Raise Me Up!

Those 3 words always make me think of Joshie Groban's amazing song You Raise Me Up.  Oh and yes I know his name isnt Joshie but thats what I like to call him around the house because he's so cute like a little boy he is just Joshie...dont judge :)

I have a great project to share with you today!  This one has been on the list for a while because, well the materials had the potential to be expensive.  Lucky for us we were able to scrape together all the supplies and not have to spend a single penny.  So this project is technically free, but if you had to buy the materials I would guess the total to be around $100.

This past weekend we built a platform for our media room.  The platform is so that we can have 2 rows of seating, with the back row able to see over the 1st rows heads.  First we had to measure the space, so length and height was easy.  Height needs to be the same height as a stair which is 7inches (FYI) and the width was wide enough to walk around on one side and even with the column in the room on the other.  The width and length will be specific to your room requirements but the 7inches is kinda standard.  For the width I sat in my popisan chair (from pier 1...i love that thing) and Joe measured to about where my feet stopped.  That way I can sit in the chair without kicking the chair in front of me, smart right?!  Because lets be honest, aside from someone talking on their phone during the movie, the second worst thing is being kicked in the back of the chair.  Always pisses me off.

Now that you have your measurements go and get your materials.

 This wood is framing wood that was leftover from a construction site.  It was really long and that was great since when we got it we didnt know what our final measurements would be.  You can use regular 2x4's or whatever length you need...I havent had to buy wood like this in a while so I forget how they come.

You will also need sheets of plywood.  1inch thickness is the best since you are going to be walking/sitting/standing on this wood and you need it to be a little sturdier than other projects.  This was also leftover from the site and let me tell you this stuff is heavy so be prepared to have a helper so you dont kill yourself.  This will also be the more expensive part of the project.  My dad who does small time carpentry says this stuff is about $40/sheet (you can see why we were putting this project off since we needed 2 sheets).  Make sure you get enough for your dimensions, and for us that meant 2 sheets.

You will also need carpet if you want a finished look, or you can put a rug down or you could just stain it.  That part is really up to you.  Again, at a different construction site, we found a whole roll of carpet in the trash pile...well baby it was the exact same color and texture as our carpet so we snagged it!  Awesome right?!

Now I bet you want to know how to put it all together right.  Ok.  So first you need to build the frame.  That part is pretty easy, you are just going to make a box with your framing wood.  Oh and to make things easier on yourself you probably will want to use a nail gun for this since you are going to have to hammer really deep on this part.  Of course if you are Hercules then no big, but most of us arent so the nail gun is probably best.

After you get the frame done you need to add support beams down the middle and down the length so that it doesnt cave in on you.  Im not calling you fat, but we all could use a little support you know :)

Oreo had to make sure the boys were doing what they were supposed to be doing.  Dont ask me why the boys did the supports the way they did, if it was up to me there would be the 2 long ones going the whole length and 3 more going down the width, but no one asks the wife so I just let them be since they are making this monster.  If you want to have this as a permanent structure screw the platform into the floor.  To do that at the edges screw a screw in at an angle so that it goes through the wood and into the floor as well.  Make sure the supports are nailed in really well also and now you are ready to add the top.

Probably the easiest part...put the plywood on top of the frame and nail it down.  You might have to cut one of your pieces of plywood like we did here but thats not too bad if you have a circular saw.  Make sure when you are nailing you are nailing into the support wood and not into nothing because that would be pointless.

Are you ready to carpet that bad boy?  Looks pretty cool right.  Cant even tell that the carpet isnt the same type.  To put carpet on lay the carpet out over the platform and line it up evenly.  Start stapling with a staple gun being very careful to staple as close to the bottom as you can so you cant really see the staples.  When you get to the edge curl the bottom and cut it a little past the edge so you can squish the edge behind the next edge you are going to work on.  make sure you pull tight as you go and do the same thing all the way around.  Once you get the carpet night and tight and stapled down you are done!  Of course you could paint or use a rug but thats the last step yay you are done!!  Looks pretty cool right?!  I cant wait to get more furniture up there and start making it look like a real media room.

What did you work on this weekend?

Project Housewife Out!

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Warm and Fuzzy

Today is a really rainy day and on rainy days I always wish I was at home on the couch drinking hot chocoalte and watching a good movie with my puppy dog...you know my puppy dog...so cute...anyway stop being side tracked! 

So on this rainy day, for some odd reason, I am thinking of laundry.  I dont have a pile sitting at home waiting for me but I think Im thinking of the awesomeness that is hot towels fresh out of the dryer.  Anyway I wanted to share my quick and easy laundry room transformation with you.  I dont have a before shot because we did this before I decided to start a blog but you can see below the finished product.

So really this was pretty easy.  I got a sets of double door cabinets from Lowe's on clearance (these were the 2010 model, look the same as the 2011 but who am I to complain) for $75 a piece.  They are already stained and ready to hang so that made me a happy camper.  The knob pulls were $2 a piece, I wanted really big ones with the stainless steel look and these were perfect and fit the bill at $2 a pop.  I wanted to get a long cabinet for the side you can kinda see there to put my brooms and mops in but if they didnt have any that were long, all the long ones they had were sectioned off and that wasnt what I was looking for, so the search continues for that.

Ok on to hanging these bad boys.  My husband is a real trooper, I didnt help him at all with hanging these and he got them up there all on his own so I have to give him real props for that because these suckers were HEAVY.  What you need is a 2x4, screws and a drill.  Measure the 2x4 to the length of your first cabinet.  Ours were 30inches long.  Cut your wood to fit right on the back of the cabinet, you may need to cut it 1inch shorter depending on the back of your cabinet.  Measure on the wall where you want the cabinet to hang, mark you spot and then screw the 2x4 to the wall.  Let me emphasize that you need to measure, measure one more time and then just to be sure measure again.  Once you get the board in you really cant make any adjustments so make sure you have the board exactly where you want it.  Make sure you use heavy duty screws so they dont break or anything.  Once the board is on the wall (make sure its super secure pull on it, do whatever you need to do to make sure its on there good and tight) then go on and hang your cabinet on the board.  You would think it was more complicated than that but its not.  Its heavy as heck though so be prepared for that!

Now that they are hung be happy because you have storage in your laundry room!  I hate seeing the clutter so this made me happy because before we had that crappy wire rack and you can see all your supplies out there.  With the cabinet its nice and stored away where no one can see it!  Yay!  And to spruce the room up I added a flower strand I found at Garden Ridge for $2!  Pretty awesome right!

So this isnt the cheapest project Ive done (cabinet $75x2, cabinet pulls $2x4, flower chain $2x2 total cost $162) but it looks nice, added more storage to the laundry room and makes me happy and its my house so thats all that matter right?!  I thought so too :)  What additions have you made to your laundry room to make it a space you like?

Project Housewife Out!

Custom Headboard

A little over a year ago my husband and I moved into our first HOUSE...not an apartment, not a town home but a real brick house.  We were so excited to finally have a real place to call ours and only ours.  The only drawback was there were so many rooms I just didnt know how I was going to fill each room, but one thing was for sure, I wanted a new mattress...a KING mattress.  For those of you sleeping on a queen right now you can relate to this.  My husband is not a small man, so on the queen bed I was lucky to have 1 inch to call my own space.  I really hate being touched when Im sleeping, yes I know Im crazy but thats just how I am.  So this queen bed was a NIGHTMARE for sleeping, plus the mattress was way past the "8 to replace" so I justified it that way too.  Well let me tell you, we went to Mattress Firm and go a Latex/Memory Foam hybrid mattress and O...M...G it is like heaven on earth.  It does get hot at night, but Ill take sweaty for a back that doesnt hurt in the morning.  So anyway, I have this big awesome king sized mattress (for under $700 by the way) and no frame to go with it...ok I have the ugly metal thing from the mattress place but no pretty headboard and what is a room without a bed set.  I was looking in Potterybarn's magazine (always a bad idea if you are looking to furnish a home on a budget) and saw this awesome headboard for $1200.  I wanted to share a link with you but I dont think they make it anymore because I cant find it.  Well I didnt have $1200 to spare so I thought it would be brilliant to make our own, I mean my dad is handy with carpentry, and my husband (at the time) is always up for a project, so we set out with the plans.  I searched online for a great tutorial but there really wasnt one, but I did find one on how to do the tufting so I went with that and let the boys do the cutting on their own. 

I have been sitting on this post for a while because honestly I didnt want to type everything out and I didnt have step by step pictures to show and this really does need step by step pictures.  Well wouldnt you know, over at Schue Love they did the exact same thing (sort of) and had the tutorial for you.  I wanted to link up to their site so you can check out Schue Love's amazing site and see her far superior job of tufting.

You can see mine here isnt really tufted, see the girls at Schue Love are so smart, they used zip tipes to hold the tread in place.  Well I have to tell you I had a few bloody fingers that day from trying to hold the string REALLY TIGHT to get the tufting look and then stapled, yes thats right I said stapled, the tread to the back of the headboard.  It was not easy, it was frustrating, and in the end it didnt look 100% like I wanted it to, but I made it from scratch and I was proud of it.  I wanted to add my own notes to the Schue Love tutorial so check them out and then check my notes.

First, I wanted the awesome Potterybarn pattern for my headboard so we sketeched it out paper then went to the plywood.  An awesome trick to make perfect circles is tie a string to a pencil, hold down one end of the string to the center of where you want the circle and then the end that has the pencil you draw your circle.  Really cool right!  Well doing the half circles and straight lines was a little harder to make them perfect but it took a lot of measuring and eyeballing.  I totally stand by the mantra "Measure twice cut once".  Dont ever forget this because it will save you so much money in wood (which is more expensive then I remember)!  Once everything is traced get the jigsaw and get going!  We used a jigsaw because of the non-straight lines we had on the headboard, but it you are just going to do a square you can just use a regular saw (its easier and faster than the jigsaw trust me)

While the boys were outside cutting the wood I was inside prepping my "upholestry station".  I found this beautiful white micro-suede in the upholestry section of JoAnn's and bought 6 yards of it (we all know I buy WAY too much fabric, I ended up only using about 3yards).  I first laid down the fabric face down, the added the egg crate mattress pad thing...do you guys know what Im talking about?  Its the  yellow thing that is at walmart that goes on your bed to help with your back.  Well rather then spending the hefty price tag of the padding at JoAnn's I bought one of those to use as the padding.  In retro-spect I should have gotten 4 to make the padding ticker but I bought 2 (I needed each to sit next to each other so I could get it wide enough for the headboard).  Also while I was at JoAnn's I found some awesome clear crystal buttons that I thought would be so much more fun than upholstered buttons on the headboard so I got those too.

Back on track, so I have the fabric and the mattress pad laid out, now I put the plywood on top and get to cutting.  I start cutting around headboard, not listening to the mantra I just told you to never forget.  I think thats why my tufting didnt come out super great.  Like I said go to Schue Love , they have a much better tutorial on how to do the tufting but let me share my mistakes with you.  First was I cut the fabric and then second was I stapled the fabric to the back of the headboard before I did the tufting.  You can see from the other tutorial that they didnt cut the fabric or staple the fabric until AFTER they did the tufting.  Im realizing that now and kicking myself for not doing that.  But I do love my headboard and I did it pretty much without any instruction.  This was also pretty much my intro to home projects and I have to say Im proud of it.  Evern though there are things I could have done better, there are things I could have done much worse too.

I bet your wondering how to hang this bad boy...Well I'll tell you, you need special hardware and its hard to find it.  Eventually we found it at Ace Hardware.  I dont remember the name but its interlocking plates.  One plate is screwed into the wall and the other is screwed into the headboard.  You will want to get 2 sets to have one plate set on each side of the headboard to make it super escure.  WARNING: its pretty hard matching this plates up headboard to wall so be patient and definately have someone help you because two people are usually better than one.

I hope you enjoyed this post and are super PSYCHED to get started on your own headboard!  Have you made a headboard?  I would love to see what you came up with, share it here!!

Project Housewife Out!