Installing PVC Wainscot Backsplash

Who doesn't love the look of wainscoting?  I would put different styles of it throughout every room in my house if I could afford it, and get the Laird on board with installing all of it.  Maybe over the years, little by little we can experiment.  Have you ever looked into all the different styles of wainscoting out there?  If you're not familiar, search it on google images or Pinterest.  You will be amazed!  For our kitchen, and very first wainscot project, we decided to keep it simple and do a traditional bead board.

We chose to do a PVC wainscot back splash in our kitchen.   After reading people's reviews, we decided that PVC wainscot would be easier to care for and clean than wood or particle board wainscot, while preserving a traditional appearance.  We used 8 ft. panels of  EverTru PCV wainscot from Lowes.  They offer packages of shorter panels as well.  After measuring the height we wanted our wainscot to rise, we cut the panels to fit.  Cutting holes for electrical outlets, windows, and cabinets proved to be the most challenging portion of the project. Purchase a little more material than you need to install, to account for mistakes and waste. To install the panels, we applied Liquid Nails to the backside of panel and attached panel to the wall.  Then we used an air compressor nail gun to further hold panels in place.  All directions suggest starting in the corner of the room and then proceeding outward- this is important so that you have whole panels meet in the corner.  After installing the wainscot panels, we then installed the PVC chair rail trim to the top edge of the wainscot.  Then we installed a PVC rounded shoe mould to the base, where the wainscot and Corian counters meet.  Liquid Nails and the nail gun secured both the chair rail and shoe moulding in place.  This project can be accomplished by one person, though it works very efficiently with 2 people.  The Laird and I made a good team and got the job done!

Shoe Moulding along base of bead board

The installation was successful, and fairly easy.  The EverTru panels are reversible- wide bead and narrow bead.  We used the narrow bead side.  Though the PVC bead board is paintable, we opted not to paint it at this time.  We do still need to fill the tiny nail holes along the chair rail and should mould.  

Wainscoting changes and improves the look of a room dramatically!  

Chair Rail along top of bead board

Along this wall we will be putting 2 open shelves.
Brackets have been ordered.  Now we just need to find the wood for the shelves.

Need to decide on and purchase/ build a range hood

The kitchen is on it's way to completion.  We have to trim and sill the window, add crown and base moulding, and then install some open shelving along the free wall.  Oh yah, we need to figure out a hood as well.  All in good time!  We're getting there, inch by inch!

How to Weave a Rush Chair

When the Laird and I got married almost 4 years ago, we both owned our own houses.  I had a single family house in one part of the city.  He had a side by side duplex in another part of the city.  His house was within walking distance of the hospital that I worked at, so it only made sense for me to move in with him upon getting married.  We knew that we would eventually purchase a house with land, so we chose not to purchase new furniture at the time.

Over the years, the Laird has collected an assortment of furniture from garage sales to outfit his home.  His old roommate found a nice dining room table with 3 ladder back chairs at one such garage sale.  Since those days, the roommate has since gotten married and moved on- and left that old table & chairs with the Laird and the apartment.  My ideal table is a pedestal table, like the Sumner table from Pottery Barn.  I love pedestal tables because you can fit a lot of people around them, without impeding table legs.  Though this is my ideal, I have grown more and more content with our 'ole garage sale table and ladder back rush chairs.  What a great fit for a farmhouse- especially the chairs.  

Our rush chairs have obviously seen better days.

I wondered how difficult it would be to repair the rush on our chairs.  I found a wonderful YouTube video by Ed Hammond (Peerless Rattan), showing step by step how to weave a rush chair.  I decided to take on the challenge and purchased my materials from Peerless Rattan.  They sell a Complete Rush Seating kit, which includes 2 lbs. 5/32 craft brown fibre rush, an instruction booklet, wedge & peg.

Rush Seating Kit + other tools (that I didn't use)

Removed damaged rush & old tacks

The front of the chair is wider than the back, therefore it is necessary to weave a few rounds on the front of the chair to square it up for weaving the rest of the chair.  Each new strand is stapled into chair.  A regular staple gun will not work properly.  Use a T25 cable staple gun (Peerless Rattan, Home Depot, Lowes all sell them) for this project.  The staples have a rounded top, rather than flat; also called a cable gun.

It is helpful to use a pony clamp to hold the tension of rush as you work each round.  At this point in the project, 1-2 cardboard triangles into each open section of the seat, for extra strength/ support (refer to video for further explanation).

With sides weaved, you complete chair weaving front to back as space allows.

Helpful tip:  Wet the rush while working- but DO NOT soak.  Moistening the rush makes it more pliable to work with.  However, do not soak rush, as it will fall apart when applying tension.  Also, I ran out of fibre rush prior to completing this chair.  I thought it was a standard size, which generally used about 2lbs. fibre rush.  I would recommend buying more than 2lbs. so that you don't have to order more in the midst of your project.

And here is the finished chair- much better than what we started with.  I will re-weave the other 2 chairs we have to match.  A fun project to learn how to do- I mean who can say they have ever rushed a chair?  I can.  Peerless Rattan was a wonderful resource, both through the informational video and as a place to purchase quality supplies.  Their customer service was excellent, and the products arrived very quickly.  I highly recommend them for anyone interested in seat weaving.  They have instructional videos on a variety of seat weaving methods.

Currently sitting more comfortably!

Reaching Our Threshold

One of smaller changes of our renovations was widening the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room.  The original doorway was abnormally narrow and short, making the house feel very disconnected.

 

The contractor opened up the doorway as much as the wall could structurally allow.   Once the drywall was completed, we would begin preparing a new threshold.  The doorway from the Great Room into the kitchen had a uniquely worn and distressed piece of solid pine as the threshold.  The Laird liked this look and wanted to recreate it in the other doorway.  I suggested that it would be difficult to match that old worn pine, and would look nice to match the new red oak kitchen floors.  He purchased a long, unfinished piece of red oak to span the doorway.  I used our can of extra Nutmeg stain that came with our cabinets to stain the threshold.  After 3 coats of stain and then 3 coats of semi-gloss polyurethane, it was finally ready for installation.

The distressed threshold between the Great Room & kitchen

Creating the step out of 2 x 4 boards

The original floor sloped from the kitchen to the dining room.  Widening the doorway gave us a reason to  create a step down into dining room from the kitchen.  The Laird was not entirely sure how to install the threshold, but came up with an idea.  He found 2 small pieces of thin metal that he nailed into the bottom of the wood.

Then he covered the place where threshold would be with Liquid Nails- the metal flaps pointing towards the kitchen. 

We applied weight to area as the Liquid Nails dried over night.  Then we were able to finish the floor.  A few more projects successfully checked off "The List"- the floor & threshold completed!

Taking on renovating an old farmhouse has been fun, but a ton of work!  We knew going into this adventure that it would be a lot of hard work and patience, but we did not know what our threshold would be.  I think we've reached it.  Thankfully, we're coming to the completion of many projects we've been in the middle of for a while- primarily the kitchen and stairs.  Seeing the finished (or semi-finished) outcome makes it all totally worth it.  In the midst of all the work, when it was below freezing outside, and we were trying to keep warm by the heat of our wood stoves, and the house was a construction zone- we kept asking ourselves, "What were we thinking?!"  Now with winter behind us, and the current house projects coming to completion, and the chance to be outside walking the property, or working on the garden, we are reminded why exactly why we came to live at this place we affectionately call REDWOODSHIRE!

Travel Planning- A Tip from the Lady of Redwoodshire

Our Babymoon in Costa Rica

The more you travel, the better you get at it. Traveling is an extremely fun thing to do.  But with any good thing in life, it takes a little planning and preparation.  There are two ends of the spectrum when it comes to planning a trip- some people like to go with the flow and see what happens... and others like to have an hour-by-hour itinerary for each day.  I like to think that a balanced combination of the two, make for the best kind of adventure.  If you don't plan anything in advance, you end up spending more time trying to figure out what you will do with your day, than getting to experience all there is to experience in the new place your in.  Precious time gets wasted.  On the other hand,  when you have every last detail planned out, it may get complicated when something does not go as planned- and if you're the type to have time planned down to the hour, then you may not deal well with those unexpected changes.

The Laird and I both love to travel.  Between us, we've travelled to China (twice), the Philippines, Mexico (three times), England, Spain, Costa Rica (twice), Aruba, Peru, & Canada.  Some of those trips together and some on our own.  In the past, we preferred international travel, but a couple years ago our West Coast Road Trip opened our eyes to the fun of domestic travel as well.

The Honeymoon was the first trip we would plan and take together.  We had so much to learn about planning a fun trip on our own- as previous trips were planned and organized by other people.  It can be quite overwhelming to decide where to go.... then where to stay... and ultimately what to do.  Where to go?  We usually don't have too much trouble with this decision.  What to do?  Not too difficult either.  Where to stay?  Now this is where our work starts.

When picking out a place to stay for our Honeymoon, we had a list of 30+ places to choose from.  As we checked out the websites of different places, we quickly narrowed the list down.  Then we discovered 2 tools that we have used for every trip we've planned since then:  Trip Advisor reviews & Flickr.

Trip Advisor:  Ranks each hotel in the area by different criteria; overall, price, etc.  Guest Reviews- they are actually so helpful and often very current.  They can be quite funny too!   Reading people's personal experiences can be extremely helpful in imagining if it fits what you're looking for.  A link to the hotel website is often provided as well.  The site provides both professional and personal photos that people post.  Not only does it offer information about places to stay, but also provides popular activities and places to eat (also ranked).

Flickr:  One thing that was often mentioned in reviews of the resort we liked, were these sandbags on the beach.  Considering it was our honeymoon, we weren't sure how we felt about having tacky sandbags cluttering the beach we'd be swimming on.  Some people complained in their reviews.  Some were indifferent, and others never mentioned them.  That is when we discovered that we could search people's personal photos within Flickr,  from their stay at this particular resort.  And low and behold, we actually did find some photos of those sandbags. Check out this El Dorado Royale sandbags photo. Who would have thought to check Flickr?!  Needless to say, we did spend our honeymoon at that resort, and quite enjoyed the sandbags on the beach.  They formed a great little place for snorkeling and seeing fish.  Nowadays, we generally don't use flickr for planning our trips, but has been a great secondary search tool when we want to see real people's photos.

The Laird & I with a baby
white faced monkey @ Proyecto Asis

Depending on what type of trip you are planning will influence how much importance you place on where you stay.  For our honeymoon, we wanted to relax somewhere nice.  We would only ever have one honeymoon, so we wanted to make it a great one.  However since that trip, we have placed far less emphasis on needing the place to be "just right".  We use Trip Advisor as more of an activity guide to finding adventures off the beaten path.  On our recent trip to Costa Rica, my favorite thing we did was visit Proyecto Asis.  It was ranked very highly on Trip Advisor, so we decided to follow the reviews and check it out for ourselves.  And like the reviews post, it really was a wonderful experience visiting the animals up close and learning about the center.

If you're planning a vacation or honeymoon and want a little more information than the brochure guides offer, check out Trip Advisor & Flickr!

Upstairs Hall Renovation & Re-Purposed Linen Cabinet

Upper cabinets to be re-purposed

The closet being replaced by stairs & linen cabinet

Original upstairs hall closet & stairs

When renovating the upstairs of the Redwoodshire house, we lost a large hall closet to the new stairs that were installed.  Originally we were going to put in a more shallow linen closet, in the same place where the old closet was.  But with the newly vaulted ceilings and L-shaped stairs, we thought that a floor-to-ceiling closet would take away from the new openness of the ceilings.  As with any old farmhouse, the closets are small or all together absent.  We needed something to make up for the lost storage space.  We re-purposed a long stretch of upper kitchen cabinets, into a linen cabinet for our upstairs landing.

We hired a contractor to do the  renovation work & stairs.  We re-purposed & installed the cabinet. As can be seen from the original hall closest photos, the ceilings were extremely low (just higher than the door trim).  The closet was removed for the new staircase and the ceilings were raised to the rafters.  This change made an amazing difference to the feel of the upstairs.  We originally want to raise the ceilings of the entire upstairs, but the cost of the whole project was more than we had anticipated.  We decided to leave the 2 smaller bedrooms (children's bedrooms) with the low ceilings, and vaulted the landing, master bedroom and the bathroom. 

The closet removed & the ceilings raised to the rafters

New carpets installed.  Chandelier hung.  Cabinet stained and installed.

We found that the kitchen cabinet was re-faced with cedar boards & doors.  We decided to continue the theme and covered the back of the cabinet with stained cedar boards (varying widths).  This gave it somewhat of an old barn look.   The stain used was the same color that was used on the stair treads- Miniwax Provincial.  

 We covered the top of the cabinet with cedar planks & included an "N" for our last name!