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How to build a simple, scrap wood upholstered footstool

An upholstered footstool is one of the gifts that I made for Pip for Christmas this year, in my quest to have one room in this house completely finished up. This is part of how I made it–I say part, because I think I deleted the building part of the pictures…oops! It is so simple though, you really don’t need anything but a picture to put it together. And I used scrap plywood and miscellaneous supplies from my sewing room, so it was free.

See what I mean? This was a very easy project. I had put together the bench part before I started on the living room built-in, but I finished the rest of this in the midst of my general-Christmas-madness-combined-with-starting-a-major-project brilliance. I will once again beg all of you to remind me that I should not start major projects during the holiday season next year!

I left the edges of the plywood unfinished–I just filled some spots where there were little voids in the ply with wood putty and sanded really well. Two coats of primer and 1 coat of my white. I did do two thin coats of polycrylic since I had it out already for the living room built in. I really like the smooth finish I end up with when I use it.

Here are the steps I used to upholster the top.

Scrap wood heart collage

I’m getting closer and closer to having ONE room in this house that is completely and truly done!!!! I can’t wait for that day Pip is really liking her desk hutch, but the project I am writing about today is one of her favorites for her room and it turned out a lot easier than I imagined. And it used up a lot of scrap plywood I had been accumulating–high fives all around! Here is the scrap wood DIY heart collage I put up on one of her walls:

I started this back in the summer and then procrastination hit…sometimes it is the silliest things that throw me off the finish line for a project. Picking out the pictures is what did it this time! I had a niggling of a feeling of wanting to do the picture-picking-out last weekend so I jumped on it, and now the project’s got a check mark next to it on my to-do list.

This used up a surprising amount of scrap 3/4″ and 1/2″ plywood. I wanted both sizes because I thought it would add some visual interest to the picture collage. Most of them are 4 x 6, but a few were smaller because it was what I had left. Read More…

February 14, 2012

Build some under the sink storage

Happy Valentine’s Day!

This post was originally a guest post for Brittany over at Pretty Handy Girl a little over two weeks ago. I so appreciate that she featured me over there! If you didn’t catch it then, here is the Pink Toe version

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Based on today’s post, I’m going to predict that 2012 is going to involve some embarrassing photos. Embarrassing to me specifically. But the “after” results are so worth the embarrassment that I’m going to show you some of the messy areas of our my house. That cannot read “our” because no part of My Man is messy. Been with him 18 years and the man hasn’t made a mess yet. Me? I’m the fertility goddess for messes—they breed all around me. So I decided to tackle one mess at a time in 2012 and my latest project is organizing under the sink in the master bath.

I mean look at this (if you are male and uncomfortable looking at feminine products, you can just skip on ahead here…if you can even find it in this mess. This photo could be a page in an I Spy book).

Ack! I swear it looks worse in the picture! You can now understand that when I saw this on Pinterest I got pretty excited.

source: Pregnant…with power tools

Actually I got a LOT excited…dollar store bins! Scrap wood! Cheap and easy DIY—what’s not to love??

So I went off and I built some stuff and now it looks like so:

AAAHHH! I love it so much now!

First thing you need to do is go get yourself some bins. This project cost me $4 because all I had to buy were the bins and I got 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree. You need to know also that bins vary in quality and usability for this project. Look for rigid bins with side edges that are uniform with no obstructions like these: Read More…

February 8, 2012

Scrap lumber project for small animal friends

First I want to apologize for this post being sent prematurely several days ago. I have no idea what happened–I started writing up the post, left the computer for a bit, came back to finish it, and discovered it was published. So sorry about that–and it was blank at the time it was published as well!

I had some time recently and I needed to solve a little problem…the little problem is a Netherland dwarf rabbit named Annie. She recently moved from the basement to the dining-room-we-never-eat-in-that-is-scheduled-to-become-an-office-in-the-near-future. Her cage needed prettied up. A lot.

So today I added a new house. All scraps, so it was totally free!