DIY
Camouflaging the Dog Door
I’ve been waiting for months for the outside temperature to drop below 90 degrees so that I could paint our exterior doors. I could have painted them during the hottest temperatures of the summer, but that would require keeping the door open for awhile and that defeats the purpose of getting our AC fixed. I’m pretty sure I would have melted too. It’s okay if you want to feel sorry for me. Last week our daytime temperatures held in the low 70s, so I knew it was time to paint! We have a beautiful back door. Except someone ruined it by installing a dog door. This is nothing against dogs, it’s…
Fixing the Rattling Windows in the Back Door
I love old houses and the beautiful doors that often accompany them. However, there is a sound that just makes me shudder. It’s when the kids slam the door so hard that it rattles the windows in said door. They aren’t trying to slam the door and shake the entire house. It just happens during their haste to get outside. It’s actually quite shocking to me that one of those windows hasn’t broken yet. This is the door in question. See it back there? This door is used for 99.9% of our comings and goings. The other day, in one of those fits of productivity where you cram in more useful…
Kid Chairs Get a Little Glam
I’ve haven’t been feeling too motivated in the crafty, decorating department lately. What can I say? Sometimes you’re on fire, sometimes you’re not! When the urge to spray paint something this week surged through me, well, I grabbed the first thing in sight that hadn’t yet been altered: the chairs at my kids’ game table. I’ve had these kid chairs for a few years now. And yes, they still had the price tags on them. *insert forehead slap here* They are from The Container Store and are probably the only thing I’ve ever purchased from that store. At the time, I was looking for a set of kids’ chairs that weren’t obnoxious.…
Repairing Nicks and Scratches in Linoleum or Vinyl Flooring
If you were to play that game “which of these things don’t belong,” well, the flooring in our kitchen would definitely win the prize. It does not fit in with the gorgeous wood floors throughout the rest of the house. It is a big sheet of chipped, scratched, dinged and maybe-burned linoleum. I really have no idea what could have caused so much damage to one section of flooring. While this was not the overall ugliest linoleum I had ever lived with, it was certainly the most damaged. I couldn’t wait to tear it out. But then I couldn’t decide what to replace it with. So, I sat there staring at…
Kitchen Refresh Part 7: The Reveal
Have I kept you waiting long enough to see how our kitchen refresh turned out? I’ve been living with it in a final-for-now state for a little more than 2 weeks. Remember how it looked before? I know, I know. Try and contain your jealousy. Not everyone can have sticky, puke green-colored cabinets. Ready for the after? Here’s that same corner now. Much better, right? I’m so glad this house presented the opportunity to paint the bottom cabinets black because that might not happen again. It’s my favorite part about this little refresh. The black paint works like magic and almost makes my black appliances disappear! The other thing I’m so…
Kitchen Refresh Part 6: Hardware
Before I typed this post, I was working on the backsplash. No, really. I was genuinely working on the backsplash, which is the last part of this little project. I’m ready to wrap this thing up in the next few days. Not that I’ll get final pictures taken that quick! In the next two weeks we have birthdays for both of my kids, end of year parties, kindergarten round-up, sports and I’m sure I’m forgetting something else. In the meantime, I have some lovely, not-so-lovely iPhone photos to share. After I painted the cabinets, I reused the cabinet knobs to save some dough. Someone still makes these knobs, by the way.…
Kitchen Refresh Part 5: Backsplash Dilemma
Free time is a precious commodity. Am I right? That’s why it pains me to think about the amount of time I’ve spent online searching for backsplash inspiration. It really is ridiculous. I’m really surprised I haven’t dreamed about backsplashes since they are top-of-mind lately. I want a backsplash option that isn’t permanent and isn’t expensive. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? My first choice was to use Smart Tiles since I’d heard about them from somewhere. I can’t hold the “where” part in my feeble mind. My heart was set on trying out their peel and stick backsplash tiles. It sounded like just my kind of project! Looks like real tile, right? It’s not!…
Kitchen Refresh Part 4: Unexpected Kindness
I am still making headway on the kitchen. As of last night, I had FINALLY finished sanding the remaining 5 cabinet doors. That means I only have the cabinet frames on one section to sand down and then we’ll be in the home stretch! Considering that it took 35 minutes to sand this ONE SINGLE door front and back, I will be happy to be done with the down and dirty sanding phase of this project. Oh, and I wasn’t messing around. I used 40 grit sandpaper to get through a billion and one layers of paint on this door and it still took that long. Then I had to go back…
Kitchen Refresh Part 3: Be Prepared For Anything
I didn’t make as much progress on the kitchen last week as I wanted to. Apparently real life can’t stop for labor-intensive DIY projects. Say what? Plus, the labor-intensive part of this project multiplied a little this week. Haha! Joke’s on me! If I haven’t said it before, I will say it now. (And I will use some all-caps typing to drive home my point.) When you are doing ANYTHING to an older home be prepared for ANYTHING to happen. Seriously. There are all sorts of crazy things hiding behind the walls of your home just waiting for you to open them up. Then they jump out and yell “GOTCHA.” So,…
Coatrack from a Wine Bar
Before we had kids we spent money on things like furniture instead of nerf guns and Pokemon. It was so long ago, I barely remember. At least we purchased some long-lasting pieces that I still love like this wine bar cabinet from Pier 1. We use the piece, but not to hold wine. That goes in the wine fridge. 😉 The back of the cabinet had a wood ledge on hinges that you could push up to act like a real “bar” area if people wanted to sit there while you poured a drink from the other side. That never happened. The wine cabinet has always been pushed up against the wall and…
