Category Archives: DIY

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A La Shed (of the wood variety)

For the last few months, Alex has been really looking for a hands-on project that would be for him. You know, not one of those “honey-do” projects that I seem to be really good at coming up with. Most of our projects start with me saying something along the lines of, “Man, I hate this laundry room. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had new tile and a fresh coat of paint in here?” Alex agrees and encourages me to go to Home Depot with him and we wander around until we have a good idea of what specific tile we want. It also seems like every time we’ve had a big project going on, he’s had some time off work and spends hours and hours every day (while I’m not home) working on some project that was my idea to begin with.

So again, he’s been reeeeally craving something that he could work on that was more…uhh.. manly.

He ended up deciding to build a woodshed that would keep all our firewood dry. He said he wanted to build it because he wanted the wood away from the house since wood attracts bugs, termites, etc. (which makes complete sense to me!) I’m pretty sure he also just wanted an excuse to lug those power tools outside and build something with his own hands.

Months ago, Alex found the plans he wanted to use and we hunted Home Depot/Lowe’s/other various lumber stores to get an estimate on how much the supplies would cost. The total was a little more than we wanted to spend on something that… you know… holds wood, but after much research we (and by we, you know, I don’t mean me) knew it would be less than a third of the price of pre-fabbed sheds and higher quality. So, all we needed was a nice weekend to get the motivation to crank this bad boy out.

I would also like to add that I thought this project would be a “work on it when you could” kind of thing. Not.so.much. It ended up getting built over one weekend and stained the following. However, I will say that Alex had some help from a good friend, Dan, and really wanted to take advantage of the extra set of hands (and we couldn’t be more thankful for all the help)!

I wasn’t even home during the first day of construction so I don’t have a lot of the very early pictures… but here ya go!

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This was what it looked like the morning of day two.

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(of course, you know that we didn’t leave all those supplies out over night….)

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More Alex and Dan…

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By the end of the first weekend, we had a shed that looked like this…

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All we had left was to stain it and add the roof. So, the following weekend (yay for nice spring days!) we got to work… And yes, this time I do mean WE. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures that were taken in the middle of staining. We were messy and dirty and bleeeeh, and I wasn’t planning to subject my camera to that :)

Here you can see how big the shed is compared to our ladders…

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Alex putting on the roof –

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And…. DRUMROLL….

Final product:

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Aren’t those dogs amazing for posing for me *all on their own*? Haha… I wish!

Now we just need to fill up that shed with a bunch of firewood!

funny story: the couple that lives behind us had their granddaughter over during this building process. I guess they were nosey and wanted to know what in the heck we were building, so they sent her over to ask Alex. When Alex responded saying a woodshed… she said, “oh! I thought you were building a STAGE!”

Now I can’t get this stage idea out of my head! Could you imagine having a party and a band setting up there… UHHH. Perfect.

I should also mention that these two boys were the perfect helpers. Hunter even brought over Dan’s bottle of water to him. In his mouth. Sounds appetizing, right?

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(I have to say one more time.. a biiiiig thank you to Dan for helping so much!)

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Everyday We’re Tiling

Mornin’!

For months now Alex and I have been discussing adding some tile down in our basement. Specifically, we were interested in adding a little entrance pad near the door into the backyard as well as the door into the garage. We thought it would provide some protection to our carpet when the dogs ran through the house with dirty paws.

What better time to get crack-a-lackin’ on this project than when we had our carpet ripped out?! Am I right?

When we had Empire out a few weeks ago, we had them give us an estimate on how much these two small areas would cost to tile. I’m not even joking you — they wanted $900 for these two baby areas. BUT, they were going to give us a special discount at $650. LAME.

Considering that we own a tile saw and actually know how to tile, we decided that this was a ridiculous amount of dinero when we were more than capable to do it ourselves. Instead, we just had Empire cut out our new carpet to make room for our diy tile.

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We lived with this exposed COLD, cold concrete for a few days until we had the time to getta tilin’!

On the following Saturday morning, we were off to Home Depot and grabbed our supplies!

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Mortar mix was laid…

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Tile was cut and fit into place..

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And an infinite amount of spacers were used..

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Let’s check out the second area, shall we?

Check out this mess. DSC_0021

That’s actually what our basement looked like when I took this picture and showed it to you a couple of weeks ago…

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You would have had no idea that right behind me was a disaster zone. That’s what real life looks like!

Anyway… back to the tile progress –

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After all the tile was set in place and completely dry, it was time for grout –Alex’s favorite tile step – HA! (he hates it!) :)

Let’s flash forward and skip to the finished project.

DRUMMMMROLL….

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Instead of paying between $650-$900 for someone else to do this work for us, we spent one weekend and $160 for the supplies. Pretty nuts how much they wanted to over charge us!

Annnnnd, here, my dears, is the finished product by the garage door.

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OH! Let me also introduce you to our new cabinet!

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So, there you have it friends! A little review of our new tiled entryways. A snap shot of our new cabinet full o’ booze. Yep, that’s about everything!

Have you been working on any projects lately? Have you ever received a ridiculously high quote for something you could just do yourself? Does anyone else have a booze cabinet in their house? Please say yes.

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Year Two Review

Not only is Monday MLK day and many of us have the day off work, but it also celebrates our second anniversary of owning our home. On one hand, it feels like so much has happened since we moved out of our apartment making it seem like it was ages ago, while on the other hand, I can remember moving day like it was yesterday! Strange how memory and perception works like that!

Move in day! TWO WHOLE YEARS AGO. Gosh, where does the time go? Do you know that all of these friends in the picture below don’t even live in the state of Maryland anymore? How depressing!

As I did last year, I’d like to recap all of our home improvements that we’ve tackled this year. We always have an ever-growing list of projects, so this really helps us look back and feel proud of what we’ve accomplished rather than feeling overwhelmed with what’s to come. It’s crazy that the house full of plaid butt-curtains, pee stained carpet, and a ticking time bomb of a master bathroom has morphed into our home.  Let’s get to this past year, shall we?

The year started off with a disaster in our master bathroom. I wrote a series of posts on what happened and how we remodeled the whole thing! This was our first really big DIY project. Prior to this we had replaced some appliances, painted a couple rooms… things like that. This was our first total gut job and probably the most expensive project to date (I take that back… last year we got a new roof, so that takes the cake). You can read about what happened here, demolition here and here, plumbing, insulation and lights here, installing walls here, tiling here, floors here, painting here, installing trim and the vanity here, and the final reveal here.

What an exhaustive project!

Next, we moved on to painting our bedroom hallway.

We also had a mildew incident in the basement, here’s how we got rid of it.

We added a new flower bed to our front yard.

And then added some new shrubs.

And had to get an electric fence installed since our pony dog Bailey likes to jump over the fence.

We added a white picket fence to the garden.

And got a new desk for the basement.

We added a new entertainment center in the basement.

We worked a ton outside and mulched and mulched our little hearts out.

We added recessed lighting to our master bedroom

And stained a whiskey barrel. And added new outdoor planters too!

We also made a ladder ball and corn hole game. AND an indoor planter box, a twine wrapped vase, and a vacation jar memento. Oh and used a whiskey barrel as furniture and added a new mirror.

Next, we finished up our bedroom remodel, complete with new paint and an added archway.

We had a field day at HomeGoods and decked out the house in new art.

We replaced our once ugly outdoor lighting.

Then we completely re-did our laundry room. Complete with new cabinets, tile floor, a new sink and so much more! (haha, I rhymed.. goo me!)

We painted our basement door red.

And had some cracks in our fireplace that needed repair.

We finished up the year with making a new chalkboard and sanding down our future mantel.

Holy Camoly. That’s a lot of stuff!

We have some plans for upcoming projects including getting the carpet fixed in our basement (that unfortunately means new carpet completely which is almost the same color as our walls down there, cue the panic of “oh my gosh, we’re going to have to repaint the entire basement AGAIN.”) We’re looking forward to giving our upstairs living room a much needed and anticipated facelift, possibly tackling our basement bathroom, and maybe even some new wood floors. I’m pretty excited to see where this year will take us!

This weekend looks to be pretty low-key for us. Sadly, Alex either got food poisoning or is coming down with the flu and is feeling super crummy. Do you guys have any fun plans for the weekend? How many of you have already got the flu? Anyone have any special chants or dances that wards off the flu germies? Do you think that would keep me safe? Here’s hoping!

Happy Friday friends and have a great weekend!

Pssst – you can read all our house project adventures here!