UPDATE: The contest has ended and the winners are announced below.

Even though I’ve been building things like crazy over the last couple of months, you may have noticed a lot of that work has been done on “things that are not the house.” I’ve been out of my groove with the house-finishing lately, but I have to give a shout out to the folks at Wagner SprayTech for giving me an excellent reason to get back in the game.

I mean, you know what the reason was, right?

New tools.

I literally held this thing in my hands and did a little happy dance in the living room when I took it out of the box, which I think conveyed my enthusiasm to an appropriate (if awkward) degree.

Why?

Oh, I don’t know… maybe because of this.

(Go ahead and laugh at that half-assed masking job I did… the painting was a last minute thing on Sunday and I couldn’t wait to try out the new toy. )

So, let me tell you a couple of things about the Wagner PowerPainter Plus:

• It’s an airless sprayer. It requires an extension cord but not an air compressor.
• It’s capable of spraying 6 gallons an hour. To put that in perspective, my entire house can be covered in 6 gallons of paint.
• It has an adjustable head so you can spray side to side or up and down.

Here’s how my experience went…

After doing my enthusiastic happy dance (in full view of every car passing the house) I actually sat down and read the instructions. It comes with a “Quick Start Guide” which I love, because any more than 3 minutes with the manual and I’m just going to toss it and start playing with the tool anyway.

It comes with this pouring lid that fit over the paint can and made filling the cup easy. No thinning required.

Actually removing the cup from the sprayer at first was a little difficult. It almost required my patented two-hands-and-a-toe removal method, but I figured it out and it wasn’t as awkward once I got the hang of it.

I followed the directions and started by aiming at a piece of cardboard and holding the trigger for 10-20 seconds to get the paint flowing, and it was a little louder than I expected when I first turned it on, but quieted down when the paint started flowing.

The painter has adjustments for paint, stain, and everything in between. With this solid stain I set it about half way.

Then I got down to it.

This was the coverage for one “cup” full, without refilling.

With the sprayer full, it was a little hefty and I was afraid I was going to have to two-hand it the whole time while on the ladder, but I ended up being able to use one hand without difficulty. The grip and trigger fit my itty-bitty hands just fine.

As for how it worked overall:

• The coverage was great, although there was no way to tell when the cup was “empty” and once it got down to the bottom the sprayer threw out a few globs of stain. It was no big deal on the house, but I wouldn’t want that to happen on cabinets or furniture.
• The adjustable head worked well, I used it both vertically and horizontally.
• It was super quick and super easy to use.
• Clean up was a little bit of a pain, but I think you have that with any sprayer. Since I just did this one small section of house, I took twice as long cleaning the equipment as I did painting… however if the whole house was masked off and ready to go, I could have done two coats on the house in one day, easy. Which would totally be worth 30 minutes of cleanup.

While it did take some quality time with the hose to get everything cleaned out, disassembling the sprayer wasn’t hard at all. Here she is in all her pieces.

Also, any time you’re using a sprayer you should wear a respirator, and possibly long sleeves if you don’t want to go to work Monday with green freckles down one half of your body. Ahem.

I forgot to take a picture between the “spraying” and “edging” steps, but here’s what this section of house looked like finished.

Well, obviously not all the way finished since you can see exactly where my tolerance for being at the top of an extension ladder ends. I’m leaving the peak for someone taller than myself.

Just a little bit more to go (on this side, at least)…

Get One For Yourself Winners

I am definitely going to be having more furn with this thing in the future, and now you can give yourself instant green freckles too! Or, you know, paint something.

Wagner is letting me give away two sprayers, which you can learn more about here.

How to enter:

• Leave a comment telling me what needs a little paint in your life
• Contest ends Friday, September 23rd at 11:59 PM
• Winners are chosen randomly and will be announced Monday Sept 26th (we all have to look forward to something on Monday’s, right?)

This contest has ended and the lucky winners are:

Commenters #18 and #65 – Sarah and L. Congrats to both of you! (If you haven’t received an email from me yet… check your inbox.) Thanks to everyone for entering.

In all of the projects I’ve tackled to double the size of my current house, the one that most inspired me to stand in a corner and bang my head against the wall was laying the tile floor for the master bath. Eighteen inch tiles. On a diagonal.

Obviously the project is done and I made it through mostly unscathed, but if I could pick a moment that sums up my feelings about the project it would be the time that the Professional Engineer walked in and saw me working my way through the first half of the floor with two levels and a trowel and said, “So… how do you know that floor is level?”

And then I blinked thirty times and my head exploded.

If you’re a smart dude and embarking on a project like, say, building a house, with a woman who often has sharp and/or heavy objects within her reach, the first thing you should do is learn the Morse code of blinking. And then duck.

It goes something like this:

Blink. (Did you just?)

Blink. (I mean…)

Blink. Blink. (I thought I just heard you say…)

Blink. Blink. Blink. (I’m not sure why I don’t hear you retracting that statement right this minute.)

Blink. Blink. Blink. Bliiiiiiiiiink. (DANGER WILL ROBINSON. DANGER.)

Maybe I should work on my communication skills, but life would be so much less interesting  without flying hammers, don’t you think?

And, and, if all of our “Doing It Together” projects went as smoothly as they do on TV, you wouldn’t have the chance to win $5000.

3M Couple Speak Contests

So here’s the deal. 3M recognizes that projects don’t always go as planned and we don’t always say what we mean in the middle of them. Now it’s not all for nothing. Here’s what you can do:

For a chance at weekly $250 cash prizes go here and create your own “(s)he said/(s)he means” translations, such as:

He says: I got this.

He means: Get 911 on speed dial.

For a chance at one of two $5000 grand prizes make a short home-improvement related video and upload  it here. Like this little gem:

Here are the video contest rules:

1. No longer than 2 minutes
2. Don’t use any 3M products in the video
3. Be funny
4. Keep it clean!

Submissions have to be in by October 6th at 11:59 PM.

And since you know you’ve been there before, leave a comment what your translation would be for this little gem:  “Honey… do we have any duct tape?”

*This post and the Couples Speak contests are sponsored by 3M. Share the contests with you friends here: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook

There are some unfortunate things about DIY. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes you crack your last tile while trying to cut a hole in it, sometimes you fall off a roof (or spend a lot of time thinking you’re going to), and in my experience a lot of the time people will be telling you that pretty soon you’re going to cut of one of your fingers.

On the other hand, not only do you get to appreciate the fruits of your labor (often much cheaper than you could purchase from a store) but you also get to show off your DIY prowress all over the Internet. And it could win you $3000.

Right now The Family Handyman is running the 2011 Best In DIY Contest, and I’m promoting it because I think it’s awesome for people to get a little acknowledgment for having the guts to pick up a set of tools and do something they’ve never done before.

Here’s a chance for you to get a little credit (and cash) by submitting your 2011 DIY project.

Contest Information

When: Entries are being accepted now through August 26th, 2011. Public voting on finalists will begin September 1st, 2011.

Prize: The grand prize is $3000, plus three Readers Choice winners will get $1000 each.

Enter: Go here to see the categories and enter.

Also, if you enter a project, leave a link in the comments section we can check it out!

Prepare to be confined to your home, rolling around on the floor of your office…

Random.org chose comment number 80 as the winner of the 8×10 Tigressá SoftStyle rug, which was Alison, who said:

We would love a rug for our office instead of the plain hardwood floor. 

Alison, clearly you don’t have to take my word for it, the pickiest member of the household agrees that you will, in fact, find this rug suggibly soft.

I do believe I just made up the word snuggibly. But as someone who has one eighty foot section of relief from the bare subfloor in the rest of the house, I can attest that this rug is worth at least one made up word.

For everyone else, thanks for commenting. I loved feeling like I’m not the only person out there with some floors in need of serious covering. You can still check out the sales at Carpet One and Flooring America if you’re looking for a good deal.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the cat and I have some things to attend to. Like lounging. And maybe stretching if we get bored with all that napping.

P.S. If any of you are wondering if I really did lose it in the last week and paint my cat’s claws green, the answer is no. He’s wearing the very fashionable Soft Paws nail caps, which have been super easy to maintain and 100% protect the furniture and carpet from utter destruction.

I hinted yesterday that I’m in the process of “moving in” to the house. There is one decent sized project to finish up before the final move– finishing the hardwood in the bedroom– but in the meantime I’ve been focusing on making other areas of the house feel more like rooms you could live in, and less like the entire contents of a Home Depot exploded in the middle of each room.

The current living room was actually both the living room and dining room in the house before I lost my mind and tore all the walls down.

Here’s a shot from a similar angle now…

Getting there was an adventure. After the roof rafters and sheathing had been replaced, the walls separating the dining room and living room came down. The left wall was also moved out four feet and the ceilings were vaulted.

I did have a building crew helping with this part. MysteryMan and I took on some of the new framing and a lot of the “being terrified the roof was going to collapse” part of the work.

Up until last weekend the living room was grand central for all kinds of projects. Trim staining, cabinet building, tile cutting, and the general storing of stuff.

Clearing it out and cleaning it up was a several day project. But it got there. Here’s a little tour of our temporary lounging area:

The cat thinks it’s pretty awesome.

The leather chair in the image will actually be taking up residence next to the fireplace in the master bedroom once the floors are done, but it’s another great new lounging spot in the living room for now.

You may also notice– in addition to the in-progress staples like paint swatches and scaffolding– that “please come roll around on me” rug, which goes a long way toward making this room feel more like a room that you’re supposed to do something other than hammer on things in.

Shaw floors offered to send me this 8×10 rug made from their Tigressá SoftStyle carpet to try out. I am a woman with a house full of plywood subfloor so I jumped at the chance to have a finished area of floor that only required the effort of rolling out a rug.

I may or may not have then laid down and rolled my actual body around on the rug, then stayed there for the next fifteen hours. It is so nice. Even without anything resembling a finished floor or carpet pad, this thing is a pleasure to walk on. Now, I’ve also been living on a concrete floor for the last year so you may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt. However, Shaw Floors is offering to give an 8×10 rug (in this awesomely neutral and yet not bland color) to one of you.

Contest Rules

What you get: One 8×10 rug, shipped anywhere in the US

What you have to do: Leave a comment! Tell me what room in your house is most in need of something soft to step on.

When it ends: All entries have to be in by 11:59 PM on Thursday June 16th

More info: Check out more info on Tigressá SoftStyle carpet at Shaw Floors. You can also check out current sales on this style of carpet at Carpet One and Flooring America.

Huge thanks to everyone who commented in the DuPont WeedFree Premium Landscape Fabric Giveaway and gave me great tips on weeding and favorite flowers. I was inspired enough to get my vegetable garden going in a few spare minutes last weekend.

And the winner of a roll of the WeedFree Landscape fabric plus a $100 gift card to Lowe’s is…

Commenter #4, Leah Marie from Behind the Stone Wall!

Wow…favorite garden plant?! How do I pick just one? Tomatoes, green peppers, and watermelons all rank a 10 on my list! YUMMY!

Leah, I hope you’ll share pictures of  your mini Landscape makeover.

Also, I have to give a shout out to some of my favorite weeding tips from the bunch.

Dave – because this one had me laughing for days, and then became scarily ironic since someone offered me a couple of pygmy goats this week…

Buy a goat and tie it out on a rope and let it do it’s thing. Goat on a rope…what up! Kidding aside they will eat anything…

Micha from Little Old House for her suggestion of a new tool to buy..

Go get yourself a Hori Hori knife.

BEST. Tool. ever!

It’s beveled for shoveling and serrated for sawing. It can be used to dig, weed, transplant, divide perennials and more. Some have measurements carved into the blade so you know how deep you’re planting/digging. I love it!

Meredith from Building Character-

To pull a page from my mother’s book – it helps to have 2 kids, between the ages of ~5-7… 2 big old brown bags… and the promise of ‘whoever picks the most dandelions wins an ice cream sundae…. GO!’.

Hilarious because it reminds me of MysteryMan’s grandpa who used to give the kids a penny for every weed they picked in the fields, but charged them a nickle for every corn plant they accidentally stepped on. After a few hours, the kids would end up owing grandpa money.

And Nora from Lemonpuss, who’s tip I’m definitely going to try…

My favorite tip is from Roger Cooke, TOH. Years ago he recommended on the show that you dig a V-shaped trench between your lawn and a mulched planting bed and fill it with the mulch you cover the bed with. Weeds and grass have to jump the mulch to encroach on your flowerbed and they are easy to pluck out of the loose mulch if they do try.

For those of you who aren’t gardners, exciting news on the furniture building front since my bathroom vanity how-to should be up tomorrow!

UPDATE: Contest is closed. The winner is Commenter #4, Leah Marie from Behind the Stone Wall!

Yes, that is my yard. If our three acres of land is any indication, the entire world at this very moment is being overtaken by weeds.

Even though I’m making an effort to work in the garden more this year, I haven’t mustered the personal resolve to tackle the pasture of dandelions yet. I think that job will probably require a bulldozer. Or, as my mother helpfully pointed out, I could just start a dandelion farm. I hear tea made from the leaves is good for swollen joints.

My farming ambitions aside, I’ve mentioned before that out in the country its not so much “weeding” as it is “waging war”, and DuPont would like to help us all fight the battle with their WeedFree Premium Landscape Fabric.

If you’re not familiar with how landscape fabric works, here’s the deal:

It goes over your garden (with holes cut for the “good” plants) and blocks weeds from making an appearance.

I’ve also used it between my raised vegetable beds with a layer of mulch over the top to keep weeds from growing on the walking path.

Before:

After:

Want to try it for yourself?

DuPont WeedFree Premium Landscape Fabric & $100 Lowes Giftcard Giveaway

DuPont is generously giving away a 50 ft roll of WeedFree Premium Landscape Fabric and a $100 Lowes gift card, which is everything you need wage your own war against weeds. And as someone who could be carried away by a field of dandelions never to be seen again, I’m happy to do my part to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you.

Prize: WeedFree Premium Landscape Fabric and $100 Lowe’s gift card

How to enter: Leave a comment on this post with either a weed-fighting tip or your favorite garden plant. (One entry per person.)

Contest closes Wednesday 5/25 at 11:59 PM. A random winner will be chosen and announced on Thursday 5/26.

First of all, I have to say the best part of my week has been reading all of your comments on the projects you plan to tackle this year. We’re a crazy bunch, but also? Totally awesome.

Okay, blah, blah, blah, tell me who won already… I hear you.

The $150 gift card goes to…

Erin from The Stucco Bungalo!

I’m hoping to kick some home improvement tail in 2011 and finish up our never-ending Project Basement (before it kills me).

Erin, I’ve seen your basement progress and I sincerely hope this helps you finish things off. We’re hoping for no DIY related deaths in 2011… particularly around my house as well.

And, I really wanted to help some more people out, so I also decided to draw for two $50 gift cards as well…

The $50 cards go to Micah from Little Old House…

Uh, entire house update? *L* We’ll be closing on a 1915s top to bottom fixer-upper in less than 3 weeks and can use any help and extra budget we can get.

From someone who has been stockpiling gift cards for a year to buy a hot water heater, I hear you. Congrats on the new house and all the projects coming your way!

And, Sarah from Ardmore Cottage…

I just want to finish the (*)$)@(#$ bathroom. We’ve been working on it for two years. We need a new sink, re-tile the walls behind the bathtub, put up beadboard, rip up the floors, try to salvage the original floors, fix the crown, fix the broken window, and re-paint the entire room, plus trim. *sigh*

I have to finish a couple of (*)$)@(#$ bathrooms myself, so I hear you. Hopefully the gift card helps you finish it up a little faster.

Congrats to all winners and good luck to everyone on your 2011 projects!

Also, thanks to True Value for sponsoring this contest.

So I have a confession…

Back when True Value asked me to be on their Blog Squad, I was pretty stoked. I had such big ideas. I was going to travel around the state, help people complete their projects, finish my house, and be sleeping in my brand new master bedroom (in my fully sided house) by Christmas.

I’m writing this post from my garage, if that gives you any indication of how the last half of this year has gone.

I did manage to sneak a few projects in:

• Helping make a out-of-date fireplace look a bit more hip
• Replacing a broken disposal
• Replacing a trick faucet

But the majority of my life was sucked up by the house I’m not currently living in, and whose interior is not finished enough for all of the fun projects some of the other Blog Squad members attempted, like finishing a bedroom, creating and installing some crown molding, or building a bed.

I haven’t really managed to do much of what I wanted to, but I still had some dollars to spend at my local True Values, so I’ve dedicated the last week of the year to catching up.

To start things off right I’m giving away a $150 gift card for someone to start the year off right with a True Value project.

To enter, leave a comment with the one project you’re hoping to complete in 2011!

(Contest closes on December 31st at 11:59 PM)

Legaleese: I’m a part of the True Value Blog Squad. A group of elite crazy people who do big DIY projects, small DIY projects and everything in between. True Value is sponsoring this giveaway, and has compensated me for my time. They also buy my affections with a seriously packed tool aisle.

When your friends decorate their house and good intentions turn into holy-god-that-paint-color-is-frying-my-retinas, mostly what you get is a potential aneurysm for trying not to laugh in their presence. And they get, uh, nothing.

Cause, listen… stuff like this does happen.

These pictures leave me without words, so I’ll only say this: Now, instead of just pain and humiliation, you and your “very much in need of decorating-help friends” can have $2,500. Each.

That’s True Value, people. Making life sweet for the decorating impaired.

Stage a Design Intervention & Win

Here’s how to enter the True Value Design SOS Contest.

1.) Find a design disaster. Really, how far do you have to go? It can be a friends or your own… seriously, True Value isn’t picky.

2.) Take pictures (up to 3) or a short video, and submit them with a short entry by going here. You have until October 7th.

3.) On October 22nd, ten finalists will be chosen, and then we, the people of the internet, will vote for the winner.

Win: $2,500 each to use at a local True Value store and an in-person consultation with a True Value “Master of All Things Hardwarian” to help them turn any space from unfortunate to unforgettable.

Fine Print: I LOVE true value. Not in the “hey, let’s run off to the chapel and get married” kind of way, it’s more like a “they make a huge effort to do awesome things for people who like houses and power tools and the internet” kind of love. Which is why I fell over dead with excitement when they asked me to join the True Value DIY Blog Squad and gave me money to help other people out with their projects. Which, as always, doesn’t mean they are paying me to say nice things about them. If I didn’t like them, I’d still take their money and then I’d say unflattering things about them on the internet and make gagging noises behind their back. Which I don’t do, because they are awesome. So there you go… full disclosure. (Wow, I think I should be a lawyer, I’m so good at this legal stuff.)