Office Shelving

     In Mid July I finally decided it was time to create some sort of storage unit for all of our books, knick-knacks and memorabilia. I went online and searched around for a few ideas about what I could DIY,  not surprising there were a ton of options. I fell head over heels for one in particular though, this awesomeness over at The Brick House.  I was in love! It has been a long time coming for this project, why we are just getting to it I will never know... O wait I know there has been a kitchen to work on as well as a garden. Ha!

     Of course I over think every single project before I even start buying or building anything. I started off with a drawing on paper and figured out how many of each piece I would need. It took me a good two weeks to pull the trigger. I did some research, by research I mean look at all the other blogs that have built their own versions of this shelving unit, and found a portion of them saying to try and find better deals online for the steel pieces. I did even more research to find the best price possible for all the pipe. I found a website that had everything I needed for cheap and with free shipping if I bought $50 or more. Yay! The website is Zoro Tools and they were great their website is easy to use and they shipped everything quickly.

Here is the box with all the pipe fittings.

Once I had all the steel I slowly started to build the shelving unit, starting with the bottom and working my way up the wall. 

I rounded the corners of all the boards, sanded them down, stained them and put 3 coats of polyurethane on each one.

Slowly I was making progress.

It took me a lot longer than I was planning on taking. I am sure me being slightly OCD with the stain and poly had something to do with it.

I think it all it took me a few weeks to do, I am sure the next one that I build wont take that long now that I know what I am doing.

Detailed shot of the steel support.

The Side Yard Garden

We finally took on the side yard and made ourselves a little garden for chile, tomatoes, strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.

As you can see we still have a long way to go in the very back part of the yard. Those are all weeds back there, but we have made great progress.

Adding Some Seating

I have been having a really hard time with the living room seating arrangement, simply because I could not figure out what I wanted in front of the fireplace. While I was at my parents house I noticed two old chairs that they had planned on taking to good will. I decided that they could work in my livingroom and took them home with me. They looked really outdated, especailly next to the fireplace. Yucck to the slate surround and our decision to paint the mantle brown.

After looking at one of my favorite blogs (Better After) I realized that I should just refinish these two chairs into something more my style. My inspirations were these guys, here and here. Once I decided on the direction I wanted to go I ripped apart the first chair. 

It came apart very easily. Next I sanded the frame, primed and painted it white. By doing so it really made a huge difference, gone is the 70s/80s fuax wood.

Next up was reupholstering the seat and backing. The seat cushion was very easy to work with since it came off, the seat back on the othher hand was a little bit more tricky. 

After the seat back was finished I started on the second chair. Here they are in front of the newly repainted fireplace. The house is going through a small transformation. I have slowly been painting all the trim, doors and fireplace white. It has really helped the house feel more open, your eye is no longer stopping on all the grey and brown. 

Dining room progress

Now that I've been able to live in the house for a while, I've made a few changes and added items to the dining room to make it feel a more grown up.

While I was in California in May helping my sister, I was able to grab a few goodies from Ikea. These curtains really make the room feel taller and more finished. I also added a few new pieces of art to the walls. The lily painting was at my parents not being used and both the Van Gogh prints are Geoff's. On the right side, I added three square picture frames that still need to be filled with some colourful artwork.

It amazes me how much this room has changed over the last couple of years. Replacing the light fixture made a big difference and now with these curtains, everything seems to be coming together.

The last item on the dining room list is replacing the floor, I cannot wait for the tile to be gone.

New Desk

This weekend we worked on small projects. I worked in the courtyard, cleaning it up for spring. Removing last years mulch which had faded and molded. I also planted a few new plants, some pansies and a few ranunculus. It is starting to look a lot better now that we are having warm spring days.

We also built Geoff a new desk. It's not finished yet but it is getting close now. He really wanted a tall desk that he could stand at, so we built it very similarly to how we built the workbench in the garage. A 2x4 frame attached it to the wall studs with a solid surface top. There is still one more top section to cut to complete the desk. After that we will need to drill a few holes for the wires, possibly staining the top and paint the 2x4 frame white.  The office is far from finished as always projects seem to evolve as you go. We plan to replace the tile flooring with a wood floor as well as replace all the trim.

Also on the list of things to finish in the office is a wire containment system.. Any idea?

Four Day Weekend!

 I am very happy with the progress that we made on the house this weekend. Some of the projects have taken a lot longer to finish than others. The backyard has definitely been a long running project and I am sure it will be for a while. Over our four day weekend we ordered a dumpster and hauled off all the concrete from the backyard. Almost all of the concrete was from last April when we removed the swimming pool. It was a lot of work and thanks to all the help from our family and friends we got it done. The final total tonnage for the dumpster ended up being 9 tons. I can hardly believe that we moved that much concrete into that dumpster but we did.

While Geoff and our friends moved all that concrete, I stayed inside and helped my dad install our newly finished wall cabinets.  I cannot get over how great it is to have storage space again. Here is a picture of the two cabinets that we are using for all of drinking glasses. The plan is to put glass inserts in the cabinet doors and have glass shelves.

Also on the list of projects was a workbench in the garage. We are really bad about randomly throwing tools in places and forgetting where we put them. Having a place for all of our tools is definitely going to be a nice addition. I painted the wall the night before and in the morning we built a frame out of 2x4's and mounted those to the wall studs. For the top we screwed down a piece of OSB. We also mounted a shelving system. We haven't finished it yet and we still need to organize all the tools but its a great start.

The last two things we did this weekend were finally installing the baseboards in the guest bathroom and also adding two shelves to the cubby. We still need to add the actual top to the shelf and paint them white but we can do that another day.

How was your Presidents day weekend? Get any major projects done?

Refinishing a Sewing Table

A while back a friend of ours brought me a little table he found in our neighbors trash. Yup it was sitting out for trash day. Our friend knew I could probably do something productive with it so he grabbed it for me. The table turned out to be an antique sewing table. It looked like someone had started to strip it but then decided it was too difficult for them and gave up.

It looked pretty rough. After sitting in the house for a few months untouched I was thinking about just taking it to goodwill. While Geoff was in Houston for work I came up with the idea of using it as his nightstand in the master bedroom. Refinishing it would be a kind of birthday gift.

So I decided to take it completely apart and sand it down. I am really glad I did, this made it so much easier to work with. I sanded, cleaned and applied 3 layers of polyurethane to all the pieces.

The whole project took me about 3 weeks, working periodically at night. It should have only taken me a few days, but I was also repainting the master bedroom and all the trim in the house white (more on that later). I was a little busy trying to get all this all done but it was worth the effort.

It has been a perfect nightstand.

I have to admit that I am a little jealous of his new nightstand. It looks so great! I have about 5 other furniture projects left, this was a great start. 

Jewelry Organizer

Last year, I did a lot of projects and never blogged about them. No surprise to me. I just wanted my projects done and would move onto the next one. Or maybe I am just lazy about writing posts. Either way I have a few projects that I have finally decided to post about.

A couple of months ago my parents were getting rid of this old picture frame and I really liked the frame. I could not let them just send it to goodwill. so I found a place for it at my house. I decided to turn it into a jewelry organizer.

I took the frame removed the glass, the matte and cardboard backing.

Spray painted the frame a fun teal color. 

Pre-drilled holes for the hooks.

Hand screwed in each hook. This took a bit more time and muscle than I was expecting.

Once I had all the hooks screwed in, I hung the frame in place and organized all my necklaces. 

I have really liked the way it looks and it has been very functional.