Remember that time Adam and I DIYed some double sliding barn doors and it was the biggest fail ever? Well I'm happy to report that we have learned from our mistake and these sliding doors are a complete success. I love DIY, but many times it is just not worth it. Considering this hardware was about the same price as the failed DIY hardware (that now sits in our garage taking up space) I'd say DIY barn door hardware is forever on the "just buy it" list.
Alright, so here is the story of the …
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The Most Organized Pantry in the World
Okay, that title might be a biiit of a stretch, but either way...the pantry is complete! I posted the first part of the pantry redo months ago, and even though we finished a majority of it soon after I refused to post it until it was 100% complete. Adam and have a problem of only finishing things 90% of the way and moving onto the next project (I even wrote a post about it years ago) and I’m breaking the cycle.
So as a refresher, here was the before...
(Yes, my house is messy. It’s …
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Planning and Building a Pantry (Part I)
A few months ago Adam and I finished our master closet, which became the first finished room in the house. It was so organized and amazing that we decided to skip some of the bigger projects we had planned and instead pick another tiny room and finish it 100%. We debated doing a bathroom, the office, or the pantry, and eventually landed on the pantry.
The pantry is 3 ft by 7 ft and is situated under the stairs, which means one of the walls is shorter than the other. It’s a tiny little …
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Industrial Pipe Kitchen Shelving
From the time we started designing our house I knew I wanted some open shelving in the kitchen. Not all open shelving (because it would look cluttered), but just enough for our everyday dishes. We put open shelving in our last kitchen and really loved it, I liked having the dishes out in the open, and since we used them everyday dust was never an issue. So Adam and I designed the sink wall in the new house to have a big window with a view and shelving on either side.
I’ve always loved …
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Kitchen Progress – Dark green cabinets, a rustic wood countertop, and lighting
Last time I did an overall kitchen update we had just installed the cabinets and it looked like this....
Well now we have not only moved in, but I’ve painted the cabinets, we poured our concrete countertops, added a wood island top, bought appliances, and installed our island lighting.
First thing first, the cabinet color. I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how I went from wanting a light airy green to something dark and dramatic, and I have to say that I’m pretty pleased …
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Installed Cabinets
Happy Fourth of July everyone! I was scrolling through Facebook today and looking at all the festive pictures and memes, and interspersed between and the red white and blue was this gem...
It made me laugh out loud...so I had to share, of course.
Anyway, in the last post I left you with a trailer full of cabinets...
and an empty kitchen.
Then one day this happened...
And now we have the beginning of a kitchen!
So, would you like a quick tour?
First up we …
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Cabinet Beginnings
One of the main ways we are saving huge amounts of money on the kitchen is by building our own cabinets. Way back when Adam and I were dating (as teenagers about 14 years ago) his family ran a custom cabinet shop. They built the cabinets themselves, which means that my handy husband isn’t new to this whole cabinet building thing. We got a quote for cabinets anyway (just to make sure building our own was worth the time and effort) and it came back around 10K. So far Adam has built and installed …
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Rustic Picnic Style Dining Table
Well....my husband built another dining room table. It's been over two years since he built the last one and I think he was starting to get a twitch. A table building twitch (or a lack of table building twitch, more like it).
If you remember, our first dining table was a simple farmhouse table made out of pine.
We sold that table to friends in order to build the second table, a beautiful pecan table with X legs.
Recently we sold that table to different friends, since they needed …
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Double bypass sliding barn door system – A DIY FAIL
Last week in my guest room reveal I mentioned the closet doors and how they were one of my biggest DIY fails to date. So let's talk about that.
I was really excited about these and planned to write this great tutorial, because really...who wouldn't want an awesome DIY double bypass sliding barn door system (say that five times fast)? No one, that's who... it sounds amazing.
But alas, it wasn't meant to be.
You're probably thinking that it doesn't look that bad (besides the …
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How (not) to make saloon doors
Sometimes DIY projects around here turn out great.
Sometimes they are giant failures.
And sometimes they look great and are a failure at the same time. This is one of those projects.
About five years ago I removed the closet door from my boy's room. Most people love doors on closets because you can hide the mess... I like closets not to have doors for the same reason. I know myself...hiding the mess is not a good thing. When I can hide a mess I HIDE A MESS. Things get crazy. It's …
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Kids Room Toy Shelf (an organized masterpiece)
Before I dive into all the DIY goodness I just wanted to say thank you for all the love and support on my last post about Adam's accident. He is doing well, a little better every day. He is up and around the house now, and even getting out a bit. We don't do much...mostly just walk around slowly, taking turns moaning about how much moving hurts and telling the kids we can't pick them up. We're quite the pair these days!
And now for our regularly scheduled post...
I've mentioned this …
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Building the Deck, Part II
I'm finally back with the second part of the deck post. Let's just pick up where we left off last week, which was with a fully assembled deck frame.
We used pine for the frame but decided to spring for cedar for the top, since it looks nice and it's naturally moisture resistant (which means it's less prone to twisting, cracking and swelling. Basically it lays flat.)
Before attaching them to the joists we went ahead and sealed the backside using Flood CWF-UV.
Then it was time …
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Building the Deck, Part I
First things first...let's start with a before picture.
So our backyard....it's ugly. There's no denying it. It is so full of rocks that I'm at a complete loss at what do with them. For the last five years we've been picking them up and using them in landscaping, but I swear they reproduce at night when I'm not looking. Anyway, right outside our back door there was nothing. Well, not nothing...there was toys, dirt, and welcome mats (which were my sad and unsuccessful attempt to keep the …
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$5 Built-In Magazine Rack
I have another bathroom "mini project" for you today, this on is easy, cheap, and useful... the trifecta of DIY goodness. It may actually cross over to superfecta status, which also includes being attractive. This isn't the most beautiful thing I've made, but it at least qualifies as non-ugly. That's a win in my book.
The only supplies you will need is a 1x2 (which is a dollar for raw and about $3.50 for pre-primed) and a yardstick (which is like 64 cents at Home Depot). So pretty much no …
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Pecan Farmhouse Dining Table
Surprise! We built another dining room table. That kind of came out of left field, I know...after all, we just built our current pine farmhouse table last year. Allow me to explain...
Adam is a wood snob.
Now Adam isn't snobby about much. He will gladly drive old crappy cars, sport goodwill t-shirts, go waaay to long between haircuts because I don't feel like cutting it, and use the same towel for the tenth time without complaining. But show him a piece of cheap furniture and you can watch …
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DIY Playset and Staining with Flood Wood
This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Flood® Wood Care for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
Those of you looking for more progress on our bathroom remodel are going to be disappointed. I'm not that far along yet... how about a playset reveal instead?
As you may or may not know, we had been talking about building/buying the boys a playset for a while, but we talk about doing a lot of stuff that never actually happens. This one was meant to be though....a friend …
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How to turn a Dresser into a Bathroom Vanity
Dressers are super versatile, you can transform them into a host of things. I've seen them made into media centers, changing tables, buffets, benches, bookshelves, toy storage, and last but not least, bathroom vanities. When we decided to start renovating our bathroom last month I knew I wanted a dresser as my new vanity. I liked the idea of the vanity looking like a piece of furniture and I wanted the storage.
I've written a few posts about the process so far, but this post has all the …
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The Wood Flooring Countertop, Part II
Alright everyone, this is part two of my bathroom countertop adventure. (If you haven't read the first part you can do that HERE.) When I left y'all we had successfully made a counter out of maple wood flooring, which happens to be particularly hard to stain. Here was my first attempt...
It looked terrible and Adam vetoed it right away. And that's saying something because he never vetoes things, he usually just lets me gush about weird new ideas that my brain comes up with and then tries his …
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Bathroom Remodel – Build A Counter Out Of Wood Flooring
As you may or may not know, we have started remodeling our tiny master bathroom. You know that dresser that a gave a makeover the other day?
Well, it's our new bathroom vanity! (or at least we're working on it.)
Here is a before picture, just for reference.
There was one problem with the dresser/vanity swicharoo....the top of the dresser wasn't deep enough for the sink I bought. It wasn't even close actually, the sink hung over by at least six inches. I really liked the sink I had …
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Open Kitchen Shelving (!!!)
So one night I got home from dinner, shopping, and a movie with a friend. I said hello to Adam and the boys and moseyed into the kitchen for a delicious glass of water. That's when I saw them, sitting on the countertops...the kitchen shelves that I had been nagging politely asking Adam to build for nearly a year.
My eyes got big and I stared at them excitedly. Then I heard something....it was the shelves, they were speaking to me. They said "Ashley! Look how much your husband loves you! He …
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Built-In Outdoor Bench
You know how everyone has a spot in their house that just seems to collect stuff? That place that is everyone's dumping ground? Perhaps it's your entryway, mudroom, kitchen counters or your garage. Ours is our front porch. Yup, right out there in the open.
Let's just pretend for a second that I'm not a giant redneck who stores all her stuff on the front porch. Let's pretend this is a normal home decor blog where I don't show you horribly truthful pictures. Are you pretending? Okay then, …
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