We have weiner dogs at my house. The day before yesterday, there were 5. Yes, 5 weiners. That’s a lot of personality at one house.  My husband always had weiners, so I got him one for his birthday several years ago. That started a trend.  Recently, we moved to a house with 7 acres and a pond.  I got the super fabulous idea to rescue weiners and have a weiner dog REFUGE! That’s hard work — weiner rescuing. It’s such hard work I think I may be DONE — (until I see another helpless weiner). Anyway, we’ve had Maggie…she’s our bionic dog. She had a tussle with the neighbor’s boat trailer about 3 years ago and broke her pelvis and both hips. Not only is she our bionic dog…she’s our $3,000 dog. My husband loves her THAT much even though she’s mean and packed with attitude.

She doesn't look evil...but she is.

Someone called me from the local humane society late last year and wanted to know if I wanted to “socialize” a weiner. He was apparently not happy there. Lots of growling and foulness. I was full of weiner gusto at that point so I said SURE!  That weiner is now Fat Jack Black. We loved him so much we kept him. I think dog jail was what made Jack need socializing. He’s a big old hole digging, fish catching lap dog. We officially adopted Jack in January….Jack doesn’t like anyone except the immediate family. Jack also doesn’t like 2 year olds that grab his ears and get in his face. He bites them and then they have to go incognito. Now we put Jack up when company comes.

Right after Jack needed “socializing”, I got a call from another lady who had a stray weiner that had been running with a pack of pit bulls in the big city.  Still really into my weiner rescue at that point, when asked if I can take him, I say HELL YES.  I know it sounds crazy. Picking up a stray weiner that hangs out with pit bulls…he can’t be very nice. That little dog is Zim — he only has the one name. I don’t know why. Like Prince…or Madonna. Zim the pit bull companion weighs a whopping 8 pounds.  I picked Zim up, took him home and immediately found a home for him with my dear friend Misty. Misty’s excited. She takes Zim home on a Friday. He’s good (except that incident where he peed on her leg in Pet Smart). Misty overlooks that. On Monday, she goes to work — BIG mistake, apparently. Zim ate holes through the sheetrock in Misty’s bathroom.  Zim also had a Chi straightening iron cord for lunch.  Needless to say, Zim was returned to me.  Who can blame anyone for returning him?  I get him back — he’s thrilled to be back. Everything was going smoothly except a weird sexual incident in the kitchen while my husband was eating his Cheerios — note to self: when a man is over the age of 50, he apparently doesn’t appreciate freaky dog sex acts in the kitchen at 6:30 a.m.  – I’m only 35 so I thought it was funny. LOL. ANYWAY, Zim is fixed now. No more freaky stuff going on and he’s the best little dog ever.  I’m glad he got returned!! He loves me more than anyone else on this earth. That’s always nice 

I know, he looks like Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter.

As if that drama wasn’t enough for me, about 3 weeks ago, I got more weiners. Not just one this time, either. I got a couple. I got them from an animal shelter — they had been there a bit too long. Adoption for them wasn’t looking good, so here I come to save the day. Mind you, I drove 3 hours one way to save these weiners. Butch and Cinnamon. Perfectly cute affectionate weiners. Butch and Cinnamon are a bonded pair, so no separating those 2. I had to find someone to take them both. While I’m trying to find potential new owners, Butch and Cinnamon corrupt my other weiners and make them do bad things. It’s like they all got the pack mentality when they were running together. Butch and Cinnamon thought it would be fun to harass the neighbor’s Chow, and take the other 3 weiners along for fun. It was the poor chow vs. 5 weiners. $90 vet bill for me — poor Zim — he’s okay though.  Butch and Cinnamon were living in the garage at this point. My husband said NO MORE WEINERS in the house peeing on the brand new hand scraped hard wood floors — he’s always ruining my fun and my opportunities to clean up dog pee. Butch liked to lift his leg on things in the garage and christen them. He also like to bark at night. Butch and Cinnamon, mostly Butch was making me really tired.  The day before yesterday, Butch and Cinnamon got new owners. Yaaay. Butch didn’t want to leave. I think it was bittersweet for all of us.

In the pokey.

What have I learned from all of this? Weiner rescue is hard, and I think I’m retiring. The weiners wore me down after only 3 months. Am I a wuss, or what?  Think long and hard before you rescue weiners, people. That’s all I can say.

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 We recently bought a foreclosed house that needed a lot of work. We also still have another house that hasn’t sold, so we didn’t want to shell out a fortune on kitchen counters  - I’m opting for a really nice master bath first!  The cabinets in the kitchen were standard builder’s grade oak.  The counter tops were beige laminate. Nothing horrendous – just boring.  There was a hideous tile border at the back of the counter that I ripped out.  The house is only about 12 years old. The previous owners had painted it dark green and then sponge painted over it, which didn’t do the counters and cabinets any justice at all. We painted it yellow. Here is a before picture and a picture once we painted.

We talked about re-laminating the counter tops, but I wasn’t really in love with that either. After a fair amount of online research, I figured out that lots of people were painting their laminate counter tops — yes, I said painting their counter tops.  Most of the ones I saw involved a sponge painting technique and some other creative painting.  Here are some of the interesting ones that I found (mind you, I also saw some horrible ones)!

I’m really crafty, but I was worried about all that sponge painting — mostly based on the ugly ones I had seen.  Google painted laminate counter tops.  You’ll see what I am talking about.  After some experimentation on the laundry room counter top, here’s what I ended up doing:

I SANDED THE LAMINATE AND WOOD EDGES – NOTHING SERIOUS JUST A LIGHT SAND

ROLLED ON 1 COAT OF GRIPPER PRIMER

AFTER THE PRIMER DRIED, I ROLLED ON 1 HEAVY COAT OF WHITE 1 PART EPOXY ACRYLIC GARAGE FLOOR PAINT MADE BY BEHR AND COVERED EVERY INCH OF THE PAINT WITH PAINT CHIPS (RIGHT NEXT TO THE GARAGE FLOOR PAINT, THEY HAVE PAINT CHIPS THAT ARE USED TO ADD TEXTURE TO THE GARAGE FLOOR. I GOT THE TAN MIX AT HOME DEPOT)

LET THAT DRY AND THEN WIPE OFF ALL OF THE EXCESS PAINT CHIPS (I SAVED AND REUSED THE ONES I WIPED OFF)

(EPOXY PAINT TAKES A LITTLE WHILE TO CURE COMPLETELY – I THINK WE LET IS SET 2 DAYS, BUT IT FELT DRY TO THE TOUCH AFTER JUST A FEW HOURS)

THEN WE DID A SEAL COAT OF EPOXY GLAZE — IT’S THE ONE AND ONLY BRAND OUR LOWE’S HAD BUT FROM WHAT I’VE READ IT’S JUST LIKE THE ENVIROTEC EVERYONE IS ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT – WE BRUSHED THE 1ST COAT ON W/ SPONGE BRUSHES THEN DID A POUR ON COAT THE NEXT DAY.
MY EXPERIMENTAL COUNTER WAS IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM AND I USED A CHOCOLATE BROWN BASE W/ THE CHIPS — IT WAS WAY TOO DARK. ANYWAY, I COATED IT W/ 5 COATS OF POLY, BUT NOW THAT I’VE SEEN THE EPOXY GLAZE, THERE’S NO DOUBT THE EPOXY GLAZE LOOKS THE BEST. IT GIVES IT THAT DEPTH THAT GRANITE TOPS HAVE. THE BRAND WE BOUGHT SAID IT WAS LIKE ADDING 50 COATS OF POLY — I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT. WE ALMOST DIDN’T DO THE EPOXY GLAZE BUT NOW WE ARE BOTH ABSOLUTELY THRILLED WE DID. IT’S BEEN 6 MONTHS SINCE THE EXPERIMENTAL LAUNDRY ROOM COUNTER WITH THE POLY ON IT AND IT IS HIDEOUS. SO, THE LESSON HERE IS, DON’T USE POLY AND DON’T BE AFRAID OF EPOXY RESIN.

ALSO, ANOTHER FACTOR FOR ME PICKING THE EPOXY GLAZE ON TOP WAS THAT YOU CAN MAKE REPAIRS TO IT. POLY CAN’T BE REPAIRED B/C IT’S JUST LAYER UPON LAYER OF CLEAR COAT — THE LAYERS NEVER BOND TOGETHER. WITH THE EPOXY THEY DO BOND TOGETHER.

I cheated — I just did a cut and paste from something else that described everything I did, thus the caps.  I also sanded, grippered, painted, glazed, sanded some more, and steel wooled the ugly cabinets. We changed the knobs, bought all new appliances, and put up a wainscoating backsplash — so that helped the whole look.  Anyway, here are my after pictures –

The counters probably cost about $150 to do. The glass knobs were $50 at Hobby Lobby (1/2 off WOOHOO) — the knobs aren’t on the drawers in these pictures and the outlet covers were still off. The wood appliques we added to the cabinets by the sink were $10. The backsplash and trim were about $60. The paint was $25 for the cabinets and another $25 for the room.

www.prettyloot.com

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