Home Decor diY

Hello all! Thankfully I am on the mend and feeling so much better -- thank you for the well wishes! We've had a little bit of progress on the basement fireplace and I'm excited to show you how it looks. My plan all along was to have a more modern look to the fireplace down here. We were thrilled to get that started a couple weeks ago when we had that area drywalled for the electric fireplace:  You can see more about that change and the flooring (that I LOVE) here . Having that wall done already made a big difference! I started thinking though...which is dangerous...and was wondering if I wanted such a modern look down here. We had always planned to add a wood mantel but I started thinking it would be nice to add a hearth too. The shape of that bay window is a perfect spot for it.  The fireplace has sat open on that bench for years so when we put it back in front of the wall it kind of felt right -- like there should be a break right there. I searched online and found stone fire

Hello all! I've been sick for the past four days and am finally feeling a bit better today. It was so odd -- I'd feel OK, then not, then OK, then really not. It's been years since I've been this sick but I am hoping I'm finally on the mend. Because I've obviously started losing it a little in my old age and I forgot about the monthly before and after link up again this month...I'm getting it up today. Let's just say I'll aim for the first Monday of the month but I may just surprise you...who knows when it will be? I like to keep you on your toes. As always, I like to share some of the awesome projects that were linked up last month before we kick off this one. And as always, there were some amazing projects shared! Sue's kitchen renovation was dramatic and turned out beautifully: I LOVE her backsplash tile! This is such a bright, pretty space.  Kim and her husband created the coolest   pegboard storage wall  for her son:  You'll have to s

As many of you know, I tend to get into decor trends way late. Usually by the time they're not cool anymore, I like them. It's my thing. I'm pretty sure the barn door trend is here to stay though and I've been trying to figure out where I could make one work in our house for a good year now. I have a couple ideas in mind but I'd have to make some additional changes first.  A few months ago a friend of mine found a beautiful barn door ready-made at Home Depot and I was intrigued. I saw this one at Lowe's the other day: As I mentioned when I shared it on social media -- the price is hard to swallow when a sliding door can be built fairly inexpensively. BUT I certainly know that sometimes it sure is nice to just buy something and not make it! ;)  It's great that you can get one so easily now! If you do a search on Craigslist you can usually find a local resource as well. But if you're interested in making your own I've gathered a few great resources for

Oh wow, I'm so excited to show you the changes we've been making in the basement! If you remember, we had a water issue in my husband's office earlier this year. This was probably the tenth time this had happened and was the worst too. We had to replace walls, ceiling and baseboards and the carpet in that room was toast.  We knew the carpet had to go for many reasons and were looking for something water-resistant to replace it. I was intrigued by vinyl flooring I had heard about that looked like wood and we decided to try it.  Well, it turned out we LOVED it:  That room is done now and looks great! I still need to share that with you.  Our plan was to extend this flooring to the rest of the basement eventually. We are pretty sure (crossing fingers) we've made appropriate changes to our HVAC system (it was the culprit when it came to the water issues and we thought we had it fixed over and over) but it does make me feel better that this flooring will not be destroyed if

Hey all! I hope you had a lovely weekend! I celebrated my 41st with friends and family and it was just perfect. The 40's have treated me well so far. :)  I got an early birthday present when we had some landscaping torn out up front a few days ago. We planned to do this forever and haven't made it happen till now. I saved up a bunch of coupons from our local nursery and we got new plants at a discount. A friend's son did the tearing out and replanting for us at a great price, and I'm SO HAPPY to have this done! If you remember, we had our small front steps torn out last year and replaced with wider cement steps. Still one of the best changes we've made to our house -- I can't believe it took us that long to do.  The next phase was this simpler landscaping. I planted azalea bushes in the front shortly after we moved in years ago and they did great...too great. They were overgrown and eventually half dead because they had no more room to grow.  They are absolutel