Tag Archives: DIY

Back porch re-do

We finally decorated our back porch. It’s been a few months and I figured I’d post pictures! My original inspiration came from Pinterest (of course), however, we made a few adjustments along the way.

Photo Credit and Pinspiration….

Our porch when we moved in

Pieces and parts to hang the rods on the aluminum

Drop cloths and curtain rods. Initially we tried the PVC and paint for the curtain rods, however, because we opened and closed them depending on the sun, the paint easily peeled off despite priming. FYI. The curtain rods were rods we already had in the living room that were the wrong size and needed replacing.

Lovely flowers to look at (our FINALLY blooming hydrangeas…a fun rug and accessories to liven up the place!

Voila! Our view the majority of the time.

Our view when the sun is going down and in our eyes! Don’t mind the wrinkles in the curtains, I don’t!!

And so concludes our tour of our decorated back porch. Eventually, I’d like to get some comfy furniture, but for now this is a good (and FREE) fit for our family!

Closet Re-do #1

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We live in an older house…70’s ranch-y style. It’s truly perfect for us, not too big (because I don’t have a maid ya’ll, just 4 kids and sometimes we have to go behind them) and when we bought it, it was move-in ready–my favorite kind of house to buy. Semi-sorta updated, at least no orange/green/yellow in the kitchen and an assortment of neutral colors, which are perfect for US. Anywhoooo, the down side is that apparently in the last 20 some years we (collectively as Americans) have garnered a lot of “stuff” and “need” more closet space than was available back in the 70’s. Our current list of to-do’s is for us (and I really mean my Hubby) to finally deal with the bedroom closets. We started with the boys closet, mainly because they are boys and if it got goofed up they really aren’t going to care so much (the girls will be next and we will save the most important–ours–for last).

For the boys, their dresser (in the closet to save space) houses the majority of the clothing, but they have a fair amount that gets hung. The clothes that get hung knock all their miscellanea on top of their dresser over and behind and creates a chronic MESS. The top of the closet was just a shelf and tons of dead space. We wanted to give them some more storage and maximize that dead space. We opted on cubbies and worked around the brace in the middle of the shelf. We are pleased with the outcome and hopefully these fellas can manage keeping their stuff in one spot and not lose chargers, memory sticks and all that other stuff. Without further blah blah, here’s the pics and once we finish the girl’s I’ll post that, too. I know, you can hardly wait. Try and contain yourself. 😉

Empty closet BEFORE

New cubes

Maximizing the dead space on the shelf

well, we had to put the closet stuff somewhere…

side by side view of the B&A

AFTER….hear the angels sing??? I do!!!

A useful shelf space now!

Before and After, a DIY project

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We inherited my parent’s old entertainment center when we moved into our house 3 years ago and it was fine. It provided a lot of storage and display space and served its primary purpose of housing the TV and DVR/Wii/CD player. But……..it wasn’t really our “style”…not that I’m really sure exactly what our “style” is, but that wasn’t it.

A blurry catty-corner photo of the old entertainment center at Christmas…

We’ve been on a little search for what we wanted to replace it with and LOVED the ideas on IKEA’s website (and trust me, I’m sure we will frequent the site again for other items….), however, we had the gist of what we wanted. One weekend Hubby came across and estate sale and found a great buffet that we could refinish into what we had in mind for the TV, etc. Sadly, by the time I made it to the sale the piece was gone…….but, tucked away in the back of the house was another sideboard. And lots of potential. Hubby talked them down to $50 (from $95, by letting them keep the hardware that came with it–it was AWFUL and we were happy to let them keep it!). And so we came home with our little DIY project. (By OUR, please understand that translates to my Hubby, in which I will happily take joint credit. We all should know where the real sweat and effort came from though, to be fair.) Without further blah, blah, blah…here is the story in pics: