Porch Bed

We built a hanging porch bed for the screen porch and love it! Here’s the design we came up with:

We kept the left side open and put a lower ledge on it, flush with the frame, so that you have space to completely stretch out or place a lovely beverage while lounging. It also makes it look less like a day bed and more like a giant chaise lounge.

Lumber and Supplies List:

3 turned posts

12 spindles

1 sheet of 3/8” plywood

2 of 6’x2”x4”s-span the middle

3 of 6’x1”x4”- support the sides and ends of the plywood
5/4"x6"-leftover decking boards

4x4 -for front left support (instead lieu of turned post)

4x4’s to hang from ceiling

3/4inch manila rope

Most of the lumber we had left over from building the screen porch, we had to buy the turned posts, spindles and sheet of plywood. First Ryan built the frame with left over 5/4" x 6" deck boards, with 2x4's in between and 1x4's on the sides to support the plywood.

On the front left, since it’s going to be open without a post, we used a 4x4 for support. Then we took the 3 turned posts and cut the ball top off each of them and cut the bottoms of them at a 45 degree angle on all four sides.  

This gave the posts a little more shape and makes them look more finished instead of just bluntly cutting them off straight. Then he mounted the 3 posts in each corner except for the front left. Then take the 5/4"x6" decking boards and cut them to length to sit on top of the posts. Making a back/arm rest. We also cut another 5/4"x6" decking board to place at the open end for that lovely beverage holder. 

attaching the posts

5/4"x6" decking boards

 Take the spindles and evenly space them out along the back and right side of the bed.

Cut the 3/8” plywood to fit the frame. 

Drill holes in all four corners of the 5/4"x6"decking boards large enough for ¾ inch rope to go through. Then drill holes horizontally in all 4 posts. The rope will go through the 5/4"x6" decking boards and down through the post for secured support. 

We already had a twin foam mattress and to protect it I bought a plastic zip mattress cover from Bed, Bath and Beyond. 

Now on to the fun part! In order to hang the bed from our ceiling, since it’s recessed in the rafters, we used two 4x4’s to go in between the rafter beams and secured those with really long screws, like 8” long, from the other side of the beam all the way through the 4x4.This thing isn’t going anywhere and my engineer assured me it could hold close to a ton. Then loop the rope over the 4x4 in the ceiling and tie a knot, then thread it down through the drilled holes and tie a knot at the bottom, do this on all four sides… and here it is hanging! 

Of course, decorate with a fitted sheet and pretty pillows! We LOVE it and it’s the perfect place for an afternoon nap!  

Chandelier make-over

Do you have an old light fixture or chandelier that you’re trading out and not sure what to do with? Sure you can sell it on craigslist or send it to Goodwill or throw it out…OR you can revamp it! It could become a candle holder, a candle-labra, a terrarium…the possibilities are endless.

My dear Meme just so happened to be switching out some of the light fixtures in her house and she knows me well enough to hold on to stuff and ask me before she chunks it. Here's one of the two that she was getting rid of:

I lost the picture of what the chandelier looked like originally..but this one is almost identical -thanks to handy Google.

I wanted a chandelier to hang over the paisley table on the screen porch and knew that this would be perfect to transform into a candle chandelier. Ryan took out all the wiring and since it was two tiers it was a little longer than necessary. So, he unthreaded all the separate brass pieces and we were able to “re-build” it by just threading back on the pieces I wanted to keep. It made it shorter and put the two tiers closer together. I wanted to do this for functionality reasons too since I would be putting real candlesticks in it, I didn’t want one candles flame right under another candle, thus the end result probably being a melting candle hot wax mess. A hot mess.  The chandelier had faux candle sticks in it and once they were removed with all the wiring, it was the perfect size to put a candle stick or tealight down in…it even has a rim for drips. Perfect!

We bought a new chain to hang it with and painted the chain and the chandelier with Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze.  And here it is…

on the screen porch

Chandeliers just like this one are very popular and can be found for next to nothing at thrift stores, garage sales, etc. Pottery Barn and other high end companies are selling a look just like these for $50-$250 and I made this one for the cost of the can of spray paint! I hope I’ve inspired you to go out, scavenge, and make your own before you spend a lot of $money$ buying one! Anything is possible! 

p.s. screen porch is obviously done, and has been for a while, I'm so bad about updating this thing...post coming soon. :)

Bird Bath

A long time ago my dear friend, Alaina, over at Recycled Interiors, gave me this vintage, yellow, glass dish and I love it! I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it though...I had it on my kitchen counter for a while but felt like it could have so much more potential somewhere else. It just seemed to be over looked.

For some reason, one day when we were at Goodwill (how most of our stories start out…), I got on this kick about silverware. They had a plastic bin full of knives, spoons, forks..all for like 10 cents each. I just couldn’t get over it and thought, there’s got to be something cool I can do with all this decorative silver. So I bought a bag full of knives and spoons. I left them in the garage for a while not having a clue what I was going to do with all of them and then a creative spark fired off in my brain! I could bend them and make a frame to hold the glass dish for a bird bath!  

I picked out some of the prettier knives...

detail of knife

 ...and bent them all at the same place/angle with a clamp and hammer and the help of my husbands muscles. Definitely wear hearing protection-it got very loud. I measured the circumference of the dish so I would know where to bend my knives so that the dish would fit in snug. 

Bent knives

 Then in the “blade” part of the knife, Ryan drilled a hole in all 6 knives at the same spot. After that we threaded a bolt through them to hold them all together. We had a hollow silver metal pole laying in the garage that already had a female end in it (Ryan used a size bolt that would thread into it). We cut off the pole at about 3.5 feet and I spray painted it black. Then we threaded the bolt with all the knives onto the pole. After that it was ready to be stuck in the ground. 

And here it is finished with the dish - a vintage bird bath! The birds love it, it’s just the right depth for them to get in and it adds a little character to my garden.

Another great example of recycling the materials you have!
and speaking of garden...my tulips are blooming!

Spring is here!

 

Lace Cowl

I don’t know how to knit, even though I would love to learn how I haven’t taken the time to learn, so I resulted in plan B for making a cowl (an endless scarf).  Plan B=sewing! If you are a beginner seamstress like me, then you will love this project. It’s easy and the end result is fashionably fabulous! I chose to use two different types of fabrics to make it a little more interesting, so I went with a gray cotton knit and lace. The cotton knit is super soft and comfy.

What you need:

2 different types of fabric (I bought enough fabric to make 8 cowls)

Scissors

Ruler

Sewing machine

1.       Lay the “gray” fabric (the fabric you want to use more of) out on a flat surface and cut it in strips. My strips were 4’6’’ long by 18’’ wide.  I know it’s a little odd of a number, but I gave myself a couple inches of breathing room for sewing so I would have enough room for a hem. (When the cotton knit fabric is cut, the edges tend to roll a little…at first I thought it would be a problem but it actually ended up helping me keep a straight stitch along the edge.)

2.       Then I did the same thing for my “lace” fabric (the accent piece of fabric), lay it out and cut in strips 16” long and 18” wide.

 3.       Line up the short edge (end) of your “gray” fabric with the short edge (end) of your “lace” fabric. It looks like this:

and sew them together. I sewed them together about an inch in.

Ryan made me a sweat band since I was working so hard

So now you just have a strip of the “gray” and “lace” sewn together. The strip should be the same width all the way down.

4.       Fold the fabric strip lengthwise with the hem of the stitch you just made showing, (facing out).

5.       Run a stitch all the way down the open folded side of the “gray” fabric and “lace” fabric-once you have done this, you should have created a long tube that’s open at both ends.

 6.       Now flip your fabric tube outside in-so that your pretty edges are showing.

Pretty seam, success!

7.       Take the “lace” end of the tube and feed about an inch of it onto the “gray” end of the tube. (I made sure that my seams are lined up so it looks like the stitches are even.) This makes a circle-endless scarf! See, it’s all coming together-just one more step!

8.       Run a stitch width wise across the part you just fed into in step 7.

 
9.       You’re done! Enjoy your no-knit cowl!

Pretty simple! When mine was complete it measured out to be 2’ 10’’ long and 9’’ wide. It’s a big enough loop that you can wrap it around your neck twice to get a cool layered look. This is the second thing I have ever sewn; it was good practice, fun, and definitely do-able!

I gave them out as gifts for Christmas and everyone loved them. They look fabulous on and will add swag to any outfit. Here are a few of them...

Aunt Carol

Me

Meme

My Sis-Sara

Want one?

Firewood Rack

Our home has two front doors, which is a little odd, but that’s just one of the many cute little quirks of owning an old house. One of the front doors is the obvious, main front door that goes into the foyer. The other door is off the den where our fireplace is. (Neither of these doors get used as front doors-everyone comes in the garage and back door. That’s okay, that just means we have great close friends and family!) The sole purpose of our den front door is to store firewood for the fireplace. It’s so convenient to open it up and be able to grab a couple of logs sitting right there. The front door opens up onto a little covered front porch area, so the wood stays dry as well. The only thing is the neat stack of firewood very quickly becomes a disheveled pile of wood and bark that looks messy from the street, not to mention the mess that gets tracked into the house. (There's usually more wood than this but we just had a fire..seeing that it's still snowing!! <sigh>)

Before

 Ryan’s idea and fix? Weld up a firewood rack of course!  We bought a ton of scaffolding off Craigslist to build the porch and have several odd pieces left over, which is what Ryan used to make it. Here are the two pieces of scaffolding that he used. 

 They were chipped, rusted, old and basically thrown over our stone wall for trash. Trash to treasure…since Ryan has recently gotten into welding I should start a section called reclaimed metal…

He cut some pieces out of the middle, then he welded it all together basically making a regtangular frame…<insert magic sparks flying here> .  He flipped it over so it has legs and isn’t sitting on the ground; which will be ideal for keeping bugs and things from getting under the wood. The only input I had in this was to spray paint it a flat black to make it look more finished. And here it is:

a much neater stoop!

He’s pretty creative himself…It’s a great feeling to reuse a piece of “junk” you already have and make it into something new, better, practical or a piece of art. I challenge you to do the same ~ modern recycling.

Stone Steps

We never thought we would say this….all the stonework is done!!! It’s such a huge chunk of the project finished, fin, complete! The steps in the last post that were halfway done were the last bit of it and they are finished. We made them a little deeper and shorter so they aren’t as steep to go down. And the porch door now has a nice landing!

Our next step is to finish the ceiling…screen and doors..and we are, dare I say? Done! well not done, done…nothing is ever done here..we ARE an ongoing project, :) but that’s the way we like it.

I have been stocking (junking) up my laundry room of thrift store finds to re-do for the porch. You'll probably see a post about those soooooon.

What projects are you working on? Need advice on a DIY? Feel free to comment and I'll get back with you!

Screen Porch Update

Cable railings-We didn’t want to do wood railings/spindles because it would block our view…we got a little creative (surprise surprise) and decided to do cable railings. (We ran it by the inspector and he liked the unique idea and passed it!) Boy, were we relieved!  We have two cables running between each support beam (one at one foot and one at 3 feet) and Ryan tied them off with turnbuckles. The turnbuckles match the ones that are across the ceiling for the cross-ties. It looks really neat and we didn’t lose any of our view. The cables blend in with the background and you hardly notice them!

 2 screen doors- we bought two screen doors at home depot and are so excited about them! One of them we got for 50% off because the screen was damaged..which was fine by us- that’s an easy fix! ;)

Beaded Board- Ryan bought beaded board for the ceiling. We put it up against the plywood so that the ceiling looks recessed and the beams are still exposed. 

Ceiling color- We picked out a color to paint the ceiling-sherwin Williams Sky High (a really light blue).You can see the quarter round is already painted...we need it to warm up to paint the ceiling!

Chose a fan- we found an awesome fan that has a pretty large diameter so we only need one fan out there. 

 Outdoor Speakers- Thanks to Aunt Lynda and Aunt Laurie we have outdoor speakers, and they are great!!! We put two on the porch and two on the patio ceiling.

 

Railing- At first we thought we wanted a wrought iron railing for the stairs and we found one on craigslist. But it didn't work out so well. Ryan ended up building a railing and it looks fantastic. He built them out of metal pipes, cut and welded them together and then spray painted it a flat black. They match perfectly with the style of the rest of the porch. 

Stone work- We had to build stone steps on both sides of the porch and a landing on one side. Ryan has become very talented with stone-masonry and has recently taught me. It's actually pretty fun!

Getting ready to pour the slab

Installed the handrail

a craftsman

Steps and slab done!

He did such a good job!!

On the patio side of the porch we had to bring the landing out a little further or else you would step off the porch onto a step.

Starting the stonework-no more gap going stepping onto the porch!

 Ryan set the stones along the front to make sure they are level (the engineer) and I filled in the rest (the artist). I definitely have much more of an appreciation for stonework.

The two steps I did-not too shabby for my first go!

Steps are almost done!

So the screen porch is getting there! I am already working on decorations. Haha I just can’t help it, we are SO excited to use it in the spring and can’t wait for y’all to hang out on it with us too!