debor026

We have 5 kids and they make a lot of pictures for us to enjoy.  Our refrigerator is stainless steel, which means it's not magnetic, and therefore the only way to display their art was taping it to the wall.  Um, not ideal.  So I saw  this idea on Pinterest  (originally pinned from  The Project Girl , who found it in the Utah Valley Parade of Homes): I loved it!  The only deal breaker is that it's white.  5 kids and 3 dogs and white are not a match made in heaven.  So I picked up a bunch of blues, greens, and purples to make my background. I picked 8 different colors and then spread each color all over a piece of plywood and mixed them together in the brush strokes.  Don't worry about it being perfect, just splatter it randomly around. The entire sheet was done in about 8 sections so the paint wouldn't dry before I got to mixing it together. I cut it down to 4' x 6' and then nailed it to the wall with my nail gun.  I screwed eyelet ...

My mother bought this table when I was in middle school and several years ago she passed it on to me. Between my sisters and I, and now my kids, this poor table has been through quite a lot. A lot of wear and tear and a fair bit of water sitting on the table (my kids used to leave spills for the magic fairy to clean up) and the clear coat broke down. The table was pretty damaged and I considered building a new one. Here's a wider shot that also shows the water rings, paint spots, and marker streaks that have graced the table over the years. So I thought maybe I would try to refinish it first and if it didn't work out then I would build a replacement. I bought some Citristrip and liberally sprayed the table then let it sit for about 3 hours. I then came back and scraped off all of the goop (eww), wiped it down, sanded a little, and tried to stain it. I say tried because what I ended up with was an ugly blotchy mess. I was pretty sure the table was ruined and it's been s...

I have been dying to cut a hole in this wall for YEARS and I finally got the chance.  The front living room is pretty dark and doesn't get a lot of natural light.  By opening up the wall it brightened it up considerably since the great room has several windows.  It's not a supporting wall so that made this project a whole lot simpler.  I started out by "framing" the opening with painters tape so i could visualize and be sure it was the placement I wanted. The next step was to cut the power in the wall and let the kids go to town with hammers.  They had a blast beating holes all over it. This was our first glimpse of the new view from the great room to the office and front living room.  The electrical still needed to be moved into the new header and the plugs needed to be moved into their new placements. This let so much more light into the rest of the house!  We moved 1 plug to either side of the new opening and put the cables above the new header. Her...

It was time to get a little more grown up in tables and the train table needed to move on.  So I turned to Ana White and her awesome plans.  I modified her plans for the Adirondack Coffee Table and created this a little wider and longer (49" x 33") with a lower shelf that will hold up to 6 of our toy buckets.  It's 20" tall to accommodate the extra storage.

With the boys moved in to their rooms we are working on the cabinets on the outside of the wall. I'm pretty happy with how they are turning out so far. I didn't want to buy expensive countertops for this and even the cheap prefab laminate counters were $100 each and I needed two. Yeah, no thanks. So I built my own counters for about $55 total. Thrifty Decor Chick just did something similar here and I thought I could work that idea in to my project. Because I was putting this on top of 12" cabinets I couldn't use 1x4s only (at 3.5 inches it would only be 10.5 inches total and I needed more like 12.5 inches). I did still want it to look like it was intentional so I didn't want to tack a random 2" piece on the back.  Luckily, it turns out the measurements worked out for 2 1x4s with a 1x6 in the middle which looks way more balanced. In order to hold it all together I put a 1x12 underneath to screw through but since that's only really 11.25 and not 12 i...

We have walls!  The tape is done on the outer wall and will be done in the two rooms today.  The plan is to do the texture in the morning and since we are using quick drying texture we can hopefully paint tomorrow night. Our four footed helper is very excited about the changes even if she has no idea what it is that we're doing.

The rest of the dollhouse story can be found at Part I - The original derelict Part II - Fixing her up Part III - Repaired and pretty A couple months ago I showed you the dollhouse I had when I was little that I fixed up for my kids. Now I thought I might show you how my dad built those original stairs that stood up to all those years of abuse. The stairs are built from a single board, just one piece of 2x4. You can use a radial arm saw or a circular saw (you may want to make a jig for the second option). The blade is tilted at a 45 degree angle and the cuts are made 1/2" apart. Cut all of the angles one direction, turn the board around and cut them the other way. Now it looks like teeth. Now it's just a matter of tipping it up to nail it in place and you have sturdy stairs that will stand the test of years and kiddos.

Day 26/31: I'm blessed to have a large pantry as it allows me to store up on things when they're on sale BUT it also means my pantry can be a disorganized nightmare in which I can't find anything (the more frequent occurrence). One of the biggest problems was that I usually had no idea what canned items I have and which I need to buy so I was constantly either out or overstocked. But now I have a new storage item which ALSO used up part of the scrap pile in my garage so that's even better! Before (yes I still have a girl scout cookie stock. I try to make them last!): I made a new rack for the cans out of some scrap MDF, a piece of 1x3, and a couple of 2x2 scraps. I set it up to sit at a 45 degree angle so that it would be easy to see and easy to figure out the angles to cut. After I built it I did a quick test fit to make sure it would work because, to be honest, I didn't measure the height available on the shelf ahead of time and wanted to make sure it would wor...