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.

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.

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!

The post Kitchen Island remodel appeared first on GabbieGillmer.

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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]]> https://gabbiegillmer.com/projects/diy-dying-ikea-henriksdal-chair-cover/ Tue, 17 Apr 2018 04:39:12 +0000 https://gabbiegillmer.com/?p=170 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      

The post DIY – Dyeing IKEA Henriksdal chair covers red. appeared first on GabbieGillmer.

]]> 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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