DIY
Step Stool (from High School Shop Class) Makeover Part 2
We have two step stools that were made during high school shop class. Anyone else have such a treasure? After all these years, the stools are still super sturdy. Education for the win! I made over the first stool last year, but the second stool was still in dire need of a refresh. As you can see, it has been lovingly cared for for many years. I decided to makeover the stool using natural wood and stained wood. That’s how my thought processes start – very vague. While I was mulling the direction the makeover should go, I dived in and sanded the stool down with my Ridgid Sander. With the stool freshly sanded,…
DIY Wood Blocks
Most of the projects on this blog have one thing in common: me. This project is the exception. Besides taking pictures, I had nothing to do with this project. I’ve got to tell you, doing nothing felt GREAT! Ever since we went to Discovery Place in Charlotte, North Carolina, my husband has been talking about making some blocks for our son to play with at home. Because we don’t have enough Legos. On Friday of last week Handy Husband came home with 8 strips of door stop moulding and announced he was going to make a bunch of blocks for our 5-year-old. “You might want to write about this,” he said. “Stop sweet…
Sheet Metal Map
I’m not sure if it’s all boys or my son in particular, but my 5-year-old doesn’t give a rip about decorating. Now, if I put something new in his room – it doesn’t matter what it is – he’s stoked about the shiny thing for all of 3.2 seconds. Then he’ll move on to the important matters of a kindergartener – whatever those are. In all reality, I’m decorating his room for me. The blank walls in his room gave my wandering mind something to focus on while I read LEGO City: Fire in the Forest! for the 217th time in a row. It’s a fascinating read. I wanted a huge piece of…
DIY Chimney Plug
Chalk this DIY up to one of the most random projects we’ve ever done in the name of saving a buck. We have two wood burning fireplaces we do not use. We could, but for a variety of reasons, we really like our forced-air gas furnace. However, the draft from our chimneys was wreaking havoc with our heating and cooling bill. For some unknown reason neither of our fireplaces have a damper. I could stand next to the fireplace in the living room and feel the cold air pouring into the house this winter. Not good. It’s just as bad as one of my kids leaving the back door open. Except this…
Scrapmaster Project #4: Dove
Last year, Handy Husband decided to rip all of our random scrap wood into 1 inch wide strips. Out of that, we made rolling milk crates, arrow art and a growth chart. There was still a little bit of wood left, but the lengths were all pretty varied. I wasn’t sure what to do with it all, so the wood sat in our garage waiting for inspiration. In the meantime, my kids decided the wood made for excellent swords. I’m sure nothing can go wrong with that game. One day, inspiration finally struck and mommy took away all of the kids’ fun (and quite possibly saved an eye or two). A wooden…
When Would You Paint A Counter?
The the burning question of the day is when would a sane person paint a counter? Answer? When they are desperate. In picture form, desperation looks like this: That is an unfortunate countertop made doubly worse by some sort of permanent marker that even Mr. Eraser and his band of toxic cleaners could not fix. To the child that decided to draw a heart on the counter…I’m not feeling the love. And no, it wasn’t one of mine. The countertop came to us this way. This bathroom needs to be gutted and reconfigured, but that’s not happening in the near future. In the meantime, I thought I would read all of the…
Fixing Nasty Grout Is Pretty Easy
The Junk Whisperer is coming to visit me next month and it prompted me to take a good hard look at the bathroom she would be using during her stay. Normally, if I have to go in there, I just kind of squint and say to myself, “hey, it’s not so bad…if you don’t turn on the light.” I’m fairly certain the bathroom is original to the house. My powers of deduction lead me to conclude that the grout in this bathroom is also original to the house. While I’m holding on to the most fervent of delusions that the grout has been thoroughly cleaned periodically in the last 50 years,…
Arrow Mantel Art
Brace yourselves. Today I’m going to show you a work-in-progress. I thought it would be super fun to see how long it takes for me to figure out how to finish what I started! That was sarcasm, folks. Seriously though, I have a feeling it’s going to take me awhile to figure out how this project ends. It all started because I needed art for the mother of all mantels. It’s probably 8-feet long. As most things begin around here, I had an AWESOME idea and a spare piece of plywood. I’m running out of spare pieces of plywood though, so I might have to stop blogging then. 😉 Through a bit of…
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…