Tag: DIY

Compost Creation

This happened two weekends ago in a day of productive fervor. Then I was too tired to think about it.

We copied John of YHL and made a compost bin out of old pallets–our pallets are waaay older than John’s which either makes us vintage and cool or janky and ghetto. Take your pick (I encourage you to pick the former). Yes, after raking the front and back lawn and taking the leaves to the dump, I noticed a pile of pallets behind an old building. We snagged a few and were frankly a little paranoid about getting in trouble. Cops out here are bored and always looking for something to do.

inspiration! or PINspiration!

Unfortunately, our ancient pilfered pallets came in an interesting variety of shapes and sizes (including a cute and useful mini pallet) so the finished product looks much less polished than our PINspiration (yep, I went there). Also it doesn’t help that the photo looks like I took it on my cell phone… Come on camera, I know (at least I thought) you can (could) do better.

We attached the sides and the backs with (surprisingly expensive) L brackets at the top and bottom. You can spy one there in the photo. We had a hinge leftover from our other pallet project (they sell them in pairs but we needed 3 for the room divider) and we hinged the mini one for a kind of door. It’s a little wobbly and eventually we’ll strengthen and stabilize it with a second hinge.

All in all the project came in at $8. I thought $2 each was steep for L brackets but what do I know?

As for the stuff inside it, I didn’t really research composting so… if I’m doing anything wrong, world, please feel free to let me know. Inside the heap are lots and lots of leaves, some of them I’d raked into a pile a month ago and didn’t bag up… smelled like potting soil when I shoveled it up to transfer, which I think is a good sign. Also included is some paper, kitchen scraps (vegetables and coffee grounds) and a leftover half-bag of real potting soil. And I mixed it up well.

So… what do you think? It’s nice keeping some stuff out of the trash can…

A New Winter Coat

A new winter coat… of PAINT, that is, on the outside of the WHOLE house.

It’s a long story. Get your cup of coffee ready. When we last spoke of the outside of the house, it looked like this:

Pink-ish with burgundy-ish shutters. Classic southwest. The master plan was to patch some of the more heinous cracks in the stucco, do a little touch-up paint here and there, and paint the shutters turquoise (turquoise and pink adobe is one of my favorite combinations).  Now, something happened between a month ago (pictured here) and last Saturday (see below):

Yes, the lawn looked healthier in the first photo but the temperature has done a 180 since then. And we planted some dinky little plants and made a flowerbed. Fall is here, my friends. Oh, you mean you noticed something else. Like, the whole house is a completely different color! It is now some kind of light beige-tan. Decidedly not pink adobe. Let me explain. A chunk of stucco had been taken to Lowe’s to get the match so we could just do touch-up on the stucco repair, but evidently the person at Lowe’s who was running the color match machine was either on some serious dope, or our 5-gallon bucket of paint got mixed with someone else’s. It really is a toss-up at this point. The fact of the matter is that we had our hands on a non-refundable 5 gallon bucket of the wrong color, so the consensus was just to go with it. Now, I’m not particularly fond of it compared with the previous color, but the truth of the matter is that the whole place (and garage) do look much, much nicer with a fresh, non-dirty coat of paint. And the nice thing was that the turquoise really does go well with it. So, what’s done is done.

Oh, but there’s more. We did the body of the house first (naturally). The majority of the work was done by Doug and his parents. I focused on the detail work, namely priming and painting the shutters. Using primer was a life-saver because (in one test location) the dark red zoomed right through the turquoise and looked ter-ri-ble. Yay for primer. Also, my MIL rolled all of the concrete porches with a special super-durable concrete paint and they just look fab. The dark brown is matched to our (new, functioning!) garage door which also helps pull things together.

I feel like I need an accent color going on here. Suggestions welcome. Also, I’m on the fence as far as what to do with the red exposed brick. I really like it, but it kind of stands out and feels really disconnected. Maybe the easiest/best thing to do would be to swap out the border edge (weird plaster rocks that were here when we moved in) and replace with a similar shade of red brick? That might look nice…. Oh, and one other detail to point out, I ORB’ed (the verb “ORB” is a DIY-blog buzzword for “painted with oil-rubbed bronze spray paint”) my mailbox and the outside light fixtures (you can see one of them in the wide shot on the right part of the house). They look good as new. Which is nice because the light fixtures were kind of rusty and falling-apart-y.

All in all, I am coming around to the new paint color. It helps that none of the old color is visible so I’m quickly forgetting what it used to look like.

One more thing, and I need the opinions of you, my readers on this one. I have the feeling that the place would look way good if I ORBed the gutters and drainpipes (carefully, so as not to get any paint on the new exterior or roof). I did a very amateur-looking mock-up in photoshop to see what it might look like. What do you think.

This:

or this:

Will it look hideous? or add some much-needed contrast and polish? Mind you, they’d be subtly metallic and match the mailbox and light fixtures. I think you know which side I’m on, but I will truly take into considerations any comments or suggestions.

Sneak Peeks

Yes, that’s a plural “peeks” up there. I have many projects on the docket and hope to complete several of them–gotta build up the momentum. This also helps remind me to take “before” pictures. Now that the whole house exterior is painted (more on that another day) I can do some “fun” and necessary projects. Okay, not all of them are necessary.

This dresser:

Snagged this dresser at Goodwill for a “landing pad” to place next to the front door. It’s not this blurry in real life, I promise. I’m going to prime it and paint it a deep gray, using leftover paint from the master bedroom or guestroom (the colors of the 2 rooms are slightly different. Honestly thecolor will depend on how much paint we have left of each color). It used to have a third drawer but it got broken at the last second after we’d gotten it into the house in transport so I’m going to remove all the drawer components and use it for a shoe corral. This will be especially helpful during the winter months when nasty, wet, salty (from the de-ice product) shoes must stay by the front door for the sake of clean floors. The drawers will be helpful for storing winter gloves, scarves, hats etc and freeing up space in my closet and Doug’s wardrobe.

This fireplace:

I’m going to paint the inside of the fireplace teal to mimic the front door (which isn’t currently teal but will be as soon as it warms up enough to leave it open for long periods of time so the paint can dry… Which means next spring). I haven’t decided if I should continue storing the records here (they do look kind of cool, but too short) or go the candleabra-in-the-fireplace route. The fireplace is non-functioning so we can’t build a real fire in it, so painting and styling it is the way to go!

A compost bin:

Totally ripping off John’s method from YHL, this weekend we hope to build a compost bin out of pallets. It will be an upgrade from the cardboard box we’re currently using, and a great place to put our leaves after we rake. Another thing to check off the list before snow and ice set in for the next few months.

A mobile:

For my friend’s baby room. Since they didn’t know the gender of the baby until she was born, most of their stuff is a tasteful green and yellow. Time to dial up the PINK! I found a ton of awesome inspiration projects on pinterest, and it’s hard to pick just one. Maybe i’ll create a hybrid, or put my own spin on one! Can’t wait to get started!