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We got a new stand-alone bathtub when we renovated our master bath, and I love how it looks. I had seen those cute bathtub trays online, and I figured I could put one together to add some decoration!
I was going to put together some 1x4s/1x6s to make it, but I found a hidden gem that was the perfect size… and old wall sign from my son’s room! It was a great width and the perfect length for our tub.
So, this DIY project was super simple for me. I painted the sign with white chalk paint. It took a few coats to cover up the words, but eventually it got there!
I screwed in my handy-dandy Amazon handles and my project was done.
Super easy, and I love how it adds some character to our new tub!
Once our bathroom remodel was complete, we realized how awkward the door that opens from our master bedroom into the bathroom is. It opens fine, but blocks the entryway to the water closet. We had talked about removing the door and adding a barn door for a long time, and finally went for it!
Before:
Originally, the door opened towards the water closet. You had to squeeze behind the open door to get in. We had already taken the door off at this point!
We purchased a pre-made barn door from Home Depot. It was a blank slate, but we didn’t have to do anything to put the actual door together. It also came with a 2×4 piece of wood. We painted both with white trim paint.
Stephen hung up the 2×4 horizontally above the door. It is supposed to go along the path where the door will slide, so we had to first figure out where that needed to be. He also screwed in the metal track on top of the white board- we had to measure the height this needed to be, in order for the door to sit at the right level.
Next, Stephen installed the black wheel parts that will go on the track.
There were washers included that you put between the black wheel part and the black track part. These allowed for the door to sit off the wall so it would slide over the existing trim. This was HUGE for us, because we really didn’t want to have to remove the trim around the door frame!
We set the wheels on the track, and voila!
This door is a complete game changer for our bathroom, and it was SO easy- I wish we had done this sooner!
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Re-post from 2021: this is a great spring/summer project!
My next goal with styling the shed was to add a window box under the shed window. These boxes looked super simple to do, and after reading a few blogs on how to build them, I kind of just formed a plan in mind and went for it.
All I needed to purchase for this project was a 12 foot piece of 1×6 pressure treated wood (which was about $10). Everything else (wood glue, screws, and paint) I had on hand. I had a worker at a Home Depot go ahead and cut the piece into four 3-foot sections.
My original measurement needed was 33-15/16 inches for the length… but I just went with the 36” length from the Home Depot cuts!
I painted the wood first. I got this great exterior Kils paint in the “oops” paint section for a whopping $5. I decided to try it out!
I love the oops paint section.
After painting a couple of coats and letting them dry, I got to building. The first thing I realized was that it’s very hard to screw two pieces of wood together in an “L” shape. There is no way to put pressure on the wood when you drill the screw in. (I’m sure there’s some fancy thing out there for this… help a sister out if you know!)
Wood glue to the rescue! I glued the pieces together in the “L” shape and let them dry. The clamp was helpful to keep the side from falling over. I did the same for the other side of the box.
I measured out the size that the ends of the box needed to be. I cut those pieces out, and wood-glued them into place.
Once all of this dried, I felt comfortable moving the box around and drilling in the screws. I put screws in wherever the wood pieces met each other on the ends.
I put wood putty over the screws, did a final coat of paint, and went outside to install it! I used three 3” screws to drill directly into the shed walls.
The window box ended up being the width of the trim, plus about an inch on each side.
Since it’s the first week of February, I didn’t purchase any flowers to include… but here are some pretty fake ones! 😉 I drilled holes in the bottom for drainage, and I’m going to line the box with weed cloth before putting potted flowers/plants in.
A ~$10 addition to the shed! The shutters and window box added the extra “uumph” I think this shed needed!
The last thing we updated in our master bath remodel was our flooring! We had 12×12 square tiles originally, but went for more of a plank style this time. It’s lighter and more rustic. Check it out!
Before:
Demolition:
Nothing like a toilet in the middle of your bathroom, eh?
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We have a guest room that my husband also uses as his office. Since we don’t have guests all that often, it gives him more space in which to work (and the ability to shut the door for conference calls when the kiddos are home!).
BUT… it has been just his desk and a bed for far too long. He wanted to keep the open feel to the room without adding a bulky piece of furniture, but I wanted to add something that could hold a lamp, be a place to set things, etc. We looked online for ideas and decided on a three shelf farmhouse console table!
Stephen came up with his own plan, utilizing the basis of the farmhouse “X” side table he made last year. He followed the steps, while extending the width to be 5 feet, and adding a third shelf.
I painted the base of it with white chalk paint, and stained the top with Minwax Red Chestnut.
Stephen added brackets on each corner of the table.
I topped it off with this rustic lamp, and hung a mirror and added a few decorations for the time being… and voila! It is perfect for this room.
Our original countertops were made of cultured marble, and we wanted to update it to granite countertops. We went to a local granite place, picked out a piece we liked, and they came to measure, cut, and install. We got new faucets and new sinks. I love it!
Before:
It definitely makes more of a statement! I really like it.
Here is my second “all by myself” project! I saw this project online and thought this would be a good one for me to attempt. Not only does building something make me feel accomplished, but I figure that the more I try, use tools, experiment, etc., the better I will get… so I’m trying to keep my eyes open for cool (yet simpler) projects.
This project makes an “H” shelf to go under your sink. The underneath of our kitchen sink is unorganized and there is a lot of wasted space, so this shelf seemed like it would be a good help. Because you have pipes and/or a disposal under your sink that take up a lot of space, usually you have to just put your stuff wherever it will fit. Typically, organization is not that feasible!
Before.
This shelf solves the storage problem by building an “h-shaped” shelf (I bet you didn’t guess that one!) to sit in front of your under-sink plumbing, and offer two levels of storage. Let me walk you through what I did.
First of all, I printed the awesome plans from Ana White’s website. I used her plans but modified them to fit my needs.
What I needed:
-1″x10″ board (8 footer) **The bigger number on this board will be your depth, so you will need to measure your specific sink. Measure from the as far back as a shelf would be able to sit (in front of piping) and measure to the edge of the cabinet before the doors. -Spare 1×6 wood **This is for the backing. Plywood was recommended. -1-1/4″ long construction screws -Saw -Drill
an 8 foot 1×10
I started off using my measurements from under the sink and marking where to cut on the boards. I almost made a big mistake, and I’m so glad I didn’t cut too quickly. I was planning on making two shelves, one for each side of the sink. My measurements were 17 inches tall and 15 inches across. I had measured these specific measurements on the 1×10 and marked them with lines. Then, I realized something. If you picture the letter H, the thickness of the two legs of the H need to be counted in the width measurement of the across bar/shelf. Whoops!
Ana White even says it in her directions… guess I should be reading these better. 😉 Anyways, as you can see above, the width of the legs (which is .75″ each) needs to count into your width of the shelf. Since you have two .75″ sides, you’ll need to subtract 1.5 inches from the total width you are wanting and cut that size. (Example: if the width for what you want is 20 inches, you will want to cut your actual shelf’s length to be 18.5 inches).
I made just a few mistakes in measuring! 🙂
So, once I recalculated, I cut four 17″ pieces for the legs of my two shelves, and two 13.5″ pieces for the shelves (the 15 inches I wanted minus 1.5 inches).
I did have to sand the edges… they were pretty rough.
Next, I clamped down the shelf and screwed the legs into the sides. I had measured the height of items I wanted to be able to store (in this first shelf’s case, Clorox wipes, lysol spray, etc.) and put the shelf at that height.
The pencil mark shows the height where I wanted the shelf to be.The clamp helped keep the wood in place so I could put pressure into screwing in the sides.
I used a level to make sure the sides matched up well.
Next was adding some backing to the shelf. Now, this is up to you. You can leave the shelf without a back. I thought about it, because our sink does go back a decent bit further behind the pipes and the disposal and we could reach back there without any backing. But, I decided to add some anyways. Why not? 😉
The instructions recommended plywood, probably because it’s so thin. I opted for some pieces of 1×6 that we had laying around. I cut them to the width of the shelf and screwed them in.
One problem I ran into (besides the above lovely splitting of the wood) was that I didn’t think about the fact that adding 1×6 wood adds 3/4″ of thickness to the depth of the shelf. (Remember: 1″ thickness of wood really measures 3/4″) My shelf being 9.25″ deep (the default width of the 1×10 wood) was about the most it should have been, so adding the 3/4″ was too much. The top shelf hit our disposal and wouldn’t fit… it was several millimeters off.
I decided to just take off the top piece of wood backing, where it hit the disposal. Thankfully, the shelf then fit like a charm.
I did the most of the same as above for the second shelf. The only differences I did here were 1) I had to cut off part of the side so that our disposal switch could be accessible and 2) I made the shelf a little lower.
Using a table saw to cut out the section for the disposal switch.
I put both shelves in, and they fit great!! I put everything from under the sink back on the shelves.
It’s pretty cool to have two levels of storage space close to the cabinet doors, so you don’t have to reach all the way to the back to find things.
This is such a cool way to get personalized shelving according to what you need under your sink. I didn’t paint or stain the wood, and there are several spots where I split the wood when I screwed the screws in. Total rookie stuff! Luckily, all the stuff on the shelves hides these imperfections, and I’m going to leave the shelves as-is, unless they start to bother me. 🙂
Remember how I said in an earlier post that most of the things we did in the past, we hired out? About 5 years ago, in our old house, we desperately needed more space. We decided to look into putting a room on the second-story, closing up our two-story foyer. Well, this was a BIG undertaking and was definitely above our paygrade, so hiring out we did! 🙂
I wanted to share this on here just in case this is something you have ever considered doing. It is possible and it was an incredible transformation that gave us an additional ~200 square feet! Since we didn’t do the work and don’t know all the ins-and-outs, I’ll mostly show you pictures so you can see the progress.
This was the before. You would come in the front door of the house and see this:
This was the view looking down:
And this was the view from the top looking straight ahead! (notice how high up that window is)
A 2-story foyer definitely gives a very large, open feeling to a home. But, if you think about it… it’s so much wasted space! We were thrilled to know we had the option of closing it up and putting a room where there was just air before. 😉
Here are pictures of the stages of construction:
Framing-
Dry Wall-
This is the view from standing by the front door, looking up.The stairs are on the other side of this wall.That window doesn’t look so high anymore, huh? (Kind of crazy to think how high up this new room really is!)
Paint and Finishings-
The grand finale!
This room bought us 3 additional years in a house we were already outgrowing. It also helped add square footage for when we sold the house! This is a house-changing adventure that I would highly recommend looking into if you have a 2-story foyer and would rather have living space!
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