I completed my CPR certification last week at GCC. Thanks, Stephanie. Great class. That was 2 and a half hours well spent blowing air and pumping the chest of a dummy. We also learned how to use an AED – automated external defibrillator which is a portable, electronic medical device that was designed to allow minimally trained people to provide lifesaving defibrillation to victims of sudden cardiac arrest. That’s a cool machine. Just push the on button and the machine talks to you, telling you how to use it. Almost fool proof.

So over the break, although every day is really a break these days, I plan to start my personal trainer certification through ACTION. Get this. It’s an online program. All of the online classes are available on demand. You can stream the classes online or download mobile friendly videos to my smartphone or tablet for offline viewing. That’s right up my alley. They also have an ebook version of the textbook. Welcome to the digital age.

They say that if you are starting with no prior experience, you should allow 6 to 8 weeks to complete the program assuming you can devote 10-15 study hours per week. I’ve got plenty of time, but I want to get this over with so I can get to the Group Exercise Certification. That’s what I really need to teach indoor cycling, but you can’t get that until you get the Personal Trainer.

It’s not the most known certification program, but they earned NCCA Accreditation in January 2014 so it will work for most places looking for trainers to have certification. It will be good enough for my goals.

Remember the old days when you had to buy or move a mattress and box spring? It was literally a pain in the butt. I’ve seen this picture numerous times on the roads around town. Luckily these days things have changed. Mattresses and box springs come in boxes that are mailed to you. You just open the box and let the mattress expand out into a full sized mattress. It’s quite magical to watch.

At first I was a bit reluctant to try one of these new fangled foam mattresses until I realized I’ve been sleeping on one for the past four years. Oops! Yep. I obviously did not do the mattress shopping last time. We ended up with an organic latex mattress which apparently is similar to these foam mattresses but better. So I ordered two: a queen from Live and Sleep and a full from Zinus. Both were purchased on Amazon for less than $350. In fact, the Zinus mattress cost only $150. I wasn’t expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not sure how well it would work for everyday sleeping, but for a guest room, I think it will suffice.

I purchased this bed on OfferUp for $50 and got busy with the sander. I wanted to refinish it so it would match a dresser we have in our spare room now. It was a lot of work to realize that it doesn’t really match, but it’s closer than it was before. This picture is the half way point. Stain applied, but now it needs a few coats of poly. The biggest difference is this piece is made with cheap pine and the dresser wood has a nice grain pattern to it. You get what you pay for, so I can’t complain since I only paid $50 for headboard, foot-board, rails and center support. Once it’s finished, all it will need is the a fore mentioned mattress and foundation.

The foundation was the biggest surprise for me in this whole setup. The new mattresses don’t really need box springs anymore, but some beds are made where you need something for the mattress to sit on. It doesn’t have to be springs. It just needs to be solid. So they make these “foundations.” They’re really cool. They come in a box with some hardware and a cover. You just have to put it all together and wallah, you have a mattress foundation. The left becomes the right in a matter of minutes.

So in a few weeks our guests will be climbing into a bed that was deconstructed, rolled and compressed, and they’ll never know what went into getting the bed ready for guests (unless they read this post). Can you believe the picture below is of a queen sized mattress?

The only thing we bought new were the couches, a sofa/dining table, and a cow. Hold that thought. Everything else is a project or thrift store find, kind of like the 20 year old wall bed – not thrift store, but renovated. I’m currently working on a $20 coffee table project. I can’t believe I bought this thing on OfferUp for only $20, and it reaked of cigarette smoke. You can tell from the original color that it was in a house with cigarette smoke for a long time. It’s so discolored. It’s also good that I planned to paint it instead of stain it because it had some pretty bad stains on top. I would have been sanding for days to get those out.

I was able to sand it down fairly quickly and put a first coat of red paint on it, as you can see in the top image. I filled in some of the bigger cracks with some paintable caulk, but after the first coat of red I filled in a few more that I missed. Now I just need to paint closer around the hardware and add a second coat, and it’s ready for prime – center stage in the living room. It’s super sturdy so it will hold up to being a foot rest and a seat if someone so chooses.

I also found a cute little orange lamp on OfferUp, and when I went to pick it up, the seller had a bunch of other orange decor I couldn’t pass up. So I left with a complete orange bathroom set (shower curtain, towels, bath mat), orange pillows for the couches, an orange throw, and a little orange planter. I really love OfferUp. You can always find something to buy on there for a good price. Hopefully it’s something you actually need.

I’m currently shopping for orange or red curtains. We haven’t decided on which yet. I may have to buy both just to see which looks better. I have my eye on a overly expensive area rug that is beautiful, but I’m already thinking something with red would be better since the coffee table will be sitting on top of it. But then again, yellow might look good too. So many decisions. Who knew the hardest part would be decorating? I’m so not a decorator.

Which brings me to the cow. For some strange reason Cammie loves cows. It’s a strange affection, but anyway I found a cow painting in a store and thought, this is it. My design inspiration! I love the colors in this painting. Can you see the red? Matches nicely with the coffee table. The gray background matches. The orange. But most of all Cammie loves it. She says the cows eyes are speaking to her. If that’s true, I bet she’s says, “don’t eat me!” Ha!

Two weeks ago (Oct. 6th) while we were up in Happy Jack, there was a huge rain storm and it rained all night. We’ve been sleeping in the camper during the renovations, so we were all snuggled up and cozy in there all night. But we woke up the next morning to falling snow. It was beautiful, but I am not a fan of being cold, and snow is cold. I didn’t expect to have to be dealing with snow so early in the season. It was definitely a strange anomaly.

I was able to get 3/4 of the wood wall done and the TV wall mount and electrical boxes installed, but I had to order two more packs of wood from Lowe’s to be delivered this week in order to finish this project. So I’m heading up soon and should finish up the wood wall project this week. I really like the look of this accent wall, and it’s super easy to install. You can see a quick progression video of the wood planks being installed (magically) at the end.

As for the stone wall behind the fireplace, I need to pick up more mortar from HomeDepot before I’m able to finish that wall. I had to buy an angle grinder to make some cuts, but it turns out the manual tile cutter works better for the straight cuts I’ve been making so far.

The angle grinder was throwing sparks and just when the cut was almost done, it would crack the tile. Dang! So close. I’m not sure how I’m going to make those angled cuts at the top when I get that far. The ceiling is vaulted and angles up to the right. We’ll see about that when we get there. That angle grinder better work.

In the mean time I’m making my way with installing the vinyl flooring. We bought it at Lumber Liquidators and love the wood like gray texture of the planks. It’s called Tranquility XD 4mm Edgewater Oak LVP, and it’s water proof. Vinyl is supposed to be very durable which seemed like a good fit for cabin in the woods.

So far it looks like I actually ordered enough of the flooring and underlayment required for install, so I hope to wrap this project up this week. I only have about a third of the kitchen left to do. The only thing slowing me down were the angled cuts in front of the fireplace. I wish I had mad math skills to figure that out. What a pain in the booty. I was using the miter saw and rotary tool to make those cuts last week, but I think I’ll try a band saw this week, as there is an angle in front of the sink. It might be safer to use a different saw. I really like my fingers.

One last incomplete project I have to finish is the ceiling tiles. I almost forgot about that one, as I did the majority of that work almost three weeks ago. As per the course with me, I ran out of tiles, not once, but twice. So sad how I miscalculated that order. Only 8 tiles to install and quick coat of paint, and I’m done.

Now I lift weights 4-5 days a week and throw in some HIIT workouts and cardio 2-3 days a week. I found a really good workout program online that I’ve been following for about 6 months now. It seems to be working. Day 5 is Back, Delts, and Arms. It’s probably the longest of the five workouts, and most days I split it up into two workouts and do the last five exercises at home later in the day.

This workout is also a superset workout, meaning you do two exercises back to back without rest as a set. So I’ll do a set of Barbell Shoulder Press followed immediately by a set of Machine Lat Pull Downs then rest 60 seconds. Repeat for 3 sets. Then move on to the next set of superset exercises. Sometimes if the gym is crowded I skip the supersets because it’s hard to hold two machines for a period of time. As soon as you leave to do the other exercise, someone usually jumps in on you. So rude. Ha!

I shot a short sample of a few of the exercises today at LA Fitness. It was fairly quite at the gym, so I snuck in a few camera shots. I’m doing 20lbs Dumbbell Bent Over Reverse Flys, 45lbs Cable Straight Arm Push Downs, 70lbs Cable Seated Rows, and 50lbs EZ Bar Curls. Not bad for a 50 year old. Wink Wink.

The bed was pretty sturdy and worked as planned for three years until I moved out of my house and didn’t have room for it in the new one. So my mom decided to keep the bed for me in one of her rooms. And 17 years later I finally have a place for my handmade wall bed. She’s going to the Happy Jack cabin. But before she can go to her new home, she needs a facelift to bring her into the 21st century. As you can see in the image to the left, I used a pretty dated molding on the front and stained it a pretty boring brown. I’d also lost a few pieces on the top when I moved it into my current garage, so I had to repair those.

In the featured image at the top of the page, you can see I removed the old moldings and added more modern wide rails. When we moved in to this current house, the wall bed couldn’t fit in the spare room because of the angle to get in the room, so we bought a Murphy bed that I had to assemble, not build, and we’ve been very happy with it. Although I felt like I was cheating on my original wall bed. I really like the look of this new, more modern bed (see below), and I’m trying to model my facelift after this bed. The white color and stainless pulls add to the modern look.

I haven’t decided what kind of pulls to use yet, but the two I left on my built bed are actually part of the legs that the bed rests on when it’s pulled out, so I need to keep the wood blocks. I may or may not add additional stainless steel pulls in the middle. I’ve only gotten as far as adding the rails and painting a primer coat. I’ll finish it up with a nice coat of white this week, and she’ll be ready for the ride up the mountain this weekend.

I’m almost certain it will fit in the room we want to use as an office, but if it doesn’t she still gets to stay as the second bedroom is a straight shot down the hall and the bed will easily make it into this room. So my bed will be home at last.

So off I went inside the house, opened a gallon can of flat white paint and started priming. It primed just fine, but then the spray gun wouldn’t spray. After about another 45 minutes with me turning, screwing and tightening everything I could find, I managed to get paint all over myself and everything else in the vicinity excluding the ceiling. However, the spray gun did decide to work. It worked great until the paint in the can got too low and then the sprayer would stop. I managed to get myself covered in paint splatter while trying to get it going time after time, but the good news is I was able to paint the ceilings in all the open spaces in record time.

The flat white paint on the ceilings tiles really adds a nice look to the room, and despite all the trouble I had with the spray gun, it was still worth it not having to roll the ceiling while standing on a ladder. It literally took me about an hour to paint the three rooms. Well, minus the two+ hours trying to get the stupid thing to work. You can tell in the picture I was pissed. Ha!

After I finished the ceiling, I started on with the lighter of the two grey colors on the walls. I used a roller to do the walls, as I wasn’t comfortable trying to spray the walls and not ruin the pretty white ceilings. And I was being lazy and not wanting to tape off everything. It was much faster to roll especially using the Wagner 9 in. Smart Roller with Manual Ratchet Trigger. Seriously this is the best invention ever. Just fill the tube with paint and start rolling, pulling the trigger to get more paint on the roller until it runs out. Then just refill it and keep going. It’s clean and easy and fast and only cost $25. The sprayer was just fast. Nothing clean, easy or inexpensive about that. Below are the results of my labor. You get a good picture of the ceiling too. Initially I thought the grey might be too dark, but it grew on me, and I like it.

I’m going to start making some more before and after collages, but here’s one that sort of shows what things looked liked before and the after. The top pictures has the ugly pink/tan walls with the drywall strips, and the horrendous popcorn ceiling and brown carpet.

Speaking of ugly brown carpet, my next project is to install the vinyl wood like floors this week. I’ll get on that right after I finish up the dark grey accent walls. There are two that need a quick coat of paint, then on to the floors. Stay tuned and wish me luck.

I started doing Google searches for “how to cover up popcorn ceilings,” and low and behold – foam ceiling tiles. What? Yep. Styrofoam like the cups. I watched several videos on how it works and said, I can do that. I found the foam tiles on Amazon. Isn’t everything available on Amazon? The tiles aren’t cheap, but did I mention removing painted popcorn ceilings is nearly impossible? I was willing to pay anything! And I did. $540 just for the main living areas, which is just a little over half the house.

They are super easy to install. The most difficult part is climbing up and down the ladder to stick the tiles on the ceiling. Every tile is a trip up and then down the ladder, so I literally climbed up the ladder 100+ times. By the time I’m done, it will be 180 times, as that is the total number of tiles I purchased. Isn’t math wonderful? Oh, I almost forgot. The second step after you’ve glued the tiles to the ceiling, right over the popcorn to be clear, is to caulk the cracks if there are any. More trips up and down the ladder. I had lots of gaps to fill in the laundry room, as that was the first room I did, and you could tell. You can see the before and after photos below. This is also before caulking. The living room was much better and less caulking required.

The tiles are easy to work with. You can use a sharp knife or exacto knife to trim or cut holes. You can use AcrylPro Ceramic Tile Adhesive or Titebond 2706 GREENchoice Acoustical Ceiling Tile Adhesive. They both worked the same. I also used DAP Alex Painter’s All-Purpose Acrylic Latex Caulk.

I finished the living room and laundry room, so this week I’ll finish up the kitchen and fireplace room. The ceiling space is identical to the living room, but I’ll have the cabinets to work around on that side. After that I’ll paint the ceiling white. I’m making progress.

We didn’t want to miss out on the first NFL game of the season being that our first night camping was Thursday night, so I hooked up the Amazon Fire Stick to the TV and set it up outside. WiFi is strong enough to reach outside, so we were able to stream the game and enjoy a camp fire too.

Camping at the cabin was a lot of fun. At this rate, we may never sleep inside the house in Happy Jack. We will however continue to use the kitchen and bathrooms.