Studio-licous

I am feeling really great about my studio right now. So I took a bunch of photos to show it off. This is considered our clean work space.
You can see the new magnet paint in full force. The main thing left to do in here is once we get our new electrical power panel in we will install the cable lights in the studio. This will also allow us to be able to use all of our outlets. We put quite a few in and they are installed just below the counter height.
Now that the weather is warming up it is much easier to use this space. Since I do a lot of my work late at night when the little one is asleep. I love being able to work in here. It just feels great.
I will get photos soon of the in progress greenhouse studio it is the dirty work space.

This looks fun | Mark lives in IKEA

Check out this blog I found today.
Mark lives in IKEA.
I love having dinner at Ikea.

Magnet Paint

Well a while back when I was trying to solve a way to mount things on the wall, when I came across a product that caught me eye, Magnetic Receptive Paint. Basically it is a paint that is impregnated with metal shards. And when you paint the paint on magnet will stick to it. This seemed like a great thing to me. We used to have these big metal boards up in the old studio and we filled them up completely. I liked the idea of the paint so we wouldn't be confined to the metal boards. And besides the metal boards were a hassle to mount.
The directions on the can say to do at least 3 coats, air drying between each coat. So I painted four coats. And then you paint your chosen wall color over it. This pretty much took me two coats to cover the very dark grey color of the magnetic receptive paint. Picture a black chalkboard, and that is what the color looks like.

Well the studio is all done except for final lights.
I will take some photos of what the walls look like finished. I have been a little disappointed, as for how well the magnets stick to the walls, I am using pretty hefty magnets thin paper works okay. Thick paper does not work well, nor does overlapping the paper, the magnets fall off. I have to be very careful when putting things on and it seems like a have to use a gazillion magnets since overlapping is not really an option.

I am going to invest in some super strong magnets, those seem to work with thick stuff.

Tiki Bath Progress

Well we got a little further in the Tiki bathroom. Our friend Mike Grover gave us some nice dark bamboo strips that were already to be used on a wall. I had given them to us before we bought our house and we had been saving them for something interesting. We just didn't know what at the time. The bathroom seemed like the perfect place. So Brad got all the pieces cut and was able to use his finish nail gun and just mount all the pieces on the walls. The bamboo was a little tricky work with in that it not necessarily a straight material. Overall I really like the way the bathroom looks. It feels tropical. But I think the bamboo finishes off the thatching on the walls nicely.

Oh how I love my free dishwasher.....

Well we have been busy over the Christmas break. Since we have been doing dishes in a sink the size of a shoebox, I have been very anxious to get a real sink up and running. On one of my walks around the neighborhood I came across a free dishwasher. Having no dishwasher I thought a freebie that may or may not work was better than none. So I drove back and picked it up by myself.. I wasn't sure if if I was going to be able to lift the dishwasher in the car. Being a woman I have never moved a dishwasher so I had no idea if this was a heavy appliance or light appliance. Turns out dishwashers are super light. Surprisingly light. I was able to pick the dishwasher up no problem and get it in my car, and then get it home and into the garage. I would have love to have seen the neighbors faces, watching my do that.
So since finding the free dishwasher I have been anxious to get this sucker up and running. One of my girlfriends thought I was very odd for getting excited about a used dishwasher, she thought it sounded gross. Well this dishwasher is all white fairly new and very clean looking besides, that what dishwashers do, clean.
When you have been doing dishes for 6 in a sink the size of shoe box trust me you get excited.

So Brad and I talked about what we needed for the dishwasher to work.
A sink - we needed to buy one, knowing we may not have countertops for a long time.
A garbage disposal - we had the one left over from when we demo-d the old kitchen
Power - at thee new location
Running water at the new location

We hired a plumber when we demo-d the kitchen to re-route all of our plumbing lines to the new kitchen sink location. He had run everything we needed we just had to get it functioning.

We had already decided on our Ikea kitchen so it was just a matter of picking up the least amount of cabinets to do what we needed. Since we are super tight on cash right now.

Originally I had planned on having to lazy susan cabinets in each corner, but upon further measuring our kitchen was exactly 8' wide. And the lazy susan cabinets were 37' wide plus a 24" wide cabinet sink added up to 98". Two inches more than we had.
What to do? I had been working of grid paper using 1' squares. So I didn't realize the cabinets were each an inch over. Why they are 37" makes no sense to me. So now we are going to do one lazy susan cabinet at a later date and for now we got a 30" cabinet that will work in the space we have so it is not totally dead space.
The current thought is to put a 12" door on the face of the 30" cabinet so we have some access to corner unit. Any great ideas contributed would be appreciated.

So since we are not able to afford to upgrade our power yet we have to run both the disposal and dishwasher off extension cords. But most importantly we have a dishwasher that was free and works great.

Tapping the Sun Gods

Well I want to know if solar is right for our house.
I have seen a few blurbs on the Governor's push for solar in California.
Here is what I have found so far.
HomeDepot supports BPSolar. I found there website very user friendly. I did an online questionnaire which sounds like solar could be a good solution for us.
I contacted the state site to see what solutions and info they have. I found the info to be very confusing and hard to understand, although I found lots of things to download I wasn't able to figure the best easiest way to get quick info. I sent emails to both site's asking for basic info, let's see who responds the best.

Tiki Surf Bathroom

Since we live a mile from the beach. We thought mine as well go Tiki Surf for the "boys" bathroom. The plan is to down the road remodel this bathroom and upgrade it. But for now we are having fun with the Tiki Surf theme.

First I painted the walls a beige color called Gobi Desert.
Then I put this grass thatching on the wall from Lowes. It took two rolls which were about $25 bucks each. To attach the thatching we busted out the old staple gun. Which worked fine. I tried two methods of stapling, on the wire and on the thatch, both seemed to work about the same. Then I went to town hanging masks and surf art.
Next we are going to add these big dark bamboo strips that we have across the top of grass thatch to finish it.
I love it. Feels so tropical when you are in there.