It's been a minute since we've had a home improvement post to share. But this one has been sitting in the drafts folder for a while now, and it seems time to share. 

Once we got through the scariest parts of my pregnancy and were pretty confident we'd be bringing home a baby in the summer, we got to work converting the room that had been our home office into a room for the baby. 

The room is the smallest of the three in our house, and I knew since it wasn't huge, I wanted to do some sort of wall feature. We debated a bit between board and batten or picture frame moulding, but before we could do anything to add some character to the room, we had to do some basic repairs. 

The floor in this room squeaked horribly from the house settling over the years. We tried a couple of simpler solutions that ended up not solving the problem, so we had to open the wall and add a bunch of screws into the wall framing to tighten things up. 

Once the squeaking was eliminated we patched the wall back up.

(I promise I didn't just take the pictures. I did work too). 

Once we had the wall repaired, we had our blank slate to work with. We settled on board and batten for our wall feature, and started using painters tape to visualize the height and width of our potential battens. I will not tell you how long we spent on getting all the measurements right and trying to figure out how to make sure no battens overlapped outlets or created awkward spacing in corners or by doors. The prep work and the math took a lot of time, but it was worth it because once this was done, it was a matter of getting the supplies and diving right into the work. 

I also went a bit overboard on the paint samples in my quest to find a green that would feeling calming and soothing. 

Since this was a small room, I wanted to make sure our battens were very thin and wouldn't make the furniture sit off the wall too much. We priced out quarter inch thick wood boards and realized it would cost us a lot of money to buy all the battens individually. Instead, we bought a single piece of quarter inch thick plywood and used my dad's table saw to rip it down to 3 inch wide pieces for the battens and 4 inch wide pieces for the horizontal boards at the top. 

Once we got all the wood home, it was time to start nailing it to the walls. We worked section by section, hanging our horizontal pieces first to ensure they were level and then fitting our vertical battens in as we went. Since our walls aren't perfectly level, we had to get creative at some points and add some filler at the bottom of some of the battens so everything would line up nicely between the baseboard and the top board. 

Oh look, a picture of me actually doing work. 

After we got the wood all hung, it was time for my least favorite part of any project -- the caulking and the wood filing. There were tons of small nail holes that needed to be filled in, though that part went fairly quickly. The caulking always takes me forever. I knocked it out in an afternoon though, and let it sit to dry overnight so that I could dive into the priming and painting. 

The wood all got a coat of primer and so did the areas of the wall that we had patched.

Then we hit everything with two coats of Benjamin Moore's Jack and the Beanstalk. The painting took some time as we had to alternate between brushes and rollers to get clean edges around the wood and smooth finishes on the walls. 

To brighten the room a bit, we also painted the top half of the walls Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace. 

For safety, we changed all the outlets, replacing them with childproof ones. We also rehung one of the closet doors to make it easier to open after we had the crib in the room. 

We built the furniture, hung the bookshelves, and then just waited for our little guy to be ready to move in. 

I spend a lot of time in this room now, and I love the way it turned out.

A few months ago, my husband had the great idea for us to upgrade our patio by building a weather-proof cabinet so we could mount a TV outside.

We had a small smart TV that was sitting upstairs in one of our guest rooms that never got much use, and we figured it could have a new home on the patio. 

We took some measurements and determined we'd easily have room on our patio to build a cabinet big enough to accommodate the TV. Because our patio gets lots of sun, we wanted to ensure we hung the TV in a place where wouldn't get bad glare. 

Once we had all the math done, we headed to Home Depot for supplies. 

Our supplies were pretty straight forward:

• 3/4 inch plywood for the back of the box
• 1 1x8x8" board to be cut down to size for the top, bottom and sides
• 1/4 inch plywood for the doors
• Decorative trim for the front of the doors
• Brick anchors and screws
• Hinges
• Door Handles
• Deck stain
• Outdoor wood sealant

Step one was cutting all the wood down to size. We started with 3/4 inch plywood that would be mounted into the brick. We were working with a 27" TV, so we cut the back piece to about 33" wide. We wanted there to be some wiggle room without unnecessary extra space. 

Then we cut the 1x8 board into the four pieces that would make the top, bottom and side pieces of the cabinet. 

Before treating any of the wood, we installed a TV mount onto the plywood and made sure everything fit together the way we hoped. 

We also drilled some pilot holes to make it easier to mount the plywood to the brick when the time came. 

And then came the most tedious part of this project -- treating the wood to ensure that it was waterproof and could hold up against the elements. 

This required three coats of stain per side per piece of wood. Then an additional three coats of sealant per piece of wood per side. The stain dried pretty quickly, but the sealant took forever to dry, which meant there were some days we just couldn't make a lot of progress. Staining and sealing these pieces probably took a week to ten days.

But then we got to the fun part of assembly!

Drilling the pilot holes into the brick was a process. We planned for six anchors to make sure the cabinet wouldn't go anywhere, and it took a long time to get holes drilled even with our special brick drill bit. 

But getting the plywood and mount up on the brick felt like a big step forward!

From there we screwed in the sides, top and bottom. 

Our box was coming together, and we put the TV up on the mount to make sure everything fit well.

The last part of the project was to assemble and mount the doors. We kept the doors really simple with a piece of plywood that we framed with some mitered trim. 

We tested the measurements one more time, and then installed the hinges and the handles. 

And then we installed the TV for real. 

We are so excited with how this cabinet turned out and are loving being able to sit outside on nice days and watch TV.

I'm so excited to share my recent guest bathroom makeover. This is the first project I did almost entirely by myself while my husband was out of town for work (for three weeks, with no access to his phone. I really needed something to keep me busy).

I couldn't be happier or more proud of how it turned out. 

I should start by saying there was nothing actually wrong with our guest bathroom. In fact, we're pretty sure at some point the previous owners may have installed new flooring and new vanity. 

But a lot of things were still builder grade quality. The mirror, the light, the towel bars, etc. 

I wanted to give this space a makeover to freshen it up and make it a bit more modern. 

I envisioned adding all new fixtures and some trim work to give things a bit of texture and some color. 

I started mapping things out with painters tape so that I could get an idea of what different layouts might look at. This was honestly the part that took me the longest. I played with so many different configurations before I settled on my final design. 

I started demolition the Friday before my husband left. I ripped out ugly towel bars and funny shelves. Some came off the wall very easily. Some did not, and I ended up with some decent size holes that I needed to patch. 

My husband helped me take the original mirror off the wall because I needed an extra set of hands so it didn't fall and shatter all over the floor. 

With that, I had a nice blank space to work with. 

I patched the holes in the walls. This required several rounds of spackle and an actual patch on one of the bigger holes. Major thanks to our friends who let me borrow their sander, which saved me so much time during the wall repair part of this project. 

With wall repair underway, I headed to the hardware store to get the rest of the supplies I'd need.

For the picture frame boxes I wanted to add, I used the same trim I'd selected for our door makeover. 

I also wanted to add a chair rail, and I spent some time trying to decide which style trim would work best. I ultimately decided on something that was about two inches tall and only about an inch wide so that it didn't overpower the picture frame trim. 

I got all the wood cut down, which admittedly took some time, and then it was time to hang it. 

I was a little nervous about this part because I always had help doing any sort of trim or wood accent walls, and I was worried I wouldn't have enough hands to hold the nail gun and the level and make it all work. But it ended up going just fine. 

Once or twice I had to pull a piece off the wall and re-nail it because I didn't have it perfectly level, but overall, getting the trim hung wasn't too bad. 

Then I needed to fill the nail holes with wood filler and caulk all the seams.

After I had the trim up, I had to pick out a paint color. I was unimpressed with the first three color samples I got. They ended up not looking much like the swatches, so I picked up three more before finding my winner. 

I went with Antique Jade by Benjamin Moore. After priming all the wood, I gave everything one coat of the paint. 

I followed it up with a second coat the next day, and I just love the way the color turned out. It was the perfect match for the earth tones already in the bathroom.

The last few things were just hanging the new fixtures.

When my parents were in town, I got my dad to help me change the light fixture. It was one of those tasks were I thought I just needed an extra set of hands. But my dad actually showed me a way to get the light to suspend so that a single person can do all the wiring themselves. It's a trick that I will keep in mind for future projects. 

I went with a light from Amazon. I had actually ordered it for a different room a few years ago, but it ended up not fitting in that space. I had returned it at the time, and was excited when it was still being sold since it fit pretty perfectly in this room. 

The last thing I installed was all the new bathroom hardware. I went with an oil-rubbed bronze finish. There's just something about that finish that I love, and I thought it nicely complimented the rest of the room. 

And that was it! Fresh trim, paint and all new fixtures, and this space looks so much cozier. 

I love the way it looks, and that I did it basically all on my own.