How to White Wash a Fireplace AND Remove a Builder's Mirror

We are in the process of purchasing our home.  We've lived here nearly four years and have been renting.  Sadly, our amazing landlord passed away last year.  Just a few months ago, his family offered the house to us for purchase and we said "yes"!  We are actually supposed to close on the house tomorrow.  

This past week, my sister in law came over and we white washed the fireplace and then removed a huge builders mirror that hung over the fireplace.  The mirror has been the one thing that I've absolutely HATED about my living room (besides the awful grey striped wallpaper-notice it in the picture above on the right of the fireplace), and it was the most exciting thing to get rid of.  White washing the fireplace has given our room the most amazing change and feel, and it was so incredibly easy.

Since we did these two projects together, and I took pictures of both projects at the same time, this is a two-in-one tutorial: "How to White Wash a Fireplace" and "How to Remove a Builder's Mirror."

White washing is very simple.  You can use any white colored paint you have.  We used a latex white paint.  It is not flame retardant, however, so you'll want to stay away from the inside bricks of the fireplace.  We removed the front, brass (hideous) cover from the fireplace, and then swept and wiped down the bricks with a damp cloth before beginning. 

In a bowl or cup, add about 2 cups paint to 1 1/2 cups water.  Mix well.  Using a paintbrush, brush on the paint onto the bricks.  Be sure to wipe off the excess paint into the cup, as the watery paint will drip.  After painting on the paint, immediately blot off excess paint from the bricks.  We wore gloves and I bought Viva paper towels (super thick) to do the blotting.  Jenny painted it on, I followed and blotted.  We only did one coat and were satisfied with the results.

Next was the mirror.  We removed the wood framing from around the mirror.  Then, using duck tape, and then painters tape when I ran out, we taped up the mirror forming "x's" and squares.  The tape helps hold the pieces of the mirror together when it will inevitably break. 

Because we had lots of littles around the house, we wanted to keep any and all mirror pieces contained well.  We decided to cover the top of the mirror with trash bags to catch any pieces that might have wanted to fly.  Then we grabbed our glasses and started to pry from the back of the mirror!

Our mirror popped off in three pieces.  The big one was pretty heavy, and if you are removing a large mirror like this, I suggest having a second person help you.

These types of mirror are glued to the walls, and they're made to STICK well.  You will probably find that it pulls off some of the drywall paper stuff (technical terms aren't my specialty here). 

It looked pretty sad behind the mirror, but not nearly as ugly as the mirror had been. 

Some putty to fill in the holes, sanding, and spray on texture solved our problems!  If you're holes happen to be small, you could get aways without the spray texture.  We really tried to make it work, but in the end, there were just too many big flat spots and we added texture. 

Lastly, paint!  We painted the wall above the fireplace.  You can see our awful wallpaper to the right of the fireplace.  Nearly our entire house is wallpapered, and so we are taking it bit by bit.  The wallpaper comes off amazingly easy, but then we have to sit and scrub the glue before we can paint. 

While I was teaching on Saturday, Ben scrubbed the rest of the wall to the right, and we finishedpainting on Saturday afternoon.

It already feels like a whole new room and all we've done is to remove the wallpaper and the mirror, paint one wall, and white wash the fireplace.  We are slowly chipping away at painting the other walls, and we're replacing the far-gone blinds this afternoon.  Eventually, we'll add grey laminate wood flooring throughout this room and the adjoining kitchen, as well as new thick baseboards and crown molding.  It's a lot of work, but each little bit is thrilling and makes such a big difference!

I look forward to showing you the rest of our house progress!

Recent Projects-Patio Set and Bench

Life has been busy lately.  Like, "whoops I planned way too much for myself in a short period of time", kinda busy.  Hence, the scattered and not-so-many-as-usual blog posts.  We have some friends preparing to move away soon, and as they've been cleaning out their house, we've been the lucky recipients of some of their awesome stuff ;)  We've been working on re-doing these items into beautiful new pieces.  

Above is a table and chair set.  They were sanded, primed, given 2 coats of red, and then 2 coats of polyurethane.  I LOVE them.  The red brightens my backyard!

This bench is almost finished (still needs the poly).  It was sanded, primed, and then I finished off the quart of that $2 Oops paint I scored from Home Depot a little while ago.  I honestly have no idea where this bench will end up, but I think it's just the cutest thing!  For now, it's resting under the chalkboard doors I did a couple weeks ago in my kitchen.  I eventually would like to build a narrow storage table for against this wall.

At this point, every furniture piece/decoration/art in out kitchen/dining area is handmade (or old but redone by us).  My style tastes have changed SO much since I got married 9 years ago (I used to hate handmade things like these).

What have you been updating or building lately?

Using PicMonkey to Increase Your Pinterest Repins

Once upon a time when I started this blog, my posts were terrible.  Okay, maybe not so much terrible as they were basic, boring, and bland.  I knew nothing about formatting, nothing about uploading a picture (or TAKING a picture for that matter), and nothing about much of anything else, including Pinterest. It was only on rare, but exciting occasions that my posts had a decent looking picture to go with them.  Eventually, I "caved" to join this thing called Pinterest, and I've never looked back.  It's a good thing, too, as 80-90% of my traffic comes from Pinterest alone!  My posts now almost always have pictures, and I almost always edit them with PicMonkey.

As I've learned more and more about blogging, I've started going back and re-doing (or creating) more "pinnable images" for my old posts.  The posts that had nothing are getting something, and the posts that had basic pictures are getting words and descriptions and watermarks.  You may wonder why I'm putting time into re-doing these old things.  The answer is because I get so much traffic from Pinterest, and, because of the nature of Pinterest, my old posts can live on and on and on.  Why not maximize the potential traffic from old posts?  

So, here is my example of why and how using PicMonkey has helped me to increase my repins and maximize traffic from old posts.

The above image is one that I pinned almost 1 year ago for a post for Earth Day.  In the past 11 months that this has been on Pinterest, it has received a whopping 26 repins and 5 likes.  Big bummer, too, because it's such a fun and easy recipe/learning activity for Earth Day.  

So, I recently went back and used PicMonkey to fix it up a bit.  Nothing fancy.  I just added a green "overlay", and then added some text using a couple different fonts.  I added my website address, as well, to prevent theft of my picture (which has been happening a lot lately...I'm flattered, but please give credit where credit is due, people!).  Watermarking your pictures in some way is always a good idea.

Here is what I pinned this time.  Same image, but enhanced by PicMonkey:

Now, AFTER using PicMonkey to enhance my pin and then pinning it again 11 weeks ago, it has had 262 repins and 15 likes.  BIIIIIG difference!  

26 repins in 11 months vs. 262 repins in 11 weeks

(Update 5/12/14: 770 repins in 17 weeks

Update 2/28/15: 1200 + repins)

Which would you prefer?  Now my old post is getting new life, more repins, and more traffic to my blog.  

I love using PicMonkey.  It's simple, free, and has made a HUGE difference in my pins.  

Do you alter your blog photos in any way to make them more "pinnable" on Pinterest?  What program do you use?  Do you notice a difference in your repins on your non edited ones vs. your edited ones?