Children's Art Wall

We have 5 kids and they make a lot of pictures for us to enjoy.  Our refrigerator is stainless steel, which means it's not magnetic, and therefore the only way to display their art was taping it to the wall.  Um, not ideal.  So I saw this idea on Pinterest (originally pinned from The Project Girl, who found it in the Utah Valley Parade of Homes):

I loved it!  The only deal breaker is that it's white.  5 kids and 3 dogs and white are not a match made in heaven.  So I picked up a bunch of blues, greens, and purples to make my background.

I picked 8 different colors and then spread each color all over a piece of plywood and mixed them together in the brush strokes.  Don't worry about it being perfect, just splatter it randomly around.

The entire sheet was done in about 8 sections so the paint wouldn't dry before I got to mixing it together.

I cut it down to 4' x 6' and then nailed it to the wall with my nail gun.  I screwed eyelet screws into pine boards and then nailed all the trim on top of the background.  Then I added picture wire between the eyelets for the kids to hang their artwork on.

A quick little close up:

I finished it off with a little paintable caulk to fill the holes and painted the pine boards to match the rest of the house trim.  Now the kids can hang their art as they finish it and change it out on a whim.  The best part is that they have a dedicated art space in the center of the home where it has a place of honor and everyone can enjoy it.

Refinishing

My mother bought this table when I was in middle school and several years ago she passed it on to me. Between my sisters and I, and now my kids, this poor table has been through quite a lot.

A lot of wear and tear and a fair bit of water sitting on the table (my kids used to leave spills for the magic fairy to clean up) and the clear coat broke down. The table was pretty damaged and I considered building a new one.

Here's a wider shot that also shows the water rings, paint spots, and marker streaks that have graced the table over the years.

So I thought maybe I would try to refinish it first and if it didn't work out then I would build a replacement. I bought some Citristrip and liberally sprayed the table then let it sit for about 3 hours. I then came back and scraped off all of the goop (eww), wiped it down, sanded a little, and tried to stain it.

I say tried because what I ended up with was an ugly blotchy mess. I was pretty sure the table was ruined and it's been sitting in my garage for 2 weeks while I was really bummed about the outcome.

Then yesterday I was out in the garage and I noticed that actually the dark spots were the color the stain was supposed to be and the rest was kind of yellow. I realized that the Citristrip must have only taken off part of the clear coat but not all of it. I felt a small glimmer of hope that I had a thick enough veneer left to sand again and restain. I pulled out my mouse sander and went to town. By the time I was done the table was so smooth it felt like butter.

I reapplied stain and, lo and behold, it was a consistent color! I applied two coats yesterday and today I'll add another 2 coats.

It's finally working! I'm not done yet so there's still a chance I'll ruin it but so far I'm really happy with the outcome. The legs will get painted white and I think it will look really nice with the walnut top. Then it will get an absolutely ridiculous amount of poly to be sure that it never looks so sad and abused again.

A Hole in the Wall

I have been dying to cut a hole in this wall for YEARS and I finally got the chance.  The front living room is pretty dark and doesn't get a lot of natural light.  By opening up the wall it brightened it up considerably since the great room has several windows.  It's not a supporting wall so that made this project a whole lot simpler.  I started out by "framing" the opening with painters tape so i could visualize and be sure it was the placement I wanted.

The next step was to cut the power in the wall and let the kids go to town with hammers.  They had a blast beating holes all over it.

This was our first glimpse of the new view from the great room to the office and front living room.  The electrical still needed to be moved into the new header and the plugs needed to be moved into their new placements.

This let so much more light into the rest of the house!  We moved 1 plug to either side of the new opening and put the cables above the new header.

I still need to caulk/paint the trim, texture above the door on this side, and touch up paint on the walls and baseboards.

I also need to cut a piece out of our extra vinyl (left over from when the house was built) to patch in the floor.  The plan is to replace the flooring in the great room fairly soon anyway so it doesn't have to be terribly perfect but I'll try to at least match up the pattern.

And here's a quick Before and After.  I love love love the new doorway.  Of course, now I'm totally itching to case the rest of the doorways in the downstairs (4 of them) but next to removing a wall that will seem simple by comparison.

Homemade Coffee Table

It was time to get a little more grown up in tables and the train table needed to move on.  So I turned to Ana White and her awesome plans.  I modified her plans for the Adirondack Coffee Table and created this a little wider and longer (49" x 33") with a lower shelf that will hold up to 6 of our toy buckets.  It's 20" tall to accommodate the extra storage.

Cabinets and Counter Tops

With the boys moved in to their rooms we are working on the cabinets on the outside of the wall. I'm pretty happy with how they are turning out so far.

I didn't want to buy expensive countertops for this and even the cheap prefab laminate counters were $100 each and I needed two. Yeah, no thanks. So I built my own counters for about $55 total. Thrifty Decor Chick just did something similar here and I thought I could work that idea in to my project. Because I was putting this on top of 12" cabinets I couldn't use 1x4s only (at 3.5 inches it would only be 10.5 inches total and I needed more like 12.5 inches). I did still want it to look like it was intentional so I didn't want to tack a random 2" piece on the back.  Luckily, it turns out the measurements worked out for 2 1x4s with a 1x6 in the middle which looks way more balanced. In order to hold it all together I put a 1x12 underneath to screw through but since that's only really 11.25 and not 12 it didn't stretch all the way. See the hole there on the back of the bottom?

To fix that I just used a tiny piece of scrap from the 1x4 I had chopped off earlier. I screwed all of the boards up from the bottom into the top boards so there wouldn't be any holes to patch later.

The cabinets on the left were going to have an angular hole to the side of them that will hold a computer switch. We were going to need access to it so we cut a hole under the shelf in the back so we could get a hand or two in when needed. 

I also cut a hole in the back of the cabinet for the power plug but I forgot to take a picture of that part (whoops).  I'm hoping that having it up high under the counter will prevent more things from falling in there but at least it will be easily accessible if they do.

So here is where we are at now. The bases and the cabinets are installed. The counter has been fabricated for about $55 (not including the stain we'll need later).  I will need to stain and paint next week and then I can start work on the shelves to go on top.  

One of my little helpers refused to eat dinner so he got to come hang out and keep me company for a bit. At least we got to have a nice chat while we worked on our tasks.

Room Building

We have walls!  The tape is done on the outer wall and will be done in the two rooms today.  The plan is to do the texture in the morning and since we are using quick drying texture we can hopefully paint tomorrow night.







Our four footed helper is very excited about the changes even if she has no idea what it is that we're doing.

Dollhouse: Stairs

The rest of the dollhouse story can be found at
Part I - The original derelict
Part II - Fixing her up
Part III - Repaired and pretty

A couple months ago I showed you the dollhouse I had when I was little that I fixed up for my kids.



Now I thought I might show you how my dad built those original stairs that stood up to all those years of abuse. The stairs are built from a single board, just one piece of 2x4. You can use a radial arm saw or a circular saw (you may want to make a jig for the second option). The blade is tilted at a 45 degree angle and the cuts are made 1/2" apart. Cut all of the angles one direction, turn the board around and cut them the other way. Now it looks like teeth.





Now it's just a matter of tipping it up to nail it in place and you have sturdy stairs that will stand the test of years and kiddos.

Pantry Can Rack

Day 26/31:

I'm blessed to have a large pantry as it allows me to store up on things when they're on sale BUT it also means my pantry can be a disorganized nightmare in which I can't find anything (the more frequent occurrence). One of the biggest problems was that I usually had no idea what canned items I have and which I need to buy so I was constantly either out or overstocked. But now I have a new storage item which ALSO used up part of the scrap pile in my garage so that's even better!

Before (yes I still have a girl scout cookie stock. I try to make them last!):



I made a new rack for the cans out of some scrap MDF, a piece of 1x3, and a couple of 2x2 scraps. I set it up to sit at a 45 degree angle so that it would be easy to see and easy to figure out the angles to cut.



After I built it I did a quick test fit to make sure it would work because, to be honest, I didn't measure the height available on the shelf ahead of time and wanted to make sure it would work before I painted it. Yup, very fly by the seat of my pants and I made this on a whim. So if you had any illusions that I have it all together, um, I don't. I just get lucky a lot, hehe.



And the final painted rack in its new home:



And because I'm feeling particularly brave I will even show you the entire pantry (since I organized it first) but please don't judge the volume of processed food because while I will organize my pantry for you I won't pretend to shop in a way I don't. Please be okay with that, k?