My latest DIY project

I saw this on Pinterest and loved it!  It is an Ikea hack.  Two Ribba picture frames, 1 set of Dioder LED strip lights and two bundles of Torka twig thingy's.  I ran to Ikea today, bought my stuff and built them this afternoon, they are super easy to make. You can also see my Amazon wire window/mirror thing that I bought with my Birthday gift card from Barry.  We just recently painted the bedroom, and I replaced the overhead light, eventually Craig is going to rebuild our bedroom furniture, but in the meantime I have to live with this set that we bought about 23 years ago.  I still need to finish up the crown with a little more caulk and then touch-up the paint, it just never ends.

Here they are with the room lights off, the lights are white, but they give off this reddish glow at the bottom of the picture frames which I think looks cool.

 And with the room lights on, it is hard to tell they are lit up in the photo, but in person you can see that they are lit up.

Craig also built a shelf for our satellite receiver and PS3 with little side panels to hide the cords, it drove me crazy that the cords were all over the place and all over the floor and the receiver and PS3 were just sitting on a table in the corner of the bedroom, this is so much neater and tidier. We ran the power and satellite cords behind the baseboards and I used a cord minder to run them up the wall to the TV and then just painted it to match.

Craft room makeover

I repainted my craft room a while back and forgot to blog about it, so here it is. 
 

My ceiling's were painted yellow like the walls before, in fact every room in my house had the same color on the ceiling's as what was on the wall, I decided I no longer like that look, so I painted the ceiling white.
 

And I got creative and made a template out of wax paper and ironed it up on the wall to create a stencil so I could bring the white down a bit onto the walls. 
 

Just below the points on my border, I painted little dots, you may be able to see them if you click on the pictures to enlarge them.
 

The only other thing I changed is I took out my cutting table that was in the middle of the room, although I really liked having it, it took up a lot of space.  You can see my craft room before by going to my Craft Room link near the top of my blog.
 

Cheryl's bathroom makeover

So here's is "My bathroom" (You can read about "Craig's bathroom" in the previous post) when we bought this house it only had one bathroom, when Carina became a teenager, things got really rough, especially since she could take 4 hour bath's, so, we built this bathroom and then Carina was free to monopolize the other bathroom.  It used to be the coat closet, the closet in my craft room and the garage closet, we knocked out the walls between the closets and created this long skinny bathroom.  Besides the rough plumbing, we did it all ourselves.
 

The walls use to be a very, very pale minty green, it almost looked white, so I wanted it a bit darker.  I agonized over this paint color and finally decided on it, went to get some mixed up and it came out this aweful color, the guy mixing it kept trying to fix it, but it just got worse, so I finally picked a slightly darker color than what I wanted and this is what I ended up with, I really wanted it a bit lighter, but it is growing on me.
 

Good 'Ol Ikea, I got some picture frames and I wanted something floral, but not to flowery if you know what I mean, so I googled all kinds of things and somehow wound up finding these, it is a PDF of a really old botanical book, 400 and something pages, but there were tons of pictures of plants in it that were just perfect!  I resized them and printed them out and wahlah!

The green in the next two pictures below are way off of what the wall color looks like, the above ones and the last one are much closer to how it really looks. I would have cried if it turned out like this, lol.
 

The prints have kind of a peachy background that goes great with my tile floor.
 

I also put in a new vanity light, nothing was wrong with the old one except I couldn't get one of the glass covers off so I could paint around it, it was stuck on there, so I gave up and just put in a new fixture, I like this one a lot.  You can't really see it in the picture, but trust me, it is cool!
 

"Craig's bathroom" makeover

So we have been in painting mode now for a couple of months it seems.  We decided to makeover our bathroom's, this one we call "Craig's bathroom", it use to be called "Carina's bathroom", but since she moved out, Craig has taken it over, so we thought we would man it up!
 

He picked out this paint, it is called "Volcanic Ash", I just love it!  It was a raisin-y color before.  He wanted some pictures of the stadium's, so I bought some frames from Ikea and googled "Safeco" and Century Link Field" and found all kinds of good pictures.
 

I changed them to black and white to go with the monochromatic theme we had going on.
 

It is extremely difficult to take good pictures in such a tiny bathroom, but hopefully you get the idea.
 

It's amazing how different paint can change the look and feel of a space, if you want to see the before, I have a post on my blog of when we originally remodeled it here, http://cherylshtuff.blogspot.com/2008/08/bathroom-completed.html.  I will post "My bathroom" in the next post.
 

Finally finished some of the details from our 2008 remodel

So Craig and I have wanted to get this done for quite some time, but just couldn't get motivated enough to do it.  We finally caulked all of the crown molding and trim around the doors and I got all of the crown painted, we still have a little more to do on the trim and we still haven't done the baseboards, but I am proud of us for getting this much done.
 

I also decided that it would look best if I painted the ceiling white, originally we had painted it a shade lighter than the walls, but I never really liked it.  We also had left the crown in the kitchen unpainted, just wood, and it looked good, but it didn't flow with the rest of the house, so I took it down and painted it.
 

This all started with us deciding to paint all of the doors black, something I saw on Pinterest and I liked, surprisingly Craig was all for it too!  In fact he was the one pushing to get them done.
 

I started with the french door, what a pain, but Craig did most of the rest of the doors.
 

Ignore the dirty fish tank, it is due for an overhall and a new light on one side.  What amazed me the most is by painting the ceiling white it made the room feel so much taller, it is like we gained a foot a space going up, it also makes the house a lot lighter and with all of the black we have, we need all the light we can get.
 

We painted the front door on both sides as well, Craig was hesitant to paint the outside, but I convinced him it would look great!
 

I realized after looking at this picture, I need to straighten out my DVD's.
 

While I was in painting mode, I painted the trim around the glass block black also, now it matches the picture frames above.
 

While I was painting the hall ceiling I realized our old attic door was falling apart, it was just drywall and the old paint was peeling and yucky, so I cut a new door from some scrap wood we had in the shop and put a knob on it, it is much better now.
 

Funny how one thing leads to another, especially with me and my OCD tendencies, I was caulking around the door next to the cabinet that we keep all of our recipe books in and ended up dusting it and then cleaning out the bottom part of it and now we hardly have anything in it, just 3 empty fabric bins, it was packed with junk before, I love getting rid of stuff.
 

Update, way past due!

I haven't done as much with the pond this summer as I would have liked, money is always an issue, but digging is free, so back to digging it is.  Craig did 90% of the digging this time around, what a sport!  We also got our ridiculously out of control Laurel hedge cut down to a managable size and I cleaned out all of the blackberry bushes behind the barn and we got our deck painted amongst many other outdoor projects this summer.
 

I realized after starting to dig the trenches under the footing for the bottom drains, that the best thing to do to make the plumbing easier and to actually do them right would be to dig out the entire area behind the pond where the filtration will go.  You can see in the picture below, the space where my pond window will be.  I still have 3 more courses of block to lay out and the back wall will be 2 courses higher than the rest.
 

So here it is dug out, except for a little more close to the fence.  I will build a retaining wall around the entire inside of the filter pit.  You can see the trench I dug out for the footer for the back wall and where I dug out under that for the 4" bottom drain line.  There will be another bottom drain on the far side as well, digging these trenches are a killer, I had to pick away little by little to get it dug out, the dirt down this far is very hard and clay-like.
 

Here it is from another angle.  Next I put in my forms for the footer along with more rebar.  The area between the two back walls will be for my Sand and Gravel filters that supply the waterfall.
 

Yesterday we got the cement poured in, now I am ready to set in more rebar and build some more walls.  When I get three courses of block laid on this wall, I will stub in the bottom drain line, fill the center in and put cement on the top 6", this will be a plant shelf in the pond, then the back wall will go up another 4-5 courses.
 

DIY Sand and Gravel filter finished!

Got my S/G filter finished and up and running.  I built this for my indoor Koi Stock tank, which will eventually serve as my quarantine tank when the big pond gets finished.  Right now it has my 3 Koi and one goldfish in there.  My old filter was failing and leaking really bad, I had used it for over 10 years, it use to be on my old outdoor pond and it was really undersized for my fast growing Koi.  I was able to use the bio media that was in it for a new shower water return as you will see in the video.  So far, no leaks and the water is sparkling clear after only 2 days in operation.  I will be building 2 more of these for my outdoor pond, so this was a good practice one.  I make a video of how to clean it next weekend!  Stay tuned!

Cheryl

Greenhouse cover for indoor pond

I decided I needed a cover for my indoor Koi tub, with the garage being unheated and the water being heated it was causing a lot of condensation throughout the garage.
 

I built it out of 1/2" PVC, I told Craig about my idea, I even drew it out, but until we got it somewhat built he didn't get what I was saying, but it came together exactly like I had planned. The whole thing cost less than $20.00.  I used three 4-way T's, 8 elbows and 8 1 1/2" T's with a 1/2" outlet for the legs, they are cut in half so they rest perfectly around the edges of the tub and I just threw a painters tarp over the top.  It is like a rainforrest in there now.
 

I didn't glue it so I could disassemble it when I am not using it.  I need to build a new filter, the one I have been using is from the old pond and it developed a huge crack in the lid several years ago, I used some of the plastic to seal it, but it is now leaking out of the sides.  I think my pump is just too powerful for it and the pressure inside it is immense.  But fish have grown like crazy and seem really happy, they take turns swimming into the current from the filter.  Water is holding steady at about 73 degrees.