ENTRY

BEFORE - ALMOST THERE- FINISHED PRODUCT

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We did some major renovation to this tiny little room. You know old houses, there are just plenty of little rooms to tackle. The first picture is what it looked like when we moved in. We removed the window and bench so that you could walk straight into the kitchen instead of having to walk through the laundry room to get in our house. You should have seen the pure joy on my husbands face when he got to cut through the brick with a giant gas powered masonry saw (I'll never forget it.)

These matching french doors were in the attic and I loved them so much I knew we had to use them somewhere. The last picture shows the GERMAN SHMEAR! I feel like I have to say it that way, I'm sorry I can't just say german smear. More details on that technique to follow. And lastly we cleaned up the ceiling and added some stain and polyeurethane, added a light fixture, tiled the floor and added a baseboard heater.

GERMAN SHMEAR!

I used masonry mortar in the color white. STEP 1: I mixed it to the consistency of peanut butter and then thinned it out a teeny bit more and smeared it over the brick with my trowel.

STEP 2: I realized about half way through that it actually looked way better if I taped off the bricks I wanted to show through first with painters tape. These bricks are extremely porous with holes in them, not the best to use with this treatment, but I was set on making it work. I also found it looked better if the uncovered bricks were grouped together and not so uniform and evenly spaced. (This was the first wall I did, all the other walls I like better.) STEP 3: Sand! Sand! Sand off any rough clumps of mortar to the desired smoothness. This project was extremely messy, but completely worth it! I loved it so much I did an entire room in this, which I will definitely post at a later date.

FAKE BULKY BASEBOARDS

This room had no baseboards to begin with and towards the end of our major renovation my husband just kind of slapped some thin little trim at the bottom of this room and called it good. I didn't dig the look. So I added a thin piece of trim about 6 inches above that and painted it all white. It gives the appearance of a nice chunky baseboard without the cost. Win win!