home improvement

Towel Racks On A Budget

April 15, 2013

When we were putting the finishing touches on the new bathroom in our basement, I knew that we needed somewhere to hang towels that were currently in use, as well as a place to store additional towels, since that is now our guest bathroom.  I didn’t know exactly what I wanted in that room, so [...]

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A Kid-Size Coat Rack

January 2, 2013

Last summer I turned an empty wall in the hall between our kitchen and our garage into saucepan storage, and I still love that system.  It’s easy to find exactly what we need, and the cupboard that we used to use for all of our pots and pans now only has my two big soup [...]

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Window Coverings On A Shoestring

December 27, 2012

Last summer, we put a window in our dining room, for free.  Last week, I put a curtain on it – a project that cost us a total of $10.  We love how it all turned out, and I thought I’d share the details. Until we put in that window, our house only had two [...]

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A Frugal Curtain

November 17, 2012

Last night I made a curtain to go between our downstairs bathroom and the under-stairs storage area behind it.  The whole thing cost about three dollars, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. This is an old sheet (leftover from when I bought fabric to make diapers for our first son five years [...]

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Simplifying For Fall – Taming Drawers

August 22, 2012

Are any of you following along with the Simplifying For Fall Challenge?  I’ve been doing some of it, but mostly tackling areas that were particularly bad and in need of attention.  I’m constantly de-cluttering kids’ toys and clothes, so those areas didn’t need much.  This is our younger son’s closet for example, which I haven’t [...]

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Too Much Inspiration

January 18, 2012

EDIT – just discovered the fitness and food sections on Pinterest.  I might have to up my time limit from five minutes to fifteen. I have been purposely avoiding Pinterest for quite some time.  From what I had heard, I knew that it could be the sort of site that could suck me in and [...]

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It’s OK To Stop Improving

October 27, 2011

Last week we got a sale flyer in the mail from Lowes.  The front page has a big picture of a beautiful wall that is made entirely of huge windows, with the words “never stop improving.”  As far as life lessons go, that’s a good reminder.  But context matters.  When it comes to ourselves, our [...]

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Free Building Blocks

October 25, 2011

For the past several weeks, my husband has been spending his weekends building stud walls in our basement.  He’s making great progress and should be finished in plenty of time for our framing inspection (it has to be completed by the end of the year). Building stud walls means lots of 2×4 offcuts.  They were [...]

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I’m Still Here!

March 20, 2011

My apologies for the dust on the blog lately.  Our baby is due in just over two weeks (and our son came ten days early…) and we’re in a mad dash to try to get all of the loose ends tied up on the various projects we have going on.  We’ve been spending every weekend [...]

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Getting Started Is Half The Battle

January 31, 2011

Last night, we measured our basement and drew out a rough sketch of how we want it to look once it’s finished.  I got all the information from our town regarding getting a permit, and we’ll be submitting our permit application this week.  We have to provide them with a drawing of the plans, so [...]

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