In the (almost) words of Fergie, I am now Herbalicious. I’d like to make more comparisons but I don’t got the boys on rock rock and they aren’t lining up the block just to watch what I got… unless of course they like herbs. Because now I got ’em.

As you may recall from my earlier deck post and subsequent deck projects (my chandelier refreshing found here and my planter redo found here) this is another step in my plan to bring a little lovin’ to our deck. I still have a few more projects up my sleeve which I plan to roll out soon and then our new outdoor room will be done!

As we came into the season our herb garden from last year looked like this:

Let’s just say that I’m glad “Herbs Gone Bad” isn’t a reality show because I would find myself in a surprise ambush. “Surprise! We’re repo-ing your herb garden because you defaulted on watering and care”! How embarassing. No, but in all seriousness our herb garden is seasonal so it tends to look like this at the beginning of each summer. Put your clipboards away herb repo-ers (is that even a word) nothing to see here.

Okay, so aside from the herbs being dunzo these poor planters were also on their last legs. Not in the function category but in the Elaine-design-stamp-of-approval one. I am attached to these planters because my dad made them (awwwhhh) so really wanted to keep them and give them a new lease on life.

I decided on a glossy black to compliment the planters that would be below them (more on that later) so the first step was to empty these bad boys and give them a good bath, clean, hose down.

Then I removed the rusty little hooks that had been used in previous years. They had seen better days and I had no use for them for what I had planned.

Now on to the stain! I chose Minwax Polyshades, Satin & Polyurethane in 1 step (1 step! Yay for laziness) in Classic Gloss Black. I didn’t even sand because I’m a rebel (please don’t write in to the producers of any fictional herb éxpose reality show).

At this stage she was looking like this:

It worked great and I love the finish. A nice shiny black that still shows the wonderful texture of the wood but hides the aging and weathering that had occured. Note: I didn’t paint the inside of the planter because I didn’t like the idea of paint leaching in to any dirt and subsequently my herbs. These herbs are pesticide – and paint – free!

Now, earlier when I mentioned these were going ABOVE the planters that I redid last week it was because I planned to hang them off the white railing that sits atop the cement wall that my planters are working to camoflauge. My hubby – Chef Kev – is 6′ 5″ so if he can walk up to a planter that is chest height to grab some fresh herbs then that saves a good 30 seconds. He’s so tall that by the time he bends down to the ground we’ve entered a new time zone. For those unfamiliar with Chef Kev, learn more about him here and his wonderful dinner creations here and here. Create a herb garden for husband = more dinner inspiration that wife gets to enjoy. Done and done.

Okay, so back to the planter support hooks. I picked up six of these babies (two for each planter) at my favourite garden centre.

Once my hooks were installed (I had to measure them out and adjust them for each planter), I was ready to hang my planters. But wait! What herbs did I plant!? On the (planter) menu we have: chives, oregano, cilantro, parsley, thyme, basil, sage and rosemary. We also use a lot of fresh dill but to be honest it’s quite hard to grow (very floppy and finicky) so we continue to buy fresh dill. If I get my act together I’ll plant some in my actual garden with a tomatoe cage for support but I’ve been too busy avoiding the herb police to be that coordinated.

Planting complete, the planters were ready to hang. My ugly cement wall has gone from this (when we moved in)…

TO THIS! (if you’re wondering where the ‘grass’ went you’ll want to check out this post). And our dog’s name is Belle – Hi Belle.

The planters fit right in and have already begun to reap their bounty.

Here are a few more shots/details of our herbs in stagnant action…

Guess you won’t be seeing me on any future episodes of ‘Herbs Gone Bad”. Why? Because I’m HERBALICIOUS. Go basil, rock your rosemary, and your thym…. … get your chive on… party parsle…

As you may recall from my deck post I had some big things in mind for our little back deck area. I really wanted to create that ‘outdoor room’ feeling so have a bunch of little projects up my sleeve on my ‘to do list’ that I can’t wait to share with you all!

First up was my pink chandelier and next on my hit list was some camoflauge for this fugly cement wall. We can’t really remove it unless we want to entertain our neighbours back yard on our deck if you know what I’m sayin’. As you can see, it has a tendency to get kind of grimey and could only be described as ‘pretty’ if pretty was a secret word for ‘redonculous eyesore of a stupid cement wall that we are stuck with’. And those are my nice words. I present you with Exhibit A taken from an earlier post…

So, fast forward until a month or so ago when my office was doing some botanical rejigging (technical term). In other words, they were sprucin’ up the joint and were getting rid of some old planters. They had a ton of these and put an email out to staff that they were selling them for $10 a pop. Great deal! I went to take a photo on my phone to email my hubby and tell him of my great plan and when I got back to my desk to send said email I got the ‘ol “all planters now accounted for” email. What!? Early bird what? Insert sulk here. Insert me forgetting about this master plan until a later day.

That later day came when my coworker mentioned that she had gotten two of the planters but had decided they weren’t going to work for her. What’s that you say? Why YES I’d love to take them off your hands. And that is how this stack came to be on our deck.

Now, don’t be alarmed. I am not a She-man who can magically turn over 100lb clay pots with as much ease as Snooki downs a beer (no, I don’t watch the show but it’s common knowledge that that’s got to be lightning fast isn’t it)? But rather these are fakeo terra cotta. They are really just feather light resin.

My plan for these pots was to spray them gloss black. I loved the shape (hated the colour) and thought they’d add a nice graphic punch while giving me a vessel to plant something TO HIDE THAT FREAKIN’ EYESORE OF A WALL! Sorry for yelling at you. I get passionate about dirty cement walls.

So, the first step was to clean the pots so that I started with a nice surface to spray. I actually power washed the deck and wall this past long weekend so I invited the pots to the spray party as well. Guess how quickly a power washer takes grime off a fake terra cotta pot. Hint: see Snooki comment above.

I used a high gloss black spray paint that was suitable for plastics and outdoor use. Each pot took one can each – about 5 coats. Multiple light coats will give you the best result and help to avoid any drips. Since the spray paint dries quickly between each coat it only took a few hours to do. Here is what it looked like after the first round of spraying.

Once they were both sprayed it was time to add some filler! I wanted something that would grow A) fast B) full and C) tall. Since I wanted to camoflauge the cement, this was key. I was thinking bamboo but after discussing it with my neighbourhood garden centre they suggested I go with some grasses as they met all my criteria as well as offered a nice texture. And the grasses cost less! Bonus. So I picked out some nice grasses that promised to grow to 42′ and also some ‘rainbow grass’ because it looks so great. There is a chance that the original grass may choke out the rainbow grass as it grows (supposedly quickly) but if so I can easily transplant it to my garden. For now though I like the texture it offers. One grass is light and airy and will grow up and over (like a big weeping willow) and the rainbow grass is straighter and thicker. I’ll update you all with some pictures as it grows!

But for now, back to planting and a tip! A good idea to keep your planter light and manageable (to move easily when full) is to fill the bottom with styrofoam, empty milk jugs or 2 litre pop bottles. What they do is take up space at the bottom allowing you to fill with one half the amount of dirt you would otherwise need to! No problem if you have a gardener/pool boy to move them for you but let’s be honest, I don’t have a pool. So styrofoam and an empty laundry detregent jug for me it is.

Once I had that taken care of I added my dirt and grasses and she was all done! Oh, but don’t forget to water generously as you should always do when you transplant or newly plant something. Doing so helps your new plant take root.

I can’t wait to watch these grasses grow! Come on grass… RACE. $10 to the fastest growing grass. NOW GO!

And here are the pair of them. What do you think?

The outdoor room is coming together and taking shape! … Should I invite Snooki over for a beer on the deck? Nah.

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.

My little boy loves his hats. And he also loves Thomas and Friends but that’s neither here nor there. My little boy also loves to do things himself now that he’s a ‘big boy’ (two), so when I came across these letters for $1 each (!!!) at Michaels a little light bulb went off in my head.

Why not make him his own little place to hang his hats – and coats!?

These letters came in white with the hooks attached but since they were living in the bargain bin they’d become quite scuffed and had yellowed a bit too. So I gave them a good spray with some white paint that I had on hand and they were as good as new again (well, they actually were new to begin with but now they looked newer than that even).

They also came with a little hook on the back to hang them but since the letters were cheap to begin with, the hooks were kind of wonky and not very well hidden on the back. In other words if I were to hang them that way you’d see nails and the tops of the hanger. Not very toddler friendly at all! Also knowing a kids tendency to yank things at eye level I came up with a good solution on how to hang (and consequently re-hang when yanked down) the letters.

You can see the hole left behind from where I removed the old hanger. Then I used (my favourite) “Command Picture Hanging Hooks“. These things rock and I use them for everything. I especially love how they don’t damage the wall, and of course are reposition-able.

Once I had all the letters hung this is what I was left with! Chace loves it and hangs his jackets up all the time. He also sits on the stairs, points and squeals ‘hat!’ at every given opportunity. Success!

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.

Okay, so further to my post yesterday of our master bedroom smoothing, here is the follow up focusing on our master bathroom en-suite.

STOP! No seriously, that was what would happen when I walked in there. You see the walls were kind of red (painted that way when we moved in). So I would stop… and wait. Wait until they turned green so I could continue on with my duties.

So, I pulled a calming blue shade out of our bedding (no, not the old blue on the bedroom walls) and introduced it to it’s friend – white paneling – which I also freshened up with new paint. Then I threw on some earrings (on it, not me) in the way of signs and hooks and off he she went (what, girls can wear blue) to the party.