Clover House's Top 15 Posts of 2013 - A Year in Review

WOW! What a year 2013 has been! We've done so much but still have so much to do! It took a bit of gathering of information, but here's our top 15 project posts of 2013.  Just click on the link below each picture to be taken to the original post and all the good information!  Enjoy! :)

#1 HOW TO CLEAN AN HE WASHER

#2 A CLEAN SINK'S FRIEND

#3 RV FLOOR UPDATE

#4 RAISED BED GARDEN PART 2

#5 RAISED BED GARDEN PART 3

#6 RAISED BED GARDEN PART 1

#7 LAUNDRY ROOM REVEAL

#8 RV CABINET UPDATE

#9 CROCKPOT CREAM CHEESE CHICKEN CHILI

#10 FENCE PICKET A/C UNIT COVER

#11 TILING THE KITCHEN FLOOR

#12 DIY TACO SEASONING

#13 ORGANIZE AND BEAUTIFY YOUR CABINETS

#14 KITCHEN CABINET PART 3

#15 EASTER EGG WREATH

I hope you've enjoyed browsing our past year of the top 15 posts!  Did you get some good ideas?  I hope you pinned them! Thanks to all of our readers for making it such an awesome year!  Keep watching in 2014 for more great ideas, recipes, tips and tricks!  :)

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm Linking to:
Sunday
Under the Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn
The Self Sufficient Home Acre 
The Chicken Chick,  Sew Can Do
Monday
Craft-O-Maniac, 
Between Naps on the Porch
DIY Home Sweet Home
Keeping it  Simple 
The Dedicated House
Skip to my Lou
Home Coming
Tuesday
Not Just a Housewife
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Sugar Bee Crafts 
New Nostalgia 
It's your Life
BeBetsy
Fluster Buster   
Confessions of a Plate Addict
A Stroll Thru Life
Wednesday
Clean and Scentsible
Lady Behind the Curtain
Family Home and Life
Ducks n a Row
VMG206
Herrban Momma 
Family Home & Life
Oh My! Creative
Thursday  
Bloom
The Taylor House
52 Mantels
Domesblissity
4 You With Love
Sweet Haute
Artsy Fartsy Mama
From My Front Porch To Yours
Friday 
Lil’ Luna
Tatertots and Jello
Five Simple Things
Craftionary
Diana Rambles
I Heart Nap Time
Crafts a la mode
Saturday 
Angels Homestead
Positively Splendid,
Or So She Says
Your Homebased Mom
What's Cooking with Ruthie
Made From Pinterest

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Tiling Our Kitchen Floor

We have the most beautiful kitchen and dining room floor now.....well, we think so! It's finally done and we all love it!  We ran into a big booboo that I'll share with you so hopefully it doesn't happen to you too!

In case you forgot or this is your first visit to our blog, we used 12 x 18 Italian porcelain tiles that we started off in the laundry room with HERE.

Here's where we left off back then.  Its been almost a year and we've learned to navigate that tiny height difference between the tiles and the linoleum.  I'm still "watching" for it!  What were we waiting for?  It's hard work people! LOL!

We had a few places over in the dining room area where the linoleum was lifting up so we wanted to cut that down so it wouldn't interfere with the way the tiles would sit.  Turns out, it all wanted to come up, so up it came!

See this big stack of tiles? It's a lot right?  We thought so too!  It was NOT even enough to finish the kitchen/dining room much less the rest of the small tiling jobs we have in the house (entry hall and bathrooms).  Since we were purchasing this tile on clearance, we bought all they had knowing it was being discontinued.  We just knew it was going to be plenty.  Oh boy did we figure wrong.  We are rookies after all and evidently along with the Lowe's worker...not very good with math! LOL!

Anyways, we got to laying the tiles working with just one row at a time, putting down the tile mortar, then laying the tiles and being sure to add the little spacers to assure our 1/8th of an inch spacing for the grout.

Though you can't tell with his long shorts, my honey has knee pads on.  Knee pads are a must when tiling floors.  Even with wearing knee pads our knees are still very sore.  How do babies do it all those months of crawling on there little tiny knees? Ouch!

This is the point we got to when we ran out of tiles.  I was beside myself with disappointment.  I knew these tiles were discontinued back almost a year ago so I knew I was in for a big task of  "finding a needle in a hay stack"!  I wont go into all the details, but in the in end a very nice lady at the Lowe's customer help center came up with the idea of purchasing the 18 x 18 tiles and cutting them down to size, so that's exactly what we did!

My honey cut 15 tiles down to the correct size.  By the way, they are not really 12 x 18 tiles, they are slightly smaller which my honey already knew before he started the task of cutting them down.  It was very time consuming to cut all those tiles down, but so worth it in the end.  There were lots of tricky cuts in the last tiles that fit into the bay window.  My honey made every cut just right to make it all perfect.  GREAT job honey!

Next was the grouting job.  Sorry, no pictures of that step.  We were both grouting so no one to snap pictures.  We used a sanded grout from Lowe's, the color is called Ivory.  While its still wet it looks brown, but when it dries its a creamy white color.  After we got it all grouted, we turned on the fans to help drying, even our vintage fan helped out!

After clean up and letting the grout cure for 24 hours, we used a grout and tile sealer to make sure if anything was ever spilled in the floor it wouldn't stain the grout.  You just spray it on, wait 5 minutes and wipe off what didn't absorb in.

5 minutes is a long time when you have 3 nosey cats and a dog who want really badly to walk across the kitchen floor!

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm Linking to:

Sunday
Under the Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn, The Self Sufficient Home Acre , The Chicken Chick
 
Monday
Craft-O-Maniac, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Home Sweet Home , Keeping it  Simple , The Dedicated House, Skip to my Lou
Married Filing Jointly,  Home Coming
 
Tuesday
Not Just a Housewife, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia,  Sugar Bee Crafts,  New Nostalgia,  It's your Life

Wednesday
Lil’ Luna, Clean and Scentsible, Lady Behind the Curtain.  Family Home and Life,  Ducks n a Row

Thursday
 Bloom,  Two Yellow Birds Decor,  The Busy B's,  The Taylor House.  52 Mantels,  Domesblissity,  Redfly Creations
Friday 
Tatertots and Jello,  Five Simple Things,  Craftionary,  Diana Rambles

Saturday 
Angels Homestead,  Positively Splendid,  I Heart Nap Time,  Or So She Says ,  Your Homebased Mom ,  What's Cooking with Ruthie 

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Chalkboard Art for Valentine's Decorating

Although the post title states Valentine's decorating, I suppose you could this phrase all year long if you wanted to.  All you need is love, love is all you need.  No truer words could be spoken in song by the Beatles.  While browsing Pinterest, I noticed a lot of people using Beatles songs for their chalkboard art...I love it!

Mr. Bear seems to be smiling in approval of the chalkboard art that is hung above him...or maybe its his flower made with cupcake liners that he holds in his hand.  I found the idea HERE.  So sweet, but very time consuming!

To create my chalk masterpiece I used white chalk only.  I wrote out the complete phrase first and then went over it several times to make it more bold.  The "love" was gone over probably about 4 or 5 times.  To make the white area that the "love" sits in I simply turned the piece of chalk on its side and ran it across the surface and then rubbed it with my finger tips to make it blend better.

To create the shadow effect I used a damp paper towel and removed the chalk back to the black chalkboard color. Cool huh?  And just for a little added Valentine's detail, I dotted the I(s) with hearts.

Only 11 more days till Love Day!  Good thing we decorated early so we could enjoy all the colors of Valentine's Day a little longer.

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm Linking to:

Sunday
Under the Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn
The Self Sufficient Home Acre 
The Chicken Chick
 
Monday
Craft-O-Maniac
Between Naps on the Porch
DIY Home Sweet Home
Keeping it Simple
Thrifty Decor Chick

Tuesday
Not Just a Housewife
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Wednesday
Lil’ Luna
Clean and Scentsible
Green Eggs and Goats
Lady Behind the Curtain 
4 You with Love

Thursday
Bloom
Two Yellow Birds Decor

Friday 
Tatertots and Jello
Joyful Stamper
Craftionary

Saturday
Positively Splendid
I Heart Nap Time
Or So She Says 
Your Homebased Mom 

read more

Entry Hall Table Makeover

We wanted a hobby we could do together and make a little extra cash at. We decided on refinishing furniture.  This is our very first project. Let us know how we did! :)

My guy was in a new resale shop in our neighboring town and happened upon this diamond in the rough.  He paid $50 for her.

Our dining room table that we use daily is similar to this one and this look is what we want to have ours turn out like, so we experimented with this nice little entry hall table first just for practice.

We just assumed it was a dining room table when my honey brought it home and never knew it was an entry hall or foyer table until the day we actually placed the two pieces together.  She was a shorty!  It was in 2 pieces at the resale shop and it stayed in pieces for many weeks while we worked on it.  We were a bit bummed it wasn't a dining room table, but we carried on anyways.

There was lots of sanding to do and also some repairs of the base were needed.  It was cracked and falling apart.  It came with only 3 original castors.  Well, original to the person who refinished it before we did, I don't think it came like that originally, but maybe it did.  The table is a bit of a Frankenstein, but still functions perfectly the way they rebuilt it. Some new parts and some old parts were used.

I decided on a very dark top and a lighter base color.  The pretty wood grain just popped with all its beauty when I added the stain.  I used Minwax Dark Walnut #2716 stain and Minwax Fast Drying Polyurethane (4 coats) to make sure it has a very long life.

The bottom was first primed with Zinsser Primer Ultimate Stain Blocker, excellent for blocking previously stained surfaces. No sanding required, just add the primer and then paint.  For painting we used a small amount of a gallon of Valspar $5 bargain paint from Lowe's in a mushroom color and then antiqued it with an almost black antiquing glaze by Valspar in the color of Asphaltum #98278.  We sealed the painted parts with Valspar Clear Protector for faux finishes.

You can still see it's cracks and years of wear, but I think it gives the vintage table character. I love it! The only sanding we did was on the top. We love the roughed up look.  We bought 4 new casters for her. They started out a putrid lovely gold tone finish but we ORB'ed them and they looked wonderful and looked like they came with the table.  The center shot shows how the wood grain catches the antiquing.  The 3rd picture is the after top in the natural sunlight. Pure BEAUTY! :)

Lovely isn't she? I wanted to keep her but that was not what we had planned so she now lives with a new family.  We are in search of our next project now.  See the Fall vignette on the table up there?  It's Our Thankful Tree for this year,  to see that post, go HERE.

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

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Our Thankful Tree

We are taking a break now that we have completed the laundry room remodel and we are just going to relax and enjoy the holidays and then get back to remodeling after the first of the year. I will post pictures of the completed laundry room soon! It turned out awesome!

In the meanwhile, I love to craft. I love it!  I started seeing Thankful Trees pop up all over blogs and Pinterest so I made one for us too.

We tend to gather things we see at yard sales and auctions and then someday we find just the perfect project for them. The pretty crocheted piece was a $1 at a resale shop, the tall glass vase only cost .75 cents at a yard sale, the little amber bowl was in a giant box of dishes we got for $8 in an auction and I just found the amber votive the other day at a resale shop for .50 cents.

We gathered a few twigs out of the yard, bought a large package of popping corn and then I went shopping in my craft goodies for the rest of the supplies. If you want to re-create our Thankful Tree you will need the following items listed below.

THANKFUL TREE SUPPLIES

Tall glass vase
Popping Corn
Twigs from your yard
Spanish Moss
Raffia
Cardboard strip
Kraft Card Stock Paper
String

Place your twigs in the vase and then fill your vase with the popping corn.  Arrange the twigs the way you want them, the weight of the corn holds them in place.  Cut a strip of cardboard to fit around your vase and then tie it on with some raffia to hold it. Now tuck a small amount of Spanish Moss in the top to finish it off.

You might also want a dish to hold your leaves and pen so they are easily assessable to your family, but its certainly not required.  We are all adults here in our home so its nice, but families with little ones may not want to leave a pen out all the time.

I cut out the leaves using my Cricut machine and Kraft card stock paper.  I made 3 different sizes and then when they were all cut out I added a small piece of string to each one so they can be tied on the tree easily.

When one of us writes a little message on a leaf, I then tie it on to the tree.  I hope it will be full of leaves with little messages really soon! It makes me happy to read my family's thankful thoughts.

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!

I'm linking to:

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