Old House Essential: Slower Cooker For Paint Removal
There are house essentials and then there are old house essentials. The essentials might look the same on each list but their purpose can differ vastly. On my list of old house essentials is a slow cooker – not for cooking but for removing paint from door hardware. If you own an old house or any home where someone became overzealous with a paintbrush then a slow cooker will be the MVP when it comes to restoring your door hardware back to its original shine. To make this very clear, I own two slow cookers and I do not confuse the two. One is for making tasty dinners and the…
When To Use A Paint Wash To Mimic The Look Of Stain
Let’s talk about when to use a paint wash (aka diluted paint) instead of stain to finish wood. Under the right circumstances, a brown paint wash can mimic the look of stain. There comes a time in every DIY project when things are not going well and you begin to regret the choices that led you to this point. It’s in this moment of profound clarity when you’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time and money on something that does not look good that you realize you could have bought it on Amazon for a tenth of the price and zero of the headaches. Now you have to decide whether…
A Modern Country Laundry Room For Our Colonial Farmhouse
If a modern country laundry room can be a thing, that’s what we created for our Colonial Farmhouse. The transformation of this modern country laundry room only took us 3 months, 13 days, and, oh fine…a while. It took us a good long while to finish. Either this project was more tedious than we originally anticipated or we actually found a life and hobbies outside of working on this house. Yeah…you’re not going to believe we have actual hobbies, so this project was probably just tedious…as all good projects are. Almost four years ago our laundry room looked like this. Sexy, wasn’t it? That photo was taken on the day…
3 Reasons Old Houses May Have Stones Between The Studs
If you own a really old house you might have discovered stones or bricks instead of insulation in between the studs in your walls. It begs the question why do old houses have stones between the studs? Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to install those stones or bricks there. They had to have had a decent reason to undertake that back-breaking work. There are 3 possible reasons that really old houses, particularly those built in the 1700s and 1800s, may have stones or bricks in between the studs in the walls. First, let me say that I am the owner of a home built in the eastern…
DIY Wood Cube Cord Holder
Today I’m going to show you my latest creation, a DIY Wood Cube Cord Holder, and how you can make one yourself. Cord management for all of our electronic devices seems like a universal problem we can all get behind. That’s a rarity in our world! I’ve been on a kick to contain, manage, and wrangle all the charging cords in our house. It’s a thankless job but someone has to do it. My laptop charging cord is particularly wily. If that cord wasn’t plugged into my laptop, it would slide right off the back of my desk. There are adhesive clips you can purchase to solve that problem but…
3 Ways To Label DIY Furniture
Have you ever thought about how to label DIY furniture? Or even if or why you should label DIY furniture? We’ve made DIY furniture for years but didn’t think about labeling it until a couple of years ago when we had an “oh no” moment. We own a wood-framed mirror that, according to family lore, was made by my husband’s grandpa. Everyone in the family knew it was made by him but no one in the family could remember when he made it, why he made it, who he made it for, etc. The story of this mirror is now lost and that’s sad from a family history perspective. If…
New Bench For The Sunporch
We have a new bench for the sunporch. Yes, it’s a DIY bench because those are our favorite kind. We do not have a shortage of benches in this house. Including the new bench for the sunporch, we now have six benches. All but one of them have been DIYed either fully or partially. I guess we like benches. Why did we need a bench for the sunporch in particular? There should be an obvious answer to that question. However, the new bench is not for sitting. At least, not right now. The bench is for the plants. I needed an elevated surface to get some of the plants off…
3 Funny Moments From Recent DIY Projects
We’ve been immersed in DIY home projects lately as we rush to get things done before the winter weather comes. We wouldn’t have to rush if we’d started them earlier, but this blog post is about funny moments from recent DIY projects and not about procrastination. I’ll write that one later. I’m calling these funny moments because they are funny now. At the time they were more like “Are you kidding me?” moments. Or maybe “Are we on hidden camera?” moments. If we had our own tv show we would probably need writers because our actual script would seem too implausible. No one would believe the funny moments DIY creates around…
How To Make a Recessed Toilet Paper Holder
Here’s the thing you didn’t know you needed – a recessed toilet paper holder. I’ll try to refrain from using any potty jokes during this blog post. Okay? Now, let’s flush out the reasons why a recessed toilet paper holder makes sense in certain situations, and then we’ll get to the bottom of how to make a recessed toilet paper holder. Number One: A recessed toilet paper holder makes sense for small bathrooms where space is tight or additional storage is needed. Number Two: You just might like how a recessed toilet paper holder looks. Everyone likes to go in a stylish bathroom. The idea for our recessed toilet paper…
How To Remove The Engraving On Slate Coasters
Slate coasters are popular gifts because they can be engraved with a personal or promotional message. But what if you want to remove the engraving on slate coasters? I can help with that. Our family recently completed a “fun” run together. If you have to put “fun” in the title of the event then it probably isn’t fun, but I digress. For completing the fun run we each received a promotional slate coaster with the name of the fun run engraved into the slate. I now had a set of 4 fun run slate coasters. They were a cool promotional gift, but not something I’d want to use in my…
