Archive for the ‘DIY’ Category

Preview

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

At this point I was hoping to be like, Hey! Check out all my stuff posted on eBay for pre-sale leading up to the big SALE! Look at all this previewed awesome furniture and other crap! Look at all that I have accomplished!

Well…that didn’t happen. Whoops.

But, I did build a little studio space (on my ghetto porch) so that I can take photos. Because why do something the easy way, when you can get all crazy and nit-picky and do it the super maniacal extreme way. I’ve been hunting for a cheap solution for this weird photo dilemma, which is that basically I need a designated area to take nice/clear/pretty photos.

Problems?

+ The house is jam packed, hoarder style.
+ There are no free walls with a corner and good light inside.
+ It is SO hard to move big furniture in and out of the tiny exterior doors.
+ The garage? HA! Where do you think all this extra stuff lives?
+ I plan on needing a nice little photo space for some time – but I want the inside of the house to stay a house.

The solution was to build these super cheap temporary walls on the back porch. Trust when I say that they are so ‘effing ghetto. Four pieces of 1/4″ drywall, six 2×4′s and some electrical tape.

Yeah. That’s right – they are literally taped and clamped together – but still freestanding so that eventually they can be moved off the porch and into the garage (if they don’t crumble out of sheer embarrassment).

During “construction” I may have broken our poor Fado porch light. Maybe I also hurt myself. Maybe I also designed them to be so cheap that I created a bunch of stupid extra work. Next time, maybe I’ll fork over a few extra dollars to build some complete frames instead of the “budget” version I thought was so brilliant (it wasn’t).

But at least. At the very least. I don’t have to look at the ugly nailed shut door and weird ghetto porch pipes anymore. This sort of confirms an idea I’ve been kicking around about doing some sort of wood wall treatment out here…

Guess what. These sloppy faux walls totally work!

Not just work, but are A-to the-MAZING.

It’s so nice and so easy to move furniture in there and not screw up my floors or bang the door frame or have the dogs jumping into every photo. I love it. LOVE LOVE. The light is great and it’s this little fun fake room I can style up however I please.

I’ve also been sorting through piles of vintage stuff fixing it up and deciding what stays and what goes. Lots of these tasty pieces never really got mentioned on the old bloggity…

Like this gorgeous Danish surfboard style rosewood coffee table. It. Is. YUMMY. Mmmmhmmmm.

Now that I built my little photo area, I’m working on getting this sale thing up and running. It’s madness, though. Total madness around here. I mean, seriously, I’m one lady and there are piles of stuff. PILES.

More previews & info soon. Better be. May 15th is coming fast.

FILED UNDER: DIY, furniture, sale

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ReadyMade

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

My little DIY fence bench was a top finalist for the ReadyMade 100 and was recreated for the magazine and published with instructions for their April/May issue. Sadly, I didn’t win top bad ass project because I failed. I’m a failure.

Oh come on, I’m just screwing around. It’s awesome and I’m super psyched to be included.

Here is the original bench in all it’s reclaimed woody glory. You can check out instructions for making it HERE. Also, it looks like you can order a book that includes all 100 projects right HERE.

Thanks to ReadyMade and all the judges for thinking I’m only a little bit of a failure. You know, on the winningest side of failure.

FILED UNDER: DIY, press

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Weedy

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

A few years back we installed almost 4,000 sqft gravel driveway with our bare hands. It was misery. Back breaking misery.

Part of the driveway installation entailed that we lay down rolls and rolls of landscaping fabric to help control the inevitable weed problem. Well, no one quite explained that weeds wouldn’t grow through the fabric, but they would totally grow on top of it. Dirt settles between the rocks and then the weeds are like, “hey guys its awesome over here – lets move in.”

Since installing the driveway, which feels like forever ago, we’ve been battling the shameful ghetto weeds about this time of year. Somehow through a mixture of the super moon, super rain storms and supernatural mystical forces bent on driving me nuts, the weeds have been particularly hardy and spiteful.

We hand pulled the bigger ones, which in some twisted irony are way easier to remove than the baby weeds. So, we tend to let these bad boys get big and then yank them. Usually the summer heat kills everything outright and we wait for the scheduled die off, but it’s been so lovely and wet out that the weeds found purchase and made themselves a little too comfortable too early in the season.

Also found some lovely artifacts hiding in the weeds caught from the wind blowing into our wide open backyard – empty cigarette boxes, trash bags, some cans, chip bags, some stuff that looked like blood – you know all the glittering detritus that Hemet bestows on us.

Weeds? I made you my bitch.

To conquer the little baby and broken weeds left over from the great weed massacre (and to deter any other punks that wanna mess with me) I gave the driveway a nice bath of salt and vinegar. Still tastes terrible though.

50 pounds of salt ($8) and a few gallons of vinegar ($3) from the local Smart & Final are my DIY and more “green” solution than grabbing some chemical weed killer from the local hardware store. Who am I kidding – have you seen the prices on that weed killer stuff? It’s OUTRAGEOUS. We need tons to cover this giant driveway, so my broke ass is going to try this salt & vinegar solution and see how it works.

BTW, after a couple days the left over weeds are looking pretty shriveled and brown; take that you bastards! Let’s see how it works out long term – I’m totally salting the earth out of vengeance, but from what I read the next few rainfalls will probably dilute it all within the next few months. Whatever, salt is cheap and weed killer is not.

FILED UNDER: DIY, driveway, landscape

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