Raise your hands if you wanted to be like Molly Ringwald when you were little! Did you want to be uber cool and moody, yet aloof and misunderstood? Did you wonder what she saw in Andrew McCarthy? Am I typing with my inside voice again? umm… sorry ’bout that.

Okay, on to todays post. Mentioned here in my deck post I hinted at doing some big things on the deck! This past long weekend (Happy Canada Day eh) I was busy working on some of my little projects and plan to share them with you over the next week or two.

First up was my charming little candle chandelier. A birthday gift from the hubs back about six years ago, it had seen better days. Not too bad (used loosely) from afar…

but she hid a dirty rusty little secret. A close up for you…

Mama needs some new mascara. oy.

So, never one to leave a good chandelier out to rust (okay, so I am one to do that, did you SEE those pics) I set out to correct my bad.

In search of some new sandpaper I came across these new sandpaper ‘sponges’ which I liked for this job as I wanted to get into the crevices while maintainng a good grip on my paper. Using regular sandpaper sheets can be cumbersome for a job like this. And result – they worked great.

Here Molly is mid-sand (Yes, I just named my chandelier after an 80’s teeny bopper idol – so what?)

One she was all sanded I started the fun part – spraying! This is the part where you feign surprise about the colour.

Molly took about 367 8 coats to completely cover. The key to a nice spray paint finish is LIGHT coats to avoid the drippy droopy look. No one likes a drippy chandelier. Another tip is to make sure to turn her over and get in all the nooks and crannys for a really solid, smooth coating. The finish is really up to you but for something sparkly like this, a gloss finish is most appropriate.

And, now she looks like THIS…

Ain’t she PRETTY!?

I’m in love. My husband on the other hand exclaimd “PINK!?” Yes, Duckie Kev, pink.

We live on the west coast and people are always talking about how green and lush it is here. And they are right… with the exception of our back yard.

We live in a town home and have a nice wooden deck off the back kitchen/family room area. Even though it looked like this when we moved in, we assumed it was most likely due to neglect (you may notice by the sludge in the garden bed that the previous owners didn’t exactly have green thumbs). We thought once we moved in and gave the grass a little TLC we’d be golden… or at least green anyway.

Wowza. Now that is ugly (with a capital ‘ugh’)

So, our request went in for the gardeners in our complex to address the – lack of – grass issue. (I could take care of the garden myself) so they came and raked and laid out some seed. We waited and waited and the grass started to grow back – yay! … Until the next year when it basically looked like this again (minus the sludge soup in the planter area). It was quite the whoop-whoop-whoop moment (think Debbie Downer from SNL). Ya, well she must have visited when we weren’t looking. Thanks Debbie.

But have no fear, Kevin is here. He set about on his own mission and went to get some sod to lay this time – “seeds are for wimps” is what he said (well, he didn’t actually say that but I just typed it so we’re going with it). What I think he actually said is more along the line of “@#%^&$# grass!”

Rolling out the red green carpet….

Did I mention it might have rained on him? Well it did – A LOT.

Speaking of soggy, apparently there is a drainage issue in our little back yard space – you think? After another round of the patchy grass/dirt show we had had enough. The little sod died and so did our dreams of grass. But, we’d always wished for a bigger deck anyway (we didn’t do it to begin with because strata said ‘no’) but now we had ammo. So, we took our big dirt guns (illegal since we’re Canadian) and showed them our grass pistols (you know I’m exaggerating to make this more dramatic right) but where I’m going here is that we got strata to let us extend the deck – cue the sky opening and Elaine doing a happy dance! Kevin might have danced too but he’ll completely deny it.

Enter Adam – carpenter extraordinaire and Kev’s soccer team mate and buddy! Yup, we have people in high places. Now this is where I let the pictures speak for themselves because I can’t tell you exactly what they are doing here other than extending our deck all they way out to the planter. So, there was a lot of this going on…

and this…

and this…

That’s Adam. And after he finished that, he did a bit of this…

Now, I know you are all thinking “wow, with that great tutorial I can now go and build my own deck” and so for that, I say “you’re welcome”.

So, within a weekend we went from this:

to this!

Thanks team Kevin Adam!

You also may have noticed that the sludge turned into some plants. That happened when I waved my magic wand wallet. It’s even changed since then which I will show in a future post.

So, there she be! A shiny new deck!  It’s literally like having an extra room out there. And it’s been great. And lucky for us, we have the best neighbours in the world (true story) so I find myself out there quite often – drink in hand – chatting away. It’s proven to be quite convenient really.

And along those lines, I have big plans for this space people – big plans! Okay, so they aren’t really big in terms of importance or world news but hopefully they will make the deck look a little nicer than it already does.

I plan to share some in future posts. If you’re excited, raise your hand? Awh, thanks Dad.