Contrary to popular belief, we have been getting some DIY finished round these parts.  It’s just been difficult actually getting the pictures uploaded and posted on blog.  Ya know how life is.

At the end of this week, Rick’s family are coming for a visit.  They’re driving about 18 hours from Oklahoma to see us – it’s been about 4 years since we’ve seen them so it will be really nice to catch up.  His folks are bringing his five year old niece, Keegan (pictured here with her 18 month old cousin, Alyssa)…

So the fact that we haven’t got any railing on our main stairs is a bit of a problem. A safety hazard, to say the least. So with a definite deadline to meet, we’ve been spurred on to get the stairs finally finished.  After all, we’ve only been living without rails since last summer . You can track our progress here: stair sanding, new library header, the tread problem and finally, stair staining.

First up?  Before we can install any spindles and railing, we have to solve the base plate issue (read about that here). Rick has been working hard building custom landing plates. Custom because DIY stores don’t carry landing plates in the dimensions we need – 16 ft long by 10 inches wide, plus a little rounded overhang to make it all look pretty.  See exhibit A.

So we glued 1 x 10 to a 1 x 1, and routered then edge to create a bull-nosed finished (see Exhibits B, C and D). A little bit of sanding and screwing and we now have custom landing plates. Voila!

See those brown swirls on the edge of the steps?  We removed the wooden decorative spirals that were stuck there.  Nothing wrong with ‘em, just not our style.  So, those swirls will eventually be painted over for a more seamless look.

Next up? Drilling the holes for the spindles and staining the rest of the plates.  Deets coming soon – stay tuned!

The old [dog] couch has gone.  R.I.P.

It has breathed its last breath … and ate Arriba for the last time

After getting gradually stinkier and stinkier (it was primarily used as our basset hound’s bed during the day – do you know how much bassets smell?), it has finally been laid to rest at the dump. Now we have a blank canvas…

In case you’re wondering where the rest of the furniture has gone to (from the first photo) …. the little glass crescent table is currently being used in our DVD nook until we find a more suitable replacement; the small TV was initially moved to the other side of the living room before being replaced with this beauty (it is now living in the game room upstairs); the keyboard is currently situated in the office.

For now, we’re putting one of the leather sofas over there until we figure our the final furniture configuration.  You know, when we get floors, a rug, side tables, curtains, redo the fireplace, install crown molding and baseboards, replace the windows, did I mention floors?

We’re still a long way from finishing this space, but hey at least it is now 100% less stinky (and probably at least 80% less ugly).

and 90% perspiration ~ Thomas Edison.

Whilst we’re working hard around here trying to beautify our abode, I thought I’d simply post a few pics that are currently rocking my world on the design inspiration front.  Enjoy the random menagerie of eye candy…

Sources: drum chandelier | clock – source unknown  |  map art |   black on black stencil |   board-and-batten bathroom |   floating nightstands

The reupholstery project on our free Queen Anne chairs has begun!

This little beauty has been stripped naked and the legs are currently being stained a dark ebony color.

We even managed to find some luxurious looking faux-leather fabric… at 50% off (marking it down from $14.99/yard to $7.99/yard).  Score!

I snapped a pic on my iPhone of the material in the store.  I couldn’t decide between the black or red color.  You’ll just have to wait and see which one we ended up choosing.  Stay tuned!

I’ve mentioned before that back in May 2010 I scored this Queen Anne chair for free on Craigslist:

Fast forward to the beginning of January 2011.  I was perusing the free section on Craigslist and spied another Queen Anne chair on offer.  The photo looked *very* similar to the chair we picked up back in May.  I talked to Rick about whether we should try and get a matching pair.  Free things in decent shape tend to go very quickly on Craigslist.  So we were pleasantly surprised that within 1 hour we were headed into town to pick up the chair.  As we neared the destination, we both had a feeling of deja vu.  Had we been here before?  No, surely not.

As we headed up the drive, it became apparent that this was the exact house we picked the first chair up from.   The guy even remembered us.  He said he had a pair of these chairs that had been mauled by their pet cat (in the exact same places on both chairs – around the bottom of the seat and on the left wing). The first chair was in worse shape which is why he let that one go first.  The second chair was in better condition … until their cat had its way with that one.

Either way, it came home with us.  So now we have two of these beauties just waiting to be recovered.

How strange that out of all the thousands of people that check Craigslist and could have responded to the ad, that we were the ones to get both chairs offered 6 months apart. Do you have any funny stories about getting things from Craigslist?

We currently have one of these serving as our alarm clock in the master bedroom:

It’s a great clock, except for one thing.  See that little circular dial on the right?  You have to “twiddle” it to set the time for the alarm clock.  It’s not too bad when you have to reset the alarm, say from 7:15am to 7:30am. A few circular finger motions and the deed is done. However, when you need to reset the alarm from 6.15am to 9am, it takes f..o..r..e..v..e..r.  I don’t know if all of these clocks do it, or if its just ours, but most of the time when you are trying to move the time forward, the time actually goes backward.  Making the twiddle time even longer.  That takes away important sleep time, peeps!  Not good.  So, we’re on the lookout for a replacement alarm clock with iPod docking station (this one will go live in one of the guest bedrooms).

This one could work:

It has a dual alarm so you can set two separate wake-up times with the option of waking up to your iPod, iPhone, CD, AM/FM radio, or buzzer.  It comes with a remote control that lets you access all the music on your iPod or iPhone from across the room. Where the iPod sits is on a hidden sliding dock tray, so if you don’t have the iPod hooked up, the tray stashed neatly away.

This one has all the functionality as above,but a slightly more sophisticated, sleeker design:

This one has dual iPod docks and an in-built weather alert system:

Do you have any suggestions for an iPod dock and clock?  I’d love to know which make/model works for your family.

The next step in making our house secure is deterring would-be burglars from breaking in. One way of doing that is advertizing that our house is monitored by an external security company.  We were given a bunch of these decals from ADT:

We simply peeled and stuck them to the windows/doors around the house:

Ignore the dirty windows, ummkay?

We were also given a small sign to put at the corner of the house…

Next up? Putting blinds on the garage windows to reduce nosy-parkers (“busybodies” in American English) looking in and seeing what we might have to steal.

Personally I feel a lot better knowing we are taking precautionary and preventative measure to secure our home.  In addition to the security system (and warning signs that we have said system), we can also rely on our canine intervention unit:

What steps have you taken to secure your house?

Last summer, I scored these two free Queen Anne chairs off Craigslist. They had seen better days, but screamed “potential!” and “makeover!” at me.  Yes, I hear the voices of furniture in my head.

They have sat in our office ever since, patiently waiting for their ugly-duckling-to-swan makeover.  During that time, the dogs have claimed these chairs as their own.  They spend a significant amount of time sitting on these chairs whenever Rick or I are working in the office.  And that’s a lot.

It’s a dogs life, isn’t it? Both of our chihuahuas and our wiener dog use Beegee the basset hound as their own personal pillow.  Check out Beegee’s buzz cut on her belly – a left over from the emergency surgery she had on Thanksgiving last year.

We love our dogs and have no issues with them getting up on the furniture.  However, as you can see above, the fabric is looking decidedly more dingy than when we originally got the chair – a side effect of the clay soil and puppy paws on the material. So, we’ve come to the decision that we need to reupholster the chair in a wipe-able, non-porous fabric, such as vinyl or faux-leather. That way, when the dogs dirty up the chair, we won’t have to worry about them getting the pristine material dirty.  One swipe of a damp cloth and the clay stains will be no more.

There are a number of cool choices for faux-leather out there.  We’ve found that some of the local fabric shops have limited selections in store, so I turned to the Internet for some inspiration.  How about these faux-leather animal prints? (from left to right: ostrich, snake, alligator, gecko).

Or these interesting textural choices?

Or maybe just something a little different?

As lovely as some of these choices are, most are out of my price range. Online fabric yardage guestimators suggest that I might need up to 7 yards of fabric per chair. At up to 30 bucks a yard, that can get expensive really quickly.  I’m going to be keeping my eye out for a budget-based yet unique  fabric to use on these chairs.  Color is not really a deciding factor – just as long as it has some wow factor (I am trying to be less conservative in our decor choices!). No matter what we end up choosing, for us, faux is definitely the way to go.

All fabric swatches from here.

Here’s a pic of our upstairs guest bathroom when we moved in.  Jealous much?  Yeah, I know you’re coveting the fake blue marble vanity with shell shaped sinks…

and let’s take a closer look at the loo.  Check out that matching blue *padded* toilet seat.  Nice.

We recently noticed that this little gem had sprung a leak. There was a crack on the bottom of the tank, which was causing a slow leak of water (the blue color comes from the cleaning block we have in the tank). So, it was high time we replaced this sucker.

Once the tank was removed, it was evident that this thing hadn’t been replaced since it was installed when the house was built back in 1993.  Check out the grime behind the tank. It’s more dirty than Christina Aguilera in her bondage leather chaps days.

Rick had quite a time removing the bowl as it was caulked to the tile floor (current DIY thinking says you shouldn’t caulk around the toilet bowl because if you have a leak in the future, the moisture could be trapped under the base of the toilet and your plywood subflooring could very well rot out.  Better to see the leak and deal with it, rather than the alternative). So, to remove the toilet bowl, Rick had to break it into pieces with a hammer…

Another problem that was causing the bowl to stick was the rusted screws that hold the toilet to the flange.  I guess the rust is courtesy of the leak that has been going on for many years.

A bit of elbow grease and the loo was gone. You can really see how much the water has been leaking under the toilet bowl.

I mentioned previously about the lovely dark sludge that we found in the toilet tank (which led us to test our well water).  You can also see that we live in a clay soil area, as evidenced by the clay particles found in our tank.

We bought a water-efficient complete toilet kit from our local DIY store.  In addition to a new tank and bowl, it comes complete with new flange, bolt, bolt caps and wax seal – everything you need to install a new loo. The steps for installing a toilet are really very simple – check out this short tutorial from Home Depot (note: they do caulk around the bowl base.  hmmm).

So nice to have a spanking new toilet tank that’s free of sludge and clay…

Here’s our brand new loo.  Ain’t she a beauty?

And just in case you haven’t seen enough photos of toilets, here is a gratuitous before and after shot.

A quick fix that makes a world of difference to the guest bathroom.  I can’t say how happy I am to get rid of that horrible padded blue toilet seat.  I am sure our house guests will be thankful for the updated facilities.  Next up is changing the blue faux-marble sea-shell monstrosity of a vanity. What decor faux-pas did you inherit with your house?

So now we have moved our DVD and electronics to the newly-named “DVD nook”

we had to move the DVD case we had originally (but temporarily) hung in this location.  Check out this old photo from before we had painted the walls and removed the brown trim…

The question was – where do we move it to?  We spend 95% of the time watching TV in the living room (the smaller TV has been moved to the game room – more on that later).  Plus, seeing as we play DVD’s through the PS3 (rather than a dedicated DVD player) and the PS3 lives in the DVD nook with the other electronics, we needed to keep the DVD storage somewhere close.  Somewhere in the living room.  Makes sense – it’s not neuroscience, you say. Yes, but there was no obvious place to hang this rather large DVD case (what can I say, we have a lot of DVD’s).  One of the great things about open plan living rooms is all the space.  One of the drawbacks about open plan living rooms … is all the space.  As in, very few walls to hang stuff.

You can see the floorplan of our first floor below.  The stairs divides the two open-plan living rooms.  The living room on the right is where we spend our time watching TV. The sofa goes along the entryway wall, the adjacent wall has windows, the fireplace is at an angle leading to the doorway to the dining room.  Hmmm.

Then it came to me.  Let’s use some of the unused storage space … under the stairs.  Lemme explain…

We have this nice staircase in the middle of our entry way (that separates the two living rooms downstairs).  At the top, one staircase goes to the master suite (to the right), the other stairs lead to the other bedrooms/games/laundry. We therefore have a very long walk-in closet under the stairs and I figured we could maximize some of this space for the DVD cases.  Yep, we have two (although we only originally hung one of them).

After a little measuring and some drywall removal, we are able to recess the media cabinets into the wall…

We didn’t lose too much space in the walk-in closet behind.  The DVD cabinets are only slightly wider than the width of the wall, so we still have plenty of storage space.

Here’s a pic of both storage cabinets, one either side of the stairs (please ignore the half completed stair railing and stain job we started before Christmas)

So far, these media cabinets are in the perfect location.  Near enough to be near the TV when we want to watch a movie, but stashed away enough and not taking up any floor or cabinet space.  All in all, we’re starting to get this place looking the way we want it.  I think the biggest makeover will come when we remove the last of the old wood floor an install darker hardwoods to match the stairs.  Lush.  Can’t wait.