Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I didn't get a craft done this weekend because I was working on a little home improvement project, so I thought I'd share it with you.  Our front steps have this sturdy, but fairly ugly railing (picture on the left is the before photo). This spring, hubby took the power washer to it and cleaned it up, but even though it looked better, it was rougher feeling than ever (and not very protected from the elements).  So on a lovely fall day, I decided to sand the darn thing to death and then spread on some deck sealer that had been in our garage for a decade. I went through about 10 sanding pads on our cheap old sander. The grain was really raised and the wood was really rough. But since it's a very sturdy railing, I just needed to get it smoother and sealed up. After an unreasonable amount of sanding, I cleaned the railing off (brushed and then wiped down with a damp rag), I opened up a can of tinted waterproof sealant that was left in our garage by the previous homeowners (we...

The interior handle on our patio door broke last week. We found an almost exact match to the old handle online, but when it arrived, the exterior handle was quite a bit different from the old one on our door. However, the old one looked like this (photo above), so my husband put the new handle on the door and took the old one off. I put the broken handle straight in the trash, but after I saw how the new exterior handle fit the door, I saved the old one. In addition to the handle leaving a hole that would need to be patched from torrential rains and freezing temps, it also sat a quarter of an inch off the door. It was hard to get a picture of this, but the new handle had posts that didn't fit into the existing holes, so without drilling larger holes (which may not solve the problem) or cutting off the posts (which would solve the problem, but would be a pain), we'd have a gap and a hole. And even if we did get it sitting on the door properly, there's still a hole above the...

I've been in major spring cleaning mode in my house lately, so once the kitchen was fairly cleaned out, I knew I needed to tackle this project that I had been meaning to complete ever since we got a new garbage disposal installed last spring. Our kitchen sink cabinet had a bit of water damage from the previous garbage disposal malfunctioning. And in general was looking pretty shabby from being 20 years old. So I decided to give my cabinet a bit of an upgrade. So I went to the local hardware store (in our case Home Depot is closest) and picked out some peel and stick vinyl tiles. I measured our cabinet at 2 feet by 3 feet--give or take an inch. So I knew I needed at least 6 tiles. Be sure to get a tile or two extra in case you make any mistakes in your cutting. These vinyl tiles are available at pretty much any home improvement store (and even sometimes Dollar Tree) and are usually around a dollar a tile. The first thing I did was dry fit my tiles into the space s...

So, a couple weeks ago we started our deck refresh project . Then after it dried for a day...it rained for like 5 days straight. So we couldn't do the recommended second coat of the DeckOver we used to paint our deck (click the link above to read all about our first coat). Well this week it was nice again, and I just finished submitting grades at school, so we figured it would be a good time to get another coat on. Deck after one coat of DeckOver On Saturday we cleared the deck off, swept and hosed it down. Then we went to Home Depot to get more paint and brushes . Note about the quantity of paint to buy: We used way more of the DeckOver than we expected. Our deck isn't that big and we figured we'd be able to use one gallon to cover the whole deck--but we were way wrong. We barely got a single coat on the deck with the two gallons we bought. So back we went. The DeckOver is the consistency of pudding and fills in cracks and gouges, so if your deck is in kinda rough s...

I teach at a local community college, so it's crunch time grade wise....and we had a lightning in a bottle kind of weekend where it was sunny with no rain forecasted, low humidity, and with warm but not hot temperatures for both days of the weekend. So, we had to do yard work. After our mowing and trimming on Saturday, we decided to refresh our deck. Between the deck and grading....I didn't get much else done, so instead of a craft tutorial, you get to see our deck painting project. Our deck was beyond beginning to get ragged. It hadn't been sealed since before we bought our house and there was a lot of mildew, cracking, and even some lichen on it. So we opted for a deck filler type product at our local Home Depot (because it was the closest hardware store). We bought Behr Wood Cleaner and followed the instructions (wear gloves, mix with an equal part water, wet deck, scrub or swab on solution, rinse off).   We scrubbed it on as we knew there were some...