What We Found In Our Kitchen Wall – Copper Tiles
While repairing the trim in our kitchen we found 4-inch copper tiles behind the drywall. Surprise, surprise. It’s not exactly the hidden treasure I’ve been looking for in this old house of ours. I was thinking more along the lines of a stash of gold coins or Prohibition-era liquor, but copper tiles are pretty cool. The internet is curiously vague on the subject of metal wall tiles. There is plenty of information about metal ceiling tiles or tin ceilings as they were called. Fun fact, they weren’t made from tin for very long, but the name stuck. They were made from sheet metal. Tin ceilings gained popularity in the United…
7 Heart Crafts To Make Out of Wood That Aren’t Cheesy
We are rapidly approaching February, the month of love. But why wait? You can start spreading love around now with these 7 heart crafts made out of wood. These heart crafts will give you all the mushy feelings, but these are not cheesy crafts for kids. They are fun, festive, and a few might even be a bit refined. I think you’ll love them. Here we go… Heart Planters Instead of gifting over-priced cut flowers that will die in a week, gift a plant in a heart-shaped planter that should last longer than a week…as long as someone remembers to water it. I created a free template to use for…
Building In Our Fridge: The Reveal
It’s reveal day! We’ve been working on building in our fridge and customizing it to make it look panel-ready(ish) and now I get to show you how it looks. It does make me a little insecure to release these photos into the wild because I know this is just one step in a multi-step process of making over our kitchen. There is still more to come as time and budgets allow. I hope you enjoy seeing a transformation over time because that’s what happening here. Here’s the original before photo of the refrigerator. Try to contain your jealousy. Fast forward a few years and we removed some wallpaper, painted, and…
Building In Our Fridge: Four Ways To Customize A Fridge
I’m back with the second installment of building in our fridge. Part 1 was all about the prep work that needed to be done for this project to fix the trim and ready the wall. Now we can get to the building of the actual cabinet and the four ways to customize a fridge that catapulted this project to the next level. There are a million tutorials of how to build a surround or cabinet for your refrigerator. Most of them claim to be “easy.” They may very well be. But that’s not how we do things. Below is the refrigerator that’s getting a glow up as seen in all…
Building In Our Fridge: The Prep Work Is What Gets You
When we purchased our home, it came with a perfectly functional older refrigerator in an off-white color. I’m so glad we didn’t replace it because now we have the opportunity to hone our DIY skills while in building in our fridge. Adding a cabinet around a refrigerator so that it looks built-in is not a novel concept. It’s been done millions of times, so this should not require a multipart blog series. But have you met our house? It is the “hold my beer” of houses whenever we want to do something simple and basic like building in our fridge. This house gives us a run for our money and…
Make A Magnetic Bulletin Board With Sheet Metal
I prefer to test out our DIY creations before I share them on the blog and the magnetic bulletin board we made with sheet metal is no exception. It is the second bulletin board we made for our Carriage House Gym and we have put this magnetic bulletin board through its paces to see how it will hold up. If it can survive being hung in a well-used gym with no heating or cooling and some moisture issues (humidity, not sweat – but a little of that too), it can survive your house or business. Why did we make magnetic bulletin board instead of a cork board? First, they are…
How To Fix Broken Concrete By A Garage Door
If you have broken concrete by your garage door or somewhere in your garage, congratulations. You’re part of a club no one wants to be a member of. The good news is the dues for this club are not as high as you might think. In other words, broken concrete by a garage door is easily fixable. Plus, you don’t need a bunch of expensive tools or know-how to do it. That will all help, for sure, but you don’t need them. You will need the following: mason mix* Portland cement* water bucket small brush a small disposable container (soup can size is perfect) scrap wood or yardstick, if a…
Fieldstone Porch For Our Carriage House
Fieldstone can be used for many things and we put it to excellent use by upgrading the porch of our carriage house. Why did it “need” a fieldstone upgrade? Well, even though it was completely functional it was looking a little sad. Let’s turn that into a DIY word problem. Sad-looking plus completely functional equals unrealized potential! If you combine that with a train leaving the station my recently learned and very basic masonry skills, you get a match made in DIY heaven. First, a mini primer on fieldstone. Fieldstone occurs naturally in the soil, likely deposited by glaciers. The stones are comprised of granite, limestone, and sandstone and are…
Recreating Historic Exterior House Trim – It’s A Process!
Recreating historic house trim on the exterior of a house. If ever there was a labor of love, this is it. We own a really old home. The oldest section dates back to the 1780s and it has been added onto since. Like many homes of that era, the exterior trim is ornate, beautiful, and rotten in spots. whomp, whomp Guess what most contractors want to do in this situation? Gold stars if you answered, “Take it down and replace it with something you can get off the shelf.” In essence, make it look like every other house on the block. I will also award gold stars if you answered,…
European Inspired Home Gym With RitFit Smith Machine
Welcome to our European-inspired home gym in the middle of rural New Jersey. Are you more surprised that a home gym can be European-inspired or that part of New Jersey is rural? New Jersey is used to being the subject of many jokes, but this home gym we created is no joke. It’s our new favorite place! We converted a room in our 250-year-old Carriage House into a European-inspired home gym because that made the most sense, right now, for how we could utilize this space. It started out looking like this. Then we made it look worse when we decided the stone walls needed repointing because no one wants…
