DIY: Bottle Lamps

I found this link on Apartment Therapy today and think it would be an awesome (even easy) project to tackle. I think I'm going to have to add it to my project to-do list. Here's the link to the directions from Hallmark Magazine.

Updates

I realize that lately I have done a terrible job of updating, so it's definitely time to get back into gear with the posts. Daniel and I really didn't tackle a lot during the entire month of January, so the house pretty much stayed the same (and the projects that were unfinished before the holidays) remained in the same state after the holidays. With the recent good weather on the weekends, however, we've actually managed to accomplish quite a bit (and, as usual, we've learned a lot in the process).

Last weekend, we attempted three projects: putting the final coats of shellac on the listening room wall, sanding and painting the window ledges in the kitchen that overlook the den, and stripping and staining the front door.

Applying the shellac in the listening room was extremely easy, and we are thrilled with the result. It is a near perfect match with the rest of the walls (the only difference is due to the age of the wood). Once furniture is in and a bookshelf in place, I don't think anyone will even notice that those five panels weren't part of the original wall.

The left-hand side is the original panel, and the right-hand side is the new panel:

The two windows in the kitchen that overlook the den (and overlooked the backyard before the addition was added in the 1970s) had really ugly spindles dividing the space. Daniel karate chopped these spindles out on the day we moved in, and we never got around to sanding and painting were the spindles once were.
Wood filler to fill the holes:

It is a definite improvement:

After months of envying one of our neighbors' front doors (which looks just like ours except it's unpainted), Daniel suggested that we should try stripping the layers of white paint from our door to see if we could return it to its original condition. I wholeheartedly agreed, as a "new" door could definitely liven up the front of the house, and I also assumed stripping the paint would be much easier than when we attempted it with the trim because everything was flat.

So again we armed ourselves with paint stripper (two enormous containers!) and went to work. The first layer came off with relative ease, which was encouraging. We even felt that we would be able to have the door finished in that same day. The second layer of paint stripper didn't seem to eat through that next layer of paint as easily though, and we ended up scraping until our arms felt they might fall off. We did manage to scrape down through one last layer of old paint and were able to see the original wood of the door, which was enough to keep us going.

It became obvious that this last layer of paint wasn't going to budge.

So we called up our friend Brian to borrow his sander, then we bought a respirator mask (just in case there might be lead-based paint) and went back to work.

Unfortunately despite all of the sanding, we still weren't really making any good progress. In fact, we discovered that the condition of the door wasn't in as good of shape as we had initially thought (the wood was peeling and chipping and the bottom, and it wasn't too terribly solid for a front door). Not to mention, the paint was not budging from the grain of the wood, and we didn't have a lot of room to sand down.

With the night looming, we rehung the door like this:

Yes, it looked really, really bad:

And I did a quick paint job.

We now needed to find a new door.

DIY: To fix a hole

Daniel and I have had several DIY projects since we've moved it (from installing a shutoff adapter on the refrigerator water line to replacing all of the toilet components), but I thinking tackling the hole in the bathroom wall might have been the most daunting. However, we're still young, and so we were up to the challenge.As preparation for this task, we read several articles online, discussed the process with my coworker David (who happens to be building a house at the moment), and gathered additional tidbits of advice from our dear friends at Lowe's (who see us way more than we would like). It seemed like it should be a breeze (no, really, I had myself convinced that this could be accomplished in a weekend at the most).

In retrospect, I should have learned that nothing is as easy or as fast as it initially appears (especially for a novice). That said, I thought it might be helpful to include an account of the process.


Materials and Tools:

• 1 sheet drywall (we had to get mold and mildew resistant since this was the bathroom; however they do have smaller sheets that are geared for patching); make sure you measure your existing drywall for its depth (1/2 inch or 5/8 inch)

• Drywall screws (we used 1 1/2-inch)- 2x4 wood for framing (you have to attach the drywall to something)

• Screws to attach the 2x4 to the other studs in the wall

• Joint compound (we used a faster drying compound that was in the paint section of Lowe's; also it was premixed which eliminated a good deal of the mess)

• Joint/drywall tape (we went with the self-adhesive kind with holes)

• Putty/drywall compound knife (they actually sell these in sets of various sizes, which I would recommend-- although if you buy only one, I would say to get a larger sized knife)

• Sanding block, medium and fine grit (make sure this isn't sandpaper, but the flexible block that can be found in the drywall section)- Primer- Dust mask

• Jigsaw

• Measuring tape

• Straightedge

• Pencil

• Shop Vac

Procedure:

1) Measure size of hole and cut 2x4s accordingly.

2) Attach 2x4s to surrounding studs using appropriate screws. Make sure that when drywall is placed into the hole, it will be flush with the wall.

3) Using a straightedge and measuring tape, mark line on drywall (drywall should fit snugly into hole).

4) Use jigsaw to cut drywall as straight as possible.

5) Place drywall into hole. It should fit snugly and should not be sticking out from the wall.

6) Use drywall screws to secure drywall panel to 2x4s. Screws should be set just below the drywall surface, and you definitely don't want them sticking out past the drywall.

7) Fill any gaps between wall and drywall panel with spackling and allow to dry for specified time (2 hours in our case).
8) Apply self-adhesive joint tape along line joining drywall and wall (this stuff was really great because you don't have to apply an initial layer of joint compound to act as a tape sealant).




9) Using putty knife, apply a thin, smooth layer of joint compound over the tape and allow to dry (since we were tackling the project in the evening, we allowed the compound to dry overnight).

10) After compound has dried, apply another smooth coat. Make sure your edges taper into the wall (to appear seamless, as though it's part of the original wall) and make sure any screw indentions are covered. Allow compound to dry.


11) Using sanding block (and dust mask!), sand entire surface so that everything is nice and smooth. This will make a big mess (dust everywhere), so be prepared for some serious cleanup.

12) Use primer to cover newly drywalled space (this will make painting much easier, and in our case, also hid a couple of errors).


Voila! Brand-new wall!