DIY or Die

Bought a fixer upper in Brooklyn when I was 25, this is a chronicle of my house progress.

[lilmissmortgage]

Gel Staining Stairs

When we first moved into our little fixer upper the stairs leading to the basement were raw, unfinished wood with years of dirt ground into them. It makes sense not to spend too much time prettying stairs that only lead to work/storage space but they drove me nuts. 

After a little bit of light sanding with my trusty hand sander to get the dirt out I applied a coat of Jacobean stain. 

Unfortunately my sanding missed bits of glue along the bottom edges and I’m way too lazy to sand all over again.

So, I waited until the coat of stain dried, then I took out the same can of Java gel stain I use for everything and went over all the stairs with it, using a thicker line to cover the old glue spots. And tada! Here they are after java gel stain with a layer of satin poly.

[lilmissmortgage]

How to Have a Deluxe Disney World Vacation on a Budget

Y'all know I’m passionate about DIY but did you know I’m also passionate about Disney World? Yes, it’s true, I’m a 28-year-old childless Disney fanatic. I grew up in Florida where we used to frequent the parks like most families frequent the playground, both my father and my best friend’s mom worked at the parks so we got in for free, woot woot! Unfortunately as an adult that lives out of state going to Disney World is no longer a casual fun thing to do on the weekend, it’s something that takes planning. And as someone that is frugal but still prefers the finer things in life, here are my tips on doing Disney deluxe on a budget:

1.) Transportation

If you’re one of the unlucky masses that live out of state (like me) you either have to drive for 15 hours or watch flight deals like a hawk in order to get a great deal. I recommend setting up a fare alert email via skyscanner.com with your travel dates, this way every time your flight cost drops/increases you get an email! This saved me $226 on my last trip - two round-trip flights went from $390 (each) to $277 and would have gone even lower but I was terrified of losing the deal so I pounced. I’m now flying JetBlue - my favorite airline - during the times I wanted whereas when I first started looking for flights only red eyes were available, and who wants to leave Disney World at 4am? It’s one less day of vacation. 

Also, if you’re staying at a Disney World hotel, take the Magical Express from the airport, It’s free and will take you straight to your resort. Don’t bother renting a car unless you’re planning to leave Disney property (Harry Potter World, anyone?) but if you are planning to then rent one for the day from the Walt Disney World Car Care Center. A shuttle will pick you up from your resort to get your car and drop you off again at the end of the day. This way you’re only spending money for a car on the day that you need it, the rest of the time you’re free to relax on the monorail.

2.) Souvenirs

Disney souvenirs can get insanely expensive and most of the time they get lost or destroyed pretty quickly. The kids I used to babysit for brought back t-shirts, mouse ears and pirate swords from their trip and all were outgrown, stained or lost within a month. I purchased Disney themed t-shirts from Target & mouse ears from Party City a month before our last trip, and the total for all three shirts was around $30 and mouse ears were $6 a piece. We got to have fun rocking our Ts on the plane ride and we saved a ton of money in comparison to buying in the parks where mouse ears start at $15 and shirts at $25.

3.) Hotels

Stay on site! It’s not even worth considering not staying on Disney property. You get the full experience from cast members and resort themes when you stay on site, not to mention the free bus system. If you have young kids the value resorts are the least expensive and have the best themes, what little kid wouldn’t love this:

But value resorts are also furthest from the parks and are not as upscale as the Beach Club is:

So I prefer to stay at deluxe resorts. The Beach Club & the Boardwalk are literally a five minute walk to Epcot and they are beautiful, the one down side is price...which is why I choose to rent DVC points rather than booking through Disney. Several years ago through mouseowners.com I found a person renting their Disney Vacation Club points at $10 per point, the total needed points to rent a studio in the Boardwalk for five nights was 72, so I paid $720 TOTAL to stay in a room that would ordinarily cost $404 per night. Altogether I saved $1,300 to stay in a top tier resort in an amazing location! 

I know renting points from a stranger can make some people a little nervous but there are steps you can take to protect yourself. Ask questions, the people I rented points from each spent time talking to me on the phone and answering my questions. Someone else I contacted refused to speak to me at all, they just advised via email that the points would be rented by someone else if I didn’t pay for them immediately... this is not the kind of person I’d feel safe renting from. I also signed a rental agreement with the owner I rented from and was given their cell and work numbers if I had any problems while there. After my great experience I now rent from the same people every year instead of hunting through the forums.

4.) Tickets

It’s really difficult to get significant savings on Disney tickets unless you are a Florida resident or military. I buy my tickets through Undercover Tourist where I save between $20 and $40 depending on what types of tickets I choose but every little bit helps. $20 means hot dogs at Casey’s Corner or an ice cream sundae at Beaches and Cream.

Magic Your Way tickets are the lowest priced and allow you to go to one park per day, they are my favorite as I don’t have the desire to park hop. After a humid sunny morning at Hollywood Studios I want to come back to my resort, swim, have a snack then head back to Hollywood Studios for dinner and Fantasmic. I paid for Park Hoppers my last two trips but realized I only used them for dinner and only because I felt pressured to get more bang for my buck. Most of the time I’d have preferred to eat at my resort and laze around. It’s still a vacation!

If you liked this post feel free to check out my book  Disney Savings Secrets it goes a little more in depth ;)

[lilmissmortgage]

Staining Parquet Floors

When we first moved into our house the parquet flooring was in bad shape - what was left of the polyurethane was yellowed with age while the rest of the floor was scratched from low hanging doors. See before pic: 

Look at that cute little Cup the Pup! She’s such a good - Ahem, back to business, so no matter how often I mopped our feet would turn black from walking on it. The polyurethane was worn away, something had to be done. I taped off a section and hand sanded it to test the Jacobean Stain. When I did it I was 99.9% sure that this would be the stain I’d use which is why the section is so big. 

Sadly the Minwax Jacobean was no bueno. I didn't like how it reflected against the doors so I tested another section with Minwax Red Mahagonoy & it was love at first sight! But sorry no pic of that. Me and my sweet little man went straight to Home Depot to rent an orbital sander & here is the floor in all it’s former glory:

 Here it is after sanding for 6 hours straight with sandpaper of varying roughness ( 40 grit to take all the crap off then 100 grit for fine finish) and then the really fun part was spending another hour on my knees hand sanding all the tiny spots the orbital missed.

Stained Minwax Red Mahogany!

It looks much better against the doors than the Jacobean did. The unfortunate thing was that even after all that sanding we still missed spots:

So what did I do? What I always do! I turned to my Java Gel Stain (see my doors) and gel painted the spots I missed:

Much better! Than we waited a night for it to dry, the next day we polyed it (doing 3 coats altogether over the course of two days). Here it is:

My one regret is not cleaning it properly, we swept mopped & vacuumed but there are still hairs/bits of dust preserved forever if you looks closely. Oh well, it’s still a huge improvement!  

[lilmissmortgage]

Cheap Exterior MakeOver

My mommy always says that the cheapest way to give something a new look is to put a fresh coat of paint on it and - 9 times out of 10 - she's right. If I had my way (and limitless funds) I'd get rid of the horrendous powder blue siding that encases my otherwise lovely house and build a brick facade or go for a nautical theme with navy siding and white trim. Sadly big exterior changes like that cost a ton so I took my mother's advice & stuck to small and inexpensive and am very pleased with the result. 

Here is the main entryway in all it's original glory - beautiful moldings painted powder blue to match the ugly siding. Please pardon the pic, this was taken from google maps streetview since I didn't have the foresight to take a before.

After a brief (but fierce) argument Davey & I agreed on Behr Exterior Paint's Carriage Red for the door & Courtyard Blue for the moldings (the white accents are just regular white primer, we are lazy humans).

Much better!

[lilmissmortgage]

From Craigslist to Anthropology Knock Off Chairs

I am cheap. It physically pains me to overspend on something so Craigslist is my best friend when it comes to buying furniture (though the furniture usually needs some tweaking). Take these chairs for example:

It was $50 for four chairs on Craigslist and though the design of them is great, the pictures fail to do justice to the dents, scratches and stains. 

I started out by unscrewing the seats, all you have to do is flip the chair over and stick a drill in the screw holes. Because I tend to lose everything I put the screws into a tupperware and piled the seats onto the dining room table for safekeeping. Then I sanded the chairs down with my hand sander (150 grit sandpaper), revealing many layers of paint from over the years. This got out a lot of the scratches/dents. 

After sanding (which took a couple hours) I then spray painted the crevices gray so that the details would be clearly defined once the chairs were white. Check out those gray feet!

I then put these chairs on my handy plastic tarp (see it peeking out in the above photo) and proceeded to use six (six!!) cans of Heirloom White spray paint to fully cover the red. I had thought spray paint would be easier than hand painting but it turned out to be a little tricky. Some tips:

- Don't spray in direct sunlight or when it's 80+ degrees out. The paint can come out powdery and ruin the smooth finish (which means you will have to sand them AGAIN and spray paint AGAIN).

- Don't spray areas in heavy coats, it's better to do a light coat over the whole chair, wait a couple minutes then do another light coat repeat ect. until it's fully covered. Heavy coats tend to drip which means - you guessed it - you will have to re-sand and re-spray... if you want that smooth professional finish.

Here they are finally white with a gray undertone!

From here I proceeded to go to Mood Fabrics in NYC and have a mini meltdown due to all the fabric choices (how do I choose?? My dining room is painted blue, will another blue match? Will gray work or is it too dreary? Cotton vs polyester?) Finally a sales associate took pity on me and helped me choose.

Using a staple gun I covered each seat in the new fabric. Make sure its on tight, otherwise you'll have weird bunching in the corners!

Mission complete!

[lilmissmortgage]

Deliciously Dark Doors

Gel stain is deceptively named, it's not really a stain, just a very thin paint that sits on top of the wood, it does not sink in. This is actually a good thing though because in order to use real stain I would have had to sand like a mother in order to get off all the old polyurethane and - as proven by past experience - I always manage to miss a spot. After a light sanding, literally just giving the door a once over with a sanding block to rough the surface up enough so that the gel would stick to it, I started in with General Finishes Java Gel Stain.

Before:

I used disposable plastic gloves with a sock over them to give the doors their first coat. A little dab of gel paint goes a long way & if you want the grain of the wood to be visible do multiple light coats rather than one thick one. 1st Coat:

The sock could not get into every crevice though & I had to use a paint brush for the angles (check out that terrible carpet).

I waited ten hours between coats to allow proper drying & after my third and final coat was dry I used General Finishes Satin Polyurethane to complete the project. I'm not a big fan of shiny finishes so be warned that Satin Poly only gives off a very faint sheen. Also, one quart of Java Gel Stain was enough for me to do my kitchen cabinets, stairs, a table, 5 doors and countless other projects so don't feel pressured to over order.

Completed Gel Stained Door:

Sooo much better! It's no wonder I'm obsessed with Gel Stain.

[lilmissmortgage]

Dining Room Transformation

Moving the two blocks from our rented apartment to our newly purchased house was a nightmare, no moving van just a borrowed Honda CRV & my Toyota Yaris to transport a three bedroom apartment's contents in one night. To make matters worse, the previous occupants left two enormous leather couches that were on the brink of death, covered in holes and ink stains, in addition to greasy curtains that smelled like cigarettes. We had nowhere to put anything & lived out of boxes for a couple weeks while getting rid of their stuff and cleaning.

My first big project was the dining room, you can see why:

I found a Maria Theresa 6 light chandelier on the Home Depot site on sale for less than $65! In the chandelier world this is a steal, even if it's made out of plastic (like mine is). 

After clearing out the junk & wiping down the walls - it's hard to see it but they were yellow with cigarette smoke as well & if you don't clean before painting the paint might not stick well - I picked Vista Blue in Eggshell & plain old white for the trim and went to work.

I bought some curtains at Ikea, paid $50 on Craigslist for a white Ikea dresser to use as a temporary buffet & voila!