All home and garden DIY projects to create a unique and beautiful home inside and out. Find DIY projects for your indoor and outdoor space so you can create your dream home.
Drainage issues and basement leaks are a home owners worst nightmare. But luckily yard grading is an easy DIY project you can knock out in a weekend. All you need is a little sweat equity and these helpful yard grading tips to get started.
Nothing like a 90 degree day to pick to seal your driveway!! Actually, a very warm day is the very best day to do this. Sealing a driveway is a job that almost any homeowner can do.
This will help you out with replacing a newer style door knob with one of those super cute looking vintage door knobs. This will also help anyone who purchased a doorknob from Anthropologie — they have fantastic looking knobs, but don’t inform you on how to install these knobs.
So, my next outdoor project is repainting my rusty wrought iron railing around my front porch. Here are my instructions on what to do: Scrub the wrought iron with a steel wire brush. This will remove any loose or flaking rust. I used a brush from Sherwin Williams with a little “ice scraper” attachment at the end of it. I used this little plastic piece to tap away at the rust and paint chips so they were easier to brush off. Sand the wrought iron with electric drill attachements, such as a sandpaper disc or wire wheel to further remove rust. Begin by using a coarse sandpaper to remove deeper rust. Go over the wrought iron with a medium-grit sandpaper. If necessary, mix a solution…
This weekend I was finally able to paint the foundation… or as I like to say “apply lipstick” to my house. If you read my post about painting the window trim and my house wearing “eyeliner” you will get where I’m going with this! My house has black lipstick, so I guess she’s in her goth stage… In the aforementioned post, I went over the steps that we took to parge the foundation. The concrete was chipping off, and making the surface uneven, so parging it with concrete smoothed the surface. It took about a week and a half to cure… I knew it was ready when the concrete lightened up and all turned the same color. Painting the foundation is just like painting anything…
Want to learn how to paint your front door? I finally got around to painting the front door purple. I know, pretty ridiculous since I named this entire blog after this concept.
Today was a very busy day, even though not much progress can be seen. The goal of the weekend is to tackle the unfinished basement. I’m having a housewarming/St. Patrick’s Day party next weekend, and this is the party zone. Here’s our checklist: Clear the cobwebs. The entire basement just needs a whole lotta TLC. My first job was to clear the cobwebs off the rafters. I started with a duster, then moved to a wet rag, and finally settled on using the shop vac to clear the cobbys. This ended up being the fastest easiest way to get rid of them… plus I got to sing Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” while I did it. Win win. Even out the floor. There are…
What a long day it was! My FAVORITE update, though, has to be the black paint we used for the window and door frames. I struggled with this, as the peeling paint I was covering was white. But the house was just screaming for something different. I thought that the black paint would go well with the wrought iron railing, and soon-t0-be-painted black foundation, and black roof. It looks amazing. I’m so happy with it. Like my house is wearing eye-liner! Isn’t she pretty? In addition to the trim paint, we also parged the foundation (the darker color to the right of the steps is actually wet concrete). This is basically just like putting frosting on a cake… it evens out the bumps and chips….
