Homespun Happenings: Tutorial

Showing posts with label Tutorial. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Three Corner Cabinets DIY

Not wanting to pay the price of an old corner wall cabinet for my living room, I settled on the idea of making my own. I found these cabinets on Craigslist . I was only going to get one, but the guy was wanting to just get rid of them so he threw in an extra corner and that odd shaped filler piece.

You can see from the collage how these cabinets were supposed to be pieced together. I thought that the center filler piece would make a neat primitive cabinet.

They all had these footers on them that I had to take off and fill in the holes with wood filler.

I also removed the trim and added some framing piece that was missing.

After sanding them, I made some doors for all three out of planks of wood--some new wood and some from an old toy box. I carved the locks and door knob with hubby's wood carving tools. (oldest son did start me out on the locks because he was worried I'd slice myself ~~again~~) I bought some neat hinges and just painted them. I used chalk paint as a primer on the hinges first and then painted them with Benjamin Moore's Woodstock along with the cabinets. I then stained all 3 with Min-wax's Espresso.

I love the way they turned out. My favorite one is the 'filler' piece that I turned into a cabinet. I also love the character the stain brings out in the door made of the old toy box planks.

I kept the small one for myself and hung it in my dining room.

It just fits :)

Friday, September 21, 2018

DIY Fireplace Surround

I am so excited to share this with you.

We moved here 2 years ago this past July. From the first moment I walked into this Colonial Revival home, I have wanted to make a surround for this fireplace. It just looked incomplete to me....sooo much brick.

I have been searching Pinterest for ideas since day 1. I am glad we waited 2 years, you wouldn't believe the design ideas I have gone through and changed over and over in my head....Panels or no panels? In the end we, hubby and I and our "Architect Son", agreed on a very basic shaker style surround. This house is very basic in its woodwork and baseboards too.

I am going to share with you our journey of building the surround.

We are by no means professionals.

So please forgive us if we didn't do something just right.

First we did research on Code for leaving so many inches of brick and not protruding out so many inches and measured accordingly.

With 1x2" boards for our 'Skeleton',

we used screws and liquid nails to attach the wood to the brick.

Next we used a 3/8" sheet of plywood for the "skin" to cover all that brick.

Tacking it in with brads.

Now for the fun part!

Using a nail gun, we attached a solid piece of 1x12" cut down to 1x10" board for the top part. For the 'legs' we used a 1x8" board cut to length. We turned the 1x8" on its side to mock up the baseboard at the bottom of each 'leg'.

The previous owner had leftover trim for the baseboard which made it super easy to figure out. This made it match up with our current baseboard. With it being a corner fireplace, we had to cope two of the angles on the quarter round at the very bottom of the baseboard. Our oldest son and Architect son carved and figured that all out for me.

Love Homeschoolers!

I am a visual person so I'd like to share the different phases in pics.

We added crown to our Living Room and Dining Room too.

Here it is today!

I painted it in Benjamin Moores' Whipoorwil. (That $10 can I couldn't resist on buying!)

I love it!...so much brighter!!

I am super excited.

The fireplace looks like it has always been like this.

If you try to build one on your own, take lots of pics.

It helps as reference for us nonprofessionals :)

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Making a Small Wreath

I wanted to hang a small wreath on the corner cabinet in my kitchen. To buy one was very pricey--I thought. I was able to purchase this bunch of Greens for Half the price. I found this little wreath at a thrift store for 50 cents.

I just needed to do the work.

I took some linen and ripped a piece to hang my little wreath.

It is just perfect.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Building a Corner Wall Cabinet: Before and After

My love for distressed colonial (as my son refers to it)

had me searching for a hanging corner cabinet from the day our offer on this house was accepted.

As I searched, I soon found the prices of these things was either going to make me creative or just keep dreaming!

I chose to be creative!

It was easier to see it once I found this corner cabinet on the FB Market Place.

I just needed to find a door....right?

The size of the opening made it impossible to just find the right cabinet door.

I decided to make one.

Taking an old toy box I had and recycling the wood made it look like a possibility.

I glued two pieces together and secured them with some wood lath.

I had to use my plane to help it to fit.

I have limited tools to cut wood ( skill saw and miter saw), there was a lot of uneven lines.

Still is :)

Here it is before and after sanding.

I really liked it in its raw state, but knew it was not going to go well in my living room.

Using hubby's hand carving tools, I had to hand carve the little "lock" for the door .

Gunsmith gray is the color in our living room.

This is what I painted the cabinet, but I also stained it with 'Early American' Stain.

The color turned out perfect!

Down the road it will be nice to have some crown molding.

It is fun just taking our time and finding just what we want at an affordable price.

I think I paid $25 for the shelf.

I had the paint and the wood for the door.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Tutorial: Making Your Party Buttons Small and Neatly Organized

Today I am going to attempt to explain how I get my Linky Party buttons in Blogger to line up all nice and neat at the bottom of my post like this:

Linking up With:

Since I am a very visual person, I am going to try and show you a lot of pics to help explain each step.

When Editing your post there are these buttons at the top left hand corner:

[COMPOSE] [HTML]

When you copy and past a button code you use HTML
When you want to read your post you use COMPOSE

I know this is elementary, but I need step by step to help me soooooo......

This is what the button codes look like that already exist in my post. The highlighted part is a new button code that I am copying and pasting to my post. Always paste below the other codes like this:

Some codes, like the one I copied, don't have a Height and Width measurement in it so by doing this next step you will add that Height and Width code to the button.

So next click on COMPOSE. This is what you would see. A big button:

Now click on the big button and in Blogger it gives you the option of making the image small- medium-large- x large. I usually click on small. Now go back to the HTML and the code will look like this:

I highlighted in Red the measurements of the button. Change those measurements to "75"

Looking at the same example I highlighted some codes in green. You can delete these.

So now your button code should look like this:

Now in the example above you can see that I highlighted some codes in blue. All you need to do is join the two codes together by backspacing. BE CAREFUL NOT to erase any of these >< if you do just hit the undo arrow and try again. You want the arrow at the end of the previous button to connect to the arrow to the beginning of your new button

Like this:

Now if you go to the COMPOSE part of your post the buttons should look like this:

Sometimes a button may have a >Center< code at the beginning and end of their code. You will want to delete these too (arrows and word). It will not allow the buttons to be right next to each other if you don't.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you tried it, and if you could follow what I was trying to instruct.

It makes your post look more organized, and I like to be organized :)

Linking up with:

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