Showing posts with label diy. Show all posts

I know I just did a post on the bathroom, but I've already made one major change. 

As you can tell from the picture above, it's a pretty small bathroom.  Our sink, while pretty, was way too deep for this space. So much so that if one person was brushing their teeth, another person couldn't fit behind them. Since this is our only bathroom it can be an issue. 

So when I got my tax return I decided to splurge a bit and buy a new sink. 

Enter IKEA. 

I purchased the Lillagen Sink for about 180 including faucet. The nice IKEA lady assured me I could do it without any prior plumbing experience. I liked this model, because it's small, and actually gives me a bit of under sink storage, which I really needed.

 

First step was to remove the sink. Here's something the IKEA directions won't tell you. This part is going to be gross. Make sure you have a bunch of old towels to sop up water from the P-Trap, and make sure you've got some paper towels to shove into the P-trap so that your whole house doesn't fill with really disgusting methane. Also cut the caulk around the sink really thoroughly  I didn't cut deep enough on one side and tore through a couple layers of paint. It's just a pain in the butt to fix, save yourself the time. 

Bonus Photo! This is how small were talking. Also, look at me, the lazy homeowner who still hasn't put a flooring transition in for the bathroom flooring. Probably because I just want to tear out the bathroom flooring anyways. 

Now you'll want to build your sink. For the smallest Lilliagen sink, I ended up with double the hardware I actually needed. I think it just saves time packaging to have the same hardware pouch for all the sizes. Still, it made me feel like I did something horribly wrong, but in the end it turned out fine. Don't stress! 

Remember not to let your cat judge you too much during the building process. He gets excited about IKEA boxes, so his judgement should be taken lightly. 

If you have larger moldings  you're gonna have to chisel them out a bit to get the sink to sit flush. I just used a flat head and a hammer. There's probably a more exact and elegant solution to get this done, but we keep it real here at  Lux Per Diem. 

Anchor your sink cabinet into the wall. Fun fact, you probably want to measure and make sure this sink will fit over your water line knobs thingys (technical I know). Mine, probably by sheer will alone, just barely fit. You can see how close I'm cutting it by the right knob. 

Lay some caulk down around the top of your sink cabinet and place the sink on top. You really only have like less than a minute to get that bad boy straight, so do your best. Mine's not perfect, but damn good anyways. 

Follow the IKEA instructions as far as the plumbing goes. This is one of the few times I wish there were written instructions along with the pictograms. Making the IKEA PVC fit onto the PVC in my house involved lots of waterproof thread tape, and brute force. Also since the Faucet is off centered to the left, I need an extension piece (the piece with the tag still attached) to make it actually reach my supply line. After about three trips to Lowes, I actually ended up just bringing the whole faucet and finding the piece that fit the coupling. It might help had I actually asked a sales associate, but this is me when it comes to Lowes.

Learn from my mistakes dear readers. 

This is what I ended up with two days later. 

See the shelf for the cabinet leaning again the toilet? Yeah that bad boy didn't fit at all around my P-trap. I probably did it wrong, but honestly I was so sick of plumbing I wasn't going to take it off. I ended up just tossing it. 

I still need to repaint the walls where the old sink was. 

I need a new litter box because this one doesn't fit with the new sink. 

Just more to add to my to do list I suppose. 

I like this sink much better! It's less deep, and two people can actually fit in the bathroom. I'll get a full room shot once I repaint, but given my track record with timely painting, it might take awhile.

Did you guys have a good weekend? 

Don't let the picture online fool you, you could practically fit four dead bodies, comfortably, in this bad boy. In fact, if your tree is under five feet, you can just stick the whole thing in there no problem. 

I'm glad to have everything packed up neatly now! 

How do you store holiday decorations? 

When I'm sore, cold, or sick there's just something about a heating pad. Since I'm basically queen of making do with what I have, I've been known to fill a long sock with rice and heat it up in the microwave  The rice stays nice and hot, and is easy and cheap to use.

Yesterday as I was cleaning out my sewing room, going through my huge scraps box, when an idea struck me. 

Instead of using socks, I'm sure I could scrap bust and make something a bit prettier and functional. 

Thus was born my rice heating pad. Mine ended up being the exact same side as my ipad, which works well for me. If you made yours a bit longer it could be great for using around your neck. 

It took me about ten minutes to make, which probably explains the lack of pictures. I tried my best to diagram it out for you. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. It's really simple, I promise.

Cut a piece of fabric that is going to be about an inch longer double the amount of height you would like your final heating pad to be. 

On your long sides, press the seam allowance in. 

Then Fold it in half, hot dog style, so the right sides are touching. Sew using about an inch seam allowance. Trim your seams.

And your done. This is a handy little heating pad, and make great gifts. Now that it's getting colder, we all could use a little heat, no? 

To use, simply place in your microwave and "cook" for about a minute at a time until it reaches the desired temperature. If it's too hot, wrap it in a hand towel until it cools down. 

I purchased this dresser off of craigslist for 50 bucks. I didn't have the sense to photograph it before I stripped the horrible brown paint off of it. I stripped and sanded this piece down, and went about staining it. Halfway through the staining process I realized that the lighter wood wasn't taking the stain the same as the other wood. It was time to improvise. 

I broke out some white left over house paint, in high gloss. 

Check out that white and wood two tone action. I also spray painted the original hardware a gold metallic color. 

They actually look much better there than they do in real life. 

I know some people feel very strongly about painting wood. I don't though, and since it's my house you really shouldn't care if I paint a very shitty wood floor. 

I started off sanding what little finish remained on the floors. 

Then I put two coats of primer down.

There was some staining that still came through the primer, I though about using kilz... but I got lazy.

Then I used valspars paint and primer for three more coats in a satin finish. High gloss is really hard to keep clean on a floor. 

Then since the floor is so so white, the rest of the at least 20 year old paint looked awful and yellow. So We set to paint all the trim with the same valspar paint. Also decided on a few samples for a new wall color.

Behold! The world's worst iPhone panorama! It looks 100 times better even in this halfway complete state. I'm waiting on the floor to be completely dry before I start working on prepping the walls for paint though. It's been about three days and it's still kind of tacky. Cincinnati has been pretty humid, so I'm not going to pull my hair out if it takes more than a week to dry.

 I'm considering putting a poly top coat on, but that might be more hassle than it's worth. I've heard that back in the old days, people would paint their woods floors once a year in the spring to keep up with maintenance. That seems really doable. Even if it's just to touch up scuffs. 

We decided to go with Belle Grove Aloe Green by valspar for the walls.(It's the paint sample on the left wall in the picture above.)

It looks a bit more blue on our walls than in the sample. It's pretty soothing though, which is good, because this room is going to our new bedroom, surprise! The whole bedroom dreaming moodboard has actually been set into motion. While I love how much room we have in the loft, summer+not the greatest insulation+second floor bedroom=cranky Paige. It gets VERY hot. 

One day we are ideally going to gut and redo the upstairs, adding more vents and insulation. Until that day though, I can't handle the heat. I also have this really unreasonable fear that one of the huge trees surrounding our house will fall and kill me while I sleep. I'm obviously really reasonable. 

There's still a bit of one stain that peeks through. Our bed will be over it though, so I'm not too concerned. There's still so much work that needs to be done in this room, but I'll keep everyone updated! 

I am so terrible at keeping track of my money. So last night the boyfriend and I decided that we needed to set a firm budget, even for the fun stuff. Knowing myself I thought it would be best to keep my budget tangible. I'll be taking out the money I've budgeted for different things and keeping them in labeled envelopes. It's pretty fool proof. If I've only got 20 that week for fabric, no sale will make me spend more than I want. 

But since I have a surplus of pretty paper and labels I thought I'd make my own envelopes. I made a template for them if you'd like to make them as well! They'd make for a much prettier presentation of a monetary gift than most people are used to! 

The template is here. 

Basically all you need to do is trace and cut your desired paper. Fold all the edges in, and glue the over lap on the long sides. Then glue one of the curved flaps on top of the longer sections. To close them I just fold the top flap into the envelope. 

  

Get some cardboard and some computer paper. I used the lid of the paper box. You could buy some new cardboard, but I could see a cereal box working very well. Make sure it's nothing too thick. 

Fold the amount of paper you want in your notebook. I think mine used about 25 full sheets of paper, making 50 pages, 100 if you're counting both sides. Fold your paper in half  evenly, using a bone folder or you nails to really get a nice clean crease.  Stack papers with fold open on top of each other. 

Cut and score your cardboard to fit your pages. 

Using paper clips get everything centered. Stitch down the middle using a longer straight stitch on your machine. GO SLOW GUYS. You don't want to break a needle. 

Admire your wiggly stitch line.