GabbieGillmer

I could be drinking this! Apec RO-90 Water Filter replacment review.

admin — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 03:00:58 +0000

I really can say this is the most used and best purchase for our home so far. Its the Apec RO-90 Reverse Osmosis under the sink water filter. I was just replacing the filters tonight and I thought I would snap a couple pictures as it looked so gross. I could be drinking all that stuff! Luckily it is filtered out before it gets to our filters water tap. The filter uses Reverse Osmosis to filter out up to 99% of contaminants they say on the website. It stores the water in a tank under your sink and you have a dedicated faucet for it. You have instant access to a large amount of filtered water and it has a fast flow rate.

Disclaimer: This article is not financial advice, or instructions on how you should do anything, it is for entertainment purposes only. This site also uses affiliate links. This means I may make a small amount of money at no cost to you if you buy something after clicking a link on this site.

Now I don’t have any pictures of my husband doing the installation, but he had no problem installing it. He said the instructions were good and it was pretty easy to do. I feel the price for the unit is really reasonable, and the same with the cost of replacement filters. We have to replace the 3 first stage filters every year and they run around 40 bucks for the set. It ends up being much cheaper then using our refrigerator filter for water. (We actually do not use the fridge for water any more) . The other reason we love it is because it fills the glass with water REALLY fast. You get really spoiled with this aspect and waiting for a refrigerator to fill a glass is like watching paint dry now. You can read other reviews HERE and see others have enjoyed it as much as we have.

BEFORE SWAPPING FILTERS

Here is what it looks like pulled out from under the sink and ready to swap filters.

We were almost at our yearly replacement date and I ordered a new set of filters off of Amazon. One thing you may notice from our picture is we have an upgraded first stage sediment clear filter cover as I wanted to be able to see how dirty is gets between filter swaps. Look it this picture, the sediment filter is a pretty ugly brown by now. I was also able tell it was getting close to time to swap out the filters as I could detect the water flow was a little slower on the dedicated water filter faucet the filter uses.

This time I went and ordered 2 sets of the 3 pre-stage filters that get changed yearly. I was able to save 10 bucks and now will have a set on hand for next time. As for price, you can get them direct from Apec or through Amazon. They are usually about the same price, but if your a Prime member at Amazon you save on shipping and get them faster. This was the double pack that saved me a little money.

Here is a picture of the first stage Sediment Filter after removing it. The water had some chunks of stuff floating in it. This is what would be in our tap water.

The carbon filters #2 and #3 did not look to bad when I pulled them out of their containers. The first one #2 had a little discoloration.

THE NEW FILTERS

Getting ready to add the new filters. They just drop in place into the container.

Here is the first stage sediment filter, notice how white they are when they are new. Crazy how dirty the filters end up and all the gunk they pull out of the tap water.

Here is the RO-90 with the clean filters installed and ready to go back under the sink.

While I have never had a leak with the unit, I do have it into a plastic tub under the sink just as a precaution. I guess I am a little paranoid.

We are ready for another year. The other two filters on the unit will need to be replaced in 3-5 years. We plan to do it on our next filter swap as it should be about 5 years. We will just do all 5 filters at once. This full sett next year will run more as the #4 and #5 filters are more expensive. The whole kit of 5 filters was in the 130 dollar range last I checked. But again, this is once every 3-5 years. I think the difference in time depends on the quality of tap water you already have. I always thought we had pretty good water in our location, and I am surprised at how dirty the filters gets.

We purchased our unit directly from Apec Water’s website here https://www.freedrinkingwater.com/ and you can see they do have some optional upgrades. We did a clear sediment filter housing and some 3/8 line upgrade they were offering at the time. They also have some good sales once in a while you can keep an eye out for. If you do decide to make a purchase online through them, They do have a referral program. If you use a friend for the referral they can get a free set of filters. (or you can always use me if you don’t have anyone 🙂 gabbiegillmer@gmail.com

But another great option is to buy it on Amazon HERE. I tend to get the filters on Amazon out of convenience and the free shipping with prime. With Amazons free shipping the price usually seems to be about the same as on Apec’s website. But it doesn’t hurt to check both to see which price is best for you.

Anyways , I really love our water filter and how convenient it is to use. I feel it really is a great product.

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DIY – Lemon Fabric Kitchen Valance and Table Runner

admin — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 23:16:17 +0000

I was wanting to add a little yellow accent to the kitchen and saw this nice tablecloth for 60% off at a local store. I decided to make a Kitchen Valance and a table runner from it.

Starting with a tablecloth.

First I eyeballed the size I needed for a valance, and also for the middle of the table. Then I grabbed my scissors and stitchwitch and my iron. I cut the tablecloth into two pieces to start.

If you don’t know what Stitch Witch is, it looks like this and is a bonding material that bonds upon heat. It will replace my need for any sewing on this project. You can purchase it HERE on amazon.

Here you can see the stitch witch placed down on the fabric, and ready to put fabric over it and Iron.

Just follow the included instructions on the stitch witch and Iron it to bond the fabric together. My Iron was at number 7.

Here you can see it bonded the fabric.

I now have my Kitchen Valance done. I did the same process for the table runner.

Ta da! Here you can see both the table runner and valance hanging up.

Here is a closeup of the table runner.

Here is a closeup of the Valance.

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Ikea Henriksdal Green Dyed Chair covers – DIY

admin — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 22:51:36 +0000

The Ikea Henriksdal Chair covers are really easy to dye to get the color you want. I now have a set of red, black and decided to do a green set. Dying some white Ikea Henriksdal green was next on my list.

Getting started

You can pick up the plain white Ikea Henriksdal chair covers at Ikea, at this link HERE from amazon. Here are mine getting ready to be colored. The covers they are sitting on are my red covers I did earlier.

I prepped the area to keep the stain from getting on anything as I was going to do this indoors. I used some tarps to protect the area in the kitchen.

The Dye I used

I mixed these colors for the project. This time I used RIT Dye (in my last post when I did the Red Chair covers HERE I used dylon brand dye.)

The colors I chose for this batch of Ikea Henriksdal covers was:

BLUE – Rit Evening Blue dye
Yellow – Rit Lemon Yellow dye
Emerald – Rit Emerald dye
Green – Rit Kelly Green dye

I used all four bottles per tub, one of each color.

Protecting my hands was a priority so they didn’t turn green. I used these gloves for this project, you can grab them from amazon HERE.

Needing a way to hold the chair covers down in the ink as they wanted to float to the top, I used some kitchen pots.

One result of being still wet is they look a little darker, but they lightened up after drying.

Drying the covers for just a bit you can see they lightened up, After that I did a hang dry to finish drying them.

Finished the Ikea Henriksdal Green covers.

My new dyed Ikea Henriksdal green covers installed on the chairs 🙂

A closeup shot of the Ikea Heriksdal Green chair cover.

I like changing colors in the room as a fun way to make a quick impact, I really like this option of having sets of separate chair covers in separate colors to go with my mood. This is one of the reasons I like the Ikea Henriksdal chairs so much. In addition to being really versatile, the price is not that bad either. These green chairs ended up being exactly what I wanted for now.

If you want to see more pictures of the red covers, they are shown in this post here.

Thanks for visiting the site! Have a great rest of your day!

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Kitchen Island remodel

admin — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 14:57:06 +0000

We recently decided to remodel our kitchen island. Originally it was in an L shape and we wanted it to be just a long straight island. We also wanted to paint it and put on a new countertop. I thought I would go ahead and snap some pictures of the progress.

Starting out

So we had rearranged the existing cabinets to line them up straight. We also removed the existing tile countertop that was on the top. While we wanted to go with a granite countertop, we are holding off on that until we are ready to do all our countertops at once. For now we are going to use a wood countertop we found at Ikea that we liked.

Also you will notice the holes in the cabinet doors below. We did this a while ago when our dog was a puppy. This is where her dog bed is and she sleeps once in a while. She was wondering what I am doing to her house.

It was really easy to cut the new countertop with my a skillsaw. The cut came out nice and clean. The Ikea countertop also has an end piece that we will glue on later, so that the cut end will match the other side.

Here is the back of the island. You can see we needed a longer panel piece for the back after doing the rearrangement of the cabinets. This was fine as we decided wanted to do wainscot on the back as I have always liked the look of it.

So we started by removing the back panel, and also the countertop as it had not been glued down yet. We also removed the doors on the front in preparation of the paint job.

Picking the wainscot

Here we were deciding on a backing. We deiced to go with the narrow lines like the one on the right.

We also got started on the painting while still working on the back. For the paint I went with General Finishes Queenstown Gray Milk Paint as I have used it before. I had to order it from Amazon, but it was worth it as this stuff is amazing and really coats and sticks well to cabinets. Here is a LINK if you want to check it out and read the reviews and see other peoples pictures, last I checked it still had a 5 star rating.

General Finishes Queenstown Gray Milk Paint.

Here is the island with a coat of paint on the front. (And a sad looking dog who is wondering where her dog bed went.)

Next we added a couple more boards to the back to make it easier to attach the wainscot.

Wainscot is now attached and ready for some paint.

Doors and back are painted with the first coat.

Here it is at this stage with no molding on the bottom.

I decided to go with something a little chunkier for the molding then we had on the island earlier. We went ahead and painted it before putting it on the island. In the background you can see the cabinets we purchased for the wall buffet.

I just nailed it with our brad nail gun.

Here is a better overview at this point.

Once the molding was attached I needed to go over and fill the gaps with some paintable caulk.

Here you can see the I just filled in any cracks before the final coat of paint.

Completed

Here is a final overview picture of it completed in the room.

Here is another picture with some yellow accents I added along with some green chair covers I dyed.

And just so you know, someone was really happy to have her little home back 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and checking out the website! Have a great day!

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TrafficMaster Ceramica Cool Grey vinyl tile bathroom remodel

admin — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 03:55:30 +0000

I just wanted to do a post of our bathroom remodel with us installing some TrafficMaster Ceramica Cool Grey self stick vinyl tiles, and wainscot on one of the walls. Due to how many pictures were in this post, I did split it into a few pages to help with load time.

After finding our linoleum had a little swelling of the floor in the corner due to some water spillage from the kids in the tub. We decided to go ahead and try installing some TrafficMaster Ceramica Cool Grey self stick tiles. We figured this would be a good time as we would be repairing the floor anyways.

Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only. It is not instructions on how you should do anything. Please follow any manufacturer instructions or hire a professional if you do not know what you are doing. This site also uses affiliate links. This means I may make a small amount of money at no cost to you if you buy something after clicking a link on this site.

Getting started

Here is the start of the job, we had noticed some swelling in the floor by the corner of the bathtub. This was due to the caulk deteriorating by the tub and water being spilled over from the tub when the kids take bath’s. I wish I would have re-caulked it before this happened, but it luckily was not very bad yet.

Here you can see the issue as I pulled back the linoleum to take a look. It is hard to show it in the picture, but there was some swelling where the discoloration is.

Luckily we caught it pretty quick and it did not cause much damage to the underlayer. We let it dry and I sanded it down to be level again.

Now the plan was to go ahead and use the trafficMaster tiles right over my linoleum. So I needed to glue the original linoleum back down. I went ahead and used a multi purpose adhesive like this HERE to glue it, but the brand I used was called stick n stay from the local hardware store. I put down a thin layer with a trowel.

Then I ran some groves in it with an old comb I found. It would have been better to use a tile trowel like THIS that is designed for this type of job, but I did not have one. But looked good enough to me once I was done with the comb.

I did not want to rent a 100lb roller for this job, so I went ahead and purchased a small cheap roller from amazon. This is the one I got HERE. It was really cheap and worked out surprisingly well. Especially for such a small room. If I was doing a large room I might have rented the big roller. So basically in the picture below I used the hand roller to roll it back down with a lot of pressure, then I sat some weight on it and left it for a day to adhere.

Prepping the floor

The next day I started the process of removing all the molding in the room along the walls and cabinet.

I used a razor blade and a putty knife to remove all the caulking I could find along the edges as well. The goal was to just make the floor level.

Then I wiped it down with this cleaner HERE to hopefully help the tiles stick better. Here is what it looked like when I was ready to get started with the new tiles. I also removed the toilet in case you were wondering about the hole in the floor :-). The glued down corner looked great. I could have probably just added caulk and been done with it, but we wanted to install the TrafficMaster stick-on vinyl tiles.

Now for the fun stuff! Starting the new floor.

We decided to go with TrafficMaster Ceramica Cool Grey tiles as we liked the pattern and also they had a nice beveled edge. These are Model: 40516C SKU: 1001 553 461 . The can be installed with or without a grout, but we thought the beveled edge would look really nice with a dark grey grout.

We decided to go with a 1/8 space between the tiles for the grout. This along with the bevel would give us the thickness we wanted. I planned to use some spacers like these HERE and in the picture below to space out the tiles. I like the T-spacers as I could also use them as a straight edge spacer by flipping them over.

Next I picked a corner to start with. I chose the corner by the bathtub. Then I used a straight edge and made a line I could follow along with to keep the tiles even.

Installing the TrafficMaster Ceramica Cool Grey tiles

NOTE: First I want to mention a mistake I made. I took a sanding block and tried to rough up the original laminate by the bathtub thinking it would allow the tiles to stick better. Then I glanced at the instructions and noticed they said do NOT sand the surface. Oops. Then after putting the tiles down and rolling them, I found they popped back up in the center after a few hours and did not seat very well. They were stiff and seemed to want to retain the slight beveled shape they were originally in. I thought the not sticking could have been due to my sanding the linoleum in error, or my tiles just needed to be pressed down more. I did a quick search online and found some people had had good luck warming up the tiles before applying. So I grabbed my heat gun, and used it to warm up the tiles I had already stuck to the floor by applying heat to the top of the tiles and then rolled them again. This really worked well for me as the tiles got soft and stuck VERY well. (If you do not have a heat gun I think a hair dryer would have also worked. )

After using the heat gun and seeing how well it worked, I ended up using the heat gun for the rest of the installation. I would warm up the rest of tiles on the sticky side before removing the paper from the adhesive to stick them down. (I started by heating the top of the tiles, but after a couple rows switched to heating the bottom only before laying down. This worked better for me and I figured it would have less of a chance of damaging the surface of the tile if I got it to hot.)

I should also mention the back of the tile has arrows to make sure you orient them always in the correct direction. This was really handy.

As I applied the first row of tiles up against the bathtub, I used the 1/8 inch spacers in between them to keep them even and leave space for the grout.

When I got to the end of the row, I just measured the length of tile I needed and cut to fit. It was easy to cut the tile as I just scored it really good with a razor blade on the top and then basically cracked it on the score mark. When I got to the toilet area I made a quick template to mark the tile so I could cut it to fit.

Again here I am heating the top of the tile with the heat gun. Using a heat gun was NOT per the instructions. Later I did switch to heating the bottom side only as I did not want to risk any surface damage. (Although I don’t think it caused any). This worked for me, but of course everyone should follow the instructions. This is just showing how I did mine. I would move the heat gun back and forth not leaving it on a spot to long. This was to avoid any burn marks or damage to the tile.

Continued on next page…

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Yellow entry bench painted with Tulip Slick fabric paint.

admin — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 22:12:24 +0000

I just wanted to post a couple pictures of my bench I painted with Tulip slick fabric paint. I really like the color and how it turned out. The bench was one I had added a cushion to in the past and then had stapled on a burlap cover. While I liked the cover, I did not like the feeling of it. So I decided to paint it and see how it turned out.

Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only. I am not responsible if you try anything on this website and injure yourself or damage your property. This site also uses affiliate links. This means I may make a small amount of money at no cost to you if you buy something after clicking a link on this site.

The project:

This is the paint I used, Yellow Tulip Slick fabric paint. I purchased it off of Amazon.

It took multiple coats to get it to this color. I just like how yellow makes it more cheerful. Also the texture is a lot nicer to touch.

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Faux wood painted bedroom wall.

admin — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 21:47:12 +0000

My son loves the look of wood and wanted to have some wood panels on his wall. So rather then buy the paneling and go through the hassle I decided to try paining them first. I had seen this technique of using a comb online and it looked pretty good. Here are my results below.

Sorry I don’t have as many pictures as I wanted of the progress, as I just found these on my phone from doing this a couple months ago. I decided to go ahead and post what I had.

The starting point:

Here are the paint colors I used, they were from home depot.

The colors were:

“Baronial Brown” and “Chocolate Heart”

I previously painted stripes on the wall using some extra light blue and Grey paint we had sitting around (Sorry, I don’t have the names of those paints). This was to give a better variance between the boards. Here you can see I had taped off the light blue color so I started by painting over the light brown color with the Baronial Brown. Then I went back and added some splotches of Chocolate heart. For reference the original stripes were about 9-10 inches wide.

As mentioned above started by brushing on the darker Baronial Brown color first and then brushed the light brown over it in splotches. While still wet I ran a comb through it like THESE. You can pick them up at a dollar store. When it came to a point that I wanted to end a board I would just drag the comb down to make a line.

Once I had those planks painted, I waited a couple hours and removed the painters tape to start the planks that were in between the ones I already completed. To paint these I found it easier to use one of THESE things to put on the dark paint straight rather then tape up what I had just painted and risk having issues with the tape on still drying paint.

Again going after putting down some dark using the light brown paint on top, then combing it with a brush to make the wood grain. The more you use the comb, the more the color underneath starts to show.

Here is a closeup of how it looks.

Here is a picture of the final product. I took it with my cell and plan to go back and get a better picture with the good camera.

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Divano Roma Splitback Living Room Sleeper Futon Couch Review

admin — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 17:47:58 +0000

I wanted to do a quick post on the Divano Roma Splitback Couch. It was a pretty good deal as it was under $200 and that included free shipping. It can double as a couch and be folded into a bed if needed.

DISCLAIMER: This is not an instructional post on how to install or put together your product, This is for entertainment only. Please consult with a professional if you do not know what you are doing. I will not be responsible if you injure yourself while doing this, or for any damages you cause. Also this site uses affiliate links, this means we may get a small fee if you buy something through one of these links at no cost to you.

This is the couch that I am reviewing:

Divano Roma Furniture Collection – Modern Plush Tufted Linen Fabric Splitback Living Room Sleeper Futon (Orange)

Here is what you can expect if you order one.

The couch showed up at the door in this large box. It was pretty heavy and took two of us to carry it inside the house.

While the box was big, it did not seem to be large enough to fit the whole couch. I started to wonder if I was missing a box. So we opened it up to find out. We were very careful when using the knife to open so we did not cut into the fabric. On our packaging they did include a piece of cardboard to help prevent this and you can see it in the picture below.

Looking inside I was pretty sure we were missing part of the couch.

Here is the couch removed from the box.

Folding open the couch we could see the extra pieces were hidden in a couple compartments underneath the couch.

Here are the hidden compartments opened. You can see it included the pillows and end pieces.

After pulling it all out we found the bolts and legs to the couch as well.

Here are the 6 legs and bolts. After seeing this, I though this was going to be a breeze to put together.

So starting with the leg’s I did the corner legs first, just a couple Hex bolts and washer’s for each leg.

Then I did the center leg’s. Oh, they also included the needed Hex wrench.

All 6 legs installed on the couch. Only took a few minutes.

Next I flipped it over onto its legs.

Now to attach the end guards. They just slide into these brackets.

One they are mounted the couch looks like this.

One neat thing about this couch is the back has a few different positions. You can go full recline to flat like below. It is about the size of a twin bed.

Here it is with the back of the couch in a recline.

You can even have each side recline separately.

I wanted to get a good closeup of the fabric. Here is about the best I could get. It looks really nice.

Here is a shot of it in the room.

Summary

I think for the price this is an amazing couch. The couch has a pretty firm feeling which I like, but that may detract others. Also the couch is 75 inches in length, but if you measure from the inside of the end pieces it is 68″ (5ft 8″). So if you want to use it as a bed and are taller then 5′ 8″ you might want to pop off the end piece before sleeping (Or lay down at an angle depending on your height.) The end pieces are easy to remove and put back on. I will update this if we have any issues with wear and tear, but so far I am really impressed with the quality for this price. It seems to be a great value. Again the couch can be found HERE

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Adding a Guitar Wall.

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 01:17:54 +0000

We decided to clean up the floor space a little and put our kids Guitars on the wall. To do this we purchased some guitar wall hooks off of Amazon. Here are a few pictures of putting them up and how we did it.

DISCLAIMER: This is just how I mounted my Guitar hooks, not an instructional on how you should do yours. Your situation may be different then mine. Please consult with a professional if you do not know what you are doing. I will not be responsible if you injure yourself while doing this, or for any damages you cause. Also this site uses affiliate links, this means we may get a small fee if you buy something through one of these links at no cost to you.

The project start:

We purchased these hooks off of amazon. It was a box of 8 hooks. We only planned to use 6 of them for now.

Here is a picture of the brand and box. It was 8 Guitar Wall hooks and a couple pick holders.

Here is what was in the box.

Each hook is comprised of the base and hook portion. They even provided the wall anchors.

I started by just screwing the hooks to the base.

Here is the back of the base.

Next I found the studs in the wall with my stud finder, as I wanted to make sure I had at least one screw in each stud. I was spacing them ~16 inches apart. I was also alternating height at 14″ from the ceiling and 20″ from the ceiling. As a precaution I made sure my marks were 16 inches apart which is a common spacing in the US. I have not done this in the past and hit a water pipe thinking it was a stud. That was not a fun lesson. Below you can see I was using a single sheetrock anchor and the other two holes were going to be into a stud. I just predrilled my hole for my anchor and tapped it in.

Here you can see how I was alternating the height between holders. While I could have used the included screws, I had some heavier duty ones handy that I chose to use if going into the stud.

They were pretty easy to mount and the 16″ spacing worked well for both Electric and acoustic guitars side by side.

All six hooks up, Room for a new guitar soon!

One more picture.

Thanks for visiting!

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DIY – Dyeing IKEA Henriksdal chair covers red.

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 04:39:12 +0000

The Project:

I wanted to add a little color to the kitchen recently. I was looking around for some Red chair covers for my IKEA Henriksdal chairs. I wasn’t having much luck finding any so decided to make my own. I had heard people had good luck Dyeing IKEA chair covers, so I decided to give it a try.

Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only. This site also uses affiliate links. This means I may make a small amount of money at no cost to you if you buy something after clicking a link on this site.

Basically I started off with a trip to Ikea and picked up some of the plain white Henriksdal covers. They tend to always have these in stock and the price is reasonable. You can also purchase them on Amazon HERE. ( I was thinking about buying a few extras and trying a tie-dye multi color design for fun. Maybe let the kids design their own chair cover. If I do this I will add another post. )

This is the Dye I used along with links. Basically I put two Tulip Red packets and one Rosewood Red packet in each buckets I used for the project. I followed the instructions on the back of the packet, it was really simple.

Making a mess

As I was soaking the covers I noticed they kept trying to pop up and would not stay covered with the dye. I tried to get the air bubbles out but the covers still tried to float. So I ended up using pots to weigh down the seat covers.

Even with the pots on them, I still had to periodically poke them back into the dye. Once done I followed the instructions on the back of the dye packet and did the wash and dry.

Here is the final product. I was very pleased with how they turned out. And I didn’t get any dye on any other surfaces. Success!

This is what it looks like with the chairs around the table. It gives that pop of color in the kitchen i like.

Someone else sure likes them!

Here is a link to some more covers I dyed green – LINK

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