Tag Archives: projects

a quick little bathroom DIY

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Wednesday, 4/10 was our 3 year anniversary of moving into our house. (oops — totally forgot that the other day!) For months and months and months, I’ve been trying to figure out how to fill the wall space in the small room that houses our toilet in the master. I wanted something functional for storage, but not a giant wooden cabinet. So after we successfully built and stained our guestroom headboard, I decided we could just build our own shelves and make them what I wanted.

Here’s a very blah before photo::

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Craig had a couple pieces of cabinet grade board left over from another project,
and they magically happened to be just the size I needed, so no cuts were involved.
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We were very precise in our measuring for shelf placement. 
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To prep for staining, I lightly sanded them (mostly just the edges).
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I had some leftover stain from the guestroom headboard, and I loved the way that turned out, so I used it for the shelves as well.
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I waited several days for the shelves to fully cure, and I bought four 6″ metal brackets from Home Depot (2 for each shelf).
Time to install!
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My live-in handyman.
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The install was pretty quick — Craig just screwed one side of each bracket into the bottom side of the shelves,
and then he screwed the other side of the brackets into the wall.

I bought this cute rectangular woven basket at Target, and it’s perfect for holding toilet paper! 
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This cute little white sea urchin is from Target as well.  I think he gives a nice clean pop to the dark shelves. 
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The finished product! These shelves bring great contrast into this little room and
also provide some fun storage for practical use — and cute decorations.
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more patio funness! (sure, it’s a word)

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The Patio Project Chronicles continue with minor updates on our first 2 projects — the hanging pallet bed and the wine crate planters. Craig finally had time to stain the planters and coat the insides and bottoms of them with a sealant to keep water from running out everywhere when the plants are watered. I think they look so great — especially considering they were in a trash pile at our neighbor’s house before Craig rescued them!


And we got plants! I wanted mums for the fall/winter, but Craig was told at the garden store that we missed the window for those. So after a little pouting, we I moved on. The plants that look like mini Christmas trees (how appropriate for the season!) are actually rosemary plants. I really like the way they look when paired with the pansies. They’re festive and a little unexpected. I just hope the bunnies that terrorize our neighborhood plants don’t sniff out the rosemary and eat it all!


Moving on to my favorite part of the patio — the hanging bed! We’d been brainstorming on how we could easily and cheaply create some sort of cushion for the bed… but we don’t own a sewing machine, and I don’t know the first thing about making something like that. I remembered that my favorite bloggers, Young House Love, had posted about some cute seat cushions they’d gotten recently for their new deck. I searched their blog archives for that post and found that they’d gotten them at Garden Ridge. I have never been to a Garden Ridge, so I looked them up and found one just north of Atlanta. They have like 100 different options for outdoor cushions, but most of them resemble something you’d see on your grandma’s patio if she lived in Miami in the 80s.

Luckily, we happened upon this modern pattern in black and white, and I’m in love!! We hadn’t thought to measure the bed before heading out on our cushion search (we were already out running errands), so we just guesstimated and got 4 cushions to cover the width of the bed. Turns out, they work perfectly! They’re outdoor material, but we plan to only put them out when it’s being used so as to preserve the fabric longer. When we’re ready to use it, we just have to tie each cushion to the slats in the bed so that they’re nice and secure. Craig also stained the bed to match the fence and planters.


Perfect for lazy afternoon reading and napping!

DIY project:: sparkly pumpkins

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It’s officially fall!!! I don’t know about everyone else, but I can feel it in the air in Georgia, and it’s glorious! I am quite enjoying the cooler weather, especially in the morning, and not getting sweaty walking 20 or 30 feet to my car after work. To help get into the fall spirit, I decided pumpkins needed to be purchased. Not real ones just yet since it is still September…. so plastic ones would have to do the trick. But I wanted something a bit less “pumpkiny” than these guys below. So, enter the spray paint.

I had the hardest time deciding on colors…. I must have spent 15 minutes staring at different bottles and color combinations at Michael’s. I ended up deciding on some super glittery spray in both gold and silver and got the “sparkling canyon” in satin to round out the metallics.

Craig was sweet and set out a big drop cloth for me to work on in the garage. I set them all out in groups so that I could divide them up among my 3 color choices. The large pumpkins were fairly easy to spray, but it was a bit difficult to control clumping where the spray rolled around to the bottom side of each pumpkin. The little mini pumpkins were almost impossible to cover! Every time I sprayed one, it would go flying across the drop cloth. I don’t know the best way to remedy that problem…. buy heavier pumpkins, I guess.

After a couple light coats on each  pumpkin, it was clear that the awesome glittery spray paint was just not cutting it for this job. The silver spray bottle got stuck in the “on” position and proceeded to just spray tons and tons of glitter everywhere…. everywhere except for the pumpkins. The gold did something similar. So it was on to Plan B with those sets…. this time, I went to Home Depot — and was AMAZED at the assortment of spray paint they have!! I chose non-glittery metallics in gold and silver to cover up the crazy, half-glittered pumpkins. These cans are great — easy to spray and they don’t stick like the others did.

And here’s the finished product! Lots of sparkly pumplins in various shapes and sizes… some a little more glittery than others, thanks to the first round of painting-gone-wrong. I tossed them (meaning I actually very carefully placed them so you can’t see the dried clumps of paint here and there) in a big glass bowl on our dining room table.

And then I accented them on each side with two of these guys!! Our family friend Leslie had gotten several of these gems at the local Dollar Tree in Arcadia, and I just loved them, so I had to get some of my own. Next time, I’ll stick to the pre-made glittery items. Happy Fall, y’all!