Archives for September 2017

How to Make Easy Fall Puppets (With a Puppet Theater)

September 17, 2017 by Eileen 17 Comments

I was sitting with my toddler the day after his birthday, surrounded by all kinds of new gifts. But what was he playing with? An empty cardboard box that previously housed one of his new toys.

All these new toys, and he’s playing with the with boxes and wrapping.

Every time we have an empty box – usually a diaper box – our son climbs in and pretends he’s driving some kind of vehicle. Or he fills it with his stuffed animals and pushes it around. Or, he tries to get the dog in the box.

Just as much as our toddler loves to play with the diaper boxes, I love when I can upcycle them into something useful. We’ve made a fire truck diaper box halloween costume, storage bins (you can’t tell they are diaper boxes when you cover them with cute contact paper and add a knob), and pretend race cars.

I was looking for an easy fall craft for toddlers, and as my son was running around the house with the empty diaper box on his head, inspiration struck.

We could make simple popsicle stick puppets with a fall theme and use the diaper box for a puppet theater. I got to upcycle a cardboard box, and my son got his “toy” of choice. 🙂

Easy Fall Kids Craft

I love to keep things simple. If it’s too many steps or materials, then it’s not the craft for us.

For our popsicle stick puppets and diaper box puppet theater, all of our materials came from around the house – making the cost nothing!

It was also an easy craft to do, which gave my son enough room to be creative.

Making the Popsicle Stick Puppets

I figured the easiest way to make popsicle stick puppets for fall was by using simple shapes to do so. Since my son is still so young, I drew a few shapes – circles, squares, triangles of various sizes, ovals, and trapezoids and cut them out.

To make the fall craft even easier for you, I created a printable (scroll to end for free printable) with all of the shapes we used – that you could simply print, trace, and cut.

Materials for the Popsicle Stick Puppets

Card stock or construction paper – I prefer card stock for kids crafts because it’s thicker and easier to work with
Popsicle sticks
Markers, crayons, or chalk – for drawing faces
Embellishments – yarn, googly eyes, stickers, buttons, or anything you have around the house
Glue, Tape, and Scissors
Optional – Shapes Template (see bottom of the page)

How to Make Popsicle Stick Puppets for Fall

First, trace and cut out the shapes. Then, I placed all of the shapes in front of my little guy and helped him to create fun fall faces. For example, we matched a big triangle to a big oval to make the witch’s hat.

Then, we simply glued the hat to a circle to make the witch’s face. Next, we decorated her face with yarn hair and googly eyes. Last, we taped the face to a popsicle stick.

For embellishments on your puppets, you can use anything that you have around the house. I like to go around and collect things and put them in a bin – and then we have all of our materials in front of us. It’s fun to also include the kids in this – like a scavenger hunt.

My little guy loves running around and finding things to use for our projects. In collecting things, we found some leftover burlap from a banner and cut a piece to use for the scarecrow’s hat. I think that was our best find 🙂

So, we then continued to choose shapes and decorate, turning our shapes into fun fall figures for our puppet theater. My son, who barely sits still, looooved decorating the faces.

I was so impressed with this cute little monster he made. That’s one of things I love about doing crafts with kids – they will surprise you 🙂

Making the Cardboard Box Puppet Theater

The puppet theater was fun to make because I love upcycling things – less to recycle too 🙂 I simple grabbed a diaper box and got to work 🙂

Materials for the Puppet Theater

Cardboard box or even a piece of cardboard that you can bend into a trifold
Xacto Knife (to cut the window)
Item of your choice to cover the box with – felt, wrapping paper, construction paper, etc
Ruler
Glue (type of glue depends on the material you use to cover the box)
Optional – embellishments such as stickers, felt shapes, letters, etc

How to Make a Cardboard Box Puppet Theater

Since our diaper box was on the small side, our puppet theater was going to be a tabletop theater. You could always use a bigger box or a big trifold and make it a bigger theater. However, I like to use what we have, so a diaper box it was 🙂

First, I cut off the top flaps of the box. I also cut off one of the four sides – to turn the box into a tri-fold. I also removed one of the bottom flaps. Next, I drew a window and cut it out with an Xacto knife.

After that, I grabbed some felt and hot glued it to the box. Surprisingly, I only used three sheets of felt. I love to work with felt and had a huge stack of it, but you could also use wrapping paper or construction paper or whatever you have lying around the house.

Last, my son decorated the front of the theater with shape stickers.

Learning Extensions – Easy Fall Kids Craft

There are so many ways you can tie learning into crafts with kids. This easy fall craft for toddlers was centered upon shapes.

Not only was my little guy identifying shapes but he was working with them to create fun fall puppets – i.e. small triangles make cat ears, large triangles are perfect for hats, and heads can be circles or squares. Other skills that this easy fall craft for toddlers included was the use of fine motor skills to glue, cut out simple shapes, and draw faces.

You can also tie this activity in with a fall book, like this pumpkin shapes book. This one is a great Halloween lift-the-flap book – the drawings in this one make it easy to pick out different shapes you see. You could also take a trip to the local library for an extension too.

Last, if your kids are not toddlers, they can totally do this craft and more independently. In fact, you could simply print the shapes template, have them trace, cut, and decorate themselves. And, puppet theaters are perfect for kids of all ages.

So, if you have a box laying around the house or if it’s a rainy, cold day and you are looking for something to occupy the kids, making these easy popsicle stick puppets with a cardboard box theater is the perfect activity.

Your child will love playing with the decked out cardboard box, and you’ll have yourself a few hours of free time after an easy upcycled project. 🙂

How to Make an Amazing Robot Scarecrow

September 7, 2017 by Ash 21 Comments

With fall around the corner, there was a local scarecrow festival coming up. Eileen and I check out their scarecrows every year and always talk about making one when our son was old enough to understand and be excited about it.

Well, this was the year to actually do. Even better, they had a new “Out of this World” category which was right up my alley. I love anything outer space related. So I put my thinking cap on to come up with an idea.

Then, as my son was singing nursery rhymes one day, inspiration struck when he got around to “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle..”

I was going to make a robot cow titled “Moo-bot Over the Moon.”

Unlike your traditional scarecrow made from straw, I planned on ditching the straw in favor of sheet metal – a more robot friendly material. I also envisioned an interactive scarecrow. In all our years of visiting this competition, I’ve never saw a scarecrow that invited you to interact with it.

So, to make my robot really stand out, I wanted a button that people could press. The button would wake up the robot and he would start telling some cow related jokes. Who doesn’t like some good cow humor?

How to Make a Robot Scarecrow

Here’s a video of Moo-bot in action. He’s an interactive cow that has blinking eyes, a moon that lights up, and plays through a reel of jokes every time the button is pressed.

Pretty cool, right? So here’s how to make a robot scarecrow. First, I started with the robot body, and then I housed the electrical components. After that I worked on the robot head and then I covered everything with sheet metal to make it weather-proof.

Next, I added some cow accessories, and then I mounted it to the post with a moon – completing the play on the nursery rhyme – “Moo-Bot Over the Moon.”

How to Make a Robot Body

To start, I needed to come up with a design. After a few pencil and paper drawings, I relied on TinkerCAD to assist with the design.

Here is what I came up with (I made the body semi-transparent so you can see what the inside looks like):I designed Moo-Bot to be easy to transport. So it separates into three parts – the body, head and post. Each attaches to one another securely with a large bolt and wingnut.

Constructing the Robot Cow’s Body

First I started working on the body. I constructed a frame using ¾” strips of wood cut from my table saw. I did use some 3.5” thick pieces for extra rigidity though. The body frame needed to be strong as it would house all the electronics. I connected all the pieces using construction adhesive and wood screws.

Here is a picture of the completed frame:

Constructing the Mount

At the bottom middle of the frame was a mount to insert the post. The post would have a hole drilled into it. Once the post was inserted into the mount, a bolt would run through both of them, making a very secure connection.

Here is a closeup of the mount before I attached it to the body:

How to House the Electrical Components

With the body done, I added in some of the internal electrical components as shown below:

The top left contained a removable board hosting some circuitry for the brains of our robot cow. The top right contains the speakers, and below are eight D sized batteries, split into two sections.

For the speakers, I MacGyvered the power adapter below:

The speakers supported four AA batteries, but I wanted to power it from eight D batteries. So I saw an area in the battery compartment to insert some wires, and secured them in place with some metal washers. I then drilled a small hole in the compartment lid for the wires to stick out.

To activate our robot cow, I added this on/off toggle switch:

Even though the switch was located inside our robot cow, it was positioned so I could access it from underneath.

Building the Robot’s Head

The next part of Moo-Bot I tackled was the head. The design was really just one rectangular frame sitting perpendicular on top another identical frame. Here’s what the finished robot’s head looks like.

Similar to the body design, I made the frames from more strips of ¾” wood. I connected the pieces together with construction adhesive and my finishing nail gun.

Here’s a picture showing the individual frames:

Here are the frames assembled to form the iconic robot cow’s head:

Wrapping the Robot’s Head with Sheet Metal

Next up was the sheet metal wrapping.

I first did the sides of the head, as those were the easiest. Using some metal shears, I cut pieces out to match the outline of the side of the head. Then I clamped the pieces down and attached to the wooden frame with some screws.

Here is the first cut piece of sheet metal:

I had to be careful with the sharp edges and corners. Most of the time I wore thick gloves to protect my hands while cutting.

Flattening the Metal

Occasionally, I would get slightly warped cut corners due to the shears pinching the metal. These warps and bumps needed to be flattened for a proper finish.

I found that my Kreg face clamp did an amazing job flattening uneven pieces of sheet metal, as seen below:

Making the Robot Weather-Proof

For the next pieces, I had to think carefully about which ones needed to be bent and overlap other pieces. This was a critical step in making a rainproof head.

All pieces of sheet metal cuts that left a crevice or opening for rain to run inside the head needed an overlapping sheet to divert the water. I was essentially wrapping the head in flashing.

The next cut of sheet metal was the face piece where the eyes were. This part needed some bending at the bottom to divert any rain water, as well as an eyehole cut.

To bend the sheet metal, I used this nifty metal bending tool.

Here’s a picture showing the bent robot face piece:

After cutting the face piece, I worked on the eye holes. I etched an outline with my utility knife and cut a hole with my jigsaw (using metal cutting blades).

Unfortunately, I didn’t do such a great job cutting and the hole was a bit jagged. So I masked my mistakes by wrapping the cut edges with some black weatherproofing tape. It actually turned out to be a really nice visual touch.

Here’s a picture of the finished face piece:

It sort of looks like a welding masking. It was perfect for a robot.

Adding Accessories and a Mount to the Robot

The next step of the process was adding accessories to our robot cow.

Finishing the Robot’s Eyes

For the eyes, I first attached a piece of plexiglass inside the head. This would keep rain out.

Next, I came up with this clever design for positioning the LED screens for the two eyes:

Here is a picture of the partially completed head, sitting next to the body:

Moo-Bot is really starting to take shape at this point.

Mounting the Robot Head

Here is a picture of the mounting mechanism I used to secure the head to the body (you can also see my fancy ears made from springs and pipe straps):

Next, I attached the mouthpiece containing the interaction button.

Creative Robot Nostrils

Also, I wanted to add some sort of decoration representing nostrils.

I dug around the garage looking for inspiration when I came across some rubber washers. I think they were meant to be used in a hose. Regardless, they would be perfect for nostrils.

I stacked four of them together, and attached to the mousepiece with a regular metal washer for a cool robotic nostril effect.

Here’s the completed head capped off at the top:

Giving the Robot Head a Plug and Play Design

Since I wanted the head to be easily detachable, I needed a quick way to disconnect/reconnect the wiring.

I really didn’t want to have to plug back in all the wires from the body to the head when I disconnected the head. So I came up with a clever custom made adapter, as seen below:

These adapters are actually for a computer power supply, but I repurposed them into cow robot adapters.

Here is a different view of the adapters:

The wires on the right plug straight into the body and the head. The cable on the left connects these two adapters. This setup allowed me to literally plug/unplug the head without the hassle of managing different wires and risk mangling my setup.

Fabricating a Sheet Metal Enclosure for the Robot Cow

Next came the fun task of building the sheet metal enclosure for the body. The enclosure was essentially two boxes, joined at a slight 15 degree angle. Each box was made from a long strip of sheet metal, bent twice to form a U shape.

So first I had to cut the sheet metal to size. I didn’t want to use my metal shears because it would take too long, and I probably would not get too accurate of a cut.

So I used some scrap wood and clamped the sheet down to a table, and made the cut quickly with my jigsaw (using a metal blade).

Here is a picture showing my cutting station:

After the cuts were made, I re-used my cutting station to also perform the folds:

Here are the completed boxes:

Here I am assembling the boxes at the 15 degree angle:

Bending the Robot Body

I could have just left the robot cow with a straight body without the slight bend (and a lot easier to build too), but aesthetically it would have looked boring. Also, I wanted an intentional bend in the body to highlight the fact that Moo-Bot was jumping over the moon.

I connected the overlapping boxes with small nuts and bolts, as seen below:

When the two body segments were joined, I needed to do something about the ridge they created at the top.

If left this way, our DIY robot would be very vulnerable to rain seeping in. So I made a simple ridge cap and attached it, as seen at the top of the picture below:

I also reinforced the ridge with some weatherproofing tape underneath, just in case rain still managed to find its way in:

Cutting Out an Access Panel

It was finally time to join the enclosure to the body frame. However, I had one remaining task to cut out a large hole in the back of the enclosure to serve as an access panel.

The hole would normally be covered by a rectangular cut piece of sheet metal, attached to the body frame with several screws. Then to gain access to Moo-Bot’s insides, it would just be a matter of removing those screws to take off the access panel covering.

Below is the access panel hole cut for the robot cow:

Here’s a picture showing the access panel covered (you’ll also notice that I added some wooden legs to help support our robot cow):

Adding in Robot Details

Here are some little feet I made for our robot cow scarecrow (springs would be inserted into the holes and attached to the wooden legs above):

Here’s a close-up of them dangling off the cow:

Making the Cow Spots

Eileen made some laminated decals for Moo-Bot’s cow spots. She drew them, printed them on our printer, and ran them through a laminator. The results were awesome, and would last in any weather.

Here is the laminator at work:

Cutting and Reinforcing the Scarecrow Post

Finally, it was time to work on the final piece – the scarecrow post. Per the competition’s instructions, the post had to be a 1 ½” square post. It also had to allow for about 18” of clearance at the bottom to be inserted into a metal stake secured into the ground.

So, I cut the post from a 2×4 piece of wood using my table saw. Next, I reinforced the scarecrow post with some metal bars.

The cow robot scarecrow was not that heavy, but I was worried that strong gusts of wind could snap the post. So metal reinforcement was essential, as seen below:

Constructing a Wooden Moon

To make the moon, I needed an 18” diameter wooden circle to attach to the post. I had a lot of plywood lying around, but I knew that the plywood edges would not fare well in the rain. So I needed to use solid boards.

Since boards didn’t come that large, I started with two 9”x18” boards as shown below:

Next, I joined them together with some pocket hole screws (using my Kreg pocket hole jig), forming a single 18”x18” square wood.

To form the circle, I simply used a 9” piece of wire, a pencil and a screw, as shown in the picture below:

I tied one end of the wire to the pencil and the other end to the screw.

Then while holding the screw down in the middle of the board, I ran the pencil around the board (with full extension of the wire), drawing a nearly perfect circle. Pretty nifty, right?

Next, I used my jigsaw to cut around the perimeter of the circle:

Once the complete circle for the moon prop was cut out, I placed the piece in a large clamp to sand down the edges really smooth:

After I sanded, I dusted it off and spray painted it outside with an exterior off-white paint.

When the paint was dry the next day, I got some help attaching it to the post:

Finally, I wrapped some LED lights around the moon, and quickly fabricated an adapter to plug into the body.

This is similar to the adapters used for plugging in the head.

As a side note, the LED lights I used for the moon were self-powered with their own batteries. The Arduino simply turns them off and on.

So, I didn’t have to worry about these lights competing with Moo-Bot’s batteries.

Wiring Up the Inside of the Robot Cow

The goal was to make the robot cow interactive. My thought was for Moo-Bot to play a friendly greeting when you pressed the button. After that, I compiled a series of cow-related jokes, such as the classic interrupting cow joke.

How did I get the robot to talk?

So, I had to include speakers for the sound and I decided to include two LED displays for the eyes. I got a little fancy and had the the moon light up too.

Since there would be no electrical outlet to plug into at the competition, our robot cow would also need to be battery powered and be capable of at least 2 months of continuous operation.

In order to do this, I made Moo-Bot’s brain a programmable Arduino microprocessor. This is just a simple device that made it easy for me to sync electronics up to a script.

An Arduino would be perfect because it was really easy to use, very cheap to buy, and extremely conservative on power consumption.

Here’s a picture of the Arduino:

How to Use the Ardunio Processor

Using the Arduino is simple. You plug it into your computer with a USB cable.

Then, use the free Arduino IDE software to write a program and upload the code to the device. The Arduino has a number of ports you can plug things into. Some carry power to accessories, while others receive and transmit information.

For example, when someone presses the interaction button on our robot cow’s face, that button sends a signal to one of the Arduino’s receive ports. My code detects that signal and sends a message (through a transmit port) to a mini MP3 player, telling it to play some pre-recorded audio.

I also programmed the Arduino to go to sleep every 60 seconds of idleness. This was to conserve on battery power. The robot cow only wakes up when the interaction button is pressed, then goes to sleep if no one presses the button again within one minute.

Sleep mode cuts off power to the speakers and lights, and turns off a majority of processing on the Arduino. While in sleep mode, only minimal battery power is used to check when the interaction button is pressed.

Moo-Bot’s Script

Here’s the exact script that Moo-Bot follows when woken up by the interaction button:

Plays “whirring” startup MP3 and the eyes open
Plays “introduction” MP3
Waits for button to be pressed again
On every button press, cycles through a number of pre-recorded MP3s telling cow jokes
30 seconds after no button press, plays, “Did you forget about me?” MP3
20 more seconds of no button press, plays “I am getting sleepy” MP3 and the eyes close
10 more seconds of still no button press, plays “goodbye” MP3 and Arduino goes to sleep

With the sleep logic in place, and powered by eight D sized batteries, I estimated our robot cow capable of lasting 3-6 months on battery, which was more than enough for the scarecrow competition.

The Robot’s Circuitry

Here is a barebones prototype of our robot cow’s circuitry and code in action:

The Arduino is on the far right. On the left is a circuit breadboard, where I have a number of accessories plugged in. The breadboard allows you to quickly connect electrical components without the need for soldering. The Arduino also has a limited number of ports physically available, so I use the breadboard to expand those ports.

I plugged into the breadboard above is a mini MP3 player (with an external speaker plugged in), and I used two LED displays for the eyes.

My favorite part of Moo-Bot are the eyes. The eyes are animated, randomly blink, and open really wide when you press the interaction button. They added a nice touch of character to our robot cow.

Here is a schematic of the complete circuit, if you are interested:

Finally, here is the electronic parts list if you are trying to make something similar yourself:

Entering the Robot Cow in the Competition

The day finally came when Moo-Bot had to say goodbye to my garage and join the rest of the scarecrows at the competition. We drove out there anxious to see our designated spot and to set up our robot cow.

I quickly got our robot cow setup (thanks to my modular plug and play design) and had him entertaining the crowd.

The robot cow scarecrow is all decked out in decals and fancy foot wear (below):

Moo-Bot was a sure blast to work on and everyone misses him here at home. We plan on visiting him regularly to make sure he is still fully operational, and wish him the best of luck in his competition.

Good luck Moo-Bot!

10 Day Living Room and Dining Room Makeover Reveal

September 3, 2017 by Eileen 52 Comments

Do you ever watch those HGTV shows just wishing they would come and make over your home? Well, have I got a story for you.

My parents recently went on vacation, and my sister decided to renovate their home while they were gone – in just 10 days. I’m talking ripping up the carpet, peeling the layers and layers of wall paper from the 1970s, painting the walls, and installing new flooring.

My sister’s timeline was a little crazy, so she had to have a little help from us – but the results were phenomenal.

When my parents returned, they were completely shocked. Of course, they loved it and were so happy to not have to tackle these projects themselves.

So, here are the before and afters, along with the details, of the 10-day home renovation challenge.

First up is the living room makeover. Below is a before picture, showing the view looking in from the hallway.

Such a difference, right?! Here’s another view of the living room before and after pictures.

Last, here are befores and afters of the dining room.

The difference is pretty incredible! In just 10 days, my sister, along with some help, was able to rip down layers and layers of wall paper, fix up the walls, paint the walls, rip up carpeting, and lay down new flooring during this dining and living room makeover project.

Preparing for the Renovation

The living room and dining room renovation was a complete surprise to my parents. After they left for their vacation, the first order of business was to prepare the rooms.

First, we took pictures of all of the photo arrangements and knick-knacks, so they could be placed back properly. This is a good idea even if you are working in your own house. This way you can put everything back exactly the way you had it.

Then, we moved most of the furniture out of the rooms. Any furniture that was too heavy got moved to the center of the room. It would also be a good idea to cover it with plastic.

Next, we removed the outlet and light switch covers – which were later replaced with clean white covers, as opposed to old gold ones. Small changes like this have a huge impact.

Since the plan was to first remove the wallpaper and then remove the old carpeting, the floors didn’t need to be covered.

It was then time to start ripping down the layers of wallpaper.

Removing the Wallpaper

The first, and most grueling task of the living room makeover project, was undoubtedly removing the wallpaper. The first layer came off in huge sheets, which was unfortunately not indicative of how the rest of the wallpaper peeling went.

It would have been magical if that was the only layer of wallpaper. However, underneath that top layer was more wallpaper – uneven, stubborn wallpaper.

Removing Stubborn Wallpaper

To remove the stubborn wallpaper, it was necessary to use a steamer. At first, we used a portable hand steamer, but it was taking too long. To make matters worse, the handheld steamer was cordless, so we kept having to take breaks to charge it.

Productivity was so slow that we looked into renting a bigger one from Home Depot. It turns out that it was cheaper just to buy a steamer than rent it.

And, it was totally worth it.

The wall steamer was much better than the portable one, and it came with an enclosure to confine the steam to the wall, which greatly improved the efficiency of removing the wallpaper.

As we were steaming, we used a paint scraper to get underneath the wallpaper and peel it off. Use a flat blade though, to avoid damaging the wall.

After all of the wallpaper was removed, we found any holes and cracks and filled them with dry wall compound.

Once the compound was dry, we went over the walls with the sander to smooth everything done and get the walls ready for painting.

As you can imagine, the sanding made a huge mess. So make sure you have things covered or completely moved.

Throughout the dining room and living room makeover, we used the Shop Vac to clean up all of the debris. It was great at getting the fine pieces (and came in handy later with the carpet removal too).

Removing the Carpet

Removing the wallpaper was eating up more of the timeline than we thought. How awful would it be if we hadn’t finished the dining and living room makeover before my parents came home?!

On top of that, trash day was coming, so we were anxious to get rid of all the garbage that we could. We didn’t want to leave heaps of trash for my parents.

So, Ash started removing the carpet while my sisters continued on with the wallpaper. Luck was on our side with the trash company too, as they took carpet in 4ft rolls. That greatly helped.

This old pink carpet that covered both the living and dining room had seen better days, and we couldn’t wait to get rid of it. Aside from the dust, the carpet removal wasn’t too bad.

Ash started with a corner and pulled it up with some vice grips. While pulling, he also started cutting it into strips to help with cleanup afterward.

The carpet was not too dusty, but the padding underneath was full of dust. So a dust mask was critical in the process. The padding was nailed down in numerous areas, so care had to be taken to remove all the nails.

Also, there were tacking strips along the perimeter of the rooms that needed removal as well. They were full of rusty nails so extra care was taken when removing them.

Ash found that a pry bar worked best to remove the tacking strips. After all the carpet, padding, tacking strips and nails were removed, the Shop Vac was used to give the floor a good cleaning.

Here is the dining room, minus the old carpeting.

Painting the Walls

While Ash was removing carpeting and my sisters were working on the walls, it was time to start thinking about painting. After all, the perfect color is one of the best things about room makeovers.

Choosing Paint Colors

So, my sweet little helper and I took a trip to our local paint store. We love Benjamin Moore paint – the odor is minimal and their colors are simply the best. My little guy loves our outings, especially loves the paint store – because if he’s a sweetheart, I let him choose a paint chip to take home 🙂

We brought a sample of the new floor along to the store, to hold up to various paint colors and help us determine the colors for the dining and living room makeover.

Not only are Benjamin Moore paint chips 100% representative of the color your wall will be (which unfortunately isn’t the case with all other paints) but the quality and sheen of their paint is amazing. We tend to go with the Natura collection because this puts the least amount of chemicals into the air.

If you think choosing paint colors is hard, imagine choosing them for someone else.

As if I’m not indecisive enough, I went back and forth trying to decide what colors to choose. The dining room had a chair rail, so I needed one color for the top and one for the bottom. The living room needed just one color, and the hallway didn’t need paint – as it was freshly painted a few summers ago.

Lucky for me, my parents love the color green, so I just needed to pick a shade. I went with Benjamin Moore Feather Green, which had more of a white base than a gray base. For the second color, I chose White Dove, which is my favorite of the whites that Benjamin Moore makes.

Priming and Painting the Walls

Once the wallpaper was finally down and the walls were patched, sanded, and ready to go, it was time to start painting. This was quite a milestone in the dining and living room makeover project!

So, after taping off the ceilings and the chair rail, my sisters painted a nice thick layer of primer.

After the primer in the living room and dining room, it was time to move onto painting the walls green. We did two coats of the green.
With the dining room chair rail, we decided to paint the lower portion White Dove and the higher portion Feather Green. It turned out really pretty.

The chair rail and tape didn’t leave the neatest edge, so in hindsight, we really should have pulled it off and then put it back.

Feather green already brightened the room so much. The dining room and living room makeover project was well on its way, with just a few days to spare.

Installing Laminate Flooring

To keep everything moving along during the dining and living room makeover, Ash started to work on the flooring in the dining room, while my sister finished painting the living room.

Ash loved working on the flooring – he found it really fun to work on. And, I love the way the laminate flooring turned out. It was so much prettier than carpet, and the white baseboard was the perfect touch. Now I’m thinking about where we can incorporate laminate flooring in our house 🙂

Laying Down the Laminate Flooring

As far as installation, the laminate was pretty easy to install. The pieces fit together like a large jigsaw puzzle.

Each alternating row was offset by half the length of a full piece. Not only did this add to the visual appeal, but it was essential for a rigid floor structure.

The laminate flooring tools (pull bars and tapping blocks) were heavily relied upon to get the pieces in place. 1/8″ spacers were also used along the perimeter of the wall to enforce a gap to allow for floor expansion during different times of the year.

The gaps were going to be covered by baseboard trim later on. Ash will have a full post on installing the laminate flooring soon. 🙂

Tackling the Tiles in the Hallway

The hallway tiles proved to be very labor intensive. The problem was that there was another layer of plywood sheathing nailed into the subfloor, followed by the vinyl tiles.

The plywood sheathing was there to raise the height of the floor so the tiles would be even with other room surfaces.

Unfortunately, it was a huge pain removing this second layer of plywood. It did not come up very easy. Yet, we endured and got all the plywood and tiles removed.

Installing Baseboard

Baseboard was the easiest part of this dining and living room makeover. It was just a matter of measuring all the walls that needed baseboard, and buying the appropriate amount from Home Depot.

We pre-painted all the baseboard pieces. Once they were dry, Ash used the miter saw to cut 45 degree angles on the ends of the pieces. These angled cuts would create scarf joints between the baseboard segments.

Scarf joints are ideal for trim because they hide the seam pretty well.

Finally, Ash attached the baseboard to the walls with some construction adhesive and a few taps from the finishing nail gun.

Cleaning Up and Organizing

From start to finish, the Shop Vac came in handy the whole project – from vacuuming up the dust and wallpaper scraps, to any nails left behind from the carpet removal.

After all of the work was done, we went over everything again with the Shop Vac. Then, we used a wet swiffer to get up more lingering dust. There was dust everywhere – so when preparing for the makeover, definitely move (or cover) everything really well.

While my sister and Ash were hard at work finishing up, I was looking for a way to organize the floor samples and paint colors for my parents.

Rather than toss them in an envelope, I created home improvement printables and placed them in a binder with the samples. This way, they knew exactly what paint color, floor, baseboard, etc that we used.

Get Your Free Home Improvement Printables

If you are thinking about a home renovation project, or are just trying to keep your projects organized, you can get your free home improvement printables below. They will undoubtedly help you keep track of your paint colors, cabinet choices, home repairs, and more.

The Moment of Truth

When my parents returned from their vacation, they were so amazed at their home. They loved the flooring, the walls, and they were happy to see that old carpet gone.

Moreover, they were ecstatic to come home to a completely updated living room and dining room. My mom has been enjoying going around with the swiffer, instead of the vaccum in the mornings. She had fun gathering braided rugs that my grandma made to compliment the new flooring. And, my dad said he feels like he wakes up in a dream 🙂 Isn’t that a sweet compliment?!

So, if you find yourself watching one of those HGTV shows wishing for your own renovation, know that you can do it yourself. Now is as good a time as ever to start working on those tasks.

Removing wallpaper, ripping up carpet, painting walls, and laying down new flooring are all things you can tackle yourself. And, you’ll be so happy that you did.