12 Handmade Holiday Gift Ideas
I hear supply chains are constricted, so here are 12 handmade holiday gift ideas to consider making for your friends and family this year. The best part is some of these gift ideas are DIY cheats meaning not totally handmade from scratch. They just have a handmade, personal touch. That totally counts! Ready? Let the inspiration flow: Handmade Holiday Gift Ideas: Game Boards Board games are often popular gifts. How about making a handmade checkers board or chessboard? You could keep it a little easier and make a Tic Tac Toe board too. If you’re interested in vintage wood checkers to go with your game board, you can find them on…
DIY Plant Hanging Rod Secured to the Ceiling
We recently built a plant hanging rod on our sunporch, so I guess I’m a plant person now? Perhaps I should have ended that sentence more declaratively. I’m a plant person now! Nope. That label still feels more uncomfortable than that time I touched poison ivy. I have some house plants. Not a lot. More than what’s on the barren surface of the moon and less than what’s in a tropical jungle. I also have some outdoor plants that I had the wild idea to try and keep alive over the winter. Three of those outdoor plants are ferns in hanging pots. They really liked hanging on my front porch…
How to Remove Plexiglass Film That is Stuck On
After much trial and error, I can definitively tell you how to remove plexiglass film that is stuck on. I’m talking baked-on protective plexiglass film that no amount of prying or peeling will remove. If Google brought you here to fix this specific problem then this below photo of plexiglass film that is stuck on probably looks familiar. Hopefully yours isn’t dotted with tears of frustration. We had a piece of plexiglass that was installed over a broken basement window. We don’t know how long the plexiglass had been filling the role of a window but suffice to say it had been years. No one had ever removed the protective…
How to Fix a Sagging Wood Bench
So you have a sagging wood bench and want to know how to fix it? You’ve come to the right place. If there’s one thing we can help you avoid in life it’s the potential emotional and physical trauma that would come from sitting on a sagging wood bench and having it break. No one wants that to happen to them. But if it was caught on camera and you were okay…Alright, not even then. Now on to the tutorial! First of all, I’m going to assume that the wood that is sagging on your bench is not rotten. You need to double-check that. If it is rotten and you…
How to Make a DIY Brass Pumpkin
I’ve found a gap in the decorative pumpkin market (gasp!), so today we are remedying that and I’ll show you how to create a DIY Brass Pumpkin. Move over, sweater pumpkins! This brass pumpkin is going to take over the world! What?!? It could happen. Here’s how to DIY a Brass Pumpkin: DIY Brass Pumpkin Step #1: Start with a rectangle of thin brass sheeting. Thin brass sheeting is available from Amazon. Once you buy a roll of this stuff, you’ll be hooked. It’s a gateway to all sorts of crafting shenanigans. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I purchased this particular roll of brass sheeting. It is 1000mm long,…
8 Fresh Ways to Repurpose a Piano
As a pianist, it pains me to say this, but it can be hard and expensive to get rid of an old piano and you might need fresh ways to repurpose a piano. I truly wish everyone had the space for a piano and wanted to learn to play, but I also understand why this instrument can be a burden to move, maintain, and learn to play. We own a baby grand piano that I hope to pass down to my kids one day, but we unexpectedly became the owners of an old upright piano too. When we purchased our current home, the previous owners left their piano in the…
DIY Kitchen Cabinet Feet from Scrap Wood
One of the easiest ways to make basic kitchen cabinets look custom is by adding feet to the base cabinets. Here’s how we made DIY Kitchen Cabinet Feet from scrap wood. This is probably the best use of scrap wood we’ve come up with yet! Lumber is especially expensive right now, so not only do we not want to waste any of it, but we want to make it count when we do use it. Our old (Seriously, they are really old!) kitchen cabinets were just screaming for the upgrade and added detail that cabinet feet could provide. There is really no limit on the style of kitchen cabinet feet…
DIY Charging Bench for Electronic Devices
If charging all the electronic devices in your home has become a chaotic nightmare of jumbled cords, let me introduce you to my DIYÂ charging bench for electronic devices. It’s a way to hide all of your charging cables and devices in plain sight. It’s my answer to the kitchen charging drawer because I’ve always wanted one of those, but we’ve never had a spare kitchen drawer with outlets in the back. I won’t promise this charging bench will eliminate all the cord chaos, but it can help you hide it. That’s half the battle! A charging bench can be made from any bench that has a hidden storage compartment. The…
9 Pumpkin Crafts to Make This Fall
I hope it’s not too soon in the year to publish this “9 Pumpkin Crafts to Make This Fall” post. I don’t want anyone pumpkin spicing my lawn in protest because summer isn’t over. Wait…maybe I do. Hmmm. This is the point in the year where I’m not ready for summer to end because summer is awesome! But everything feels a little wilted, including yours truly, because it is so dang hot and I’m looking forward to the more manageable temperatures of autumn. Please note I said I’m looking forward to autumn not winter. Winter can take a hike to get me more pumpkin spice. Now back to the program!…
How to Paint Metal Pool Coping with Marine Paint
This post is for a super small percentage of the population who have a really old pool with metal coping and are wondering if they can paint that metal pool coping. Yes! You can! (Editor’s Note: I wrote a blog post with an honest assessment about how the paint is holding up after 2 years. You can read that here. To find out how we painted the coping and the paint we used, continue reading this blog post.) If you aren’t familiar with the term, pool coping is what caps the edge of a pool. Modern pools are built with pool coping made out of concrete or stone, but some…
