If I’ve learned anything about DIY in the last 5.5 years of writing this blog, it’s that it’s all about the sealer. You could do the most awesome job ever on a project, and if you don’t seal it correctly it’s all for naught.
I knew I needed an amazing sealer for my concrete countertops, for three reasons....
Concrete is a porous material, so it’s susceptible to stains
Not only are our countertops concrete, but they are also white
I’m messy
So even though Z Counterform sent …
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DIY Concrete Countertops, Part II – The Pour
*Thank you to Z Counterform for sponsoring this post.
Alright, here it is...part II of my concrete countertop series! I know a lot of you have been patiently waiting for this post and I’m excited to share all the details. (Read part 1 here if you haven’t already.)
Before we get started on the tutorial, let me just tell you that neither Adam or I have ever worked with concrete, we are truly newbies at this. We spent a ton of time watching videos and reading tutorials online, but had no …
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DIY Concrete Countertops, Part I- Setting the Forms
Well, we did it...we actually poured our own concrete countertops! Adam and I spent hours and hours (and hours) researching this before we did it. We read tutorials and watched YouTube videos and generally felt prepared and confident...but honestly, the process still didn’t go quite like we thought it would. Turns out no amount of research or reading can compare to actually getting your hands dirty. I already knew that...but now I know it better.
There are a lot of steps and information to …
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Quick and Easy Office Makeover
So last month for my Better Homes and Gardens sponsored post we gave my brother and his wife’s living room a makeover...
This month I am still between houses and have zero rooms that are ready for decor or organization...running water and locks on the doors trumps decor, every time. So I batted my eyelashes at Eric and Kelsey and asked them if they would let me use their house again. And they said yes, since they are under the impression that I’m doing them a favor, when really it’s the …
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My Painted Kitchen Cabinets – Five Years Later
Since we have been on the subject of kitchen cabinets lately, I thought perhaps y’all would appreciate an update on the ones I painted five years ago. Truth be told they aren’t holding up that well, so if I can keep someone from making the same mistakes I did that would be great.
So five years ago Adam and I took this dated, boring, builder grade kitchen...
and turned it into this...
The total price on the kitchen renovation was about $3,800 ($2,200 on new appliances + …
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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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Eric and Kelsey’s Budget Living Room Makeover
Most of you know that Better Homes and Gardens is one of the main sponsors of Domestic Imperfection. Every other month they send me a Walmart gift card, then I incorporate some their products into a project I’m working on and write a post about it.
So for my June post they e-mailed to say that they were going to send me a bigger gift card than usual and wanted me to makeover my living room. That sounded pretty darn great...except for one little problem. Even though I technically own two …
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Interior Limestone
When designing and planning this house Adam and I knew we wanted a lot of rustic features inside our home. Metal ceilings, antique beams, shiplap siding, brick flooring, rock walls, and rustic wood ceilings and floors were all things we wanted to incorporate in one way or another. We particularity wanted an entire rock wall on one of the walls in the main living space. After finalizing our blueprints we were like “We’re going to put the rock wall HERE. Okay, no... here? Well, that won’t …
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Prepping to Sell – Curb Appeal and Porch Updates
When it comes to selling a house, I feel like curb appeal is the most important thing. Buyers make snap judgements on houses just like they do on people (even if we don’t want to admit it, we do.) If you pull up to a house and it looks overgrown and uncared for, you're going to decide (probably subconsciously) that the owners aren’t excited about owning it and you're not excited about buying it. Once you get inside, any features you don’t like about the house are going to stand out even more, …
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Gold Leaf Stencil Art and Honest House Photos
*Thank you to Cutting Edge Stencils for sponsoring this post.*
Things have been so busy with the new house that I haven’t done any fun craft projects lately. And even though making super quick and stressful decisions about $10,000 expenses is crazy fun, I kinda miss the quick and easy projects that provide instant gratification. I’ve been itching to gold leaf something for a while now, so I decided to try and gold leaf with a stencil and make some simple, shiny art.
The good news is that I …
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Christmas Wreath Chandelier
Hard to believe there are only a few days left until Christmas! Are y'all ready? I'm almost ready... I have a few more gifts to buy and that's about it. Our Christmas is very simple this year, because things are crazy, Adam and I are tired, and simple is good.
Speaking of simple (you like that seamless transition?), I have a Christmas craft to share today. It's very pretty and a big statement, but super simple to make.
So a couple months ago I got and e-mail from Martha Stewart ('s PR …
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Ron Swanson Serving Trays
I'm crossing my fingers that most of y'all know who Ron Swanson is. If you do, then I have a project you will love. If not, well.... then I have a TV show recommendation that you should binge watch on Netflix.
Materials
wooden serving tray (I used these)
computer, printer, and paper
pencil
tape
pen
Sharpie or paint pen
I made these trays as Christmas presents for a family white elephant exchange. I wanted to use food-related quotes on them, and …
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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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How to Make a Lego Table
I've been so concentrated on building the new house that I haven't done a project in a good long while. I finally have one for you today though, a Lego table!
Last month Levi (my middle son) turned four. Four. I remember blogging his birth story like it was yesterday, and now he's my four-year-old middle son. Crazy.
Anyway, I made him a Lego table for his birthday. He loves it, my other boys love it, and I kinda love it too...despite the fact that it lives in my living room and has a …
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Corralling the Entryway Chaos
I've mentioned this before, but we have a serious shoe problem in this house. There is plenty of shoe storage in our closets, but that's not where the shoes live. No, they live by the front door.
The pile of shoes isn't alone though, it's always kept company by an ever-changing pile of tools that need to go out to the garage and a couple of backpacks. It's important that disorganization doesn't get lonely.
Our new house has cubbies in the mudroom that take care of all this, but in …
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Sliding Door Media Center
So my sliding barn door failure isn't the first barn door hardware Adam and I have DIYed. About 18 months ago this beauty was created...
I never blogged about it for two reasons...
I don't have a single picture of the process. I know I took a boatload of pictures but they seemed to have disappeared...I'm pretty sure I accidentally deleted the entire folder for this project.
The hardware doesn't work all that well. At least I didn't think it did, but compared to the other version it …
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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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Southwestern Guest Room Reveal
Time for another reveal post! Can you tell I'm trying to tie up loose ends on this house before I completely move onto the next one? Although this room turned out so well that I think I'm just going to move it right into the next house and try to change as little as possible. Anyway, here it is!
Here is what the room looked like previously...the one on the left is just after we bought it, and the on the right is after the first makeover.
This is by far my favorite room in the …
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Master Bathroom Reveal
A few weeks ago I was working on my linen closet makeover and taking pictures of the finished product. I was perched on the vanity counter, pressed up again the mirror, when I looked around and realized that I had never posted a reveal of my master bathroom remodel. You know, the one Adam and I started in 2013 and haven't worked on in over a year? Obviously you remember it perfectly.
I never posted the reveal because there is still things I want to do to it, so I've never had that awesome …
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Linen Closet Organization (and the end of my pink walls!)
I've done a lot of painting during the seven years we've lived in this house. A lot. Most rooms have been painted three or more times... Adam jokes that there are so many layers of paint on the walls that I've actually decreased the square footage of our home. There is one spot that has yet to be caressed by a paintbrush though, the single stronghold that reminds me daily of the time we bought a house that looked like the inside of a stomach.
The master bathroom closet.
That's the …
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Round Inlay Table…err, Wall Medallion
Three years ago I stenciled a dining room table for my in-laws using the Indian Inlay kit from Cutting Edge Stencils.
It turned out gorgeous, but admittedly took me forever to do since the stencils comes in a bunch or small pieces (which also makes it super versatile).
I remember a few of you asking if you could use this on a round table, and at the time you couldn't. Since then Cutting Edge has come out with a round version of this stencil (two actually). As great as that news is, …
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