Sundays are apparently our designated tiling days. Last Sunday Dain set the tiles (in Part 1), and this Sunday he was back at it with the grouting. We might have the most fun weekends of any young couple ever. Maybe. According to Dain, grouting is the most stressful part of tiling since you have to hustle to make it look nice in the end. Luckily this one wasn’t as complicated as our last grouting job on our bathroom floor and shower, so he jumped right in yesterday making quick work of yet another tedious project that was bound to leave marks on his legs from those gnarly velcro straps on his kneepads. The perils of a DIY homeowner I guess. Continue reading →
All posts in House Projects
Now You Can Come Over…
Since we have our hand towel cubbies completed of course. Before you would have had to dry your hands on a community towel atop the vanity. BORING. As we told you yesterday (here), it took a little longer than expected as many things around here do. But after an incredibly fun Wednesday night of sanding, filling, and painting, Dain has completed his bathroom masterpiece. It now happily hangs on our wall waiting for the guests to arrive….since we obviously won’t use it for ourselves. Unless we really need a pick-me-up maybe. Here’s what it took to complete this little beauty.
Bathroom Delight in the Works
Have you ever been in a bathroom that has individual hand towels each in their own little cubby for your hand drying pleasure? Pretty deluxe. We’ve seen them a few places. Typically in very tony restaurants and hotels, but also at the occasional home, which has made me think, why can’t we offer that extra something to our guests too? I’ve been wanting my own ever since. I’ve had the idea for over a year now for our upstairs bathroom, and when I floated it to Dain, he responded that he could make it. How cool is that? Give the guy an idea, and he makes it happen by busting out his woodworking skills.
Snap, Crackle, Sit….On a Crackle Bench
It’s rare for us to be driving anywhere at 6 in the morning on a Saturday, but since Dain was in the Edina Art Fair earlier this summer, we had a three day span of early and long days. And it paid off in a surprising way. A few blocks from the fair on a random Saturday morning in June, we spotted a pile of wood and a free sign. Cue the erratic u-turn by Dain. Luckily, it was a ghost town at that hour. As we pulled up we realized that we were looking at three solid wood benches. For FREE. It’s almost embarrassing how excited we get about free stuff. Almost. We stuffed them in the car (not ours…a much bigger one that we were borrowing for the weekend to haul all of the art fair supplies) and went on our merry way. After quite a few steps and a couple of months, we finally have one final product. Only one since we hedge our bets and thought we’d test out our new found refinishing skills on that for starters. Enter the crackle bench.
Tiling the Sun Porch: Part 1
Yes, we had another exciting weekend. If you consider a Home Depot run and a hardware store run and a whole lot of tiling exciting that is. But what’s not exciting about concrete, thin-set, and tiles? Ok, pretty much everything. It’s a lot of work, but we had to do it. And doing it ourselves saved us a ton of money. Gone is the cheapo sketchy carpet that somebody set on top of our concrete, and now we have a very nice floor that doesn’t make us cringe. It is a big undertaking for a DIYer, but it’s doable.
It’s Turning into an Obsession
A chalkboard obsession. For real. Dain asked me the other day if I would paint a child’s room in floor to ceiling chalkboard paint. I said no, but only because I contemplated how many little cans that would require. I would obviously only paint the entire bottom half of the walls in chalkboard. Kids aren’t that tall. In all seriousness. Because I find it delightfully fun. Like I am young again. Not that we’re that old, but we do have under two years before the big 3-0. So while Dain was installing our new toilet, I worked the chalkboard paint as promised in our newly improved itty bitty pantry.
How to Replace a Toilet in Style
Ok, not really. It’s a dirty job any way you slice it, but wouldn’t that be nice if home projects were a little more glamorous? A few weeks ago we installed a dual flush converter on our basement toilet, and as you may recall, we vowed to replace the toilet (in this post) upon seeing the condition of the old beast up close and personal. So Dain put on his handy man pants over the weekend and got it done. Talk about a fun Friday night. You may know you are getting old when you actually spend a Friday night doing home projects and a weekend is not complete without a trip to the Home Depot. But it had to be done.
B-I-N-G-O-C-O-A-S-T-E-R-S
As you probably now if you’re following our adventures, we spent an abnormal amount of time perusing the games section at Goodwill last weekend in hopes of finding a Scrabble game for our Pinterest Challenge art. Of course we did not find Scrabble, but we managed to come home with two Bingo games. TWO. At the bargain price of $1.99 each. While it is certainly not as fun as the live version (since there are no daubers or jackpots or screaming ladies in glittery tops involved), Bingo does come in a boxed edition. Were we just delirious from all of our shopping and the lack of working air conditioning in our car? We definitely were, but that doesn’t explain our purchases. While suffering from heat stroke, Dain actually had the brilliant and crafty idea to take the little Bingo cards and turn them into coasters. He is an art major you know.
Pack it Out, Pack it In.
Let me begin. Can you guess what we packed out and packed in? The contents of our garage of course. One of the compromises we made when choosing our house was the fact that we do not have an attached garage. Which is kind of a bummer for us in Minnesota, where we have to brave below zero temps and biting wind just to get in our car (which may or may not start) during the winter. However, we are lucky enough to have A garage even if we do have to walk ten feet to get there. It is a small space. We call it a one and a quarter. Since we are still saving up for our mopeds or smart car, we currently use that spare quarter as our dumping ground for our growing crap heap. It is not actually all crap, but it sure looks like it when you store like we have been doing for….oh….a year and a half. As in the whole time we’ve owned said dumping ground. I finally snapped last weekend after tripping over one too many things getting in and out of the garage. And Dain was obviously obligated to join in. Marriage code or something. Since I certainly did not put it all in there myself.
A Pinterest Challenge? Why,Yes. We Accept.
Not only are we bloggers (albeit newbies), but we also follow a few other blogs. One of our favorites is Young House Love, which is how we found out about this challenge. Sherry (and John by proxy) over at YHL teamed up with Katie from Bower Power, Lana from Making a House a Home, and Emily from Style by Emily Henderson, and the ladies threw down a challenge. A Pinterest Challenge. And we have accepted. The parameters were pretty wide open to let the creative juices flow. The idea is to act on all of that eye candy we peruse for hours on end by creating something inspired by Pinterest. In full disclosure, this is only our second attempt at making something that we’ve seen on Pinterest (the first being our brickends). So thank you to our fellow bloggers for giving us a much needed kick in the pants. We owe our crafty new wall candy to them.
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