I know I said just a day and a half ago that I would be posting some archived stuff soon, but I had an unexpected update to share. The first flower from the garden beds has finally bloomed. And it’s both gorgeous and just as fragrant as I’d hoped.
I haven’t always had the best of luck with plants (as we all know), so this is very encouraging for more outdoor projects. I’ve been thinking of building a few more beds for another spot closer to the front of the house as well.
There are signs of other blooms on the way, so hopefully soon, entering my back yard through the side gate will involve one hell of a flowery whiff.
And in case you missed it, here is the breakdown of how these beds came to be:
This week has been all about making progress on the kitchen walls. I know some of you guys have waited a LONG time for me to find the motivation to finish this room, and it’s finally come! After finishing off the dining room, I guess I just lost that part of my brain that thinks skim coating is at all fun. But I’m determined, so… I guess that’s enough?
From time to time, we all fall victim to the DIY slump. Skim coating used to be fun for me, but now that I’ve spent at least one part of each year fixing damage from ugly-ass wallpaper (1,2,3,4), I lost my skim coating mojo for a while. I am thrilled to be on the last room that I have to do this to, but I’m once again wishing for tiny DIY elves to come in and get it done for me while I sleep. (I know that I could hire someone to do it for me, but have you met me? I’m stubborn. And when you’ve got more time—and pride—than money, you do it yourself.)
This porous surface sealer/primer has been the best product I’ve found for for nixing air bubbles in torn paper and prepping the wall. I wasn’t sure if I would like it when I was fixing the dining room and still had a couple bubbles pop up (which were easily fixed), but now I’ve treated an entire wall with it before I begin a skim coat (last time I only found out about the product after the first skim coat was on), and it’s seriously amazing. I haven’t experienced a single air bubble in the kitchen thus far because it locks down the paper kind of like a coat of glue. (While there’s an affiliate link to the product listing that will make me a couple of cents if you clicked on it, the makers of the product are not paying me to say this and have no idea who I am. It’s basically a schoolgirl crush.)
In other news this week, my darling furball sidekick had to visit the vet. She was favoring one of her paws Monday night, and I soon realized that she split one of her dew claws (presumably at our most recent visit to the dog park) – ouch! She promptly freaked out in the vet’s office at anyone coming close to touching her foot (she has always been an anxious dog, but she turned it up to 11 and pretty much shed an entire coat of fur on the docs and nurses), and four of us had to hold her down while we clipped it off. She’s been on some light pain meds and antibiotics to help it heal over the next week or so, and then she’ll be fine. It’s basically the most expensive manicure I’ve ever purchased, and it wasn’t even for me. Figures.
Oh, and she also has to wear the cone of shame to keep her from licking at her wound whenever I’m not able to be at home. For the record, this is pretty much the meanest I’ve ever been to her—if you’re reading that guilt-trippy look in her eyes, that is.
I gave her some time to get used to it, and she seems to have gotten back to her old happy self, especially in the car.
While I keep working on the kitchen, there won’t be many interesting updates until the paint goes on. So I started thinking about it, and I realized that there are a number of things that I always meant to do a dedicated post on but simply never got back around to doing, such as info on poison ivy (a good lesson from my highly allergic dad), my stint on HomeStretch (the details on the laundry room and living room makeovers), and some family cookie recipes from this past winter. So, even if you’re spotting some things out of the archives, they won’t be re-runs but instead new details on older stuff I never found the time to share before—including full-fledged makeovers. Which, if you think about it, really is a new concept on this always-in-progress blog!
As you might have seen before, Fridays are a good day to get a little goofy around here. So while I’m busy working away in my kitchen today, I thought I’d share some funny observations I’ve seen from Pinterest lately.
(As it will become plainly obvious, this post is not sponsored by, affiliated with, or in any way promoted by Pinterest. But just in case they decided I needed a disclaimer on that, there you go.)
Whenever I have an idea for a new project, I often use Pinterest as my better, more efficient image search (where Google might find me exact pictures of whatever phrase I query, such as “adirondack chairs”, Pinterest will skip some of the useless results of beach scenes and give me projects specifically about how to build or paint one). Last week, I was on the hunt for some tricks for getting rid of pokeweed, which has decided to take over my back yard now that the pine trees are no longer smothering them with pine straw. I know, solve one problem, create another, right?
For those of you who were around back when I first ripped out ivy from the yard, you might recall me pulling out giant roots of these plants in awe of how large they were. Luckily, they can usually be pulled out of the ground with a few hard yanks… they just grow back insanely quickly. I tend to work on patches of them whenever Charlie goes outside.
But anyway, the majority of my results were turning up how to cook pokeweed (since Southerners are crazy enough to cook things that have poisonous leaves, poisonous roots, poisonous berries, and absolutely nothing on this plant doesn’t want to kill you if you ingest it) or use the berries from the plant to make a natural dye.
I tried narrowing my search to just how to get rid of pokeweed rather than making it into my next meal, hoping that someone somewhere had figured out how to prevent and remove this pestering plant. While nothing beyond the yank-it-out-of-the-ground method I was already using emerged, I did spy a rather hilarious ad placement:
To the left: how to get rid of pokeweed. To the right: how to get rid of stubborn butt acne.
While it’s obvious that the advertiser may have just selected “how to get rid of” as a search term preference, I prefer to think of this ad as trying to say: Got pokeweed taking over your yard? Could be worse. You could also have butt acne. Or butt acne and no pokeweed… which would still be worse. Now stop bitching about weeding your yard and just get off your lazy—though thankfully, acne-free—ass.
And one more example. From time to time, I also like to check on what’s being pinned from the blog. If you are a blogger and don’t know how to check this for your site, simply type “www.pinterest.com/source/YOURSITEURL” in the address bar, and it will provide the most recent results for what’s been pinned from your site. Seeing my most popular older posts is common, but I am especially happy when I see new stuff getting pinned as well.
And you’d think that when someone pins something from your site, it would be next to impossible for it to get screwed up, right? Wrong.
I honestly have no idea how this happened, but somehow, a user was able to pin an image that has never existed on my site in the screen grab above. In last week’s post from the #oneboardchallenge, I did share several other projects from other DIYers, but just the links to their projects and a single roundup image of everyone… not individual images of each project (if you click on the link in that last sentence, you’ll see what I mean). So, I’m pretty intrigued by this little snafu. The image above is actually Build Basic’s DIY mirror project. And intriguing still is that the post this user pinned is about tiling my kitchen backsplash. There were no links on that post that would have included this image as a resource. I could even understand a thumbnail pic, but this is also a full-blown featured photo size. And from now on, I am going to wonder whenever I see a borrowed image that clearly doesn’t belong to the post; for all I know, a person properly linking to a source could be unintentionally sharing someone else’s images. Crazy.
Pinterest, I do love ya. But maybe you should stop hitting the sauce.
This is one of those kinds of posts where there are a lot of little things going on to update you about; some of it is mushy, and none of it really warranted its own post (because most of the pictures are crap). It’s just going to be a jumbled mess of completely random things… like what it’s usually like to be inside my head.
Last Week
This year, I decided not to attend the Haven Conference in Atlanta (which started on Thursday of last week). I have gone every year since it first began and really enjoy seeing everyone (see recaps here, here, and here from the last three years), but I just felt like this year wasn’t in the cards for me. Still, since I live nearby, I got to do the best part after everyone was finished with classes: stop by their hotel for dinner with some blogging besties, like Ann Marie from White House Black Shutters. I am still so very glad that she and I met the first year of Haven. She found a selfie stick in her swag bag, so we had a little bit of fun trying to get it right.
One down, four to go (unless she has more, of course).
On Saturday night, Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl had a small get-together that I also stopped by for, and then we all went down to the lobby to say some final goodbyes. So, of course, pictures had to be taken even though we were all tired and had terrible lighting.
I came directly from a baseball game, which made things a little comical since there were some afternoon showers that soaked me through. I looked like a drowned rat (and my jeans were still wet!), but I’m thrilled we at least got one. The fact of the matter is, we bloggers love to TALK, and there’s very little time to do it. I always walk away wishing I’d had more time to spend with them. I guess the lesson here is that this is what real friendship sometimes looks like; we simply burn through the hours of great lighting and high energy, and instead put down our phones and just catch up with each others’ lives.
Earlier that same night, Brittany filmed a bunch of us (live on Periscope) as we sat around talking. Which, holy cow, I think is going to be my new favorite app thing to make foolish decisions with.
It’s pretty narcissistic as far as apps go, but it’s also a lot of fun to see and interact with folks in real time. As I looked through it, I immediately thought of the likeliest subject lines you might see in the future if you were to follow my account (download the app and look for @uglyducklingDIY if that’s the case):
“This is probably a bad idea”
“I lost a bet”
“Proof I need singing lessons”
“Charlie thinks I’m nuts (but so is she)”
To be honest, it will probably be more of the fun-to-shoot, behind-the-scenes stuff that I share (or just me, being awkward) rather than DIY tutorials. Since the Periscope broadcasts expire after 24 hours, any instructional stuff I think is useful will be made primarily for Youtube (I know I keep saying that I’m trying to do videos, so maybe Periscope will make me less camera shy?). I’m going to go ahead and apologize in advance for anyone who hasn’t yet figured out that I have a colorful vocabulary.
This Week
After a couple of days of hanging out with DIYers who love talking projects, I have quite a few on my mind that I’m dying to get to, including the counter for the laundry room, finishing the kitchen walls, and some additional build projects for the workshop. I do have to say though: after last week’s participation in Jen’s #oneboardchallenge, I have a new found respect for the DIYers who take time every week to post building plans. Guys, the work that goes into those tutorials is some serious work. I’m looking forward to the next challenge, but I’m going to need to kick my butt into gear and make sure I bring my A-game come September (click on the image below if you missed Friday’s post).
To start off on the right foot this week, I’m nearly finished with some Adirondack chairs for the backyard patio. I finished putting them together in my living room while watching TV (mostly because the weekend weather was muggy and blah, and I sometimes get the energy to build at night, so in front of the TV was really convenient!). They are now sitting in my living room corner while I try to figure out whether to stain or paint them (and what color). Any suggestions?
I’ve also been getting some new quotes for fixing the exterior siding. I got a few quotes earlier this year, which led to the whole tree-cutting thing, and then I just sort of stopped (which was kind of strange, since the exterior was the more important job, but I did the trees first because it made my summer project list easier). But after procrastinating again, I am more aware than ever that this project just can’t be put off any longer. Dollar signs are noisy little assholes, don’t you think?
Hopefully Next Week
I’ve finally settled on a new logo (!!!), which means that the new site design will be ready to launch soon! Possibly as early as next week. The layout will be a bit different than what’s going on now, but hopefully even better organization, better mobile, etc.
Finally, this… just because it made me laugh.
So, that’s what’s been going on lately. How about your world? What’s next on your to-do list?
So, here’s a fun thing to do: make yourself some long, deep, thin floating shelves for your laundry room. Admire them. Put things on them. And then realize that at only 5’2″, your new organization plan still has a few holes in it. Specifically that you can’t really reach them all that well to get to all of your everyday laundry stuff.
I know, looking at pictures of me, it’s incredibly surprising that I’m short, right? Ok, no one in the history of ever has spoken those words, but I’m almost always the shortest person in the room. So even though my plan to use some of the underutilized wall space in the top right corner of my laundry room was a much better plan than constantly reaching over my new washer and dryer to get to the shelf under the window (which is now narrower and serves as a little greenhouse), I still needed one more item to make it functional: a modern and stylish step stool. And when Jen from House of Wood announced that she wanted some building bloggers to try their hand at creating something from a single 1x8x8 board, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to 1) reach back out to the DIY blogger world (I haven’t done that much lately!) and 2) get a much-needed project crossed off the list.
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However. I procrastinated and found myself changing my mind a lot. A lot. That’s kind of the uglier side of creativity, I think. When I get inspired and have too many ideas, I tend to get overly ambitious and want to do ALL THE THINGS. Because, as you’ll see from the sheer genius of the other bloggers who participated in this challenge, you can make a lot of shit with a single board. Shelves, wine racks, benches, planters, seating, tables… the list goes on. But then you are still futzing around and you just have to jump in and get it done. So I put a little bit of a modern spin on my step stool, and I’m pretty darn happy with it. The other things I wanted to make can wait for now. (Which, btw: my newly organized garage made this whole thing a lot easier!)
pathetic attempt at taking Pinterest-y photos ;) Hi, random towel!
Also, remember how I suck at Google Sketch? I’ll upload the images from that as soon as I finish them this evening (if you recall just two short paragraphs ago, I changed my mind a lot as I made this, so the plans really couldn’t be done until the project was done). But for now, here’s pretty much how the cuts would go if you were to try this yourself:
spray paint (color of your choosing; I went with white)
nail gun
1. As for the assembly, it turned out to be easy once I started slapping ‘er together. First, you cut your biggest pieces that will become the two steps and the riser in between using your miter saw. Drill pocket holes where the bottom piece will connect to the middle, and where the middle will connect to the top.
2. Next, rip down the rest of the board into 1 1/2-inch strips using a table saw or circular saw. Then, cut them to the following sizes:
2 – 1.5″ x 5.75″ (front legs)
2 – 1.5″ x 13″ (back legs)
3 – 1.5″ x 11″ (middle and back supports)
You’ll have plenty of scrap left over to do whatever else you want.
3. Drill pocket holes in both ends of all the middle supports. I pre-primed these and gave them their first coat of paint before assembling.
4. Assembly! The middle supports are 2″ up from the bottom, and the back is 5.75″ up from the bottom (to align visually with the front step).
I created both sides first, then added the back piece to make sure everything stayed where it should be. Check to make sure it’s square and level!
5. Caulk and paint a final coat on the legs.
6. While all of this is happening, you can also, condition, stain, and poly the steps and riser. I wound up switching between the two parts as I waited for the other parts to dry. As for the stain color, I had both American Walnut and Dark Walnut from Rustoleum on hand, but didn’t wind up liking either color when I tested it out on one of the scrap pieces. So, I mixed them together, about half and half (slightly less American Walnut than Dark) and applied two coats. I’ve decided to call it Hot Walnut just for fun. And I plan to use Hot Walnut again when I stain the laundry room countertop (more on that in a different post!).
I’ve mentioned this before, but I use old socks and/or t-shirts for wiping off stain (so you’ll see a sock in some of these photos); I find that it’s a good lint-free cloth, free, and gets rid of the socks I no longer have a match for.
7. Finally, assemble the stairs and riser and quickly attach it to the base with a nail gun. I probably would have used screws, but I got impatient. And I love my nail gun.
I put it in the laundry room temporarily for these pictures, but remember to give stain some time do off-gas in your garage or a place with some ventilation. Those VOCs are no joke!
A couple of notes:
I have no idea how much weight this might hold; I tried it out temporarily as soon as I felt it was dry enough, and it seems plenty sturdy for me. Then again, I perch myself on things all the time.
I kinda wish I’d used a 5-degree angle on the legs rather than straight. I suppose I could go back and hack it a little if I really wanted, but I don’t care enough to do that right now since it works for the purpose it was made! :)
I think that adding a support piece to the front (like a lip under the first step) would also add more support if you’re looking for ideas.
Don’t forget, there are 16 other bloggers sharing some one-board magic today, so be sure to check out my fellow building badasses and feel either incredibly inspired or woefully inferior on creativity (depending on what mood you’re in today!):
