Nails for the DIYer

Hey hey! How are ya? I’ve FINALLY been pulling out the Christmas decor around here. Being away for Thanksgiving made me feel totally behind – especially since (like every year) I have delusions that I’ll be able to get it ALL out before December 1st.

Ummm…like every year, it’s just not happening. ;)

But I’m taking my time and thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve pulled out a few things here and there, and one of my favorites is ready to go -- the cutie Santa hats are baaaack!:

With Rudolph on the TV in the background – could it be more perfect? :)

You can see how I made them here. It’s been two years and they’ve held up GREAT! The Bub was so excited to see them too – it’s like Christmas officially starts when they come out.

I also finished up the Christmas decor on the new mantel tonight and I am in luuuuurve. Can’t wait to show you it when our holiday parties start next week!:

Thanks so much for the sweet comments on the new fireplace set up by the way. It tickles me pink that some of you felt my pain all these years and are just as excited as I am with the change. ;)

So tonight I’m sharing a little something different – you know I like to share when I find a product that I love, and I just had to do a post about this one. This will probably be the one and only fashion-related post ever at TDC, but I couldn’t resist it!

I’ve mentioned before that I never get my nails done – mostly because it’s just not worth the money for me. I get them painted (I never do the “fill” – is that what it’s called? Just painted.) and then within days (sometimes less than 24 hours), they are destroyed.

Manicures are not the DIYer’s best friend. :)

Until now. Whoo HOO!!

I read about shellac nails at Emily’s site – I think it was a few months ago. I thought they sounded awesome but since I never have mine done, I didn’t try it out till a few weeks ago.

Let. me. tell. you. This stuff is incredible!!

I got my nails done with it and then loved it so much, I did it again before our vacation last week – nine days ago. (Usually I have them done two times in a year – so that tells you how happy I am with this!)

They still look like this:

(I’ve decided my hands just don’t photograph pretty, no matter what.)

I’m not kidding you – this stuff is impossible to mess up. CRAZY awesome. 

I’ve sawed, cleaned, bathed (duh), painted, drilled, scrubbed, scraped…ev.er.y.thing.

They still look brand new.

The only thing that has slightly done anything to them is a few wires sticking out of the garland – they got minor scratches. You honestly can’t even tell though.

As far as I can tell, the only reason to have them redone is because they grow out:

Isn’t that AWESOME?? They price isn’t bad either – just a few bucks more than a standard manicure. (At least at the salon I go to.)

I’m going to wait another week and then have it taken off for a while (they have to soak your nails and then scrape it off, so you I think you have to go into the salon to have it removed).

I’ve heard that the shellac can damage your nails, but with it on, my nails are SUPER strong, especially for the winter. Usually I have issues with them breaking easily in the cold months.

Of course I say that and tonight look what happened:

GAH!! You gotta be kidding me! Funny though – the polish is still perfect. ;) It’s not flaking off at all.

So there you go – if you love pretty nails but love power tools even more (like me) – you finally have a solution! I get to feel like a girl every once in a while now and I’m pretty stoked about that. And they are WAY more economical – at least I figure, considering the polish lasts so much longer.

Have you tried the shellac? Love it, hate it? Did it damage your nails? I’d love to hear!

A fireplace redo!

Hello my peeps!! I hope you had a LOVELY Thanksgiving week!

I’m so glad to be back, but the little blogging break was nice. :) I can’t wait to tell you what we were up to last week – but for now, I am SO psyched about the project that’s been going on around here over the past couple of weeks!

For as long as we’ve lived in this house, I’ve had a thorn in my side…that I may have mentioned one or 437 times.

Our family room set up was part of the issue for a very long time – but I addressed that earlier this year with our new sofa and moving the TV. LOVE it still – probably the best changes I’ve made to our home.

But there was that one thing. That corner thing. The one that drove me batty:

I curse the day I chose that corner fireplace! Shakes fists in air!!

I know it doesn’t look that evil. But it was.

Ahhh…all those years ago, I thought oh yes – let’s do a corner fireplace and be all cool and different and uh...ANNOYING.

I’ve addressed it numerous times – first by adding molding to the top. It started out looking like this:

And then I changed it up a bit later by adding a mirror over the mantel. It was great because it gave it the “feel” of a wall.

But there were still so many things that drove me nuts. I added crown to the room this year, and I had to end it by the molding over the fireplace. I hate the weird stop – but I’ve not found a better way to do it. And I realized a few months ago that part of the reason the fireplace looked weird to me was because it was so top heavy – big on top, little on bottom.

And the corner mantel was really a pain in my patoot to decorate. And I’m all about the decorate:

And even though the top was large and in charge, the whole thing felt too small for this space.

I thought about taking in the chunky molding on top, to make it less top heavy – but then I was going to have to redo that and the crown. Nah thanks.

Then I thought about building a wall above the mantel to close it off (many of you have suggested that). But it would have just made the mantel even smaller.

Then I had THE idea…and it was right in front of my face every night for the past eight years.

Why not try to make a full wall like the one in our bedroom:

Nah DUH.

I’m quick.

But then there was another issue – the firebox couldn’t be moved out to meet up with a new wall. I didn’t know how to make it work (I thought it all had to be flush.)

But then, one glorious day, I walked through a model home (one of my favorite things to do!), and found IT!!

It was a corner fireplace, with a wall. But the firebox was inset quite a bit:

It was a good five inches or so. And I knew I could do the same with our fireplace! (With some help.)

Cue the angels singing. (I almost wrote “angels signing” – which would be OK too.)

I called the handymen who did a ton of the work around here when we had the fridge/floor fiasco. I explained what I wanted to do, showed them pics, then showed them our upstairs fireplace and THEY SAID EASY PEASY SQUEEZY!!

Yesssssssssssssssssss.

So a couple weeks ago we started with this:

Vince (Handyman #1) took the mantel off (it was way easier than I thought it would be) and the trim around the front of the fireplace, then started building a wall:

And what a glorious wall it was. I’ve never been so happy.

(They even added studs between the studs right where I would hang the mirror – no anchors needed!)

Then they drywalled and sanded like mad (which resulted in more dust than we had when the floors were sanded – no joke):

Then they started building the mantel. A REAL mantel people!

HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY!

They couldn’t go real beefy with the surround because I wanted a DEEP mantel and enough space around the fire box to install tile. So in order to make that work, the sides were a bit thinner, but the molding and mantel were chunkaaaay.

To save on costs I finished the redo from there. You’d think it would be quick, but nah. You know me. :)

I found a beautiful mosaic tile at Lowe’s (I found it months ago and knew I’d use it if this project ever happened). The guys brought me their tile saw to use and it ROCKED! It was so easy to use!

I made the cuts for the side pieces:

And used mastic to apply them around the fireplace:

No mixing required – it was SO easy to use!

I just buttered the wall:

There was a bit of a gap between the firebox and the drywall around it when they pulled off the trim. You can see here that they ended up installing some luan that covers that gap and gave me a good surface for the tile.

Then I buttered the back of the tile:

And stuck it on. It does not take much – I used too much at times and it came out between the tiles. Not hard to clean up, and you just learn as you go. I didn’t have to grout because the tiles were so close – whew!

I LOVE how it turned out!

We went away on vacation last week, and I was chomping at the bit to get this finished up! I worked most of today painting. And painting…

Forgive me for these pics – it was pitch black at 5 p.m. and I was busting booty to get this finished today…but the pictures didn’t start till about 7. :)

After three coats on the wall, four coats on the mantel and surround (it still needs at least one more), reinstalling all of the wainscoting next to the fireplace and then some quarter round at the bottom, I was DONE:

What you don’t see here is the nice little large spot where I put painter’s tape on the wall too soon and had a nice loooong patch where the drywall was exposed. And then had to patch and paint all over again. Hence the 7 p.m. pics. ;)

But I’m pretty much done – finally! I put accessories up there for it’s first photo shoot and I was SO excited at how easy it was to make it look decent and how BIG the mantel is and HOW MUCH I LOVE IT!!!:

:)

The guys used one (really, really thick) piece of molding to beef up the mantel and I love it – its exactly what I was hoping for!:

I still have some touching up and caulking to do, but I was tired of messing with it today. :)

We all stood in front of it last week commenting on how much we liked that it’s inset – it makes it look like it’s been their forever, like something you’d see in an old house:

The one thing Mike (handyguy #2) mentioned later was that he wished he had thought about adding lights underneath that I could dim – what a great idea! Wish I had thought of that. ;)

But honestly I don’t think I could be happier!

I was willing to give up some square footage in the family room – I actually wanted to go out a little further. But the guys didn’t want to take it too far out and now I know that was a good call. Overall the wall comes out about a foot more than it did before.

We don’t even notice it in the least though – it feel like it “fits” in the room SO much better! It really feels like it was always like this!

I have all kinds of ideas running through my head for the wall above the mantel – some kind of molding treatment. But I’m really digging the simple, clean look right now – I don’t know if I’ll even add anything:

It’s so surprising to look at the before and after – the before looks SO busy and overwhelming to me. And now it’s bigger and even more of a statement but it feels simpler and easier:

Oh happy day. :)

So there you go…what I’ve been up to the past couple of weeks. Can’t WAIT to decorate this for Christmas! The guys even moved the outlet (behind the candlesticks) so I can still have my twinkling lights up there.

It took a little help from the professionals (building a wall isn’t in my repertoire, but I’m working on it!), but I was able to fix the thorn in my side. I am so thrilled! Do you have something about your house that drives you crazy? Have you thought of a million and one ways to fix it? ;) Actually done it?

 

**You can see how to make that mossy letter here! And no, it’s not upside down. I promise. :)

Last Minute Landscaping

Heya!! How was your weekend? Good I hope – the temps were pretty darn great around here and I took advantage of it!

All of the activity we have going on in the backyard has kind of spilled over into the rest of the yard – but not in a good way. Our front and side yards have looked like the back for the past month or so – AWFUL.

With all the workers walking all over and all the STUFF everywhere and dust and dead grass and moving furniture off the deck and back on and off again – it’s not been pretty around here. So we kind of gave up on the front too.

Hubby is a fareeek about our yard too – so that tells you what a mess everything has been. We just figured we’d wait till everything was done to make the outside presentable again.

Well, the back is thisclose to done, so this weekend, I attacked the thorn in my side in the front.

Shortly after we moved in to our house, I installed landscaping bricks along the front of the house:

I also tore out all the plants and put in the azaleas and lilies. Didn’t they look great?

Then, as time went on, the plants got bigger – the lilies looked GREAT, and the azaleas did awesome too:

And check out those petunias – wowza! :)

For a few years, it looked great! But lately I’ve noticed something every time I pull up to the house. It just looked MESSY.

A hot mess to be exact:

Numerous issues were going on – (most) of our azaleas are out of control. Which is great, but a couple of them are HUGE. They’ve at least tripled their size since I planted them. Nice problem to have, I know. ;)

But the lilies are being completely choked out. You can see how big and beautiful they were before. Now they just looked like weeds coming out between the azaleas.

Speaking of weeds – I’ve just ignored them lately. The landscaping is so tight behind those bricks that I can’t even get in there to get the yucky stuff out. We have a HUGE problem with critters dropping Mulberry tree seeds – so we have random trees popping up EVERYWHERE.

(You can see one coming up behind the azalea above.)

It drives me mad. Cuckoo.

And add to that, if hubby didn’t use the weed wacker every single time he mowed, the grass just looked like booty up against the bricks.

So I thunk and I thunk and tried to figure out what to do. And I decided to take the bricks out.

I had one of those “is this allowed?” moments I sometimes have with myself – I mean, I worked my tail off installing that brick (years ago). And it took me forever to get them all level (years ago). And they weren’t cheap (years ago).

So I felt like I had to keep them there, which is just silly.

But I don’t. So they’re gone. :)

It took a while, it took some muscle. It took some weeding. MUCH weeding.

And in the end, it was different, but a good different:

I still have some work to do – it needs more mulch, I need to cut into the lawn around it to keep the mulch in and clean up the line a bit, and after a good rain I’ll actually be able to get the landscaping lights down into the ground. Our soil is solid. Gah.

Eventually I want to run beds around our little sidewalk and down along the driveway and add more perennials. But for now, just clearing it out and adding a ton of mulch made a HUGE difference.

I feel like our house can breathe!

Originally I was going to just reinstall the landscaping bricks around the mulch, but goodness, those are so much work to get right and level. And I want to tie in this area with the rest of the front yard, so the bricks just won’t work anymore.

What’s especially awesome about this small change is that the landscaping lights were hidden behind the plants before, and now we have LIGHT! Over time, you couldn’t even see the spot lights on the house because the plants got so big. And it was a BEAR to get behind there to change out the teeny light bulbs in those things too.

I got a couple more lights to add to what we had, and now it’s even brighter out front.

I LOVE landscaping lighting by the way. It adds so much beauty to your house at night. And it makes it look more expensive – I swear. If you don’t believe me, drive through the fancy neighborhoods at night and check out the amazing difference landscaping lights make! ;)

And they are just so easy to install too – I just luuurve em.

While I was at it, I tore out the dead flowers from the window boxes and planted my kale and mums:

   

I think kale is such a beautiful option for fall – they hold up great in cool temps, they are unusual and just pretty.

I throw in a few (fake) pumpkins this time of year to fill in the empty spots, and I love how it looks. The first signs of fall are showing around here! YAHOO!!

I’d like to add extend the beds even further next year, move the lilies out a bit so they can breathe, then add some annual color along the front. But going into the fall, I’m just loving the power of simplifying:

Next up – mums in the porch planters and some front porch changes! Ohhh…I’m so nervous. ;) Can you guess what I have up my sleeve?!

Are you working on any last minute landscaping? The weather is PERFECT for it and fall is great time to plant trees and bushes! I am so motivated, I’m moving on to another overgrown spot this week.

And I hope to show you the backyard this week too – once we clean it up! :)

DIY or DI-Buy?

Hey hey! How was your weekend?! We had a great one!

I worked on a project I’ve been wanting to try for awhile now. Our backyard redo is finally finishing up this week…and it’s been a long time coming. :) The landscaper and his team have done an incredible job and stayed right on track, but we’ve had many, MANY issues with the deck and staining it (which I’ll tell you about soon) and it’s pushed things back quite a bit.

I’m hoping I can show you the deck (finished) and the patio (finished) later this week or early next. Of course now that I say that, some random, freakish storms will come through and push it all back again…but I’ve come to expect that. ;)

Anyhoo…the patio is mostly done, and the outdoor fireplace is DONE and it ROCKS OUR WORLD! I’ve been trying to find a coffee table to place in front of the fireplace – we have some chairs set up around it and I knew a table in the middle would be the perfect set up.

So I went to a bajillion stores and of course…nothin. It’s September, after all. That’s like trying to find Christmas decorations in August. Well…wait. Not really. Cause that you can find.

But anyway, it’s impossible.

So I decided to make one. Our landscaper had plenty of pallets so I decided to recreate this project:

(source)

I’m digging the slightly rustic, industrial look right now, and I love that it was large and in charge and it rolled. I’m obsessed with things that roll right now too, if you couldn’t tell.

So I got two pallets (free):

Then cut down 4 x 4’s to the height I wanted (four inches) for the legs:

I turned the top pallet over, as you can see. I attached the legs with brackets:

I attached the bottom part of the bracket first (onto the pallet), then put the leg in and then attached the sides of the legs.

Then, I turned it over and put it on top of the second pallet to make the table.

Because I couldn’t attach the bottom part of the brackets the same way I did before, I would line up the legs, place the brackets where they went, and then prop up the top part of the table while I screwed in the brackets:

Does that make sense? I did that for all four legs, then placed them all back into their brackets, and then attached the brackets into the legs.

Are you with me? ;)

Then, because I was trying to use what I had, I found some honkin’ washers from my stash to attach the casters:

I had to use the washers because the holes on the wheels were too large. The washers are ridiculously large and look goofy so it’s a good thing they won’t be seen. :)

I sanded it down to prepare it for a dark stain:

Annnnnnnnd…I didn’t like it. OK, not really. I mean, it looks fantastic. I love it – it just wasn’t going to be right for the patio.

I kept standing there trying to convince myself that it would work, but I just knew it wasn’t the look I wanted. It has some rough edges and is way dirty (underneath) – which I was OK with because it was going to stay outside. But I didn’t want to worry about the Bub playing around it either.

And it was just a tad too rustic for me.

Then the most important little detail came to me – uhhh…the table is wood. The fireplace has fiyah. Fire and wood – not a good combo. I mean, the fire isn’t shooting out, but the occasional ember will, and I don’t want to have to worry about that.

Why do I think of these things AFTER I spend an hour on a project?

So…it was on to plan B.

On a total whim I called a Menards about 30 miles away to see if they had more of the set we had already purchased (on clearance) a few weeks ago. None of the stores around us had any pieces left…but this location did. I couldn’t believe it!

I got a great little coffee table for $50-something and it matches our furniture exactly:

Usually I’m not a “buy the whole set” kind of girl, but in the second week of September, I’m not pushing my luck. I bought that baby up FAST.

But one little issue was bugging me – it was too tall. Too high coffee tables are one of my biggest pet peeves. They are right up there with parking lots that don’t connect – HATE THAT.

Seriously…hate. it. Aren’t you glad you’re not me?? :)

So I decided to take care of that myself. I cut down the legs with my plumbing tool:

I showed you how I use this baby to cut down my curtain rods here. It works like a breeze!

First I took the little feet off the table legs:

Then I measured five inches from the bottom and marked the measurement. I usually put some blue painters tape around the metal so I can clearly see where my mark is:

You just tighten the cutter around the metal and then turn it around and around – with every rotation, tighten it just a tad, and after a few rotations, you’ll get this:

A perfectly clean cut! It’s SO easy!

I pushed the little feet back in:

And now we have a much lower (it was 22 inches high, now it’s 17) outdoor coffee table:

I love it! It’s perfect! I find lower tables make a space feel much more intimate. And you can put your feet up on them much easier. That’s the main thing. ;)

Here’s a sneak peek of the patio – it’s SO awesome, I can’t wait to show you!:

(The Bub had set up a picnic for us. Sweetie pie!)

So…that was my long road to a table for the patio. The good thing – both projects were easy and super fast. The pallet table took less than an hour to put together, and the coffee table adjustment took about ten minutes.

And now I have a pallet table for sale! Ha! No, for real -- if any of you local Indy folks are interested, let me know. If not, I’ll take it apart and use the parts for a later project. :)

Have you started something that ended up all wrong? How did you fix it? Trash it? Walk away? Is it still sitting there? ;) Sometimes store bought is just right -- even if you do have to make a few little adjustments to it!

I will show you the whole space SOON!