entry – Francois et Moi

How to Paint a Radiator Cover

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 15:18:56 +0000

This post was sponsored by Rust-Oleum and contains affiliate links. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Continuing on with our foyer remodel, you may have caught an IG story or two of Ken and I building a radiator cover to dress up the bare heating unit in the front entry. The plans for the cover itself are coming soon (I promise!), but in the meantime, I’ve painted this bad boy, and I can hardly hold back to show you guys how it turned out! (It’s gooood.) In the past, I’ve used a paint brush application to paint furniture, but this time around, I knew I’d need to look to spray paint for the intricate metal panels of the radiator cover. I’ll admit I was a little nervous whether I would be able to apply the spray paint evenly. Ken and I worked really hard designing/building the cover, and I wanted to make sure my paint job would do it justice! I went with Rust-Oleum spray paints for this project, because I’ve been using their products for YEARS, my dad used Rust-Oleum growing up, and I always know their paint (not to mention the spray nozzle) is going to be […]

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Modern Tudor Foyer: Design Direction

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Wed, 15 May 2019 21:12:16 +0000

Modern Tudor Foyer: Inspiration and thoughts surrounding our upcoming foyer renovation. Come weigh in on my design direction! First impressions are everything, and my foyer, in it’s current state anyway, couldn’t charm a fly! See below. Our home is wonderful, if I do say so (with great bias!), but the foyer just isn’t a great indicator of what’s beyond. As you guys know our home is a duplex. (We live on the main floor and rent out the upstairs apartment to our fan-tabulous tenants.) The foyer is the space where the duplex splits in two. Go through the door on the left for our place and up the stairs to the door of the tenant’s unit. If you’re interested in becoming a landlord or buying a duplex, read up on my I Am Landlord series! The foyer has the original wood trim/stringer which I want to keep (and not paint), but the carpet/plastic runner on the stairs has got to go! I plan to refinish the stair treads to match the existing wood trim and paint the risers white. There’s also a great opportunity to make a real focal point on the radiator wall with picture frame moulding and a […]

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DIY Back Hall Makeover

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 15:01:30 +0000

This post has been sponsored by KILZ ® . All thoughts and opinions are my own. Whether it’s a mountain of clutter in your spare bedroom or a forgotten niche that’s in need of a facelift, we all have those areas in our home that we put on the blinders for in order to make them palatable. (Or at least, I hope we’re not the only ones!) For our family, it was the dreaded back hall, a dingy, bare, tiny space that just wasn’t pulling its weight. So, I’ve teamed up with KILZ Complete Coat® Paint again (remember our medicine cabinet makeover?) to rock this hall and make it feel more like the rest of our home–a spot we’d enjoy coming home to. The layout is pretty typical for 1930-era homes. You enter the back hall at ground level, and you can either go down into the basement, or turn the corner and head up to the two floors above (our floor + our tenant’s floor—our house is a duplex). What I’m getting at is there are lots of stairs, and not much room for coats, boots, garden stuff, toys, etc., all the things you’d like your back hall […]

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DIY Modern Key Holder

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Sat, 06 Aug 2016 16:00:03 +0000

As owners of a Duplex home, it’s safe to say we have a healthy number of keys to manage. Not only are we looking after our own home and car keys but the duplex’s exterior door key, our tenant’s spare keys, etc. Without a designated drop spot for them when you walk in the front door, our keys often end up in scattered, hard to find places throughout the home. And it makes for a frantic struggle when you need to dash out the door in a hurry. So when Dremel challenged me to share a small space solution as part of their month-long August Maker Days (more on this in a bit!), it was a no-brainer which area to tackle. Key Storage in the Entry. Because our entry is a small space, I knew the key holder had to be wall mounted, and I found inspiration in this only-sold-in-Danish-stores key holder. Normally making a wall-mounted key holder with key chain slots & recessed keyhole hangers would require 3 big-daddy tools: belt sander, mitre saw and router, but instead I’m simplifying things and using the Dremel 8050 Micro, a handheld rotary tool that satisfies all 3 tool needs in one. (It’s […]

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Every Piece Has Its Place

francoisetmoiblog@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 14:00:09 +0000

What do you do with a 6′ airplane propeller that against all odds, you won on eBay? Well…Ken and I went back and forth, but we both agreed we wanted to keep the integrity of the piece (hence not modify it by trying to make something else out of it like a lamp–although that probably could have been cool too). So where do you hang a 6′ piece of aircraft in your 750 sf apartment? After much deliberation we finally landed on our entry. It seems an unlikely place considering our entry is tiny, 40″ x 84″ to be precise. Not only is our entry small, prior to last spring, it lacked sufficient storage. We have a coat closet on the east wall, but again it’s quite teeny in terms of storing all the outdoor gear that comes along with surviving Minnesota winters. So last spring, Ken and I built a coat rail out of molding and wood pegs in order to provide a spot for everyday coats and bags. We painted it white, and installed it along the west wall of our entry. Doing so created a long, horizontal expanse of white wall above the rail, and ever since, we’ve […]

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