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The Mistake We Made When Adding Hardscaping Around An Old Pool
May my words of experience find you when you most need them. We made a mistake when we added hardscaping around an old pool, so please learn from us and for the love of your sanity, check for leaks before you hardscape around an old pool. Or any pool, really. What is hardscape? It refers to the man-made parts of landscaping that aren’t vegetation. Things such as paths, walkways, and walls would count as hardscaping. Why would you hardscape around a pool? It’s personal preference, but hardscaping around a pool (the pool deck, in essence) with concrete or stone is easy to maintain and helps keep the pool clean and…
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Carriage House Interior Makeover Reveal
Thank you for following along on this Carriage House Interior Makeover series. (Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2.) Today is time for the reveal of the space! Makeover reveals make me uncomfortable. It’s not that I’m not happy with the work we’ve put into a space, but a reveal implies something final to me. This Carriage House interior makeover isn’t even really done yet. It’s just done for now. But that’s still a reason to celebrate! I’m going to assume I’m not the only one who feels this way about their home, especially one you are continually working on. As a reminder, here is what the Carriage House…
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Carriage House Interior Makeover Madness
Today we are getting to the good stuff – our Carriage House interior makeover madness! And madness it was. Phew! To recap if you’re coming in new (welcome!), our Carriage House is a separate building on our property that was originally built a couple of hundred years ago to house horse-drawn carriages and horse tack. When we bought this property, the upstairs had been converted into a living space and was a time capsule from the 1980s with a side dose of plumbing fixtures from the 1940s and 1950s. Sweet, right? Well…not so much sweet, but full of potential. Trust me, it’s there. You just have to squint and plug…
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Carriage House Interior Before Photos
If you follow us on social media then you’ll know I speak about our Carriage House fairly frequently, but I’ve not mentioned the Carriage House interior on the blog yet. We’ve owned this property for 3 years and this is the first time I’m addressing the Carriage House interior here. What have I been writing about?!? Hmm. That’s a good question. I have written about the new roof we put on the Carriage House and how snazzy that building is looking with its fresh exterior paint. The inside…well, it’s never felt done enough to write about it. It’s still not done, frankly. We put the slow in a slow renovation,…
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7 Tips for Refinishing a Door With Deep Scratches
Today I’m going to share 7 tips for refinishing a door with deep scratches. I can only assume deep scratches in a wood door come from years and years of a dog scratching at the door. My number one and most helpful tip for refinishing a door with deep scratches is for the love of your sanity, DON’T DO IT! Just pretend those scratches aren’t there. Or get a new door. Better yet, just move. It would be easier. I’m joking. Partially. I truly do believe it is worth the effort to save all the old doors, so let’s get down to my actual door refinishing tips because that’s probably…
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How To Hide Cords On A Standing Desk
Standing desks are great for many things, but hiding cords is not one of them. A standing desk is required to move up and down with the push of a button. This means any cords associated with your computer setup have to move too. This makes hiding cords a little trickier than usual. So how do you hide cords on a standing desk? We built a box to hold the cords and the surge protector and attached it to the underside of the standing desk. The box allows the cords to move up and down as the desk moves up and down from the sitting to the standing position. This…
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Painted Chainlink Fence Hack
Need a painted chainlink fence hack? You’ve come to the right place. If you’re reading this blog post then it is probably because you have an ugly chainlink fence that is driving you batty. You’ve probably wondered a million times if you can paint that chainlink fence and how much of a pain in the paintbrush is it going to be? You can paint pretty much anything. The question is whether or not it will hold up. In a grand, tedious experiment, I painted our ugly chainlink fence one year ago and discovered a hack that might save your sanity and a whole bunch of wasted paint. Here’s the hack,…
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Refinished Wood Mirror With a Sentimental Twist
I love a DIY project with a sentimental twist. Don’t you? Today’s refinished wood mirror project fits that description to a T. We have owned this wood mirror our entire marriage, so over 20 years but the mirror is much older than that. It was made in the mid-1960s. I had never seen the frame unpainted. It was painted when Handy Husband carted it over from his dive of a bachelor pad (Hello, gross shag carpet!) to the place we rented together. It was painted several times by yours truly as my style evolved over the years. The most recent iteration was a chippy, distressed look. Since that’s no longer…
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Why Do The Small Projects Seem So Large?
Why do the small projects seem so large? This could be any project or task, not just the house-related ones. Most of the time the mental gymnastics I go through to avoid starting a small project are way worse than the reality of actually completing the small project. Why is my brain that? Am I the only one who does this? I’ve seriously spent more time obsessing over, whining about, or flat-out ignoring the five small projects we tackled recently around our house. Here they are in no particular order related to the time spent procrastinating before starting, the actual effort or time expended to complete, or the satisfaction gained…
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How to Make Wood-Burned Dice
I have the most satisfying project for you today. How to make wood-burned dice from wood cubes. Do we need them? Need is a relative term. Do we want them? Of course. They are so cool! Are they satisfying to make? Oh, heck yeah. And that, my friends, is the best part. It’s not so much what we create, but the act of creating that’s the reward. Let’s get started on how to make wood-burned dice. How To Make Wood-Burned Dice Step #1: Cut Cubes Cut cubes out of wood using a table saw. Our cubes are 3/4″ square, but you could adapt your size if you want larger or…
