Our Most Recent Project Is Gonna Knock Your You-Know-Whats Off!

The last year or so has felt a bit like a smorgasbord of side projects – a coloring book, a teacher’s lounge makeover, a podcast, new lighting designs, and a big ol’ beach house renovation. But behind the scenes, we Petersiks have had one more thing in the works for a while. And it definitely takes the proverbial “random project” cake. But we are so, so, SO excited to finally share it with you guys!

We’re a shoes-off-at-the-door household, but there’s no denying that our feet felt a little chilly at times. Plus, just like you hang art or paint your walls to express your design personality – we though, shouldn’t your feet do the same thing? And thus the idea for PETERSOKS was born. Well, that and the play on our last name was just too pun-tastic to pass up (if you’re new here, we’re the Petersiks and we like puns).

After much research and prototyping (you wouldn’t believe the engineering that goes into sockwear!), we finally teamed up with the most awesome manufacturer out there and it’s like a dream come true to work with them on our ‘SOKS. They’re actually the people behind celebrity socktrepenuers like Rob Kardashian and Jessica Alba’s husband! So basically, baller status when it comes to socks (footballer status?)

PETERSOKS are launching this week with a variety of women’s and men’s designs, and kids will be coming soon. Each features a design that references things closest to our heart (chihuahuas, tools, burgers, etc) or things we just thought were fun and cool. Cacti are so hot right now in homes, so why not wear them on your feet?

We’re also constantly submitting new designs and trying to push the sockvelope. We’re actually working with a certain jewelry brand that we love (you guys know the one) to make these mix-and-match versions that have a little DIY element to them. You get to pick your stone color, style, and placement. We’re tentatively calling them “KENDRA SOKS.”

We can’t wait to see you guys all decked out in your favorite SOK styles. They’re great for adding personality to your office outfit, for lounging around at home, or even for tackling a renovation. Hint, hint.

And oh yeah, if it wasn’t clear by now… HAPPY APRIL FOOLS!

Nope, we’re not getting into the sock game, but if any of these pics piqued your interest, here’s where we got all of the wacky socks: bikes, hamburgers, tools, chihuahuas, and stripes. The others were from Target on clearance, so we can’t seem to find the online. And yes, all of those Kendra Scott earrings are Sherry’s (she fancies herself a bit of a connoisseur).

And if you’re in the mood to relive any of our old April Fools antics, here they are:

• 2016 – An app for swapping out decor items
• 2015 – Siri for home decorating
• 2014 – A household crafting challenge (or is it?)
• 2013 – “Hush” – our debut music video (still our all time favorite)
• 2012 – A totally reasonable toilet purchase
• 2011 – Burger’s very own playroom
• 2010 – A super classy curb appeal upgrade
• 2009 – The purrfect light fixtures

PS: Sock modeling is much more difficult than we ever expected. So glad this isn’t really happening.

*This post contains affiliate links

The post Our Most Recent Project Is Gonna Knock Your You-Know-Whats Off! appeared first on Young House Love.

Our Most Recent Project Is Gonna Knock Your You-Know-Whats Off! published first on http://ift.tt/t7ufHF

FROSTA bike wall mount

You can spend a lot of money for a decent bike wall mount. This one is pretty cheap and easy to build:

Materials: Frosta stool, screws, self-adhesive rubber pads

Take 2 Frosta legs and saw off about 10 cm (depending on the width of your handlebars).
You might use sand paper to clean the edges.
Mount the legs to the wall as seen in the pictures.

Attach the rubber pads where the bike will be placed later.

Done!

~ by Patrick

The post FROSTA bike wall mount appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

FROSTA bike wall mount published first on www.ikeahackers.net

Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 1!

Perhaps the most stressful period of working on the Olivebridge Cottage project was, paradoxically, the period in which the smallest amount of physical work was taking place. It was almost three months into the nightmarish beginnings of the physical demo and renovation work, our situation was dire, the building department was requiring that the project be evaluated by engineers, the homeowners were increasingly frustrated and anxious, and I was looking for a way to bail on the whole project so they could, in turn, choose to bring in someone better qualified to enact the engineering proposals and turn the situation around for everyone.

So that was fun.

The same day that the building inspector told us we needed engineers, I found engineers at a well-reviewed local firm. I went straight from working on site into their office, covered in dust and debris and looking like a complete mess, and got things set up for a consult later in the week. I was just a *tad* stressed and might have given the impression of being a complete lunatic.

It’s tempting to think that two adult men with decades of experience evaluating structures would be amused by this little project, but they were not.  As it happens, they said  it was the worst house they’d ever seen. Then they told me this cute little story about a house they provided plans for out on Cape Cod, where—if memory serves—essentially an ENTIRE HOUSE was sitting precariously atop a few 4×4 posts, the bottoms of which each rested on a small piece of flagstone sitting right on the ground.  Worse than that. Awesome!

Luckily, they weren’t intimidated. Our problems were solvable. We spent time going through the house and all of the issues I’d already identified, and then they walked around and took a billion photos and thorough measurements and said they’d get to work.

Since I began blogging about this house, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how I’d recommend homebuyers avoid falling into a similarly bad situation. That’s the subject of a much longer and much different blog post, but I guess the first part of my answer would be to try to “read” the structure. See that graphic, above? This house is only 1300 square feet, yet it’s comprised of FIVE different structures. #1 is the original cottage (built, evidently, as a little three-season hunting cabin, but in the manner of a garden shed), and 2, 3, 4, and 5 are all additions onto that original structure. 3 and 5 are both enclosed porches, which often aren’t built that well to begin with and then tend not to receive the most sound upgrades during the enclosure process. Of course, it’s also helpful to learn about the housing development history in the area (this kind of thing is actually common where this house is), ask neighbors what they know, and see if there are records for past building permits.

This addition-on-addition approach does not all NECESSARILY add up to structural problems, but I think it’s a good indication that there could be structural problems. It also makes renovation difficult, because each space is constructed differently and to a different standard, and maybe finished (including wired, plumbed, heated, etc.) at different times. #2 and #4, for example, had reasonably solid concrete foundations from what we could tell, but #1 had a few cinderblocks in some places and simple rubble in others. We didn’t know what was under #5, so we had to find out. The house was also on four slightly different levels with steps up and down everywhere, with seven different types of flooring and three different types of heating, which is kind of a recipe for general awkwardness and difficulty when trying to renovate a more flowing, simplified, open space.

This also meant that we had NO IDEA what this would mean from the perspective of our new engineers and how much work they would require us to do. If you have to redo ALL the foundations, at what point does saving any part of the structure at all become ridiculously impractical, particularly when the structure isn’t really worth saving? This isn’t some gorgeous old thing with great bones, mind you. The engineers were understandably hesitant about telling us anything until we got the full plans—I think they didn’t want to be too hasty or misspeak and inspire false hope about our prospects.

It was so stressful and made it incredibly hard to plan our next moves. From my perspective the only thing that made sense was waiting for the engineering report to come in. I was stuck in the middle of trying to keep my cool so the homeowners could keep their cool, while also prodding the engineers to move it along, while also trying to stay in their good graces so they’d be more inclined to really put their thinking caps on instead of throwing their hands up. Finding code-compliant, structurally sound, and as-budget-friendly-as-possible solutions to each issue big and small was a sizable task.

It was tricky.

This is the cottage when I started this job, but what we were really waiting on with the plans was an enhanced version of the cottage, not an exact carbon copy. We were tied to the original footprint due to zoning regulations, but we were all in agreement that the original house—even with our initially planned modifications—was very awkward in a number of ways, particularly the living room set-up. The enclosed front porch attached to the skinny living room space was particularly difficult to work with, since you had to step down to get into it and the living room also functioned as an entryway and the main artery to get anywhere else in the house. Add to this that almost half of it was given over to the wood stove and surrounding stonework, and the room was crazy hard to arrange in a way that didn’t look so stupid.

In our original renovation plan, above, the big changes are obviously to the kitchen and the elimination of the half-bath, but we’d also decided to remove the posts between the living room and the enclosed porch, insert a structural beam, and frame up the floor 6-7 inches to at least level things out. That plan was problematic (still choppy, too-low ceiling height, maybe not possible if the beam would have to be too large, which it probably would be for a 20 foot span…) and never really sat right anyway, so whatever. Adios, old plan.

So knowing that the porch area would need to be rebuilt completely, this became the new basic plan. It’s still kind of weird but I think in an OK way, and makes the living room a real ROOM instead of a big pass-through.

How exactly we should handle that bigger space was never particularly refined at this stage of things, but it felt like there were some good options to do something way cool.

We were going to accomplish this by keeping half of the existing living room roof up to the ridge (right side in the image above), and then running new rafters down from the ridge to the front wall of the house, matching the slope of the existing roof over the dining room. So outside, the house would go from this:

To more like this:

Which is not winning any architectural awards (and would have been further tweaked (especially the street-facing windows), but the basic strokes worked really nicely with keeping as much of the original house as we could while ALSO fixing what we knew at the time needed fixing and ALSO making big improvements to the layout in the process. It’s easy to change out window sizes and stuff before building, but I needed to give something to the engineers to base their plans off of and this is more or less what they got.

The whole process was pretty fast-paced. I think the hardest part for the homeowners to take were these lulls in the physical work, when the house was just sitting without any visible transformation, so they were very anxious to get things underway. This was coupled with the inconvenient truth that we’d worked through spring and most of summer and were headed into fall…in upstate New York. If we were going to start this project before the following spring—leaving the house vacant and in serious disrepair for another six months during the winter—we were getting to a point where we really had to get moving at least on whatever foundation work would be required.

ANYWAY, since we had to affordably re-side the entire house anyway, I proposed a simple board-and-batten treatment in black, potentially with cedar under the eaves because doesn’t that seem cool and fun? I love a little black house in the woods.

We also scaled back the kitchen quite a bit in an effort to keep costs down. BEFORE YOU FREAK, let’s remember that this is a second home for the clients and a vacation property they intended to rent…which makes a small and simple kitchen sort of preferable, I think. If you’re renting a home and don’t know your way around the kitchen, it’s not as hard to find things or remember where to put them away…anyway, it all made a lot of sense at the time.

Check out that sink location. Drink it in. ;)

SO. Lots of waiting. Lots of feeling sad. Then the engineering report came in. Gulp.

The engineers were great about addressing each issue and figuring out suitable and practical solutions. It was their judgment that areas of the house that were still intact could mostly remain that way, so just the fact that we didn’t have to completely tear down the house and start from scratch was a relief.

I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible to follow. Apologies if it’s all just nonsense! Let’s start at the boots:

The living room foundation needs to be rebuilt completely.

The kitchen and dining room foundation was actually permitted to stay in spite of some issues, but at a minimum we would have to trench all the way around it and add rigid foam insulation (I didn’t even know this was a thing people did, but apparently it is done) to protect it from frost heaves. The section in red between the dining and living rooms would have to be completely built (not even rebuilt!) because whoever put in this foundation relied on the living room “foundation” for that run, which was not smart because the living room foundation was literally a pile of rocks.

The front porch slab would have to be demolished, with the new foundation for the living room making up the footprint.

In the back of the house, the engineers said that the foundation under the master bedroom, bathroom, and hall closet (#4) was fine to remain. Hallelujah.

The sunroom—or the other enclosed porch, #5—would need some investigative work because it was impossible to see what was happening below the floor. Ideally there would be a concrete slab (and we thought there might be because the floor was tiled, and maybe they did it right over a slab?) but we didn’t know what to expect, and we were now required to find out. If there wasn’t a slab, we’d have to put one in.

Similar story with the floor framing. All new in the living room. Modifications to the dining/kitchen to support the new joists on that new section of foundation. Again, #5 is a mystery but we knew we were possibly looking at framing in a new floor in there depending on what we found below the existing floor.

Of course, walls! Again, living room and front-porch-turned-living-room are all new.

Dining and kitchen were OK-ish, not great. There was some substantial rot to some framing and a lot of the sheathing, meaning we’d be stripping down to the studs inside and out. We’d already rebuilt the front and back walls, but the engineers wanted us to add a second jack stud to support our headers for the window openings on those walls. It was frustrating because our original framing was actually permissible according to code, but this was one of those things where we were tied to having to do—at minimum—whatever the engineers said.

In the guest room, we’d already gutted those two highlighted walls while framing in different windows and the sliding doors. All that work was fine, but all the walls are 2×4 framing and—short of spray foam insulating the house, which was not remotely budgeted for—we’d have to fur out those walls two inches to accommodate fiberglass insulation that would meet the minimal R-Value requirements (R-21 for exterior walls).

Annnnd the roofs. Oy vey.

The plan to potentially retain the back half of the living room roof and re-frame the front half was nixed, so the living room is completely new. Foundation to roof, all new.

The problem with that is that we had to find a way to tie into the existing roofs over #4 (shingles) and #5 (EPDM rubber because of the low slope) which were both in fairly poor condition. We weren’t being required to rebuild them but we would likely have to re-roof those sections to get everything water-tight and functioning correctly. On the plus side, the roofing would all match? Oh joy.

In the living/dining area (#2), we had 2×6 rafters sistered into the original 2×4 rafters, but both were under-sized for the span of the rafters. So we’d have to sister in bigger rafters next to those, then cut out the space at the ridge where the rafters met to insert a structural beam across the width of the room, with a built-up post down to the foundation on the exterior wall and another down to the header for the opening between the living and dining room on the interior wall. Then we’d need to tear off the layers of shingles and underlayment, possibly/probably re-seath, re-roof, re-insulate on the interior…OH BOY HOW FUN. OH BOY HOW DUMB.

See where I’m going with this, maybe? The dining/kitchen needed major work to the foundation, floor system, walls, roof, insulation, plumbing, and electric. That’s the entire thing! And that’s when you have to think long and hard about what you’re saving, and whether it’s worth it. All that work would still be less expensive than completely rebuilding that part of the house, but is the cost savings worth it? To go through the exercise of redoing the whole thing and then still potentially have a lot of issues with it down the line, still have walls and rooflines that aren’t level, still have an improved but iffy foundation…it’s not great.

I voiced this to the clients who understood but weren’t entirely convinced, and it wasn’t my call to make, so we all went to our separate corners to think it out a little. Now it’s early September, the homeowners want to start construction in two weeks to beat the winter, and we’re deciding what to do about…oh, half the house. Totes normal.

TIME. IS. A-TICKIN’.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the plans, but they were delivered in the form of a slim 6-page document containing exactly 10 small diagrams, each with a bunch of arrows and a spattering of text. They were minimal. Since we hadn’t yet locked down a contractor (ALL THE PANICS), it seemed very important for me to understand every single thing on those plans. So I set a meeting with the engineers, as one does.

I kept Adriana and Barry, the homeowners, informed of what was going on while this was unfolding. And when I told Adriana about the upcoming meeting with the engineers, she told me she wanted to come. I assured her that it was just a boring meeting about really technical stuff that they included in the report that I wasn’t entirely clear on, and it really wasn’t necessary for her to make the trip, but she insisted on her personal attendance.

“I mean, sure, if that’s what you want to do. It’s your house and your money—I’ll see ya there!”

So we sit down with the engineers and start talking. And we’re going over everything point by point, around which time Adriana interjects.

“Now, while we’re talking about that, Barry and I were thinking. About going up.”

“Up?”

“How hard would it be to add a second floor over the part of the house we’re rebuilding?”

OH. MY. GOD. WOMAN. WHAT. THE. FUCK. The engineer was the first to respond, because I was speechless.

“Not that hard; we’d just have to adjust the foundation specs a little to compensate for the additional load.”

“OK, I think we’ll do that.”

“Sure.”

And I’m just sitting there. LIKE WAIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED. I came to my senses:

“OK, if you’re serious about this then we have to hire an architect who can turn this around quickly.”

“I was thinking you could do it.”

WHAT WOULD GIVE YOU THAT IDEA, YOU PSYCHO? Again, speechless. The engineer turns to me:

“I mean, everything you’ve given us so far is all we’d really need to modify these plans, so that works for us if you’re up for it.”

NO. EVERYONE STOP. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING.

Here’s the thing. I write a blog that some people read and that’s all very nice. Heretofore, I’d worked essentially as a decorator which people like to call an “interior designer” but they’re actually different things and I am technically neither. I have little schooling when it comes to this stuff, no architecture or design-related degree, no experience with new construction, no experience managing a project of this scope, had never designed a house, and a week prior to this meeting I was trying to hand over my proverbial letter of resignation.

And now they want me to design a new fucking house.

In two weeks.

Top to bottom.

Soup to nuts.

Back to the drawing board, literally. Time to learn about stairs.

Psssst! Olivebridge Cottage is an ongoing series about a renovation that flew off the rails (and then found its way back on)! For lots of backstory and schadenfreude, check out these past posts!

1.  New Season, New Project!
2. Plans for Olivebridge Cottage!
3. Oh Dear, Here We Go…
4. Little House of Horrors
5. From Bad to Worse (And Worse and Worse and Worse)
6. Blogger is Hired to Renovate, Mistakenly Destroys Ulster County Art Piece “House”
7. Olivebridge Cottage: 2.0!

Designing Olivebridge Cottage 2.0: Part 1! published first on manhattan-nest.com

Coffee capsule holder hack

It was always a problem for us, where to store the coffee capsules. We simply could not choose any holder version from the manufacturer, because they also needed a lot of space like simple boxes. So we decided to make our own, which can be moved out of the way after use.

For the 40cm long capsule holder we used some components of the following sets:
- 2 pcs. Grundtal single rail 40cm
- 2 pcs. Grundtal double rail 40cm
- 1 pc. Grundtal shelf (6xRails) 80cm
- 1 spring cylinder from Malm with 6 drawers (Wear a wide smile, and you can get one from the customer service )

(If you are OK with a 80cm long version, you only need the 80cm shelf, one Single rail, and the spring of course)

1. The trickiest part was to remove the unnecessary bends from the shelf frame.
2. Drill two holes for the spring as seen on the picture.
3. Assembly as usual with one little difference. At one end, attach the two short ears with longer, or double ended screws (found in the package of the single rail Grundtal).
4. Attach the spring
5. Position, and fine tune. The closer you screw the spring’s loose end to the base, the greater the angle will be when opened, and the capsules may fall out.
6. Have a well earned coffee of your choice.

Warning! Do not let it opened by the spring only! It is far too strong. Follow, and hold back the movement with your hands!

~ by Bence Fazekas

ps.: 2 sets of double rail 80cm, and 1 set of single rail 80cm for sale…

The post Coffee capsule holder hack appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

Coffee capsule holder hack published first on www.ikeahackers.net

Double sided HEMNES shoe storage

Take 2 Hemnes shoe cabinet from IKEA.

Photo: IKEA.com

Cut the feet. Place them back to back.

Remove the top.

Then replace the top with a piece of wood of your choice.

Cover the sides with a piece of wood.

That’s it.

~ by Florent, FC Renovation.

The post Double sided HEMNES shoe storage appeared first on IKEA Hackers.

Double sided HEMNES shoe storage published first on www.ikeahackers.net

My Favorite Hardware Store is…My Basement.

On Saturday, this blog turned 7 years old. SEVEN! That’s so old! I celebrated by thrifting most of the day and buying a few things that I did not need but wanted and didn’t have the self-restraint to leave behind. Some things never change!

But other things do change. A lot has changed, actually. In particular, everything?

When I started this blog, I was a freshman in college who tried—mostly in vain—to make my dorm room cute and nice until I could get the hell out and move to an apartment. In service of this goal, one of the most important things I brought with me to college was a clear plastic “men’s shoebox” from the Container Store, onto which I had adhered a label reading, simply, “tools.” In my possession, I think I had a hammer, a selection of nails and picture hooks, a small spackle knife, a pair of vice-grips, a tape measure, and a manual screwdriver with a bunch of interchangeable bits.

I was the only person on the floor to bring anything like this to college (this was New York City, after all), so my little teeny tool kit ended up being a valuable piece of social currency. I wasn’t just that guy in room 218, I was that guy with a hammer. Try not to be too jealous. It was a long time ago and I’m not nearly that cool anymore.

When I did rent that first apartment, my supplies got upgraded to an entire drawer, which I remember thinking was SO legit. I mean, I didn’t have any friends with a set of clamps and multiple sheets of sandpaper. I could pretty much do anything!

As time passed and the projects got more numerous and more involved, I started to accumulate more. More and more and more. I started having to buy actual power tools on an as-needed basis, fill out the selection of manual tools, and figure out when keeping the last dregs of a can of wood stain just wasn’t worth the storage space. After a year I moved to Brooklyn to an apartment that needed more work than I’d done on the first one, and I was also designing and building stuff for clients, and so the collection continued to grow.

And then I bought the house. And it’s been almost four years since then, so maybe you can imagine. If you’ve ever renovated, you know how many tools and supplies are involved, and how many trips to the hardware store you end up making over the course of a single project. You acquire a TON of stuff, especially if you’re anything like me and end up keeping and storing anything that might still be remotely useful to some future task. You stop returning small extra purchases to the hardware store because you’ll use them at some point anyway, and start to think you could practically build an additional house with all the supplies you have to renovate the first one. It seems crazy, but also not crazy?

Of course, just HAVING all that stuff doesn’t necessarily equate to using all that stuff, because you have to be able to find it all! This is harder than it sounds, because when you’re mid-project and you need to something, you want to be able to grab it quickly. If you can’t, you might think you actually don’t have the thing you thought you had, so you end up buying it again. So you gotta keep it organized. Organized-ish. Organized enough. Because THEN, this magical thing happens. You’re doing a project and you actually have everything you need and it feels so badass you can’t even stand yourself. And since you’re not buying much stuff anymore because you’ve already effectively transported a small hardware store into your own home, you can delude yourself into thinking that renovating is cheap! It’s all very satisfying. Hoarding, but with purpose.

This is why I’m SO GLAD that I put some real effort into my basement a while ago, even though I haven’t really discussed it here! The basement was TERRIFYING when I bought the house, primarily because it was so dark. I think there were three lights in the entire space, all activated either by pull-chains or tightening the lightbulb until it turned on. Picture lots of groping in the dark for lights and running into cobwebs and tripping on the uneven floor and just being generally spooked.

Now, this basement is what it is. It’s never going to be a finished living space or anything like that, but I’ve tried to make it nicer and, someday, might make a few more improvements just to polish it up a little. By the way, the beams and steel supports were here before I was, which I always think is kind of remarkable. Somebody did some major work on this house back in the day! There was a family who owned the house between 1962-1973, and I think they’re responsible for this among other improvements. I’d love to find them and thank them for taking care of her! Unfortunately google hasn’t turned up anything helpful for me regarding their whereabouts. I’d guess at least the kids are still out there but I don’t know where.

ANYWAY. The first and most important thing I did? LIGHTING. IT CHANGED EVERYTHING. Now there are 16(!) lights, all on a single switch at the top of the basement stairs. Wiring a simple circuit like this is somewhat time-consuming (what isn’t, really?) but not technically difficult. I think it took me a couple of days. It’s the kind of project that’s good practice if you want to get comfortable with simple home wiring tasks. A lot of electrical work is very straightforward and approachable for homeowners, even though it seems kind of scary. If you’re thinking about it, read up! There are a lot of good books out there like this one, and big box home improvement stores always have similar books for purchase. Also check to make sure it’s legal for you to undertake your own wiring work—it is for homeowners here as long as it meets code and passes inspection.

With the basement all lit up and gorgeous, I turned my attention to storage! The house came with these old and VERY cobbled-together shelves, which I sort of loved in a way because they were just so scrappy. But they were not functional so rather than try to modify them, I just ripped them out.

Look how crazy! These must have been here for a long time because the concrete floor was poured around them.

Bam! Shelves! Fancy! I bought these simple utility shelves (similar to these), which are cheap and very sturdy. The shelves themselves are a fairly thin particleboard that does bend and bow over time (particularly on the shelves with heavier items), so maybe someday I’ll swap them for some thicker plywood or something. For now they’re fine. It’s hard to care about stuff like that when you don’t have a kitchen.

When it comes to how things are organized, I’m not convinced there’s anything that makes this easy. I’m certainly not dutifully putting each thing away right after I use it, but I try to spend a little time every couple of weeks (more or less, depending on how much I’m working on) resetting and putting everything back where it belongs. Otherwise I end up with 7 packed IKEA bags full of tools and supplies on the floor.

I won’t claim it’s a flawless system, but it works for me! I don’t have a pegboard or a nice big rolling tool chest with a bunch of shallow drawers (have you ever looked at the prices on those bad boys??). Instead, it’s basically just a huge version of what I’ve been doing since I brought that little plastic container with me to college! I like keeping things in clear plastic bins, I guess.

Here’s what we have going on with these shelves, from left to right:

1. Wood stains and poly. A Dremel. A jigsaw. Antique plumbing escutcheons. A crock pot for stripping hardware. All the screws, washers, nails, that kind of stuff. Manual sanding tools, the finish nailer and nails, clamps, rags, the staple gun and staples, velcro, weatherstripping, leftover subway tile, tiling supplies, and window repair supplies.
2. Safety equipment like respirators and gloves, batteries, soldering supplies, anchors, door and cabinet hardware, assorted old house bits and bobs, wrenches and pliers, sandpaper, the mouse sander, the oscillating saw and blades, manual screwdrivers, rubber mallets, hammers, pry bars, sawzall blades, levels, manual saws, tin snips, pain scrapers, framing squares, pens and pencils, plug-in drills, drill bits, empty plastic containers, chisels, box cutters, pens, pencils, and the requisite container of random IKEA hardware.
3. Paint sprayer, router, pneumatic siding nailer, hand planer, various cleaners and sealants, orbital sander, aluminum flashing, construction adhesive, wood glues, various solvents and chemicals, spray paint, leftover VCT flooring and mastic, wallpaper removal supplies, shelving brackets, L-brackets and mending strips, concrete binding adhesive, and what I think might be an original plaster ceiling medallion which was down here when I bought the house.

And on the other side, more shelves! These nicer metro-style shelves were secondhand and are great. From left to right we’ve got…

1. Assorted crap that I’m saving for an upcoming project!
2. All paints, spackle compounds (I have a few varieties, but always go back to Ready Patch), my Kreg Jig and Kreg Crown Pro, siding nails, and framing nails for the pneumatic guns. All that paint is leftovers from past projects (I KNOW) but will get used up shortly and save a lot of money in the process. Full gallons can be re-tinted, too, as long as the formulas are compatible!
3. More paint! Cans of spray foam, different types of primer, Bondo (my one true love!), caulks, paint brushes, adhesives, hole saws, supplies for drywall and plaster repair, painting supplies, and Shop Vac accessories.

Then over here, there’s…

1. Grout, leftover tile from Anna’s bathroom floor, a pneumatic flooring nailer, a garden sprayer.
2. 6 mil plastic, lightbulbs, an old pot also for stripping hardware, cork contact paper.
3. Assortment of NM electrical cable, power strips, light switches, outlets, switch plate covers.
4. Electrical boxes, utility light fixtures, supplies for small re-wiring and lamp-making projects, drop cloths, and other electrical supplies like clamp connectors, electrical tape, breakers, wire nuts, staples, and conduit straps.
5. Pex fittings, other assorted plumbing supplies, and a belt sander.

Here’s my nice stockpile of light fixtures. There are more but they didn’t fit on the shelves.

I feel shame.

The furniture/old sink hoard has been worse in the past but this is just the basement. There’s more. There’s lots more. It’s just elsewhere.

We also have in attendance a pile of old framing lumber and a pile of moldings that have been removed during demo in various parts of the house. And some old wide-plank pine tongue-and-groove subfloor. And a bigger pile of narrower old pine tongue-and-groove subfloor which you can’t really see. I got 99 problems but having enough old lumber ain’t one.

Oh yeah and then there’s this area, which is where I keep…this stuff? Old doors, old window sashes, a tabletop, a billion chair bases, and some other random things.

My favorite part of the basement, though, is the room right under the kitchen. I actually think this room could be fixed up a little and turn into more of a workshop space one day. Until then, it’s where the lumber goes.*

*BECAUSE THE GARAGE IS ALREADY COMPLETELY FULL OF LUMBER. I don’t know if you’re ready for the garage. Let’s see how this goes first.

We’ve got some leftover Pex pipes, various trim pieces, beadboard from the solarium, beadboard from the mudroom, beadboard from the downstairs bathroom…I love beadboard and am so excited to repurpose this material for some upcoming stuff! There’s also more framing lumber, yellow pine flooring, fir flooring, and a totally absurd amount of lath.

I struggle with the lath. I recognize this is ridiculous. I feel like I have to do something cool with it, but I haven’t figured out what! I think it comes down to the fact that I’m not sure I actually like stuff that’s made out of lath (unless Ariele Alasko makes it, but I think she’s mostly moved on from that). I mean, now that I can buy a big fake lath piece of “wall art” at Target, it just seems sort of played out. And I don’t want to toss it because it’s part of my house, but maybe I just have to accept that it really isn’t anymore? And be OK with that? And use it for something practical, like firewood? Or give it to someone who is more inclined to do something crafty with it than I am?

LOL. That all makes way too much sense. It can’t be right. I’ll just store it indefinitely. Forget I said anything.

OH, and by the way, isn’t it fun how you can see the outline of where the stairs used to come down from the kitchen? Those stairs were removed nearly 100 years ago, but I love that there’s no mystery about where they were.

SO ANYWAY. There it is. My basement.

And since I started this post with blog-i-versary talk, I’ll end it by just saying a big, sincere thank you. This blog has been such a strange and fun and unexpected experience, and has fundamentally affected my life in so many ways. It’s a big part of who I am that I owe to you—the people who read, comment, share, and make this still fun after 7 years. I’ll try to make year 8 the best one yet!

My Favorite Hardware Store is…My Basement. published first on manhattan-nest.com

Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished

I love a baller room makeover as much as the next person (Lisa Vanderpump’s closet? I could stare at it for HOURS), but scrapping all of your existing stuff and completely overhauling every nook and cranny of your room isn’t always realistic, especially if you don’t have a Housewives-sized budget. Sometimes using what you have and just getting a few new things to revive the entire room is the sweet spot (have I mentioned how much fun I had staging my friend’s house to sell a few weeks ago?!). So when my best friend asked for some help with her bare bones living room, I immediately started shouting out ideas and scribbling sketches like a lone weirdo playing solo Pictionary.

You can see where we started below shortly after they moved in. Pretty sparse with just a rug, sofa, armchair, and tufted ottoman. It’s their “formal” living room, so the TV and big cozy sectional is elsewhere – but this room still gets lots of use (by the kiddos, for holiday entertaining, for spirited adult game nights, etc). After the move she was feeling so underwhelmed by how her existing stuff looked, she actually had convinced herself everything needed to be craigslisted so she could start over.

In her mind that felt like the only option since she was so tired of the things she had, and she just couldn’t imagine them ending up in a space she truly LOVED. But her current reality = three young kids (and a cat). So after some pretty deep talks about what we coined “that sticky fingers and rogue Cheerio dust life” – all off which will be around for at least five more years – she realized she would much rather wait a few more years to update her sofa and rug with something awesome that her kids would probably be a lot nicer to when they’re a little older.

Enter Captain Optimism stage right (that’s me, btw – my other aliases include Sergeant Enthusiasm and Petty Officer Peppy).  I was all “Woah, woah, woah – this stuff is neutral enough that it can work with anything! Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Then we took a long conversational detour to discuss how weird that whole baby/bathwater expression is, but eventually circled back to the task at hand: me successfully convincing her to Tim Gunn it in there (aka: make it work).

By just moving in some stuff she already owned and purchasing a couple of accent chairs, a pair of super inexpensive bookshelves, and three pieces of art that she adores – we breathed a ton of new life into her old stuff (btw, her neutral sofa and armchair are more tan and less pink in person than they look in these pics). Plus everything we added will not only work with this existing stuff, but should she replace their seating or their rug down the line, well, these new pieces will play nicely with whatever else she chooses.

The main “projects” in the room were the gold display shelves flanking the couch. They were a DIY effort that we tackled together and they only required two $50 Ikea shelves, this gold spray paint (the primer is built-in so it’s just one step, and it’s the best gold color I’ve found), and this marble contact paper. As for the how-to details, after we assembled the frames of each bookshelf (leaving the actual shelves aside), we spray painted both of them with a few thin and even coats of gold spray paint and allowed them to cure outside for two days so they wouldn’t stink up the house or get dinged up when we brought them inside.

Here’s a detail of the bottom shelf (you can see the top shelf in the pic above). All of the middle shelves are glass, but the top and bottom were solid metal – so when we dressed them up with the marbleized contact paper, we only covered the visible side of each one. It was sorta like wrapping a present where you just fold an inch or so of excess around the backside of each one. The contact paper didn’t affect the fit, so they still slid right into place. It was an idea that she found on Pinterest a while back and had always wanted to try – and it could not have been easier.

The other high-impact addition was the art. The large piece on the back wall is this photograph from Minted (in the 40 x 30″ size with the whitewashed herringbone frame – my favorite of theirs). The other two that were added to the mix are Paris View and Day in Paris (both 24 x 18″ with the same whitewashed frame).

The art was definitely the splurge (the total for all three pieces came to around $480 with a discount code that we googled) but thanks to such inexpensive Ikea bookcases, and the fact that they kept their existing sofa/chair/rug/ottoman instead of rebuying any major pieces, the makeover still came in under budget. Best of all the art has become their new favorite thing in the room, especially because of what it represents to them. She and her husband go to France once a year (he goes for business, and she gets to tag along for fun) so they love having a little bit of France in their living room. I know, I’m jealous too. #NeverBeenToEurope

The funny thing is that everyone who walks into the room says “Woah, that’s such a cool picture of your husband!!!” because he wears a bright orange jacket like that all the time. So people literally think the guy in the foreground is him, which leads to some pretty hilarious “I can’t believe you think I can take a picture like that!” revelations from my BFF. Sometimes she’s like “oh, you know, just a little snap I got on my phone...”

Also: this is Kitty Purry (named after Katie Perry’s cat by their oldest child). I like her because she matches the art. Also because she’s a sweet kitty who only occasionally makes my eyes itch thanks to my stellar cat-intolerant genetics.

Let’s bring it back around to the before shot one more time, just to show one last “zone” that we added to fill out the room.

The only other purchases for the room were the two $65 ghost chairs that we added on the exposed edge of the rug, which help the seating area feel more complete and extra functional (now we can squeeze in two more butts on game night). They actually already owned two of these acrylic chairs in their dining room, so I just dragged them in here to test them out. We liked that the clear acrylic lets your eye travel through them (if they were larger or more solid it might feel like a jarring “wall” of chairs in your face). Once they were sold on the look, they just ordered two more so they weren’t short on dining room chairs. And that side table between them? That’s a basket they already had turned upside down. How’s that for using what you have?

We also brought in (and anchored!) a leaning mirror they already owned for one last hit of gold in the room. She got it a few years ago at West Elm, but it’s back in stock in brass (it tends to go in and out, so here’s a similar one on Wayfair). And for the accessories on the shelves, we just used stuff she had around the house – some magazines stacked horizontally, framed photos, boxes, vases, and these perfectly-sized lamps that put out a nice glow at night. Most of their books live on built-ins in the other room, so these shelves got to be more decorative and light.

For anyone else who is faced with bare shelves, or crazy cluttered ones, my best shelf-styling tip would be that a few larger scale items are better than a bunch of little busy or piddly looking ones, and I love decorative boxes, stacks of mags and books, framed photos, and a few vases – perhaps with some cheap grocery store flowers if you’re feeling fancy (we paid $4 total for the two bunches that you see in the after pics).

Here’s a little board full of ideas if you’re looking to fill out your shelves with items other than the books & magazines you already have on hand:

1 / 2 / 3 /4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16

This probably isn’t the last time you’ll see this house (you’ve actually already seen their son’s room, and we’re slowly working with them on a bunch more). But I just couldn’t wait to share this tale of turning a room’s frown upside down with just a few new items. Total time spent: around 5 hours including planning, measuring, assembling, spray painting, marble-papering, ordering things online, and hanging prints. Taking a detail shot for the post just as Kitty Purry saunters by: priceless.

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The post Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished appeared first on Young House Love.

Easy Makeover: Taking A Neutral Living Room From Plain To Polished published first on http://ift.tt/t7ufHF