Category Archives: Budget-Friendly Weekend Fun

Budget-Friendly Weekend Fun / DIY / weekend

Our Laundry Room DIY: The Before and During

March 19, 2014

So, like I said yesterday, we have this large laundry room/basement type area downstairs in our house, which was quickly just becoming a place to house all the things we didn’t want to spend time figuring out how or where to store.

In my mind, 120 square feet is a lot a space.  I mean, this may be because I live in one of the most expensive rental markets in the world.  It may also be because I lived in less than 500 square feet with a giant man (KC) and a very snobby cat (Seuss) for 4 1/2 years.

Either way, KC and I had been tossing around ideas for the laundry space for awhile — workout space?  Guest room?  Indoor hockey rink?  (Yeah, that idea didn’t last long.)

I, being disinclined to do anything that involves manual labor on my part, kept pushing it off — “No, I don’t want to turn it into [insert room type here].”  “That will be too expensive.”  “It’s not a big enough room for that.”

Basically, I’m super fun to live with.

However, with the old couch sitting (what felt like) squarely in the middle of our living room, I finally conceded — “Ok, let’s turn it into a family room.”  Move the old couch down there, and we’d be in business.

A few minor issues — the room has concrete floors.  And not like “nice” concrete floors — like, industrial warped and wonky concrete floors.  Also, there was a giant hole in the wall, the remnant of an old water heater or something.  Either way, there was a 5-6″ circular hole, smack in the middle of the longest wall in the room.  And the lesser issue — all the walls were painted that pukey green color (like the color of rotten algae).

So what did we do?

  1. We cleared out all the crap (this included KC moving a giant IKEA storage cabinet up a flight of stairs and into our hallway.  By himself).
  2. KC patched the hole (he’s magic) and spackled all the weird dents and divots.
  3. We painted.
  4. Moved a wall shelf.
  5. We laid down carpet.
  6. And I styled that business up (y’know, after KC and a friend moved the couch down there).

And because I like to leave you wanting just a little more (and because that room is insanely hard to photograph and I’d like the “after” shots to actually look decent), here’s some before photos and some during shots (post-paint and post-carpet):

basement 1(keep in mind that this is after we’d cleared out most of stuff from the room already…)

basement 2Don’t be fooled by the way the camera makes the green paint look — it’s awful in real life.

basement 3All painted.

basement 4You can sort of see how wonky the concrete floor is here…

basement 7Carpet!  (And yes, the hallway is still green because it was going to be too hard to paint/we ran out of paint.)

basement 5basement 6

Full reveal of the finished room and what we used for our DIY re-do will be up later!  Get excited.

Budget-Friendly Weekend Fun / DIY / weekend

DIY: Table and Chairs Update

March 18, 2014

After we got our new couch, our old one was moved in front of the large window in our living room, since we didn’t really know what we wanted to do with it.

Couch in windowIt’s a nice couch, and having the extra seating was a nice perk; but I couldn’t get over the fact that it was blocking one of the major features of our living room — the big window — and blocking a lot of light from coming into the space.

Couch in window (a mess)(Please ignore all the crap in that room, we were in the middle of our DIY when I took this.  But you can see how the couch takes up quite a bit of space in there, and why I kept telling KC that I felt like our living room looked like a waiting room with all the couches.)

KC was hesitant to get rid of the old couch, and so it sat in our living room for a few months.

Then KC started talking about our laundry room.  (Weird segue?  Just wait.)  We have this laundry room downstairs, next to our little office, that’s about 10′ x 12′, which is a good chunk of space in the world I live in.  The washer and dryer take up a little bit of the room, obviously, but the rest of the square-footage just kind of became a place to store things (our bikes, stuff from Costco, coolers, etc.).  KC had been talking about turning the laundry room into something more usable for awhile, and then it hit me — we could move the old couch down there and turn it into a family room-type space.  Genius!

However, moving the couch out of the window in the living room meant that there was kind of a big space that would be left empty.

I decided that I could make use of the two dining chairs I hadn’t gotten around to painting during the dining room DIY, and set them up with a crappy old table I bought years ago at Target.  Voila — extra seating, a good filler for the blank space, and it wouldn’t block too much of a light from the window.  Win-win.

Here’s what I started with:

Table 2Table 3A dingy, “wood” (let’s use that term loosely) table and a couple of chairs (that I forgot to photograph in their original state — just picture crappy blonde wood that’s really worn.)

I sanded everything lightly (basically, I just did a once-over with the power sander and touched up the rest by hand), wiped everything down, and then primed the three pieces with one coat of Glidden Gripper Primer in white.

Table PrimedThat primer is the business, you guys.

That got to dry overnight (since we had a dinner to go to), and then I got to painting the next day.  I chose Glidden Oyster Shell for the table and Behr Antique Tin for the chairs (I chose semi-gloss for both).

Table PaintedChairs Painted

These pieces took 2-3 coats of paint (I did 3 coats + a couple touch-ups on the top of the table, since I wanted that part to be really well-covered.)  And even though the process is a little time consuming and kind of messy (or, it is for me anyway):

Paint Hands I think the end result is pretty nice.

Here are the finished pieces in their new spot in the living room:

FinishedFinished 1Finished 2Living roomIf you’re interested in doing your own DIY for finished wood (or “wood”) furniture, here’s what you’ll need and how to do it:

  • The pieces of furniture you want to paint
  • Drop cloth
  • Medium-grit sandpaper (I used 150)
  • Optional: power sander
  • A few clean rags
  • Paint brushes/small roller/paint tray (you can do this just with brushes, but the roller is nice for painting large flat surfaces, like the top of the table)
  • Glidden Gripper Primer (If you’re painting your pieces a dark or vivid color, ask to have your primer dyed grey at the paint counter — it will be easier to cover than the white.)  I used the quart size and had some left over with these
  • Paint (I got a quart of the Oyster Shell and the Antique Tin and had plenty left over)
  1. Lightly sand all your pieces (where you’re going to paint), so the finish is just taken off.  You want to just rough up the surface a bit so the primer has something to adhere to.
  2. Wipe down your furniture to remove any dust, then apply 1-2 thin coats of primer.  Let dry for at least 1 hour, ideally overnight.
  3. Paint 2 (or more, as needed) thin coats of paint, waiting at least an hour between each coat to dry.  (If you’re working on a piece with hinges, be sure to test the moving parts periodically to make sure they don’t get painted shut.)
  4. Let dry for at least 48 hours before using (I’d recommend allowing the paint to cure for about a week before you start using your piece.  You will be able to tell if the paint is dry and set when you touch it — it should no longer feel slightly sticky or tacky.)

Budget-Friendly Weekend Fun

It's like owning a condo, except it's in my mind

December 3, 2013

Yes, that’s how I describe my mountain of law school student loan debt to people.  It’s literally like I bought property, except I can’t live in it.  I like to call it a condo, because it would really only be like a condo in some crappy bay area suburb; however, in the midwest, I’m fully confident that I could have bought a 4-5 bedroom McMansion with what I owe the federal government for my education.

This brain of mine, it’s real pricey.

Anyway, if you have student debt, you know how all-encompassingly (not a word, apparently.  Whatever) sh*tty it is.  Mine were constantly being transferred between providers (oh, you thought that online loan interface was bad?  Well just check out this one!), not to mention my absurdly high interest rate of 7.5% (shootmeintheface).

Also fun: first year of law school our first big research/writing assignment was about the process to get your student loans discharged via bankruptcy.  The verdict?  You pretty much can’t get them discharged.  Ever.  For any reason.  Sooo, that was a nice little mind-$%#@.

However, recently I came across a little ray of hope in the stupid world of student loans — SoFi.  They’re a Silicon Valley-based startup that’s alumni-funded.  They’ll take over your loans and lower your interest rate if you qualify.  I mean, it’s not like they’re gonna pay them for you, but they can save you some money in the long-haul.  Like, thousands.  (And I don’t know about you, but I’m not Scrooge McDuck rich over here, so I like to hold onto my thousands when I can, thank you.)

Anyway, if you have student loans that are ruining your life (or just making it mildly uncomfortable — whatever) check out SoFi here.  And, if you apply through that link, you get $100.  What up, Christmas shopping!

PS: I also saw somewhere that if you get approved they’ll send you a pie.  Super random, I know.  And I’ve sent an email to ask about this pie — I’ll report back on what I find out.  I mean, if it’s mincemeat or something, I don’t really know what to tell you; but free’s free.

Budget-Friendly Weekend Fun / Dairy-Free / Dinner / Fall / Gluten-Free / Savory

Taco Night!

October 10, 2013

Taco Party 1On a particularly delicious Saturday night, we had some friends over on a whim and made a bunch of tacos.  I had never really made tacos for a crowd, and don’t normally cook for more than two people, so I was a little nervous about how everything would turn out.  Luckily, tacos are surprisingly easy to make for a group, and always a hit (at least in the crew I run with).

Here’s what was on the menu:

  • Marinated Carne Asada (I bought this at TJs — pre-marinated and everything.  So easy.)
  • Chopped yellow onion + cilantro
  • Homemade salsas (red & green)
  • Roasted veggies (I had some poblano chilies, green bell pepper, onion, and jalapenos that I tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, cumin and red pepper flakes and roasted)
  • Refried beans (from a can — I’m not quite that ambitious yet)
  • Spanish rice (it was “Spanish” rice, as it was really just a recipe I kind of made up.  If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll post the recipe.)
  • Corn tortillas
  • Oh yeah, and beer (obviously)

Taco Party 2Fall Bucket List progress, coming along nicely:

  1. Make spiced (and y’know, probably spiked) cider
  2. Master some sort of new pumpkin baked good
  3. Make at least 2 new kinds of soup (I’ve got my eye on a Thai-spiced squash soup, currently)
  4. Keep our new fiddle leaf fig tree alive (3 days in — so far so good)
  5. Have a taco night with homemade salsas
  6. Learn to make falafel
  7. Decorate for Halloween and watch my favorite flicks on the 31st — Young Frankenstein, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Hocus Pocus.  (Yes, I’m 12.)
  8. Host Thanksgiving and finally use our wedding china
  9. Clean out the hall closet and install cabinet latches in the kitchen (OMG that closet… It’s like the inside of my brain — just crammed full of sh#$)
  10. Finally paint those last two dining chairs that just hang out in our hallway (ugh, I’m annoyed just thinking about this one.  I hate crafts.)

Budget-Friendly Weekend Fun / Date Night at Home / Dessert / Favorite Things / Gluten-Free / Sweet / Vegetarian

Date Night at Home Ideas: Dessert

March 26, 2013

Since you’ll be making dinner for date night, and maybe even cocktails, the simpler the dessert is, the better.  For date nights, I like to have something store-bought or easily assembled for dessert (since, by the time dinner is over, I’m generally not ready and raring to be measuring out cups of flour in the kitchen.  Or sober.  Y’know.)

Part 3: Dessert

It tastes even better when you’re not the one who made it.

affogato-2image

One of my most favorite things to order for dessert when we’re out is an affogato — which is vanilla ice cream covered in espresso.  It’s basically like having your dessert and after-dinner coffee all in one.  Also, because it’s a whopping two ingredients, it would be easy to make at home.  Use either an espresso machine (here‘s the one I have) or a stove top espresso maker (I have one similar to this) to brew espresso, then pour over a scoop of good vanilla ice cream (I love Three Twins).

date night 3I love French macarons, but I highly doubt I’d ever have the patience to make them.  (Much less make an assortment of them.)  I would love for my husband to come home with a bright assortment of these cookies for a date night to have for dessert — they’re almost prettier than flowers, don’t you think?  Miette and La Boulange make good ones.

Sorry, there aren’t too many ideas for dessert on here — but I’m sure you can come up with some good ideas of what to tell your love to pick up on his way home for date night.  These are just two of my favorite things.  (Hint hint, Kace!) 🙂