Currently viewing the tag: "DIY"
Wanna get your holiday craft on? It may seem kinda late in the season to just be getting started (ahem, me) but there’s always room for a quick little, Martha Stewart-esque craft project. This one, from Wit & Whistle, is at the top of my “have to try” list! It’s inexpensive (I’d get the mugs at Goodwill instead of buying retail), quick, and super easy! It would even make a great winter afternoon with the girls type of project. With wine, of course. Always wine…
Our current home construction project is our guest bath (we’re almost done so pics coming soon), which backs up to our home office. Well, during the demo phase, we managed to knock not only all the pictures off the office wall, but also some of the drywall as well. So now I need to refinish the office wall, patch and paint it. And apparently, not hang anything back on it since the back side of it is thousands of dollars worth of tile in the bathroom. So… I’m thinking about chalkboard paint. Or maybe even magnetic chalkboard paint. Does anyone have any experience with either? What was the application like? How does it look? Is the magnetic paint actually magnetic? Better yet – has anyone ever used a color other than black (or green, if that’s even possible)?
Here’s a few lovely inspiration images.
We have been up to our eyeballs in diy home improvement this summer. Last weekend I was pretty sure I had died and gone to Ikea furniture hell as I was buried in a room full of stuff requiring assembly with a piece of shut allen wrench. Needless to say, I probably stripped at least half the screws I put in, which is always good later if you ever need to take them out.
That was sarcasm just in case you didn’t recognize it…
Anyhow, thanks to this months edition of Good Housekeeping, husband can’t get mad at me for stopped screws. GH says simply to use a rubber band between the screwdriver an the screw if it’s been stripped. Use the small ones that come on produce bundles (although lifehacker says to use the wide bands) and you’ll get a good grip just like if you hadn’t jacked it all up!
Thanks, Good Housekeeping (and lifehacker)!
Am I the only reader who struggles with bookmarks? Because to be honest, they really irritate me. Sure, they’re functional, but they never stay in place! I have taken to trading most of my books online over the last couple of years (http://www.swap.com/) so am really trying to get away from dog-earring all my pages. Well, thanks to the lovely Tally over at I Could Make That, not only do I have a functional bookmark that will stay in place, but now I have one with tons of personality too! Anyone can make them – crafty or not. All it takes is a little paper, scissors and glue. As Michael Jackson used to say, easy as 1-2-3!
I desperately need this product, aptly named DrawerDecor by it’s creator, Keith Neilson. Not only is it totally functional, but it’s kitchy and stylish with it’s bright color options. DrawerDecor is a DIY system of modular silicone sheets and dividers that can be trimmed fit your drawers. Each 16-piece set comes with one nonslip BaseMat made from food-grade silicone and an assortment of Divitz dividers, which stick to the BaseMat so you can create perfectly sized storage slots for even your most irregularly sized tools and utensils. So yay me, now I don’t have to rifle through a stack of forks, spatulas, can openers and a whole slew of shit I only use once a year to get to my pizza cutter!
Remember way back in February when we started our half bath renovation? Well, it’s finally done. It was actually finished about a month ago but I never got around to taking proper pictures of it. My bad. Before I take you through the whole process, let’s take another look at the before.
Boo! Hiss! Ick!
Ok, now that we have that out of the way, notice, if you will, the tools sitting on the toilet. Also check out the white stripe along the bottom of the wall. Once again, my bad. I halted the demo because I realized I hadn’t yet shot the “before” photos. Massive sledgehammering ensued just after this photo was taken. The floor and the fixtures came out first, thanks to my man and kid, giving my dog an anxiety attack and me a temporary job as supervisor.
Then we prepped for the new tile floor with hardi-backer and applied what seemed like 13 coats of paint to the walls to cover up the diarrhea green.
That many coats of paint takes a few days to dry, especially in a room with no windows or cross ventilation. So fast forward to the following week (hey, we have day jobs too!) when we prepped the walls with the basecoat color and taped for horizontal stripes. Notice the multicolored stripe on the bottom where we ran out of Frog Tape and had to switch to Scotch Blue at the last minute. Oops.
Since I ordered 99% of the supplies for the new room online, they arrived in stages, and thus, were installed in stages. And since the room has no windows, lights were up first.
The floor came next. And the next step after that. If that doesn’t make sense, let me rephrase that for you… We did the floor twice. Again, oops. Here’s the thing, instead of a white hex tile like I had originally selected, I changed my mind and went with a white penny round instead. Which would have been all well and good, had we taken our time and perhaps, went with a matching color grout. But noooooooo, I had my mind set on a contrasting grout – BLACK! I was opposed to white tile with white grout for fear that it would be terribly dirty and always look like someone had peed on it. SO…at the end of what had proved to be a very long and backbreaking day of perfecting all the last details of the stripes, we slapped that tile on the floor like a Vegas blackjack dealer (picture it). We had laid tile before and thought not much of it. In hindsight, NOT the best way to lay tile, especially tile in any other shape than square or rectangle. However, without grout, it was hard to tell the gravity of the situation.
Not so bad, right? Wrong.
See all the black rivers running through it? HID.E.OUS. And far beyond what it’s not supposed to look like. Trying to be the good sport that I am and not waste the $200 we had spent on the penny tiles, I said I could live with it. Husband, however, had a different opinion. So the decision was made and no sooner had the grout dried, that the new floor came up. Being the fab husband that he is, he even said we could go with penny tiles again, given that we take our time and USE THE SAME COLOR GROUT. I pondered that for approximately 2.5 seconds and decided against it, opting for a more geometric (re: easy to install) shape; the grout, however, matching the color of the tile (I’m not that stupid). This time around we went for a pinwheel style with a black accent piece in the center.
Confident that we had weathered the storm, the remainder was simply installing all the pieces. Easy. Breezy. Albeit time consuming. But in the end, totally worth it! Check out the final product:
Let’s take one last look at the bathroom in a side-by-side comparison of before and after, shall we.
Pretty damn nice, if I do say so myself! A vast improvement if nothing else. Kinda makes me feel like I’m in a fancy hotel every time I use it. And remember how I said I purchased almost everything online? Most people are quite surprised by that, I am too a little, if we’re being honest. Here’s a breakdown of sources for everything in the room (except the toilet, cuz that was old):
Vanity cabinet: Sagehill Apothecary Collection from Faucet Direct
Granite countertop: Stone by Nature (they have changed their site since we purchased, but we did the custom top)
Vessel sink: Kraus ceramic sink from Faucet Direct
Faucet: Danze vessel faucet from Home Indoor
Mirror: Target
Towel ring, paper holder and hook (on the back of the door – can’t see it): Delta from Lowes
Lights: Jeremiah Lighting from Lighting Direct
Paint: Behr Premium Plus Ultra; Hazelnut Cream & Ivory Mist
Type print: Holstee Manifesto
Everyone poops print: Etsy
Glass shelf: Target
Towel(s): HomeGoods (can only purchase in store)
Penny tile: Gloss white from The Tile Shop
Pinwheel tile: Merola spiral from Home Depot
Have you seen some of the fabulousness that is going on over at Ikea Hackers? Man! Talk about squeezing blood from a turnip! Check it:
Drum Shade Pendant
Painted Edgeby Rug
I always get so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff in Ikea that my mind goes blank and I can’t imagine doing anything like this. I’ve got to plan ahead for this kind of stuff.
The hubs gave me the green light to renovate our tiny half bathroom over the weekend. It’s kinda strange actually because this was waaaaay down on the project list, far behind a new kitchen sink, renovating the fireplace and surrounding wall, and gutting our master bath and walk-in closet. I’m not even really sure how this project came about but I’m glad it did! We like to do projects ourselves rather than hire outside contractors. One, because we’re cheap, and two because, well, we’re cheap.
Here’s a picture of the bathroom before:
This is the only picture I got since the bathroom isn’t even big enough to stand in and take a picture. It’s THAT small. The wall color is a hideous dark, grayish green sick baby poo color, which is actually a vast improvement over what it was when we first moved in the house – flourescent yellow. And the bathroom has no windows so with this dark color, the room itself is pretty dark, so yet another coat of paint on the walls is in order.
I came up with 3 different schemes for the new room over the weekend and put them to a vote. We immediately veto’d one and were left with 2 choices. I was pretty torn between the 2 and could have easily gone either way, so I enlisted the help of my Facebook peeps and asked them to vote. Hands down, #2 won out. That and the hubs picked #2 as well and since he’s footing the bill I figured his vote should count for something.
Here were the 2 options (#2 being the winner):
OPTION 1
OPTION 2 – WINNER!
I purchased everything but the countertop and the floor tile over the weekend (on the internet, of course), so hopefully we can knock this project out pretty quickly. And by quickly I mean 2 weeks cuz I’ve got some out-of-towners coming on March 16th! The difficult part will be starting with the paint because we are keeping the toilet and the sink (for a future project) so everything will have to come out of the room to paint it. This includes the lights so we can fix the wall behind it if necessary, which means the room will be DARK! And I am painting horizontal stripes (inspired by John & Sherry) so painting will take a couple of days at best. Wish me luck. I’ll keep you posted with progress and of course, the finished product!
Game on, Bob Villa!
How sweet is this medicine cabinet? Surprisingly, it’s not a luxury, shi-shi brand that will break your bank. Believe it or not, it’s a diy project that cost a mere $6. With a little bit of frosting paint, tape and imagination, you can transform yours too!
by love&lace via shelterrific
Inspired by Wit & Whistle’s DIY calendar journal (which was inspired by Design Sponge’s DIY calendar journal), I have decided to do a calendar journal of my own, however, slightly less of a DIY project than the latter. Enter One Line a Day, a five year memory book for me to record all my thoughts and memories. I have been in a bit of a slump lately and I think this might be a good way for me to focus on the positive things in my life and the accomplishments (however small they may be) I’ve had.
Similar to this blog, its cheaper than real therapy, so I figure it’s a good place to start!
