Kreg Jig

We're about to get down and dirty with some DIY projects all thanks to our recent addition....a Kreg Jig.

I have to thank John and Sherry over at YoungHouseLove for getting it in my head that I had to own one of these, otherwise my life would be unfulfilled. 

To sum it up, Kreg Jig is another way to join two pieces of wood together, however it is so much easier than, say, using dowels or biscuit joints. If you are DIY savy, or even remotely interested in home projects, you gotta watch the TV spot found here. You'll want one too!

DIY Wall Stencil

Before I get started, I know the last time I tried to put music up, it didn't work, so I'm trying out a new method. Let's hope it works!



The house is still crazy, and that is mostly due to the fact that we do not have closets yet. Sure, they are there, but without shelves, drawers, or well, anything for that matter. We've finally muscled up and bought some wood and are designing built-in closets (yay) and we actually scored a piece at an estate sale for the kiddo's closet!

Looking at all those empty closets though has inspired me to dress them up a  bit. Originally, I was thinking wallpaper. Here is what I imagined:

But, wallpaper ain't cheap...especially the kind of wallpaper I'd like to install. So I moved on to another option, stencils. Since it is way smaller than mine, I decided to experiment in the kids' closet. I thought about purchasing something (and a Google search will confirm that there are a plethora of options out there) but, I decided to be adventurous and make my own. 

I started experimenting with shapes on a sheet of paper. I played around with squares, circles, diamonds, etc... After deciding on a pattern, I used small bowls to trace circles on a large poster board.

Sorry, I know its hard to see in this picture. I wasn't after the circles though, I wanted the diamond pattern that was created by overlapping the circles on one another. 

After that, I used an X-acto knife to cut out the diamonds.

And then it was off to stenciling. I used the color Blue Suede by Martha Stewart, and a sponge brush, to apply the stencil.
 

It was a labor of love, as it took close to five hours to do the back wall of the kids' closet, but it was well worth it!

Here's a shot with the bedroom wall as a contrast.

 
As you can tell, the closet doors haven't been installed yet, or the trim for that matter, but it will look great once they are! 


Next up, was installing the closet system we picked up for $50 at an estate sale. It's a part of a California Closet and you guys know how expensive that is! When we put it up on the wall, it had all these unnecessary, and ugly, holes. Thankfully we got an extra shelf!

After a little bit of measuring...
 

And a little bit of cutting...

We attached the piece using liquid nails, and wallah, holes be gone! 

And the final product!

Again, no doors or trim yet, but you gotta admit, it looks freakin' awesome. I swear I find myself roaming in to their room, just standing there, staring at it!

And for the cost breakdown:

              Small paint sample..................$3

              Sponge Brush........................$1

              Poster Board........................$.50

              Closet System.......................$50

              Total Project.......................$54.50

 

Rast Ikea Hack

Full disclosure, while I wish I could take full credit for coming up with this genius hack, I actually  was inspired from a pin on Pinterest, which was from here.

The idea was, to take the most boring Ikea dresser ever, Rast...

And turn it into something, spectacular. Dare I say, something almost unrecognizable to its original form! So, it was as simple of partially building good ol' Rasty boy...

Staining him using a dark walnut color. I like to use a cloth to stain, but using a brush is fine too.

It's just a matter of going back and forth, making sure to always follow the grain of the wood.

I didn't want it to be too dark, so I opted for one coat of stain. I followed this with three coats, yes three, of a polycrylic protective finish. (I finished mine in satin.) This will keep the wood protected from stains, and most importantly moisture. This was a giant pain in the butt, as each coat had to dry for 2 hours

Romy snapped this shot of me as I was adding the first coat. I think its hilarious to view the chaos that surrounds me.
 

I painted both the front and back of the drawer boards in a semi-gloss white paint. I just used the paint we had left over from the trim. Ikea wood always comes with pre-drilled holes and if you plan on painting anything, make sure to protect the wholes from paint seeping in. I just screwed in the screws, and used Q-tips everywhere else. 

Lastly, I replaced the cheap-looking wooden pulls with ring pulls.

And now, the final product! Please bare in mind that the lamp is temporary, I need to get a smaller one, and that no, the bed will not always be on the floor! Also, some flowers would be nice in that vase. I'm thinking a few yellow daisies!

Lovely,  no? Now I just have to make one more!

Kitchen Pro Tempore

First off, hooray....we have internet! Secondly, hooray horah we've put together a temporary kitchen! But before I begin, I thought it would be fun to share the music we listen to while working on these little projects on each post. Kinda let you guys in on the action. So these are two songs off the album we had on repeat while working on this baby. The artist is Radical Face, and this album rocks. Enjoy it while you read on.



So, just to bring you up to speed, we had to gut the original kitchen because of mold issues. Strange, because it was a fairly new kitchen. Being that kitchens can cost upward to $20,000, we decided to save our pennies until: A. We knew what we really wanted to do with the layout and B. Be able to afford to make the kitchen of our dreams.

So, obviously living without a kitchen was not an option, so we put one together that will have to do for a little while. It was pretty simple. We used 2x4 to frame a kitchen cabinet to hold a cheap counter we picked up at Home Depot. We made sure the size was big enough to accommodate the dishwasher we hope to furnish in the near future.

We scored a deal on a sink and faucet and in order to get this baby in, we traced the sink onto the counter....

And then got our good friend Mr. Jigsaw to saw out just short of the line we traced of sink. (If we followed the line exactly  the sink would fall right through, rather than rest on top of the counter.)

We drilled a pilot hole making sure to keep the drill, again, on the inside of the line...
 

 And thar she blows....

We then carefully placed the sink in, crossing our fingers that she would fit...
 

And of course, commenced with a happy dance. 

With all of that behind us, we moved on to aesthetics. I mean, if I have to live with this for a few months, I would like to at least enjoy looking at it.

We started with the window sill, which was in a serious state of despair.

We aren't sure exactly what we will do with the window sills around the house, but decided it was safest to stick with good ol' fashion wood, which we measured and then cut accordingly.

It was a little bit tricky, because while we wanted the wood to span the depth of the entire sill, we also wanted to expand two inches wider than the actual window.

We had a small technical difficulty, but nothing wood filler couldn't handle!

I then painted the wood in Martha Stewart's Magenetite paint and attached it with liquid nails...

 

Not too shabby. There are still some gaps that we have to take care of, but I just couldn't wait to share! 
 
Lastly, we had to tackle concealing the storage area under the counter. Thankfully, I had a left-over shower curtain from the old house which, when cut in half horizontally, fit pefectly!

I attached the fabric to the underside of the counter using double-sided velcro..
 

When all is said and done, our temporary kitchen wasn't looking too bad.

Not perfect, and there is still work to do, (like plug those extra holes in the sink!) but we are really happy with the result. And for a price break down:

                      2x4...............$20

                      counter...........$60

                      sink..............$90

                      faucet............$30

                      P-Trap Kit........$6

                      1x8...............$6

                      velcro............$3

                      shower curtain....free

                      paint.............already had

                      grand total.......$215

Not bad for an entire working kitchen area, which really could hold us over for a few months, maybe even till summer. It's going to cost a pretty penny to get the kitchen we dream of, and we really aren't sure what to do with the layout, so this was a perfect solution....for now!  

Things I Shall Miss

Sorry for the lack of updates! We are having some internet difficulties over at the shack, and hope to get things working as soon as we can. Man, you don't quite realize how much you depend on the internet till you can't access it. 


So it took us four days to move everything out of the ol' house. I guess that's the downfall of only moving five minutes away; you aren't motivated to move everything out at once. 


On our last visit, I took a moment to capture some of the things I will most miss about living there. Surprisingly, the list is quite short.


First and foremost is out fruitful trees. These include one avocado tree and one mango tree. 

Next up, is my kitchen. It was a small kitchen, but it was a modern one, and it is where I started blogging with (Chef)uality, a blog I have neglected in the past months!

Lastly, I will miss our resident peacocks, whose flock grew to 13! I thought it was so cool to see them walking around the neighborhood, particularly in spring times when babies were born!

So we've said our goodbyes and are super excited for the new chapter. We have so much work to do at the new house, and it will take quite a bit of time to make the ol' shack a home, but we are in it for the long haul!