Category: Home Reno & DIY

My Very Own Built In Bookcase

We’ve lived in our home for over 9 years now. And for 9 years I’ve stared at this random little indented wall in my den and thought that I should add a bookcase.

Over the years, the little indent has been the home to our Christmas tree and lately I’ve had some hanging lights in there. However, it never really looked quite right. So, I took everything down and cleared it out in anticipation of this project.

I had a plan, which I sketched out with some ideas. But once we got to Home Depot to see what kind of wood options we had, the whole plan was thrown out the door. The problem was that we needed long pieces of wood (the indent was 58.5 inches across), but also wide enough that I could use them as bookshelves.

After looking through the whole store, we found a winner in the closet department: Rubbermaid Chestnut Oak Laminated Wood Shelves in a 12” x 72” size for $15 each. I started by grabbing 5 of those, because I knew I wanted 5 shelves. But then, we also bought a bunch of the smaller sizes to use on our project as the shelf supports.

I’m not going to go through the whole process, because frankly it was an absolute blur of sawdust, sweating, more sawdust, and a nail gun. My dad is the master craftsman… while I was his humble assistant that ran all over the place, checked measurements, held boards while he cut them on his miter box, and pounded things into place with a rubber mallet.

My dad and I work really well together, in that I’m always open to trying things in different ways. And if something isn’t working, we can typically figure out another way to get to the same end-goal. With that being said, this project went MUCH quicker than I anticipated. My dad and I met at Home Depot at 9am and we were totally done and cleaned up at noon.

Pro Tip: buy EVERYTHING you think you might possibly need for your project the first time, as it’s much more fun to return unneeded stuff when you’re done then to have to run back out to the store in the middle of a project

On our morning trip, I spent $188 at Home Depot. When we were done, I went back to the store and returned $59 worth of stuff we ended not needing. So, the whole bookshelf project totaled $129.

Here is the slide show, but I also made an adorable little video with THE BEST song ever that you can view here (click through and turn on the sound):

Once we were done building and I had vacuumed up the sawdust. My dad left and it was time for me to do the fun part of ‘styling’ the shelves. I gathered up all the books that previously lived on my mantle, grabbed some more from my office and then went around the house stealing fun trinkets like photos, art projects and vases. I also took a quick trip to Homegoods to buy a couple more fake plants and two baskets.

And I LOVE the finished product!

Now the little den indent looks like it’s supposed to be there. The bookcase is custom, so it fits perfectly and with the light and the recliner, it makes a great little spot to snuggle up with a book.

All in all, I’m kind of annoyed that I THOUGHT about the project for 9 years… and it only took 3 hours.

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Losing My Mind & Gaining a Roof

Actual photo of the hole in Jack’s ceiling. I photoshopped on googly eyes for funsies.

You know how when you put a household task off, and put it off some more… it just goes away? Oh. Yeah, that doesn’t work for me either. Which is why when the ceiling in Jack’s room started leaking again, I figured I should probably do something about it. This wasn’t the first time it leaked, but it was the first time the leak morphed into a scary mouth not unlike the Harry Potter Sorting Hat.

While keeping a bath towel folded up on Jack’s dresser to catch raindrops seemed like a pretty great long-term plan, I decided to give my dad a call to see if he had a ‘roof guy’ and… of course he had a roof guy. So, just two days later, I poked my head out the door when my dog started barking his head off during my conference call to find a strange man climbing a ladder to my roof.

Not too long after, I decided to record a couple videos. Because I’m totally going to want to look back on this in a few years and laugh. Actually, it’s been a few days and I’m still laughing at the absurdity of it.

Click the little arrow on the right to enjoy all three videos:

So, there you go. Because obviously the perfect time to have a nice man rip off your old roof and replace it with a new one is when you are quarantining at home, working from home, and online schooling with your kid. Obviously.

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An Unplanned Bathroom Refresh

Our kitchen faucet was pretty much shot with terrible water pressure, so we decided to replace it with a new one. As it happens, my dad happened to have exactly the faucet we needed in his truck. He’s much like Mary Poppins and her carpet bag… but it’s home improvement supplies and his work truck.

My dad ended up stopping by our house on Christmas Eve to help us switch out the kitchen faucet. It turned out that the job was so easy-peasy, he decided to started poking around our leaking bathroom sink.

And then he ripped the whole pedestal sink out of the wall.

I mean, there was a little more leading up to it. But basically, the sink was a pain in the butt so I told him to just feel free to rip it out. And he did.

Here’s the before from an old blog post:

And here’s the during:

I’d always hated that stupid sink. The bathroom is soooo tiny and the sink was weirdly HUGE… while also providing no storage at all. The only reason we hadn’t ripped it out before is that the toilet is an almond color and all the small vanities/sinks at Home Depot and Lowes are white.

Welp, once you have a hole in the wall where your sink previously was… you get a lot less picky about matching toilets!

When it comes to tiny 18” vanities you don’t have a ton of choices. As it turns out when Travis and my dad ran up to the good ol’ Home Depot there was one 18” vanity in stock. SOLD.

It cost $79 and once we bought all the other plumbing crap we needed it was around $100 total. My dad shimmied it into place and hooked up the faucets before he left that night. A few days later, I sanded the walls, touch-up painted, repainted all the trim, and used silicone caulk to affix the sink to the wall. I also painted a few coats of white paint on our wood medicine cabinet/light combo. I would have preferred a whole new mirror and light, but I figured I’d give the cheap option a try first.

Here’s how it all turned out:

It’s an awfully tight space, so here’s another angle:

As it is, I’m super happy with our $100 bathroom update. With the vanity and the medicine cabinet matching in white, it makes the whole room look so much cleaner and brighter. Sure, the toilet is still the almond color, but I don’t mind it as much as I thought I would.

Oh, and our original project of our kitchen sink turned out great too!

Have you ever started a project which steamrolled into a whole different project?

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