Category: DIY Projects (Page 1 of 5)

New Look

February 12, 2016 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

I’ve wanted to paint the entry way of our home for a few years now. But because of the large staircase and tall walls up there, I didn’t really want to tackle that job myself. So, instead, we would talk about it, then let the idea fall by the wayside. Finally, when we were making our budget (there’s that WORD again), I asked if we could PLEASE use some of the extra to paint. More specifically, to PAY someone ELSE to paint. Hubby agreed.

I got a couple of bids and picked a painter. Then I picked up paint samples.

Here we have the before walls. Stripped of all pictures and art.

Ryan had a business trip scheduled for this week, and I thought it would be great to do some painting while he was gone. We scheduled it for Tuesday. I proceeded to take pictures off of walls, clean baseboards, and even asked Ryan to take off a few wall sconces before he left. For as long as we’ve lived in this house, I’ve had a saying on the wall above the kids’ pictures on the wall that says, “All because two people fell in love”.

I took down the pictures of the kids and peeled off that vinyl saying. The wall looked SO barren.

Tuesday turned into Thursday before the painter could actually come. That gave me another day to take the face plates off the plugs and tidy up a bit more. Thursday afternoon a guy came. He patched up walls and got to work painting.

So nice to see a color on the wall. Even a neutral color (I think this one is called agreeable grey, or something like that) is nice. It’s not a huge change, but it will look so clean and fresh.

In just 4 hours, he’s got all the main floor areas painted. Yes, it’s a little awkward to have him painting and we are all right here hanging out in the kitchen and family room, but we can deal with awkward. We have valentines to make and stuff to do, so let him paint. Not sure if he’ll get this finished this weekend, or have to com next week as well, but it’s fun to have this project going.

387 Bad Reviews should have given us a clue.

June 22, 2015 / Superpaige / 2 Comments

Saturday was HOT. Super HOT. I was already planning on hosting a party for the Bells on Temple Square members and their family, and I anticipated that we’d have about 60. I’d been prepping and planning all week. But John really wanted to have a garage sale, and I couldn’t foresee any available Saturdays for quite some time, so I gave in and said we could just do it. That meant about 3 days of sorting, purging, gathering, etc. We made signs, we dragged up tables, we folded clothes. On Friday morning (after being out late on Thursday night to go see a play with the Relief Society ladies), I got up at about 5:30 to start taking out our tables and make sure the signs stayed up (they hadn’t). I had to wake up the tired kids, most of whom did NOT want to be woken up before 7. But I wasn’t about to do this by myself.

We started our boring sale, which was a lot of sitting there outside, waiting for people to come. The kids were wondering why we were even doing a yard sale on Friday, but I was hoping by having it on Friday, we could NOT have to sell our junk on Saturday. At the end of the day, we had made $70. I was hoping that was enough to toss everything and send it to DI. But no, they wanted to sell again on Sat. So, we hauled everything back to the garage and closed up shop.

Next day, repeat. At 1:00, we started to pack everything away. We didn’t have time to waste. We had a retirement party to go to, and our Bots party to set up for. But why was it so hot? Cole and Megan took most of the leftovers to DI (thank goodness).

At about 2:30, we started to set up the canopies. We have one square shade canopy that we bought, and two that we were borrowing from a neighbor. While we do have a LARGE back yard, we do not have a shady back yard, so we had to put up some shade.

And we have this thing.

It looks great, right? The description sounds great, too.
Holds up to 30 people
4 sidewalls with windows
2 end walls
All-white waterproof polyethylene canopy features UV protection; blocks 90 percent of sun’s rays
Measures 10 by 30 feet

We borrowed this canopy when we had a different big party here, for my parent’s 50th anniversary (also hot, also in June). Ryan’s sister and husband host a lot of parties for the Chilean association, so they have all the stuff. We set this thing up in the morning, and then had to leave. It was no small feat getting this thing up, because the instructions (I think we did actually have the instructions then) are ambiguous and just when you have one side done, one of the poles comes unsnapped. It’s a VERY frustrating thing to put up even when it’s not 95 degrees. When we came back, the wind had taken it and twisted it. Part of the canopy was ripped and one or two of the poles had broken. NO!!!! We had to do our best to repair it and put it back up, but we wore worried it would get ripped and ruined even more. We used other stakes and weights to hold it down. It did hold up for the evening. However, we couldn’t return a broken canopy, so we ended up buying her a new one, and we kept the one we had broken.

Fast forward to Saturday. Blazing heat. We’re already exhausted, dirty, and tired from yard sale X 2 days.

Ryan and Cole are pulling over the bounce house and setting that up. We had the box of poles and tarps. No instructions. 5 of us sat there surrounded by poles with the mandate…”You guys figure that out.” Are you freaking kidding me? First I tried to make light of the situation. “Let’s pretend we’re on the amazing race and this is our task in Africa.” They were not amused. Megan even went in to get cups of water for us, since we were in danger of heat exhaustion. We tried fitting pole 1 to pole 2. Now what? 3 and 4? No, that doesn’t fit. Turn it around! Tempers were flaring with the heat and frustration.

If someone were to ask me what I thought of that really cool canopy and should they get one, I would Grab them by the front of the shirt and yell in their face, “For the love of Pete, man, do you not love your family? Don’t do it! Don’t buy it! I know it looks big and the price is great, but DON’T DO it! You WILL say things you regret, and isn’t your family worth more than that?”

There are 387 customer reviews on Amazon for this tent. That’s 387 families that are probably in family counseling now (or at least they should be). One short and sweet review said, “If you want a canopy made from cheapest materials available this canopy if for you. It would make a wonderful windsock. One good gust and hope you can find all the pieces.”

You get the picture? There was whining, crying, gnashing of teeth, yelling, screaming, and stomping. There was also working together, trying to be supportive, and encouragement. We weren’t ALL bad. We TRIED. In the end, we got the thing up, and miracle, it stayed.

We all needed showers to cool off (both literally and figuratively).

The party was still hot, but much less than if we’d had shade.

I was so busy, I didn’t even get any decent pictures, but my friend Liz took a few. You can kind of see the canopies in these pictures.

We survived. The party was fun, even though it was too hot. I haven’t written my review on Amazon just yet. But I’m ready in case I decide to.

Kitchen paint– failures, flops, and finished

June 6, 2014 / Superpaige / 2 Comments

I was all excited to paint my kitchen. I bought paint that I thought would work and got right to it.

Unfortunately, the lighter of the two colors (called cucumber something) just looked like hospital green,

And the darker of the two colors (called gumdrop) I liked at first, but after painting all day, wasn’t so sure.

It was just too….. Bright Kermit the frog green. Too…something. While I like that color and it makes me happy on it’s own, with the hickory cabinets, it was just too much. I put a picture up on facebook and commented that I wasn’t sure about it, and got many comments. Many more comments than I wanted. It’s not THAT bad, folks. But, that prompted me to figure out what color it should be, and to repaint it even though I had spent a whole Saturday painting already.

So, I searched the internet for greens, earthy greens, greens that go with hickory cabinets, etc. I even tried the gold paint that I have in the front room, thinking that might look good. It didn’t.

For someone who can usually pick a paint color pretty easily (and I scoffed at my neighbor who has repainted her kitchen 3 times and had painters tape up for months. How cocky I was. No more), it was frustrating to not be able to paint. And I had kind of lost my confidence. I finally ended up on the shirwin williams paint site, and uploaded the picture of the bad green paint behind the stove and used their little program to visualize how different colors would look there. It’s hard to get a good shot of the kitchen, so many shadows from cabinets, etc, but I finally thought I had found something. I went to the hardware store and had them make up two samples for me.

Oh, yeah, that looks good…. NOT.

I tried in a different spot.

I decided to go with the lighter of the two samples, which, turns out, was called “Bengal Grass” (only someone who knows my high school mascot would realize how awesome that name is), and went and bought a gallon in semi-gloss. Thankfully, since I had already done the scrubbing, the taping, and taking off the plug covers, it went pretty fast to cover up that bright green with the darker, more earthy green.

But then I had to start on the wall above the upper cabinets. Climbing, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning (who cleans up there? NOBODY, that’s who!), climbing back down…ick. And so exhausting! Kind of frustrating that it took me so long to paint up there, plus, there were some spots in the corners that I didn’t know how I was going to paint. Need longer arms.

I got a lot done the day that Megan got out of school by 10 am or something. There I was, up on a ladder, and she agreed to help me. SO much easier with another person to hand you things, joke with, and who actually paints.

Oh, and she fits back behind the fridge better than I do, too.

I got most of it done that day, but was still frustrated about the parts I couldn’t reach, even with a ladder. When I came home from an extra bell rehearsal last Saturday, I was surprised to see that Ryan had finished off those difficult parts for me! Hooray! He said he ended up sitting ON the fridge to get that top corner spot.

I’ve been meaning to post a great picture of the finished room, but it turns out my kitchen is clean for about 2 seconds and then it’s a disaster again. Plus the lighting is not great in there, with just the one window over the sink, and I haven’t gotten a great picture that shows off how nice it looks (at least I think it’s nice, and since I’m the one who does the cooking in there, it’s my vote that matters the most, right?), but these will have to do.

I’m happy with the color. I’d better be, because I don’t anticipate that I will be wanting to do that again real soon.

Do not spray on things you like

March 25, 2014 / Superpaige / 1 Comment

It was a warmish day today (55 degrees, I think) and I already had the chickens caged up because Ryan had put fertilizer on the lawn and I would like to give it a day or two to settle before the chickens come out and disturb (hopefully not eat) it, so I mixed up a batch of round-up in the 3 gallon sprayer. As I was looking at the instructions to see how much of the concentrate to mix with that much water, I read, “Do not spray Round up on plants, trees or flowers that you like.”

Now that sounds really obvious, doesn’t it? Don’t spray weed killer on the plants you like. But as I am spraying those grasses and weeds, I ALWAYS end up spraying something I didn’t want to spray, especially in the early spring when the tulips and daffodils are just green.
Some of them are hiding in there with the grasses that I am trying to get rid of. Sometimes they get a squirt on them.

As I read that warning, I was trying to think of a great analogy with life and parenting. After all, conference is coming up in two weeks, and I have been listening to last session’s talks to get myself ready for conference. I’m sure Dieter Uchtdorf could come up with a wonderful analogy about that. Oh, wait, it’s not an airplane or related to travel. Ok, President Monson would have a great story about taking flowers to the widows and could have tied that in. Me? I didn’t come up with much. Except be careful where you spray, cause you will kill your flowers as well as the weeds.

Perhaps that warning should pop up in our heads before we say something rude or sarcastic, especially to our kids. “Do not spray on things you like”. Even if you are mad, even if they deserve it. Even if they come home from school and their bad mood immediately kills the happy mood in the house. They do not need us to spray bad or angry words at them. We do, after all, like our kids. Hold your tongue. Share kindness and love with them, maybe that will help their bad mood.

Last night, it seems we were all doing ok, until it was time to get ready for bed. The girls all went upstairs. Some to get ready for bed, one to pick up her laundry. Some kind of shouting and shoving ensued, and before I knew it, doors were being slammed, and there was some stomping away. Big Sigh from Mom. Didn’t we just have family home evening and go on a bikeride and then watch brother bear together? Didn’t we just learn that you need to forgive your brother because you never know when he might be turned into a bear? Come on, people. Good night and good riddance, I thought to myself. But I couldn’t let it go. Someone was hurting, and I needed to see what I could do to help. I went to the door slammer’s room with a peace offering of a cookie. (I had hid the cookies we made the day before because, frankly, if I don’t hide them, they are GONE in about 10 minutes and then we have no cookies for lunches.)
“Hey,” I said, “What’s wrong?”
“Stuff.”
Hmm, that’s not much to go on, but I tried to comfort and reassure that we loved her, even if it didn’t seem like we did, and even if we weren’t pleased with the door slamming and the stomping.

Do not spray on things you like.

What do you know, I DID make an analogy. Not like you’ll hear in conference or anything, but it’ll work for the blog.

I didn’t mean to be Scrooge-like, but sometimes it happens

December 1, 2013 / Superpaige / 3 Comments

My decorating for the holidays weekend didn’t go quite as planned. Let me explain.

Last week I hauled out the fake tree and started setting it up in the basement. I knew there were some lights that were out last year and I wanted to get those taken care of, so I put up the bottom section and went through all the lights to make sure they worked, tweaking and adjusting as we went. I got the middle section up, but had to take off a whole string of lights and put on a new string because half the string just wouldn’t light up. I hadn’t gotten to the top section yet, and got distracted by Thanksgiving. So, Friday morning, I had the kids help me haul up the tree to the living room, moving the furniture out of the way so we could put the tree in the traditional spot in the bay window. When we got the top section on, things did not look right. About half of the top branches were just hanging there, sort of limp. I took off the top section to see that the tree was broken. The only thing holding those branches on were the lights. Probably from being dropped, shoved around, or handled by kids, the tree was broken.

NO!!! I don’t want to have to buy a new tree (budget things and all), and if I WERE to buy a new tree, 10:00 am on Black Friday isn’t the time to realize you need to buy a new tree. If there had been awesome black friday deals, they would be taken by now, and I hadn’t realized my tree was broken, or I would have been shopping around. Everyone knows you buy a new Christmas tree AFTER Christmas to get the best deal, right?

Full of despair, I went upstairs to ask Ryan if he could maybe help with our tree. I decided to look for the lights for the house. I hauled up the huge wreath, found a bunch of other Christmas decorations in our horribly unorganized storage area, but couldn’t find the lights. I found the OLD lights that we used to use, but not the new LED lights that I bought and we first used last year. Looking everywhere in the storage area, I could NOT find those lights. I did find a bunch of stuff that I decided we didn’t need (two non working drum sets for rock band? Really?) and started filling the truck with things to go to DI. While I felt good about getting some (just a tiny fraction, really, but it’s a start) of the junk out, I was frustrated that I couldn’t find the lights. Ryan wasn’t going to get the ladder out to put up the big wreath if he couldn’t just do the lights, too. Ugh. No tree, no lights! And to add insult to injury, I kept seeing ALL these Black FRiday amazing deals, but my budget was empty for the month, and I since we ARE really trying to stick to the budget, I didn’t want to buy anything we really didn’t need, just because it’s a great deal. My day is shot.

I did get out my favorite nativity and set that up, and the kids took a load of stuff to DI, but the day was kind of discouraging.

In the afternoon, a friend from Scarlet Pimpernel messaged me that she had one free ticket to that night’s preview of A Christmas Carol at the Hale Center Theater, and did I want it? (I had previously asked her about attending a preview). Even though it was just one ticket, I said I would love it. I needed to get out of the house, get away from my Christmas frustrations, and go see some of my friends in a show.

As luck would have it, another of her friends cancelled, and she offered me another ticket at the last minute, so I invited Ryan to go with me. Free Date night!

Can you believe I had never seen A Christmas Carol? We did that SCrooge play in Jr High and all, and I’ve seen several tv adaptations and knew the story, but hadn’t seen the play, and I was excited to see it AND support several of my friends who were in the show.

I meant to take some pictures, but didn’t. So, here’s our selfie before the show started.

What a great show! ~~Six~~, no make that seven of my friends were in the show that night, and it was such fun to see all of them on stage again. Plus, there were several other friends and people I knew in the audience. Ryan got tired of me telling him who everyone was, but I was just excited for them.

It helped me realize that it’s not the end of the world if my lights don’t get up, and we can deal with our broken tree issues. So thankful that we got the opportunity to go before the season gets really busy.

Saturday dawned with new determination to find those lights. Ryan looked in the storage area, under beds, in our closet, in every closet we could think of. Still could not find them. However, we did start putting up some lights on a couple outside trees, and got a few house decorations up. He even worked on a way to fix our struggling tree.

There’s 3/4 of the tree.

At noon, we were just about to leave to go to lunch with some old friends, and it hit me. I knew where those lights were. “I KNOW where the lights are!” I exclaimed. We went downstairs, and looked not in the storage area, but in the new closet under the stairs. BEHIND all the tables and chairs, were the lights. That closet area had just been finished when we took the lights off in the January or February, and I remember thinking, this will be a GREAT place to store our Christmas things. But then we bought extra tables and chairs for Cole’s mission farewell, and they found a home in that closet. Lights were buried and forgotten.

Hooray! We found the lights!

Here we are at lunch with some of my childhood friends from my ward. That’s Ken Clayton, Chris Cooper, Carolyn Archer, and me and Ryan. Ken was in town and organized the little get together and it was so much fun to catch up with them!

After we got home from lunch, Ryan started on the lights. He didn’t actually get them up, however, because one of the strings was broken and he didn’t know we had two more boxes of lights. BUT, at least we HAVE the lights now, and can get them up soon.

So, no, the lights are not up, the tree is not fixed, the house is still in chaos. BUT, we have made progress.

And talking Santa? He needs to move. Right by the front stairs is NOT a good place for him. He startles us every time we walk by.

New life for an old nightstand

November 21, 2013 / Superpaige / 1 Comment

I bought this little nightstand at Deseret Industries a while back, when I realized that Cole’s room could use a nightstand. My intention was always to paint it, but, like most projects, it sat in the garage for a long time.

Sadly, I forgot to take a before picture, but it was pretty bland.

I decided to paint it blue, and picked a little sample pot that I had bought who knows when for who knows what, and started to paint.

It didn’t take long to make it cute and pretty. With a bit of spray paint, even the hardware looked nice.

Here it is in it’s spot in Cole’s room/guest room.

Just a fun easy project. But that lead me to another project. Wait till you see what I did to my coffee table.

Picture Project

October 4, 2013 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

I have this wonderful painting that my sister did of my kids. I’ve had it in this frame and on the wall for about a year and a half.

I never loved the frame or the way I matted it. I took a frame, added a mat that didn’t quite fit, and just made it work. It cut off a little too much of the picture, and I wasn’t too jazzed about the colors, but I didn’t want to pay to have it professionally matted and framed, and I was honestly a little intimidated to take it to a place and have them do that. Scared for no reason? Probably.

Today, for some reason, I got it in my head that I was going to repaint that frame and change it. And when I decide to do a project, it’s best to just go ahead and do it.

And I’m glad I did. Although taking the glass out of a frame and getting it back in right? About impossible. NEVER take the glass out. I’m just sayin’.

I LOVE how it turned out. That awkward maroon mat is gone forever, and I think this shows off the painting better. It was just a bit too small for the mat I had, so I just cut craft paper an inch wide, secured it to the picture with tape, and then arranged it in the mat.

Here it is back on the wall. (Not a great picture with the lights reflecting and all, but you get the idea.)

Happy with the results.

Things are a bit Fishy (and how I’m excited to reclaim my kitchen counter)

September 13, 2013 / Superpaige / 5 Comments

Another of Megan’s projects is done (Whew!) and that means I can reclaim my kitchen counter again, at least for a day or two.

She’s been working on this FISH thing. I don’t know if Ryan suggested this one to her, too, or if it was her idea at first. It’s another project for her AP 3d art class. First she had to paper mache’, then it was cutting up a dozen soda cans, and then the endless gluing, gluing, gluing.

Can you see the little notes she left that say, “Work in progress”. Warning me to not clean her project away. Um, whose kitchen do you think this is, girl?

Last night she and I worked on that thing for a couple of hours. She LET me help her. I did a lot of cutting and even helped with the gluing of the scales. When you hot glue on aluminum, the whole thing heats up very quickly, and we had some burned fingers.

I think she’s been working on this one for two weeks. I lose track of time, but I do know the fish and cans and pieces of cans have been on my counter since Monday.

Now that it’s done I think it looks REALLY cool. Like she should win some kind of award cool.

I don’t know if it’s because she’s using the cans of my favorite beverage as an art medium, or what, but it turned out great. Ryan even built that little stand for it to sit on so it won’t get tipped over or whatever. This girl’s got some talent! She has named this one Frankie De Piranha. (It’s a reference to a Monk episode. Do you get it?)

And now I’m going to go clean off the rest of my counter. It will probably stay that way for all of about five minutes before I haul up the pears and decide what I’m going to do with pears today.

Life’s a Peach

August 28, 2013 / Superpaige / 4 Comments

We have three peach trees in our little “orchard”. For several years they didn’t yield much fruit, and then it’s kind of hit and miss. Last year there was a late freeze in the spring and we didn’t get more than a dozen peaches. We were at the mercy of a neighbor whose trees did not freeze to get our peach fix.

This year Ryan attended a pruning and gardening workshop and learned that we should be picking a LOT of the tiny peaches so that the peaches can have the energy, food, and room to grow bigger. He picked at least a 5 gallon bucket full of the tiny little peaches early in the summer. But he said it was like murdering peaches and he didn’t like it.

I don’t know if it was due to the fact that we pruned those trees last year, or that he picked those tiny peaches, but this is the most peaches we have ever had. And they are nice sized, too. Gorgeous. For weeks in the summer, we would go out and hope for ripe peaches, only to realize that close up, they were not ready yet. Well, they are ready now. Saturday I started picking. Mostly because I was worried that branches would be breaking off if I didn’t do something to lighten the load of peaches on those branches. I picked a 5 gallon bucket, with a smaller bucket full of smooshed or buggy peaches to give to the chickens. I realized these peaches weren’t going to wait, so I got the steam canner down and started going to work.

It’s a messy process, washing, blanching, peeling, adding a simple syrup, boiling the lids, sterilizing the bottles. It had something on every single burner on the stove. I enlisted the kids to help. They are good at the peeling and their smaller hands fit well into the bottles, and really I just could use the help so the peaches don’t go brown and yucky before I get them processed. I always have to look up the instructions every year..How much sugar? How long do they process? What’s our elevation? But I got going quickly.

We got 8 quarts done that first day, leaving the non ripe peaches to wait for the next round.

Aren’t they gorgeous?

Monday dawned, and I was a little sad that I didn’t have a play to go to that night, but all the better to get sticky and can some more peaches, right? I went out and picked another 5 gallon bucket full of peaches, and got started. No kids to help me at first, but I got the first batch of 7 into the steam bath before they got home. After I picked them up (early out day and all), everyone was home by 2:00, and they each helped for about an hour. It seemed much longer to all of us. We got another 7 quarts done for a total of 14 that day. I had to send Natalie out to pick me just a few more peaches when I ran out right after I started the last bottle.

Tuesday, I picked another bucket and took a bunch with me visiting teaching. After our VT appointments were over and I had finished my obligations at the elementary school, I figured I had better get back at it. I also sent out some texts and messages to friend to PLEASE feel free to come over and get some peaches, as we have more than we can eat or bottle. I wasn’t super productive and only did 8 or 9 quarts. Also, I was running out of wide mouth jars. As I was searching the basement, I find lots of regular jars, but I was down to my last bunch of wide mouths. Hmmm. Maybe if I make taco soup and use this jar of tomato juice, that’s ONE more wide mouth jar. Pitiful, I know.

My friend Lisa called and said she was going to come over and pick some peaches, and she had some bottles I could have. She did NOT want to bottle them, and was super generous to bring me a whole box of 12 wide mouth jars! She picked about a 5 gallon bucket full of peaches, and her kids played here for a bit while we talked. It was wonderful to have her visit, as I haven’t seen her all summer!

Wednesday I was going to skip the canning for the day, but I HAD all these bottles, and there were still LOTS of peaches on the tree, so what’s a girl going to do. I got started and pretty soon my back was aching and I was finishing up the last of the 11 quarts for the day. Work like that makes one sticky, so it was time for a shower, then clean the counter and mop the floor… AGAIN. I haven’t cleaned the stove, even though it TOTALLY needs it, but I want to finish the intense canning before I scrub all the mess. I’ll just make more mess tomorrow.

So, if I am remembering correctly, we how have about 40 quarts of peaches. I have 8 more wide mouth jars, so if I fill those tomorrow, that will be 48 (or so). That’s enough, right?

Some call it retro. Some call it art. Some call it junk. Not sure what we call it, but it’s done.

August 13, 2013 / Superpaige / 2 Comments

Megan has been working on several art projects this summer. It seems she has to do a dozen projects BEFORE school even starts for this AP 3-d art class (just a tip, don’t ever let your kids take AP art. It will take ALL their time and kill a few grades in other classes.) Well, summer is winding down and the projects are not all finished, but she is making progress.

Somehow, when Ryan was cleaning out his office, he may have suggested a project idea using old 3 1/2 inch floppies. The idea took off, and took OVER.

First, this required a trip to Spanish Fork to acquire a whole bunch of old floppies from Grandpa Erickson. Lucky for us he’s a pack rat who never throws anything away (even worse than Ryan) so he HAD several boxes of the disks to give her.

She mapped out her design and started to paint.

My counter was her place of choice to paint, and things looked like this for a couple of days. Patient, aren’t I? Not really. I couldn’t STAND having those disks all over the counter for too long, and made her move the whole operation to the basement, where there is a whole table she can use.

I came home from my show one night to find Ryan and Megan working in the basement. Wonder what’s going on, I thought. It’s time for these people to be in bed.

I found that they had gotten this thing started. Ryan has been a great help to her on this project. He said he felt like he owed her that much since he kind of put the idea in her head. They had gone to Home Depot to get baling wire, a shower curtain rod and hangers, and he had made 360 s hooks for her to hang this thing.

On the floor, she had the rest of the design all laid out. I have to admit, it’s pretty cool.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s a dragon character from the old game “Bubble Bobble.” Kind of obscure, but if you like old video games, you might recognize him.

The next night there was more progress, until Monday night she finally got this huge thing finished.

And on the back..

As you can tell, it’s VERY big. Right now it’s a “screen” between our family room and the rest of the basement. I have no idea how she’s getting that thing to school to pass off, or what happens to it then. It’s currently attached to two of our light boxes. I am impressed that she finished it, and that it turned out so well. Not that I want it hanging in my family room for the long term, but it is interesting.

Maybe she could find a buyer.

So, if you are possibly in the market for a very unique piece of “recycled retro video game art”, give her a call.

Category: DIY Projects (Page 1 of 5)

New Look

387 Bad Reviews should have given us a clue.

Kitchen paint– failures, flops, and finished

Do not spray on things you like

I didn’t mean to be Scrooge-like, but sometimes it happens

New life for an old nightstand

Picture Project

Things are a bit Fishy (and how I’m excited to reclaim my kitchen counter)

Life’s a Peach

Some call it retro. Some call it art. Some call it junk. Not sure what we call it, but it’s done.

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