Just plugging away at things here...

Remember a couple weeks ago I was in shock over the estimate for replacing the bathroom counter top in our old house? When I wrote that, SuSaw left me a comment saying that she had painted a counter top using "granite" paint, followed by several coats of clear urethane. She thought it looked great and it had held up pretty well. Well, thank you SuSaw!

This is how the counter top now looks.

Closeup:

Pretty darned acceptable—right?

I sanded the old painted counter, then sprayed it with spray primer and then the paint, which is called "Stone Effects." The stone paint creates a texture that is fairly rough, but once it was good and dry I started adding layers of clear, satin urethane—3 in all, with a good long drying time between layers. This sort of fills in the texture a bit, though there is still a pleasantly nubbly feel to it. It cost me some time, some effort and about $15 worth of materials. The counter top guys wanted $1200 for the cheapest Corian, on sale. (Does that sound outrageous, or am I just not up with prices of things?!)

We are working away at getting the old house ready to try to sell again. We WILL sell it. We interviewed realtors and selected a woman who seems like she has a great affinity and feel for our kind of old 1914 house, which gives me some confidence. I never felt like the realtor we had before quite appreciated the charms of an old house. She wanted everything "updated". Bah. Anyway, I have a good feeling about this one. I hope she comes through for us.I was a bit hesitant to tell her how I had dealt with the counter in the bathroom, but when I did she got very excited. "That's fabulous! I need to write that down!" and she grabbed her notebook and started copying the info off the paint cans. See why I like this one?

We have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks. Our new realtor has some good ideas for freshening things up. All good, but equals work for us. She really is a DIY woman after my own heart though. She said the light fixtures with bright brass are dated and cheesy for today's home buyer. I think I looked alarmed at another possible big expense, though I had to agree about the bright brass. Then she said, "take them down and spray paint them dull brass or bronze." Wow. There's a concept. I guess if I can spray paint formica, I can spray paint light fixture fittings.

Meanwhile here at home the daffodils are blooming.

And the spring green is coming out all over the place. Lots of inspiration for the 12 x 12 "chartreuse" challenge.