Reversible Scarecrow/Snowman Sign

I think it's about time to take a break from house renovations and dive back into some arts and crafts. I've had this idea saved on my Pinterest board forever. Last fall we were in the midst of selling our house/packing everything up, so there wasn't an opportunity to make it, or to decorate at all for that matter. But this year I am bound and determined to make the house look festive through the fall and winter seasons.

Enter the double-sided (i.e. reversible) scarecrow & snowman sign. You have a sweet fall scarecrow sign, and then also have a jumpstart on winter decorations with the other side.

We even managed to get our pumpkins and decorative gourds in place for (Canadian) Thanksgiving. We found a local farm, just minutes from our house, that sells every possible size of pumpkin, squash, and miscellaneous gourd that you could want. They're all arranged by size/price, and the owners provide little red wagons to haul your choices around as you decide. How adorable does Tom look with the wagon?

My aunt provided the pie-sized pumpkin that is the star of our table centerpiece.

But back to the scarecrow/snowman sign. This project was so much fun. And cost nothing in new materials. I used scrap wood, plus paint and decorations that I already had on hand. I even grabbed some clippings from random plants and bushes on our property to add a natural touch.

I started with a 1"x4" board that I cut into three pieces - 20" each. I then used Gorilla Glue to attach them to each other and clamped it all together overnight. You could use a pocket hole jig (Kreg is my favourite) to screw them together, but since the boards are so thin, I didn't think it was worth it this time. Plus the brim for the "hat" is screwed on, which helps hold it all together.

Once the boards were glued, I cut two strips from a spare sheet of 1/8" plywood for the angled hat brim - 1½" x 16" each.  I just played around until I found the angle I liked and screwed them into the sign with countersunk screws - one in each sign board section (six altogether).

I painted one side of the sign white with a black hat for the snowman, and the other is yellow with a brown hat for the scarecrow. I used poster paint - two coats for each section.

I started with the snowman face (because it was the easiest). I drew it in pencil on a piece of paper, erasing and correcting until I had exactly what I wanted. I flipped the paper over and held it up to a lampshade (you could also use a window in the daytime), and lightly traced the face on the other side of the page.

Back at the table, I went over the tracing again, pressing harder with the pencil this time. I then laid the page on the sign, tracing-side-down, and drew over my original sketch, pressing firmly. This transfers graphite from the back of the paper onto the sign so that you have an exact replica of your original drawing.

Then it was just a matter of filling in the features with paint. Once everything was dry I flipped the sign over to do the other side. Same drawing procedure as before. One final step: Give the sign an extra layer of protection against the weather with a couple of coats of matte spray lacquer.

With the painting all finished, I dug out all of my ribbon and crafting bits and pieces, plugged in my hot glue gun, threw on a movie, and got down to decorating the hats and bodies.

The focus of the scarecrow side was that big honkin' flower. What scarecrow doesn't have a floppy flower hat? I added some scraps of burlap and dried grasses from the yard.

The snowman side has bows made of sparkly blue snowflake ribbon and dried sprigs from the garden. My favourite bit is the piece of white glass I glued in the center of the bottom bow. It looks just like a piece of ice!

With the pumpkins from the farm and a potted mum, the front of the house is starting to look a little festive. Mr. Scarecrow fits right in. I can't wait until Mr. Snowman gets his chance, too.

Installing Craftsman-Style Door & Window Trim

Now that the ceiling in the bedroom is fantastically smooth and the walls are painted, it's time to move on to the window and door trim. Like most of the other finishes in this house, the original trim was inexpensive, badly installed, and paint spattered. With the new paint on the walls (BM Edgecombe Grey), there was no way the trim could stay any longer. The strange window trim was the first to go.

Each side of the casing was made up of two pieces of wood, offset from each other, and angled in towards the window. With that angle, any moisture would collect against the window instead of away from it. I'd love to know the reason - it was obviously intentional as all of the windows in the house are done this way.

It took some elbow grease and finally the Dremel Multi-Max to remove it. It was glued and screwed in place, as well as every seam being caulked. In fact, Tom worked away on it that entire first day that I attempted to scrape the popcorn ceiling.

The door trim was easier to remove - the pieces were barely attached to the wall, so they came off with no damage. Look at those paint splatters! I can't tell how old the paint is - maybe they were in a hurry to get it done before listing? There are also paint drips on the baseboards and carpet.
 

When we started looking for door and window trim, I couldn't really find anything that spoke to me. and I looked, a lot. At one point I even picked out some ready-made trim and had it in my cart at the store, but something deep down was telling me I wouldn't be happy with it. I did some more searching on the internet (right there in the lumber aisle) and was drawn over and over again to a simple, stacked Craftsman look.

My favourite style of house/architecture, hands-down, is Craftsman.  I love the wide, yet streamlined, door and window casings, built-in bookcases, natural wood tones...and I'd give just about anything to have a large front porch with stone and wood columns.

So everything in my cart went back on the shelf and I started again. We decided on a 1" x 4" top, side, and apron (below the window sill) casing, with a 3/4" x 1 1/4" casing cap and 1/2" x 1 1/4" fillet. The stool, i.e. the bottom sill, is 1" x 10". Yes, I even learned the terminology.

Those seem like some crazy measurements, but all we had to do was buy 1x4s and 1x2s, then plane them down as needed. (Keep in mind that 1 inch boards are really only 3/4 of an inch thick.)

Installing the trim was a simple matter of attaching each piece one at a time to build the pattern that we wanted.

 

With the window, we also had to add new interior trim to replace those funky angled boards.

The door frames begin with a simple rectangular plinth block at the bottom, then the 1x4 side trim, followed by the stacked header trim.

Each of the thin header pieces are nailed into the board below (or above) rather than into the wall. I'm still wavering on whether or not to build up the top with some decorative molding, but we're planning on adding crown molding at the ceiling so it might be overkill. It's always something that can be added in the future though.

The window sill is all one piece, 10 inches deep, with a 2" overhang at the front and a 1" overhang on each side beyond the side trim. That piece went in first, and then we built up and down from there. The window header pattern matches the door headers exactly.

We put them in place with just a few finishing nails to make sure we liked the look. Once everything was in place and the proportions were right, we took it all down (mark your boards!) and gave them a couple of coats of primer. The trim is so much easier to paint when you can lay it all out like an assembly line.

Then it went back up on the walls. Once everything was in place, I caulked all of the seams - between boards and between the casing and the wall. I love a seamless look. I also puttied and sanded the nail holes to prepare for painting. All of the trim was painted in a bright untinted white, Behr's Premium Plus Paint & Primer, in semi-gloss.

 

We still need to put in the base trim - which we've already designed - but we want to wait until the carpet is replaced as it will all have to be removed anyway. I also didn't caulk the plinth blocks so that they could also be removed for carpet installation. But that can't be done until we finish the basement so that there's a place to put everything while the carpet is installed. One project always leads to another.

But for now we're really happy getting the trim up. It lightens up the room so much, and the Craftsman style fits us so well. We're planning on replacing all of the doors and door frames, as well as widening the closet entry, so this was kind of our practice run at custom trimwork. We know part or all of it will have to be removed but I couldn't bear to have the room look half-finished forever.

I'm really looking forward to new carpet and a renovated closet. We've sourced Craftsman-style interior doors as well, so as soon as we're ready we can get those in too. One step closer every day!

Removing a Popcorn Ceiling

I should probably preface this post by saying that, since just about everything went wrong with this project, you absolutely should not treat it like a how-to manual. It's more like a how-not-to manual.

Each of the three bedrooms, along with the living room and entry, have a popcorn ceiling. When we originally viewed the house it was the first thing I mentioned would be going, if we bought the house.

Now I've lived with a popcorn ceiling before - both of our previous houses had them - it wasn't my favourite feature, but at least they had been done professionally. I'm pretty sure these ones were done by the previous owner, or a friend "who's really good at that stuff". You know those friends - we all have them. This popcorn was heavy, uneven, and badly finished at the edges. Here is a prime example....

So I did my research, and the general consensus was that as long as you tarp everything, it's pretty easy to remove. You just wet the "popcorn" with a spray bottle full of water, wait a few minutes, and then scrape it with a wide putty knife or plastic scraper. Easy-peasy, right?

Hold up. Not so fast. The popcorn isn't melting. Why isn't the popcorn melting? Of course they painted over it. And now it's completely waterproof. Occasionally I could get some water in behind it and pry some off, but more often then not, that just softened the drywall underneath and damaged it.

So we spent a couple of days (by this time I'd enlisted Tom's help) chiseling away at dry popcorn. It wasn't until the third (fourth?) day that we discovered the magic of the U-shaped paint scraper.

When Tom brought it out I threw myself in front of him, terrified that it would gouge the heck out of the ceiling. But surprise, surprise, it worked!  A few passes and the popcorn was gone, leaving smooth, undamaged drywall behind. In the photo below, the back corner is the area that was scraped - you can see that there are almost no marks on the drywall.

The next step was skim-coating the ceiling with drywall mud. Initially I was stressing myself out, trying to get it perfectly smooth. But once I realized that sanding would take care of any uneven areas it became fun - sort of like icing a cake.

Less fun was the sanding part - holding an orbital sander over my head for extended periods of time. Sometimes I would switch to hand-sanding, just to give my arms and shoulders a break. On the plus side, check out those muscles I developed:

The ceiling needed to be skim-coated three times and sanded three times to get a nice smooth finish. I really hated the mess it made each time so I spread this job out over weeks. Eventually I'd had enough, was tired of the dust everywhere, and tired of sleeping in the guest room - I wanted my room back! I had spent days and days (and days) looking like this:

I applied 2 coats of drywall primer (Behr Premium Plus Drywall Primer & Sealer), and then 3 coats of white, untinted, ceiling paint (Behr Premium Plus Interior Ceiling). Most ceiling paints have a flat sheen to keep imperfections from showing.

And finally it was finished! I also painted the walls before we moved back in - Edgecomb Grey by Benjamin Moore. Our last bedroom was painted in BM Stormy Monday, which I loved, but it felt a little too cold, so this time I went with a warmer, taupe-ier grey. I will probably always stick with neutrals when it comes to wall colours - I like being able to change out the accents without having to repaint the whole room.

The edges are still a little rough as there was quite a bit of damage to the paper corner tape when the popcorn was removed, but we are intending to add crown moulding, so that won't be a problem.

And we're still on the hunt for the perfect light fixture. For now we're just making do with this $10 cheapie from the hardware store. When we moved it there weren't any ceiling lights - so this is a step up!

My final evaluation of the process - I love the flat ceiling, but it so wasn't worth the amount of work necessary in this case. The whole house felt like a construction zone for weeks - even though we tarped the openings, there was still drywall dust everywhere. We have two more bedrooms and the living room/foyer remaining. For those areas, I'm either going to hire it out or just drywall over the popcorn and start fresh.

I did learn a lot though. I can tape and skim like a (semi)pro now. Some people made fun of me for putting in so much time and effort, but one of the biggest parts of DIY is honing your skills. To get all cliche on you - sometimes it is about the journey and not just the destination.