How I changed my hutch

I started with thisHere is the hutch I bought for $25 at a Rummage sale. I bought this 3 days before my son was born! You can imagine I was huge and I am sure the guy I bought it from was wondering why I wasn't in a hospital. I think he actually gave it to me for so little because I was so pregnant. Anyway it sat in the garage for 6 months driving me crazy. I decided I wanted to join the white hutch club. So I took all the hardware and doors off. I filled the holes with woodfiller because I wasn't sure if I was going to use the original hardware.

I just used your regular miniwax wood filler

It dried quickly and really hard so you just get some 120 sandpaper (or whatever you have around) and sand it flush.


I wiped it all down with a rag and water (use some dish soap if you have grease on there)
Then I taped it all off ( I didn't tape the inside glass very well and REGRET IT! I have been scrubbing paint off the glass for a long time now)

Then I used my mini foam roller and zinser oil based primer and just rolled and rolled and rolled until I finally got it all covered. (if you are going to paint your hutch a darker color this paint is tintable and I would recommend having it tinted !)

There it is all primed and ready for spray paint

I used Rustoleum White semi gloss.

Now I learned something with this project. If you are going to paint a big piece of furniture white use regular old latex paint! I didn't do it because I didn't want brush strokes and thought it would be faster. It wasn't and I don't know if I will ever use spray paint again for a big white colored project. Only because of covereage. It takes sooo long to get the perfect white coverage. It seems like there are always places that didn't get enough. I sprayed this 4 times!! It took 5 cans of paint (so $23) when I could have just used one of my nice brushes with my high gloss valspar white. Its cheaper and lets face it it will take the same amount of time! (you have to wait an hour after each coat and each coat takes a long time!) And with your nice brush you shouldn't get too many brush stroke marks. I am making a mental note about this. (However with any other color I get perfect coverage!! so just white spray paint)

I was going to use polyurethane for protection but I chose to go with actual miniwax. Thats right the actual wax. This is not good if you have alot of rough bits on your furniture but if its pretty smooth its lovely. Way less fumes and fast but I am worried about durability. We shall see

After the wax I wanted some of the nice details to come out and while I think distressed furniture is beautiful I don't have any in my house which makes me think its not really in my design plans. So I chose to paint the strips. I wanted it to tie in with the fabric I used to cover the back so I made my own contraption with these:

I pretty much used what I had on hand and only used the poster paint because of the tint. O chose to use one of my nice water color brushes because I have more control over every stroke.

It only took two coats and I did it while we watched march madness.
Here is a door still wet.

Then it was time to iron out the fabric and attach it to the wood on the back.

I just layed it on the floor and then put the fabric on top and left one and a half inches on each side.

This kind of pattern is one that should be straight to I used masking tape on the back to keep the fabric in place (my husband kept asking me if I was only going to use masking tape to stick it on) Then I pulled out the glue gun and glued and glued. I pulled it really tight as I went because I wanted it to look tight.

Then we used nails to put it back on (it was really thick and my staples were not long enough) Next came putting the shelves and doors in (put the shelves in before you put the back on because its easier) and then we had our almost finished product here:

I put the blue and whites in and I am still trying to get those situated how I want them

All that is left now is some hardware:

I found these and liked them and bought them (they were on clearance at Lowes 70cents each!) But I don't think they are right for the piece. But I have 3 small children so the lack of hardware is really working in my favor with keeping all the doors and draws closed!

And thats how I did it.

Introducing the green and white hutch

This hutch went from this

To this.
And here it is with the china in it


I ended up choosing a completely different fabric and I think I like it. Its a bamboo print. I admit its not finished yet because I need to decide on hardware. I want to find something spectacular so I am waiting until I find the right ones.

clicke Here for the how to




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Those Pesky OSB Stairs

For years now I have seen many beautiful stair redos. People rip up the carpet and find pine stairs or mfd or oak. They cheer and say we can stain them! Or We can paint them! Then there are the other people like me who rip up the carpets and find OSB. As you know OSB should not be stairs. For one it gives you slivers and the other is it ugly.

So I researched and pondered and gnashed my teeth until I figured out what we were going to do! I did not want carpet on them. We live on a giant sand dune so I didn't want sandy carpets.

When you move into a new home that needs a lot of fixing asap you tend to get more daring and rip stuff up without too much though.

Yes that is a stair tread

We figured we could replace it and be fine (no one was harmed in this redo). Luckily the closest store to us is Lowes and they are well stocked with pre-cut stair treads with the rounded edge. We went to Lowes and looked at the options for replacing treads. We ended up buying some of the MFD pre-fabricated stair treads. All we had to do was cut them to length. They were $8 each and we had 14 treads to do.

We chose MFD because I wanted painted stairs. If you want stained stairs the oak treads are $15 each and staining is time consuming but not difficult. I originally wanted black treads but our floors are fireside oak so I needed them to go together more. I chose to use Valspar floor paint and chose a very dark brown, like chocolate. This paint is only $28 a gallon and I still have a half gallon left. We ended up putting 3 coats of paint on them, 2 before we put them in

I put these on cans. Just regular old cans from the pantry

and 1 after. I am glad we put 3 coats on because they are much more durable and easier to clean.

After that it was time to go to work. Once Daniel (the laborer, just kidding) got the hang of ripping out the OSB treads, the demolition didn't take as long as we thought it would.

The process of ripping up the old treads and putting in the new ones took 2 days, one day for each set of stairs (upper and lower). We then measured the length of each tread then use the table saw to cut. Make sure you do this for each one because there can be slight differences in length. We glued them in using hard as nails but I would use any construction adhesive for this. We used screws instead of nails because we didn't want any squeaks. We counter sunk the screws and then filled the hole with hard as nails and then put a precut wooden dowel in there and made it flush then wiped away the excess glue. Touching up the screw holes was time consuming because we used oil based paint (24 hours to dry).

When we touched up the screw holes we had to paint the ones on the sides first, let those dry overnight, then paint the ones in the middle and let those dry overnight. (It probably would have been easier if we didn't have little ones running up and down the stairs) After we painted the screw holes with 2 coats, we put one final layer on each tread to hide the screw holes better. Its a good idea to go out of town right after you do the last coat of pain unless you don't have to go upstairs for 24 hours. (we had a downstairs sleepover with mattresses and then a zoo day)

The next step was the trim work. We put the smallest piece of floor trim we could find at Lowes and ran it above the stair treads on either side.

White trim to the left, no trim yet to the right

After the trim was up we painted the area below white. Make sure to tape it all off first, use frog tape and not the regular blue tape! We had major leakage. (the white paint came off the treads really easily with baby wipes!)

If you plan on doing this project do the beadboard risers before the white trim on the sides!!

So here we are so far

Next comes the bead board on the risers. Once again cut these to each stair because you might find small differences. For the tread cutting and the bead board cutting we used a table saw borrowed from a friend. They sell blades specific for mfd so buy it (just ask your home improvement store where they are)! It will save your regular blade. Put the beadboard right on top of the OSB. We tried gluing them in but they kept popping off so we used finishing nails instead. If you have a nail gun USE IT.

The final step was finishing the laminate wood flooring on the landing. Daniel finished it up and we bought a special stair nose piece from lumber liquidators (we just matched it to the flooring) We glued the stair nosing on with wood glue but hard as nails would have worked. Don't use gorilla glue because it just makes a big mess and doesn't work.

It took 30 minutes for the glue to set and we didn't have any weights or clamps to hold the stair nose on so Daniel sat on it while I brought him bowls of cereal.

So this is what all that hard work got us:

I LOVE THEM.
However we are still were not done :( there were many spaces that the beadboard cutting and tread cutting left as you can see at the bottom of the stair above. So I got to caulking. Here are the small differences caulking makes:


no caulk (there is a gap on the side)

caulked

no caulk
caulk

caulked

caulking doesn't take too long and it just makes it look more finished. Big tip here is use baby wipes!! The white shows up pretty strongly on the brown so you need to make sure its all gone with a fresh clean swipe every time. The baby wipes were perfect because they were already wet and you could just throw them away and not ruin your rags.

Cost breakdown:
This project was time consuming but relatively inexpensive.

Treads-$112
Bead Board-$55
Floor Paint-$28
Trim-$12.50
Stair Nose-$29.00
Laminate Flooring (for the landing)-$30

After doing this project here are some tips:

• If you can get this done before you move in it will be much quicker because the most time consuming thing is having to space out all the dry times because you need to actually use the stairs
• Use a table saw and a mitre saw
  
• Use foam rollers ($2.67 for two pack at LOWES) for the oil based paint, no paint brush lines and you can just throw it away and use a new one each time so less clean up
• Do all the wall and trim painting very last or you will have to repaint anyway
• start on the tread that will be least seen because you get better after each one so you want your best work to be seen, not your worst

and thats it!

We love them and the cleaning is so easy just a wet rag!!! So even OSB stairs can get some special treatment.


Oh and these stairs were featured here on BetterAfter. On my family blog though :)




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