. It became quite tedious and I wondered where my brain was when I came up with this hair brain scheme. And before doing that we had also had to prep the wall since it had drywall on it, putting up cement board (rock board, wonderboard what ever you want to call it) on the walls, installing the new control and also moving and widening the door to our bedroom. My husband did all of the heating work (I don't know anything about that!) but I helped with the rest---except the cutting of the cement board. That requires a saw and I hate hate using the electric saws.

Anyways in one of the before pics you can see the foil behind the radiant tubing---that is just heavy duty aluminum foil. And yes, it does work. We also have pink board behind part of the wall since it backs up to the garage storage room. No sense in radiating heat into the storage room! The red tubing is what the hot water moves through and it is amazing stuff. My husband says that tubing like that is the easiest plumbing work he has ever done. He says if we ever build---he will use it for all of the plumbing since it is quick to install and easy to get to where it's needed.

The last pictures are of the wall basically finished. I still have to fill the holes in the molding and then seal the molding. At first about half way through---I didn't think I liked it but now that it is done I really do.
And really ---the picture doesn't do it justice. It is not as blue looking in person. Kind of black and grey and golds which goes well with the black metal rails and the oak stairs. It is supremely cool when we open the door and walk into the hall. Very "posh" hahaha

Almost a baby's butt

So---we have worked on our water problem previously spoken of in regards to our concrete counter top and now have one cabinet with a sanded smooth top on it. It looks really good if I do say so myself---and REALLY the picture doesn't even do it justice. We can see much more glass than before. Everyone who sees it "pets" it for a while---it's really really neat. We still have to fill some voids (common issue) and seal it but I am so glad we did it. We have much more to do---and I think I need to order some more of the glass we are using.
We ended up using a lot of water---a lot a lot.
We now realize that we will have to get pretty creative to keep the flying h2o in place while doing the cabinets that can't be removed from the house. At least we have a wet dry vac which will be a great help in keeping the water contained. Unfortunately we will also have to use plastic sheeting. We have an extra heavy duty piece of a very large size that came tarped over our windows this summer when they were delivered. We have already gotten many uses out of it and it will come in handy again with this project. I won't feel so bad when we throw it away eventually because we have used and reused it BUT I will have to buy a few more. I doubt I will find plastic sheeting used---most people just throw it away after one use. To bad isn't it. We generally invest in drop clothes for painting and other projects to avoid plastic, but they won't work in this situation. We'd have water dripping everywhere.
Well, I'll keep this updated so anyone potentially interested in it can do it their selves too. We procrastinated a bunch on this project because even though all the books/magazines said it was easy---we never could find a blog or anything that a "regular" person did it and said it was easy. So now we know it's easy (as long as we don't have to carry them on our back!)

Here is a good link for more information:
Cheng Concrete Exchange----the original architect that made concrete counters/kitchens famous (not saying he was the first---just the first widely recognized concrete person)

And a picture forum for ideas: Decorative Concrete Photos

My take on the situation

I recently posted about our concrete counter tops and would like to update slightly about that situation. The last we posted was that we had poured two small section but had to wait until after the holidays to sand/polish them. Well, I also didn't tell you we had to order the sanding disks (which look nothing like wood sanding disks I found out). We finally received the disks (which is a completely different fiasco that I won't blog about) and decided to give them a "spin" the other night.
Since we will not be able to carry the peninsula outside to sand we decided to leave the small cabinet in the kitchen to get a feel for how it will be when doing the bigger/longer sections. I said " don't forget to tarp the cabinet so that it doesn't get damaged" to my wonderful spouse. Which he did do. Then---while I was engaged doing something else --he preceded to start sanding. Which was fine. Until he added a very small amount of water to the process as you are suppose to do to keep the little bits of rock from gouging the much softer cement (yes, in the scheme of things cement is very soft. Much much softer than granite and marble to give you an example). At this point let me add that he forgot to tarp ALL the cabinets and only did the one he was working on AND in all fairness neither of us really thought it would be that big of a deal. Irregardless what we thought--- when you add water to a situation that has a disk spinning at about 2000 revolutions per minute---it splashes just a bit. Just a little bit---really.
He said he sanded with the water for a couple of seconds and checked to see if it was splashing--because he DID realized that it could happen. The problem was that he checked by looking down at the front of himself which was basically not splashed except for a very very small bit and in doing so he forgot to look sideways.
Well, when I came in the kitchen I had an entirely different vantage point which included the fronts of all the surrounding cabinets. Think one of those "exploding soda pop bottle" type situations. All of them had cement "juice" slung across them from top to bottom, and it was across the floor and the dishwasher and the living room floor---almost to the living room chair (which luckily has a slip cover so it would have been washable). To end this story---we cleaned it all up and now have a completely different perspective on what it will take to tarp the kitchen in preperation for this job. As I am sure you can imagine.

Concrete Countertops

We have finally gotten around to starting our counter tops. We decided a long time ago (actually many many houses ago) that we would like concrete counter tops. I am posting a few pics to show what is going on. Excuse the last picture since I was playing with the camera and that was not the picture that was suppose to be there. It is a close up of a protruding green glass piece. After a few failed attempts at getting the correct pictures posted----I am accepting this set. The last set had some Xmas party pictures of my husband and I---definitely not counter tops :-) The set before that wouldn't post so anyways.......
The first picture is the cabinet pre-pore with the screen cut for use in the middle of the cement pour to reduce cracking. (The cabinet was actually moved away from the wall and the drawers taken out before we put in the cement). The cabinets all have stainless steel edging to hold in the cement so that we wouldn't have to mess with all of the form work---we decided we would rather have the steel than mess with building wood forms to make the counter top lip. The stainless steel was purchased from a metal company and my husband bent and welded it up to fit each section. He also brushed it so it will match the front of the stove and fridge.
We mixed the bags of 5000psi cement outside in the wheel barrow, adding acrylic water re placer for some of the water (to further reduce any cracking and shrinking) and then took it to the kitchen in a bucket. We poured the first half, laid the screen, then went for the rest of the cement. Before we took the second half to the kitchen, we mixed in some colored glass and rocks (black, blue and green) of various sizes so when we grind the counter to smooth it the glass will show through. Kind of like terrazzo. We actually had some white quartz that we picked up when we went to Arkansas for Thanksgiving for it too----but forgot to crush it and use it. Oh well. The nervousness of doing this made us forget the white stone which was still sitting in a bucket by the front door. One of those duh moments.
The first counter top we did --we mixed the "mixture" way too dry and think we might have to knock it out of the form and re pore it. It is a bit too "dippity" and when we grind it smooth we could have to many dips and waves and holes from the dryness of the mix. It was very difficult to try and smooth out---even when we resorted to spraying it with water to help the cream come up a bit. With the eventual use of a cement slurry to fill in some problem spots (common to all pours), it may still not look the best. In other wards---we think it might be too problematic. But it is only about 9 to 12 dollars worth of material so not really that big of a deal. (except time wise) The other cabinet on the other side of the stove was poured much wetter---we learned our lesson----and came out much much nicer. When we finally grind it it should look good.
We have to wait at least 4 days before we can sand/grind it to polish it but with Christmas coming it might be a bit longer. We won't pour the long sink counter and peninsula before we sand those two to make sure we are happy with the results. Just in case you know. I would hate to have to remove 6 running feet of 2 1/2 deep cement counter top---or the pennisula.
In the picture below the wheel barrow you can kind of see the colored glass if you get real close to the picture LOL. Don't forget your reading glasses.
After the counters are done I can then tile the walls/back splash in the kitchen with some tiles I have to go with the whole thing. I look forward to doing that since I am sick of looking at primed drywall and open plugs in the walls. Sometimes some things fall to the wayside though as more pressing issues come up. We have had "pressing" issues since about the end of August and this has really been the first time we had the mental oomph to work on the kitchen again. Or the time even.
The next issue to work out----can you really grind counter tops in place without making a huge mess?? The books say you can with proper preparation---but I will wait and make up my own mind. I am the clean up person after all--so I WILL know. My husband is tool picker upper and outside cleaner upper. We seem to make BIG messes most of the time so we have divided clean up chores based on who is best at what. I definitely clean up the inside better :-)

A Blue (and Green) Xmas with Radiators

Yes, that is my glowingly white xmas tree in my living room. All dressed up (mostly) in blue and green. Obviously you can tell it is FAKE. A big fat fake white tree. For years and years I held out against a "boxed" tree. For one---their fake and they look it. Two: the whole using up of resources for such a silly consumer thing made me feel as if I shouldn't do it---we have a number of times purchased live then planted them after xmas. Finally though when the allergies and asthma became to much we decided we would break down and buy one. Well, I decided if we were going to have fake---we were going to have the fakest of fake trees. How much more un real can you get than white? I mean really.
O.k---I could have gotten one of those blue ones. But I LIKE the white ones.
I will say since we live in a late 60's split level that the tree does sort of "go" with the whole mid century idea though. We have tried to remain somewhat true to the house during renovation and we like mid century modern. I also remember my grandmother having a white tree when I was little and many other people too. So if nothing else we can be "cool" temporarily and make a mid century statement. hehehe Which absolutely doesn't fit the whole farm thing we have going on outside the house.
By the way, since putting up the tree I seem to have that song "I'll have a blue xmas without you" stuck in my head----and it's probably now in yours.
Notice to the side of the tree is our "rad". Yes it sits a bit off the floor (all the better to dust under you dear) but will eventually have a nice rad cover over it---we just haven't decided on a style yet. The mission style that we see so commonly just won't fit a 60's split/ranch. So we will procrastinate for a while longer until some great idea hits us. My husband installed the complete heating system in this house. It is a hydronic system running off an on demand/instantaneous water heater plumbed almost entirely with pex tubing --my husband highly recommends the pex tubing. Eventually the water heater will be hooked into an evacuated tube solar collector , which should about halve our heating of water. We are pretty sunny here in the winter and evacuated tube collectors are very efficient at their job. We hoped to get them this year but it looks like it will be next year since we don't get any solar rebates from the state to help out with cost. It will all be out of pocket for us which means waiting while a few other expensive things get finished first. The man that built our house sited it to the south (with big windows) and so the longest part of the roof will be perfect for water heating when we can purchase it.
We also ran some of the heating pipes under the floors so we have a small amount of radiant floor heating and in the wall next to our garage we put tubing in the wall--which is wonderful when you come in from a very cold outside. When we were trying to decide to do wall tubing/heating we only found one article about radiant wall heating. The article it self was written by a man doing an experiment. Well, since then this is what we have decided: We would absolutely do wall heating again. We highly recommend it to others and as a matter of fact we wish we had done more walls and less radiators. We also think it is as good if not better than floor heating. Of course you have to pick walls were you won't have a lot of pictures--that is one downside (tiled bathroom walls would really work well). We also decided next time we would go ahead and send off to Europe for a really really nice knob to turn the heat up and down with. Of course you can also do thermostats but we just wanted to be able to turn it up down off very un complicatedly right at the location. I am a simple person at heart---hence the sometimes odd selections of thing.

Finally

Finally--my first post. I have been waiting to get new batteries for my camera so I could add a picture with my first posting. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to post---but I imagine I will get rolling with time. Anyways--here is my beautiful black maple with a little view of my neighbors house behind it. I hope to have postings of more than the tree in the future: gardens, sheep, cows, the work we do on our house. We have lots of work to go. We purchased our house a bit over 2 years ago and have been working on it ever since. Two bathrooms done--completely tiled floor to ceiling, one left. Kitchen cabinets built--no doors or drawer fronts yet. Stairs with almost finished stair railings. All new windows (boy that was a great project since the old single pane aluminum windows leaked like a sieve) Yes, we flip flop around---but eventually we will finish it. We do the work as we have the money and we do it ourselves. Sometimes we procrastinate if we are unsure how to do a project hence jumping around. Some other things I would like to blog about in the future: pasture restoration, organics, environmental things, raw milk, sheep, fleeces and wool, making cheese, canning and gardening, heritage/open pollinated vegetables. I could go on but will leave it at that for now. :-)