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!

Guest Bedroom Makeover

I don’t think I took any pictures of the bedroom before I started getting ready to paint…because it really was BAD and I just didn’t think about it. Besides the bed being in there, it wasn’t a usable space at all due to the amount of boxes stacked high to the ceiling and across the floor.
Here are a couple of pictures I took before I started painting:

yellowed doors and pink walls-yum!

The walls were a light pinky color and the ceiling, doors and trim were a semi-gloss and stained yellow. The trim and baseboards were white (at one time) and the window casings were brown. Not to mention all the baseboards were cracked or chipped and needed to be replaced. There was also a hole in the sheetrock that needed attention... Boy did I have my work cut out for me!

I started painting the ceiling first-I just did Ceiling White-Flat. Then I started on the walls…trim…windows..doors. I used Sherwin Williams, Nomadic Desert on the walls and for the doors, windows, and trim I used Sherwin Williams-Shell White, semi-gloss.

Swatch of Nomadic Desert

 We bought new wide baseboards and I LOVE THEM! I want so badly to do the rest of my house like that…but it would cost a small fortune. One room at a time!

and all the painting is done!

Now the room serves as a guest bedroom and more importantly my craft room! I have a nice big desk and armoire that holds all my craft stuff, sewing machine, etc. I made another (large) chalkboard frame to go over the desk.

I got an awesome deal on the bed set from our K-mart that closed and I am super excited that it's Ikat.

my creation station! yeah!

More decorations will come soon I’m sure, I have lots of wall space to cover! I am also happy to say that with this bedroom being done, that only leaves ONE more room left to paint (our bedroom)-yippee!!!

Kitchen Table Makeover

I have to admit this is the first time I have ever straight up copied a project from another person…but I liked the idea SO much and the final outcome of the project was so awesome I just couldn’t help it! (Well, there are SOME things I did a little differently. )  I wanted to have a table for the screen porch where we could eat out there, play games, etc.  and I was looking for something that would seat 6-8 people. After much searching for just the right table, I found this one on Craigslist. It’s just what I was looking for…patience is a virtue! It has a leaf that is attached and folds up underneath the table, so it’s easy to use if we need to accommodate for a bigger crowd.

The table was pretty beat up, I mean…well loved by a lot of kids…Parts gouged out by a pencil, colorful magic marker drawings and the gloss finish was slowly chipping away. Exactly what I wanted! My dear friend, Ann, is so sweet and brings me her “Better Homes and Garden” magazines to flip thru and I just so happened to find a teeny tiny little coupon on one of the pages for 25% off a stencil from: Cutting Edge Stencils .

It was so ironic b/c that’s the same website the other girl got her stencil from. I looked at all the stencils, trying not to copy this girl to a “T”, but turns out the Paisley stencil was my favorite one too… it’s just so darn cute! And the stencil is awesome, no bleeds, easy to clean, I was very pleased!

First to prep the table I sanded it down and took all the original finish off the top of it. Then I wiped it down to get the wood dust off. 

after it's sanded

 And it was ready to stencil, that easy! I use white latex outdoor paint and a mini roller-I didn’t use a foam roller because they tend to hold more paint and I didn’t want it to bleed under the stencil. You don’t have to press down too hard…just a light pressure and I did 2 coats.  I layed the stencil in the middle of the table to get started and then I went out from there. 

One mistake I made was turning my stencil because I thought it would look neat not to have a “repetitive pattern” welllllll they are smart and made the stencil to line up and look never-ending..so don’t turn your stencil! Just keep painting, just keep painting... (let it dry, takes about 2 min to dry) and then line it up and paint the next section. Since I turned my stencil, it obviously wouldn’t line up so I had to wait for it to dry and then sand the paint off. Not too big a deal-just a 10 minute detour. 

if you make this mistake, the paint sands off really easy

ran the stencil down the middle first

almost done...

 Another thing I did was wrap the stencil around the edge of the table…I didn’t want it to look like there was a defining plain border going all the way around the sides of the table. 

done stenciling!

When the stenciling was done and the paint was dry, the next step was to stain it. That’s right, stain over all the hard work you just did! Trust me, you’ll love it! I used Minwax-All American and it turned out pretty dark since the wood was sanded down to the raw, so I’m glad I didn’t go with my Kona stain. Make sure you wear latex gloves-staining can get messy and have an old rag to wipe the stain off. I did two coats of stain because I wanted it a little darker in some places.

my sweet hubby helping me :)

After staining

I painted the legs and sides of the table a teal color- the same color I used on the China Hutch. I did two coats, my rule of thumb is two coats of paint on any and every thing you are going to paint! It always turns out smoother and covers any spots you may have missed the first go around. 

I waited 24 hours for the stain to really dry and then put on a semi-gloss poly-urethane to seal it.  

It gave the table a pretty little sheen and it will help protect it some from the elements.

And here she is, in all her lovely shabby farmhouse glory! Don’t yah love it!?

here's how we wrapped the stencil around the edges/corners

 It’s probably been the easiest project I have done so far and I’m SO happy with how it turned out!