Classroom Voice Level Chart

In addition to all my crazy home projects, I also make a lot of stuff for use at school.  I have found that having a voice level chart is helpful for students, I use a clothespin to indicate which level voice is acceptable.  I made this cute voice level chart you can pick up at my Teachers Pay Teachers store here for free!  I printed mine on the school color printer (after all, it's for classroom use!) glued it on to card stock an then laminated it.  I used binder rings to hang the pieces together and hang it up on my whiteboard at the front of the room! 

Bathroom Mirror Makeover

Our bathrooms are on the top of my "to update" list for the interior of our home.  They have those old nasty crystal-y sink nobs, builder grade mirrors and big, gigantic lights.  When we repainted our kitchen cabinets (check out that post here), we also painted the vanity in the downstairs bathroom (the upstairs ones were already done, how nice), which also helped give a quick and cheap face lift.  Next thing to tackle was the huge, boring mirror.

I've been seeing DIY mirror frames all over Pinterest, so after some researching, I decided to give it a shot.  Luckily, I already had the moulding.  When the previous owner flipped our house, he installed new moulding and left us four 12ft sections of leftovers in the garage...perfect.  The only thing I actually had to purchase was the glue.  Make sure you get glue that is for mirrors!  I originally bought some heavy duty adhesive (I figured, it has to work it says HEAVY DUTY) but then read that it was absolutely not for use on mirrors.........so I went back and got this:

Unfortunately, 12ft pieces of moulding were not going to be easy to transport to my Dad's (so that he could do the hard work with the chop saw) so Steve and I did some rough measurements and he cut them down to a more manageable size.  We actually added moulding to all three of our bathroom mirrors so, after we cut them, I labeled them so I wouldn't forget which piece went to which mirror.  Dad cut 45 degree angles on the edges and made sure the pieces fit together to make a nice frame.

(make sure you have the same edge on the outside...my moulding was thicker on one edge than the other, we put the thinner edge on the outside)

Like many other people's experience, those lovely builder grade mirrors come with lovely builder grade mirror clips.  Some people recommended replacing them with flat washers but I wasn't about to take anything apart and screw it up, so instead I whipped out the dremmel and created some notches to fit over the clips.  I just held the moulding up on the mirror and marked with a pencil where the clips were and went to work using the wood cutting attachment.

I then set to work gluing the pieces directly to the frame.  Looking back, I should have painted the back of the moulding first because you can see the edge of in the reflection of the mirror, but it's not really that big of a deal.  (I don't suspect people will be inspecting my mirror that closely, but now if you're at my house I'm sure you will...) 

You want to make sure your glue isn't too close to the edge of the moulding or it will seep out and you can see it in the reflection of the mirror.  I made this mistake on one piece but once again, it's not that big of a deal...my vase covers it up! I stuck the moulding to the mirror and had to press it on for a minute or so for it to adhere, then I just taped it up with some masking tape.

 (notice the nice streak of glue on the mirror...I didn't hold the top piece on long enough and it slipped...the glue came right off with some denatured alcohol though!)

I left the mirrors to dry overnight and came back with some caulk the next day.  The piece didn't fit together perfectly but I just filled in the gaps with paintable caulk and it was fine.  Definitely make sure you smooth out your caulk though because sanding it is a realllllll pain. I let that dry for a few hours and then painted the moulding using left over paint from our kitchen cabinets.  Then about two weeks later, finally got it glazed and coated it with the protective sealant that came in the kit for the kitchen.

They really add a lot to the bathrooms and make them look way more expensive.  They look more finished and put together, especially since they match the cabinets.  I can't wait to get new faucets and light fixtures to really finish the update!

The top few things to remember if you are going to do this project yourself:

1. paint the back of your moulding before you glue it on

2. don't put glue too close to the edge of your moulding

3. press your moulding to the mirror for a bit to let it adhere before taping it

Here's the price breakdown for the supplies:

36ft of moulding (about 12ft for each mirror) $20.00 (about $7 for a 12ft piece)

glue $5.00

caulk $2.50

caulk gun $7.00

masking tape $3.00

paint (I used left over, but a quart will run you around 10 bucks)

TOTAL: about $40 for 3 mirrors or about $13 per mirror!

Budget Patio

As much as I love our home, it's not exactly great for entertaining.  I love to have people over but we really don't have the space inside for more than a few people, so we decided to expand our outdoor entertaining area.  Our backyard was pretty bare (with the exception of the bamboo plant from hell...if you know me, you have probably heard me talk about it) when we moved in, but there were some things that we could take advantage of...like the 100 pavers around the perimeter of the house.

(See those lovely red things?  And the bamboo plant...)

To the right of the existing patio was a complete disaster when we moved in.  It was essentially like walking in a swamp, you sunk in at least a few inches with each step.  We remedied this by installing a french drain (all by ourselves, I wish I had pictures for a post!) and planting some water loving aborvitaes. There is also a small deck over there which is in poor shape.  We're planning to put the outdoor dog kennel on it.  We knew that that area really wasn't very practical as it was currently being used, so expanding the patio was our best bet.  We had originally thought about building a deck or having a patio poured, but we quickly found out that was WAY out of our budget of less that $200. So I did some research and was really inspired by this paver patio by Amelia at House Pretty Blog:

(she has a great post about how she did her patio, check it out here)

So I ripped out about half of the pavers and stacked them on the existing patio.

 (This happened about 2 months prior to me actually working on the patio...Steve moved the rest of them while the patio was in progress, I was totally over moving them)

I set to work killing all the crabgrass and such by laying down cardboard over the area for a few weeks.  It totally did the job!  Anything that was left got sprayed with RoundUp and ripped out, until I was left with just a huge patch of dirt. Then I put down some weed preventer which Steve watered in for me.

Next, we laid down some landscape fabric.  I used landscape pins to hold the fabric down but didn't have enough so we just used a few rocks in places too.

(I had to run to the store to get more fabric because I totally forgot we used all of it when we made our raised bed...ugh...the light colored one is all I had left)

The next step was to start bringing in the sand.  We got 2 yards from our local landscaping supply for $60.  I used their calculator and found out that I needed 1.5 yards to cover the whole area at a 2 inch thickness, but one part of it had a big slope, so I wanted more to make everything level.  You really need to buy your sand from landscaping supply...it's four bucks for half a cubic foot at Home Depot and there's 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard...I'm sure you can imagine how much that adds up to.  We laid down some 2x4's along the fence so that the sand won't shift as much over time (thanks Dad for the tip) and brought in sand with a couple of wheelbarrows.  Leveling the sand was by far the most difficult part of this entire project.  I used a 2x4 and a level and basically drug the thing across the sand, adding and subtracting sand as necessary, until it was pretty much level.  Steve then went through with our fancy homemade hand tamper to compact the sand.  (It was $26 to buy one at Home Depot...and you know I'm not spending that if I don't have to.  )

Finally, it was time to start laying the pavers.  I just eyeballed where the center of the deck was and placed my first paver there, then used a 2x4 as a spacer to lay the rest of them.

(I came to realize that the fence line and the flower bed are not straight, but oh well that's a project for another day!)

I laid out the rest of the pavers and also a border at the end with the same scalloped edging you see above. We were finally ready to add the pea gravel.  We bought a yard, though it ended up begin a little more than we needed.  We laid a few pieces of particle board down to make it easier to bring in the gravel.  Steve brought it over with a wheelbarrow and I used a shop brush to spread it out.  I had to use a shovel to get it into some of the small spaces, but for the most part I just pushed it around with the broom. For a about $120 (see price breakdown below) we ended up with a beautiful new place for entertaining.  We still have to hang up the party lights and install the dog kennel on the deck.

100 pavers = $0 (we had to dig them out of the yard, but they're about $1 a piece a the hardware store)
2 yards of coarse sand = $60
1 yard of pea gravel = $30
1 roll of 3'x100' landscaping fabric = $15
Fabric pins = $5
Lanscape border = $10