door Archives | Crafted Niche - a lifestye blog that shares DIY crafts, recipes and tutorialsCrafted Niche – a lifestye blog that shares DIY crafts, recipes and tutorials

You are browsing the archive for door Archives - Crafted Niche - a lifestye blog that shares DIY crafts, recipes and tutorials.

Barn Door Headboard?

September 11, 2012 in Bedrooms

I sold my bedroom furniture… and now I need your help!

I can’t decide what kind of headboard I want to build. For a while I thought about Ana White’s Farmhouse Bed, but now I think I’d like to stick with just a headboard rather than a headboard/footboard. Hmmmm Decisions decisions!

I’m leaning towards building a headboard to look like a barn door. Easy, breezy and just the right touch of ME. Yes? No?

Here are some inspirations I’m mulling over… but please, please, please visit the original source and PIN from there. Let’s be sure credit is given where credit is due!

Poorly Pinned - Does anyone know the ORIGINAL source?

Source

Ummm yea… can I have that side table… and the yellow table at the end… and the wall-mounted lamps… and the natural fiber floor…. and the yellow ceiling. Okay, Okay… can I have it all?!

Sweet French Toast

Source

Sweet French Toast actually pulled these two barn doors OFF A REAL BARN. Ok… now THAT makes me jealous. Love their perfectly worn planks. Visit her site for a step-by-step on how to safely (and thoroughly) clean barn wood!

Our Vintage Home Love

Source

Have you met Our Vintage Home Love? I SWOON over everything she creates. So incredibly talented. My sister was lucky enough to win a set of her handcrafted Walnut Breadboards. Ugh… lucky! Her boards are also authentically old, but I think I could recreate the look.

Lively Grace

Source

Lively Grace used this barn door in her son’s room. I’m thinking something like this would fit perfectly under the window.

Down to Earth Style

Source

Down to Earth Style created this bold red headboard out of real barn doors. I think I’ll stick with a weathered white or wood tone, but I like the lines of these doors.

Okay, so those are just some photos to get your opinions flowing. Here’s my concern…. I’m a “horse person”… and I don’t want people to confuse my barn door headboard with a love for all things western. That’s definitely not the case. I don’t want fringe… or 80′s Western Decor… or anything really that resembles southwestern decor. I just like a rustic touch… maybe with a twist of industrial. Hmm Maybe I should rethink this whole headboard and come up with an industrial twist?

Ugh! See! I’m completely torn.

Opinions… please! Leave a comment and let me know what you think. This gal needs some help!

LIKE CraftedNiche on Facebook | FOLLOW CraftedNiche on Twitter

Sliding Closet Door Makeover

August 23, 2012 in Bedrooms, Building and Repurposing, Crashing at Christy's

Are you watching Big Brother right now? I am! It’s my guilty pleasure. Any chance you caught the All-Stars season years ago with Chill Town? – oh how I miss them….

Anywho… so earlier this week my rockin-DIY-sister and I had a conversation…

Dana: Rinnnnng rinnnnng
Christy: Hello?
Dana: Hey Christy – it’s Dana! I was just thinking – how come we’ve never blogged about your closet doors?
Christy: Umm We haven’t?
Dana: <doing frantic google search of her own blog> Nope, nada. FAIL.

Without further ado… check out one of the genius DIY upgrades my sister undertook in her home. This girl’s handy I tell ya…

Hi again, Crafted Niche followers!!! This time I’d like to share a project that was no idea of mine, but the project was super easy and made a HUGE difference in the look of my bedrooms. So, maybe if you’ve been toying with the idea of doing this, you can now have the courage to do so.

When I moved into my house, the bedrooms were graced with hollow-core, sliding doors. They were an orangey stained wood and really didn’t go well with my white trim. (Dana Sidenote: That’s an understatement. Those things were badddd. Sorry Christy… just puttin’ it out there!) So, I knew I at least wanted to paint them. Dana showed me a link of a closet door redo that she thought would work perfectly. So, why not??

I’m not going to give you an in-depth tutorial as Frugalicious already does that for you in the link above. But, I basically followed her instructions except I didn’t use liquid nails. The trim I used is the plastic trim and there is no warp to it and the nails have done a great job holding the trim on. With the caulked edges, I’ve never had any problem with the trim coming up.

So, here’s what I had to work with. Pretty, right??

Confession… that’s a closet door that I have STILL not done yet. I forgot to take a before picture of the other closets, so luckily I had one set that hadn’t been refinished. Lucky procrastination! I sanded the doors down on the outside only (since only those who would hide in a closet would see the backside of the doors). Wiped ‘em down with a damp rag and got to work.

I primed the door first and then put my wallpaper on. I didn’t use extra wallpaper paste. This wallpaper is from Lowe’s and is the paintable beadboard-look wallpaper. I had to trim the width a bit for one of my narrower door closets.

Then, I hung the trim up. I didn’t paint with the semi-gloss paint first. Looking back, that would probably have been a much easier method. That way you could just roll it on. Also, you have to find a fairly thin trim. Anything too thick will rub when the closets try to slide back and forth.

This project was from waaaaay back in the day (approx. 4 years ago) when I didn’t have a nail gun or a compound miter saw. So, I had to nail with a hammer and cut the trim with a miter box. This project is so easy, that it didn’t hold me back one bit. So, no excuses!

So the super dramatic Before and After?

The beadboard texture is very subtle and I like it that way. The only final upgrade I did to these was to change out the finger-slide-hole-thingies. (Dana: Nice technical term, Christy. Hehe) I had originally just painted them, but they looked “painted”. So, I spent the whopping $3 or so and got brushed nickel. I also put felt pads on the back so that when the front door moved from side to side, it wouldn’t rub the trim on the back door.

See, super easy! Now go update those old closet doors!!!

- Christy

Told you! Aren’t those doors brilliant?! They look so nice in person. Huge kudos to Christy for tackling this project so early on in her DIY endeavors. Atta girl!

LIKE CraftedNiche on Facebook | FOLLOW CraftedNiche on Twitter

DIY with Dad

April 29, 2012 in Bathrooms, Building and Repurposing, Outside, Pups

My Sunday Productivity Level peaked at about 8:30am today… when Dad and I were just finishing up our To-Do list for the weekend. After he packed up and hit the road, I promptly headed to the couch.

And camped.

All. Day.

Don’t judge.

…I can feel you judging me!

We had a great weekend and crossed several items off my list. You see, I’ve been without a second bathroom since last fall when Mom and I did some tiling. Yup, the toilet really has been sitting on a tarp in the shower for ~~five~~ more months than I care to admit. BUT – not anymore!

Dad gave me a quick wax ring how-to (yuck) and then proceeded to drop that baby into place. Hallelujah! A real, live, working second bath! Woop!

A quick dig in his (so friggin’ heavy) bucket o’ tools and he had a hold of his two “must have” tools:

1/2″ and 7/16″ Wrench
1/2″ and 9/16″ Wrench

According to my Dad, these are the two most common sizes you’ll ever need. Noted. Literally… I wrote it down! ..and now that I blogged about it, I can toss that piece of paper and use my blog for reference.

Before I could even stand back and admire my newly re-installed toilet, Dad had already moved on to his next project. Installing a brand-spanking new GLASS STORM DOOR on the front of the house. Oh man – you have NO idea how excited I was about this. I found this door at Lowes last fall on Clearance. It was a $330 special order door that had been returned. Lucky me scored it for $30.

Yes…

THIRTY dollars. Hardware included!

First task… remove the existing door. Come to find out, the brick moulding around the outside was rotten in the bottom right corner:

After a trip to Lowes for a $15 piece of brick moulding, he pried off the old piece and replaced it with the new. Booyah. That’s some handy-Dad work for ya!

I don’t have photos of the actual moulding/door installation process. Sorry. I was the official door holder. Example of how the conversation went…

Dad – “Dana, hold the door and don’t let it fall ok?”

Dana – “Ok, got it.”

Dad – “Are you holding it?”

Dana – “Yep… I got it.”

Dad – “Now don’t let it fall!”

Dana – “I’ve got it Dad.”

Dad – “You holding it still?”

Dana – “………….” <crickets>

LOVE YOU DAD! For the record – “I’ve got it Dad.”

So a couple ~~hours~~ tweaks later and the door was installed and working like a dream!

I may or may not have been standing outside demanding he give me a thumbs up.

Yep, my lanterns are still hanging from my log. You can read more about those here.

I’m seriously loving this door. It really shows oh-so-much-more of my cheery yellow door.

The girls are loving the door too! They like to peer through the glass looking for squirrels, rabbits, people, blowing leaves (yep, those call for a good bark too)… if it moves, they’re interested!

The best part – the door has a lock! I don’t have to worry about one of them jumping up and strategically knocking the handle to let themselves outside. While Quinn would likely stay close to home, Emma’s been known to go on a great adventure around the town (with me on her heels: Furious. Terrified. Screaming.).

I had to adjust the lighting on the picture below so you could see more than just a black hole of a room. The dark blue walls in my living room make it tough to get these shots!

Great before and after right?! The new door is exactly what I wanted.

…and what the girls wanted too…

Dad and I cranked out some other things too while he was here… Re-installed the trim in the bathroom. Put hinges on the bathroom cabinet doors. Picked out some pegs for him to take home (along with the old storm door that’s going to go on his garage!). Oh…. and some beer and Mexican! Labor payments come in the form of food and beverage around here. Interested? Call me… we’ll talk. Currently looking for a concrete person. Willing to pay in Mexican or Sushi!

~~Way too~~ long story short, we accomplished quite a bit for one weekend! The only downside of the entire 2.5 days… finding out my DishNetwork package didn’t include the network playing the Blues Playoff game last night. Ugh. SO frustrating. Instead, I followed along on Twitter, Yahoo and streaming radio online from our local KMOX. Girls gotta do what a girls gotta do!

I’m feeling motivated to keep going in that spare bath now that it’s functional once again. I’ll be sure to share the successes and fails along the way. I’ve already had one major fail… which completely derailed my motivation. I’m back on track now though! Stay posted.

Cheers to productive weekends! Maybe now I’ll get my lazy butt off the couch and crank out a couple more things before the day is up.

P.S. The photo collages / edits in this post were done using a downloaded version of Picasa. I’m still working on figuring it out, but it just might be my replacement for Picnik. Sigh. Oh picnik, how I miss thee.