Before I go on and on about the antique clock I bought recently, I’m going point out the elephant in my living room: an antique mechanical wall clock is truly, hopelessly obsolete.

• It requires regular winding and care.
• It keeps woefully inaccurate time compared to even the cheapest modern quartz watch.
• It is only usable in one place.
• It doesn’t correct itself or update for daylight savings time.

In short, the cellphone that is already in your pocket or purse is a superior timepiece to any antique clock like mine.

At this point, you’re probably asking, “Josh, if this antique clock is so lousy, why own it at all?” Well, consider this: although it may not be great as a timepiece, an antique clock makes a fantastic pet.

• It is well-behaved and makes a good impression on houseguests.
• It doesn’t shed or aggravate allergies.
• It makes a variety of endearing sounds.
• It requires feeding only once per week and leaves no messes to clean up.
• It it a better timekeeper than any other pet.

See– mediocre timepiece, brilliant pet.

Of course, this mission style clock is also a great vintage accessory for the living room where it fits in perfectly between the piano and the archway trim. It winds with a brass key that is really a kick to use, and now that I have fine-tuned the pendulum weight I only have to correct it by a few minutes each week.

But chiefly, the charm of the clock is its sound. That’s a hard thing to convey with words and pictures only, so I recorded a video clip talking about the clock and sharing all its ticks, tocks, dings and bongs in case you, too, might be thinking of bringing a pet mechanical clock into your home.

When pulling a home design together, often it is the little details that make the difference between harmony and dissonance. In my bungalow kitchen remodel, I’ve been distressed by the dissonant details over the sink. Specifically, these are a scalloped header board and an off-center electrical fixture box.

In the before photo above, the problem with the location of the light fixture is pretty obvious. I may like my politics a little left of center, but the pendant light clearly needs to move about two inches to the right. This problem wasn’t apparent until I put up this cheap, temporary pendant after removing the fluorescent strip lighting that had been in place over the sink and under the adjacent cabinets.

The scalloped board is perhaps a less obvious problem. [First, though, I should concede I have no idea what the proper name is a decorative cabinetry board like this. Leave me a comment below if you can help me with my terminology-- for now I'm going to call it a header board. ] The scallops aren’t obviously flawed, they just say “country” or “grandma” to me, not “bungalow,” or “craftsman.”

Sayonara Scallops

The most natural solution for the scalloped header was to just cut the edge to a more desirable shape. Craftsman furniture and woodwork often features a simple shallow curve on horizontal spans, so I decided to try to apply that design here. The chief challenge to this plan would be making the new edge smooth and symmetrical while leaving the header in place because I could see no easy way to remove the board without risking major damage to the adjacent cabinets.

Using clamps and a flexible metal ruler, I traced a curve on the header board that would remove all of the scallops but leave the joint between the header and cabinets intact. Then I used my jigsaw to cut along the line as slowly and carefully as I could. The cut wasn’t long or complicated, but the awkward cutting position and the nails I hit at each of the sides made the process a bit nerve-wracking. In the end, with a couple blade changes and a bit of sanding with the palm sander, it turned out great.

I will stain and finish the new curved edge when I build the new cabinets I have planned for the area next to the stove. In addition to the construction and installation, I’m planning a separate post about color-matching stain.

A Centered Schoolhouse

Fixing the off-center sink pendant was uncomplicated–just move  the electrical box to the middle and patch the hole left in the process. The wiring looked in good shape, so I didn’t pull new wires or do more extensive electrical work with this job.

Somehow I didn’t get photos of the centered electrical box in the patched ceiling. Drat. The photo above shows the off-center fixture location after the old box had been removed. I replaced the rectangular box with a shallow circular box intended for ceiling fixtures and attached it to the ceiling joist visible on the right edge of the old opening. The most fortunate part of moving the electrical such a short distance was that the conduit and wires included enough slack to make the connection to the new box without alteration.

With the electrical box properly positioned, I installed a mini schoolhouse pendant I had found to match the large schoolhouse lights in the kitchen. Whether vintage, or reproduction like this, I like schoolhouse lights for their basic, versatile style and their ability to hide modern bulbs like CFLs or LEDs that look all wrong in vintage bare-bulb fixtures.

Harmonious details achieved! This project concludes the work on the sink wall of the kitchen. For my next work in the kitchen, I will shift my attention to the stove wall, where I am planning new cabinets to fill the former refrigerator space, more backsplash tiling, and an exhaust hood for my vintage stove.

Well, friends, I hope we can pick up where we left off, even though it has been weeks since my last update. In that time, I’ve continued to work on my projects in the kitchen and elsewhere, with a brief break to step off the beaten path…

make some new friends…

smell the flowers…

stare out the windows…

watch the sunset…

do a little fishing…

…and put my feet up.

Those are just a few pictures from my family vacation in Costa Rica back in March. It was a fabulous trip, but in the days of preparation, travel, and recovery for our family’s first international excursion, my writing fell by the wayside.

Wednesday, things get back to the bungalow with a fresh post further detailing my kitchen progress– specifically how I reworked the lighting and woodwork over the sink. See you there!

Keeping my existing cabinets is a decision I’ve second-guessed a few times as I work on this kitchen remodeling project. There are several details of layout and design I would like to be different if I was starting from scratch in the kitchen. I briefly considered total cabinet replacement, but realized that wouldn’t work within my goal of a low-cost renovation– particularly if I wanted to replace all the beautiful natural cherry with a similar grade of wood.

But if keeping the kitchen cabinets was the right choice for my budget, I have wrestled with how best to make the cabinets feel updated. Painting the cabinetry is a popular DIY choice these days, and painted kitchen woodwork would be a more historically correct choice for my bungalow than lots of natural cherry.  Historic or not, however, the cherry is such a beautiful, premium material I just couldn’t bring myself to paint over it. Painting inside it, however, is a different story.

Several of my upper cabinets are constructed with glass door panels, and the cabinets themselves are backless against the wall. This means that I can just paint the wall at the back of the cabinets and get a lot of the visual impact of color while leaving the cherry cabinets unpainted.

Selecting paint colors is a job I choose to delegate to my friend Molly. I’ve wasted too much time and money on the wrong paint, and her picks are always better than anything I had in mind. That said, I got impulsive with this one and decided break my own rule by making a color selection of my own. For some color inspiration, I looked to a plate I found at an occasional sale that is displayed on the kitchen wall.

With the plate in mind, I used the online Color Selection Tool at True Value Paint to find a color like the plate that was closely related to  the color on my walls. Picking colors online is tricky, but I knew that even if they didn’t look exactly right on my monitor, related colors should look good in person. The screencap below shows the related number codes and colors between my wall color , Seedling 21C4, and my selected cabinet accent color, Victory Lap 21D4.

When I went to the hardware store to buy the paint, the clerk confirmed for me that not only were the paint codes similar, most of the pigment colors and quantities in the accent I chose was identical to the wall color. With such similar formulation, the colors would have to play well together, right?

Two coats of paint later, I reassembled the interior shelves and put back the dishes, glasses, mixing bowls and serving pieces. Against this new colorful background, my dishes suddenly popped out visually like they hadn’t before. To enhance this effect and make the cabinet contents look snappy and uniform, I removed things we didn’t use often and pared down the colors of my stuff to either white, stainless steel, and clear glass.

It was after dark when I realized that I didn’t have a photo of the wall and cabinet colors together, so this final image captures the two colors side-by-side, though the lighting was pretty lousy:

For my first self-selected paint color in a while, I think this one turned out well–and Ms. Bungalow likes it, too. The new paint and the monochromatic shelf contents combine to give the old cabinets the updated look I was aiming for, while also costing less time and money than replacing or painting the cherry cabinetry.

When I last wrote about the progress of my low cost kitchen remodel, the new apron sink and cherry butcherblock countertops had been installed. Now I can share the backsplash tile installation and result that finishes off the sink-area countertop. (Spoiler: I really dig it!)

About The Tile

First, a word about my choice of tile. Yes, subway tile is trendy right now. It is particularly popular in white and in the 3″ x 6″ size I chose, but similar tiles are widely available in alternate dimensions–oversized, long and skinny, really oversized– and in a variety of colors of ceramic and glass. But for all its hipness today, white subway tile is a classic design that was widely employed in early 20th century homes, and public buildings, including… wait for it… subway stations. It was a favored choice for bungalow bathrooms and kitchens because it was simple, low-cost, and easy to keep clean.

The only original subway tile left in my bungalow is a row of mopboard tile in the bathroom. All the wall tiles were replaced with light blue squares sometime in the 1950s. By then plain white subway tile would have looked bland and old fashioned, and household cleanliness was assured not by white tile but by an array of post-war chemical cleaners like Tide (1946), Ajax (1947), Formula 409 (1957), and Mr. Clean (1958)  to name a few.

Now subway tile has come full circle. All its original virtues of simplicity, affordability and cleanliness hold true today and there is renewed appreciation for its classic good looks. Depending on spacing and grout color, white subway tile can look historic or contemporary, which makes it a perfect choice for my kitchen.

Tile Backsplash Installation

My tiling process in the kitchen started with repairs to the plaster wall above the countertop. Some of the finish coat of plaster had pulled off the wall when I removed the gross, adhesive-attached melamine backsplash, so I evened the surface with premixed plaster patch. The photo below shows the wall repair in process and you can see I got a little sloppy on the new countertop. It was easy to wipe away this excess plaster while it was wet, but it would have been easier to patch the wall before the countertop and sink went in if I had been willing to go another couple days without water in the kitchen.

Once the wall was patched, I measured and marked some tile layout lines on the wall. Because of the strong presence of the sink and faucet in this area, I concluded the tile would look unbalanced if it wasn’t centered on the faucet. After marking the “center” behind the faucet, I marked a few additional vertical layout lines by adding increments of 6 1/16″ — 6″ for the tile width and 1/16″ for the spacing. This tight spacing is less forgiving on the installer, but is more like how original subway tile would have been placed.

With the wall and layout prepped, it was time for the fun part: setting the tiles. I spread mastic on the wall with a notched trowel roughly one square foot at a time. The I set tile into the mastic, starting at one of my layout lines above the countertop. When it came time to cut tile, I tried using a manual tile cutter, but quickly found I was breaking nearly as many tiles as I was cutting. I ended up buying a pretty basic wet saw for $100, which cut down my tile loss significantly and made possible more complicated cuts than the tile snapper allowed. For the money, the wet saw really is the only way to go for almost any conceivable tiling job.

To get the correct row offset on my running bond pattern, I used a carpenter’s square, with the ruler adjusted to 3″– half the width of the tile.

Outlet boxes and the window trim proved the most difficult to tile around, but in the end I finished all my oddball cuts and had the tile all mounted to the wall.

As I mentioned earlier, grout color can determine a lot of the character of a subway tile installation. White grout looks uniform and contemporary, gray grout looks historic, and colored grout looks edgy and modern. Can you guess which direction I went?

It is best for grout to set gradually, so after I spread the grout and removed the excess, I returned to wipe the surface with a wet cloth twice a day for a few days until the grout was well set. Then I used a grout sealer and spread a thin bead of caulk at the seam with the countertop and sink to keep any moisture on those surfaces from getting into the grout.

All finished, the light gray grout highlights the pattern of the tile, without overdoing the contrast. White tile also ties well with the white apron sink and my white appliances, making them all more of a cohesive design element.

I’m very pleased with how the grout turned out and how straightforward the project was. I’ll have more backsplash tiling to do when I finish the wall with the stove. But before I get to that, I have planned a couple more changes for the sink wall, including adding some color to my upper cabinets and modifying some cabinet trim.

Forgive me for not keeping you in the loop, Dear Reader, but 2012 is off to a whirlwind start. My family had a fantastic vacation in San Diego the first week of the year, which included touring a magnificent Arts and Crafts home, the Marston House. (Look for a collection of photos and recollections from the tour in a future post.) Then when my family returned we had birthday celebrations for Ms. Bungalow and our 5-year-old son on back-to-back weekends.

It should go without saying, then, that I haven’t had much time to work on the house in this young new year. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been making anything. My son’s 5th birthday was a fun opportunity to get creative, particularly with his chosen theme: Angry Birds.

Paper Characters

For my first creation, I made up these paper art characters as an art project for the party. I had the components pre-cut and sorted, then the kids at the party chose their favorite character and assembled it with a glue stick. Then we attached the character to a paper headband so the kids could wear them like a crown. The preschoolers loved this project and a few parents made one, too.

Red Bird Cake

A spherical cake pan was the inspiration for this party creation. When I conceived the idea, I had thought to make the details out of frosting, fondant, or other edible bits. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to experiment and execute that plan, so I fell back on paper character details after I frosted it with red homemade buttercream. And in case you’re curious, the cake was red velvet so the bird was red all the way through.

Green Pig Pinata

My favorite party creation by far was this pinata I made to look like the king of the Green Pigs from Angry Birds. This was made from three layers of paper mache over a large “punch ball” balloon. After filling with candy, I covered the opening with a cardboard cylinder for the snout then layered on the green crepe paper and added paper face details. I was a little sad to let the kids at the party whack this thing to bits, but they had a great time doing it. Plus the construction proved strong enough to let almost all the kids get a shot in before it burst.

I hope you liked this short detour into the at-home dad part of my job. I’ll be back on track with more home improvement and bungalow-based content in my next post. Cheers to you in 2012!

2012 is just around the corner, so what better time to say out with the old and in with the new? In my case, I am continuing my kitchen progress by saying goodbye to my old top-freezer refrigerator and replacing it with a new and larger french door model.

This upgrade probably won’t surprise regular readers who may have seen this coming since the time I indulged a whim to try painting decorative stripes on the old refrigerator. Replacing the fridge gives me a chance to get something larger, more efficient, and with the freezer-on-the-bottom configuration that I prefer. But I’ll really be happy just to have an appliance that doesn’t make ice in the refrigerator and unintentionally defrost my frozen food.

Because the old refrigerator sits in an unstructured alcove, the only size restrictions I have on the new appliance is the 30″ doorway to the kitchen. After scouring ads and checking out some sales, I found a suitable 25 cu ft, 36-inch wide french-door refrigerator in white for $999– a serious upgrade from my old fridge’s 19 cu ft.

The nice thing about buying a refrigerator this time of year in Minnesota is that is isn’t hard to keep food cool on delivery day. When the appliance crew arrived I just needed to stay out of their way as they removed my old refrigerator and brought in the new one. At 29 inches deep with the doors removed, the new appliance just barely fit into the kitchen, but the delivery crew did a great job threading the needle.

As you can see in the photo above, the new fridge is definitely bigger and deeper than the old one, but certainly not overlarge for the room. I picked white to go with my other white appliances, the white sink and the white tile backsplash I have planned. I especially like that the smooth finish on the new refrigerator looks like the smooth white enamel on my vintage stove.

In addition to having more room and a better layout, I was excited to upgrade to an appliance with a built-in icemaker. It’s not much of a luxury these days, I’ll admit, but it is still a very welcome improvement. Because this is a new feature to the kitchen, I needed to add a water line to serve the refrigerator. And that was a job I figured I could handle myself.

How To Install a Refrigerator Water Line Kit

Refrigerator water line pipe is commonly sold as a kit with all the parts you need to connect to your appliance and tap into the kitchen water supply. I found a great kit with copper water pipe and brass hardware at my local True Value Hardware for about $30.

The first step to installing the water line is to make a path for the pipe through the cabinetry. In my case involved drilling holes through a stub wall and the back of a few base cabinets to the sink base.

Then when it was time to feed the pipe through the holes I had made, I wrapped a bit of paper towel around the end of the copper and secured it with tape to keep out sawdust, plaster dust and other drilling debris.

With the coil of copper pipe in the refrigerator area, I only pulled enough copper to make the connection to the pipes beneath the sink. Here you can see the water line and saddle valve where they connect to the cold water pipe. The fittings for this project are simple to use and install with just a screwdriver and a wrench.

I left all the remaining copper pipe from the installation kit coiled behind the refrigerator and connected the water supply using the compression fitting on the back of the appliance. The extra copper pipe may look like overkill, but this coil allows me to move the fridge for cleaning or maintenance without needing to disconnect the water or risk a breakage.

Installing this water line was a great little DIY project that I think any handy homeowner could do without trouble. To give further explanation about what I did, particularly about the use of compression fittings and saddle valves, I made the video how-to below:

Since installing the water line, my ice maker has been working like a charm. If you try installing your own water line, let me know how it goes.

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program and my DIY project as well as my posts about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

With my butcherblock countertop cut and finished, I was ready to install it along with my new kitchen sink and faucet.

As a reminder, here is the sink area of my kitchen before the installation:

I began the replacement process by removing the current countertop and sink. For the countertop I scored the caulk along the edges and removed the few screws that attached it to the base cabinets. The faucet came out easily by just reversing the basic installation steps: closing the water supply pipes under the sink, disconnecting the hoses, and unscrewing the faucet base from the sink. Then I could free the sink by unscrewing the ten small retaining clamps around the edge of the sink on the underside of the counter. The faucet supply hoses and the sink retaining clamps are both visible in the photo below.

Removing the countertop also allowed me to remove the old backsplash, which was a melamine-type material that had been painted several times. To make sure I wasn’t disturbing a hazardous material, however, I pried off a small sample and brought it to a local asbestos testing lab.

I also took samples of my basement ceiling and some old floor tile on basement steps. (I’ll write more about the basement in a future post.) Testing the samples cost $40 each, which sounded like a pretty reasonable price for the peace of mind the test provides. Best of all, the testing company was able to get my results in less than a day so the project wasn’t paused for long. The results: no asbestos in any of the samples. My home tests for lead paint on the backsplash also came up negative. I was on a roll.

With no hazardous materials to worry about, I removed the rest of the backsplash in the sink area and an identical one on the wall behind the stove. Then I placed the new countertops on the base cabinets and marked the area of the sink base face frame I would need to remove to accommodate the IKEA Domsjo apron sink. These dimensions are specified in the installation instructions from IKEA, but it I wanted to have the counters in place to mark the exact cut locations.

Unfortunately I forgot to take “in-process” and “after” pictures of this, so on the picture below the highlighted box marks the portion of the cabinet frame I cut out using my jig saw.

I had remove the countertops when making the modifications to the sink base. With that work done, I reinstalled the new countertops and attached them to the base cabinets. At this point, I was ready to install the sink itself– the weight and size of which required me to call in the reinforcements. Ms. Bungalow would rather have continued crocheting the blanket she was making for our younger son, but she was a good sport about heaving and grunting the massive ceramic double bowl sink into position.

The fit was tight but right (check out the 1/8″ clearance with the drawer to the left of the sink), so I moved ahead with installing the new faucet and reconnecting the drain. Between the asbestos testing and the final sink base modifications, this work stretched into a third day since I had disconnected the water and I was getting anxious to be able to wash dishes.

The existing drain pipe didn’t leave me much to work with. It was a jumble of metal and plastic pipe and I found to my shock that the metal pipe going from the u-bend to the drain pipe coupling at the wall was so corroded that I inadvertantly pushed my finger right through the underside of the pipe when I removed it. I had never noticed any water dripping under the sink, but it’s hard to imagine how that pipe had not been leaking. Hmm. Unfortunately, as with my sink cut-out, I was so focused on the job at hand that I forgot to pick up my camera to document the drain pipe “before.”  Trust me, it was ugly.

Now that I knew i was replacing all the sink cabinet drain pipe, I went over to my local True Value Hardware for supplies. It’s a good thing these stores are so close by, too, because it took me several trial-and-error trips to finally bring home all the materials I needed. I had the most trouble figuring out how to make the elbow and connection to the second sink basin and how to handle the challenging relative heights of the pipe on either side of the u-bend.

My challenge with the u-bend was that after adding the elbow for the second sink basin and the inlet for the diswasher drain, the pipe coming down from the sink was a few inches lower than the outlet pipe going into the wall and I was having trouble making the standard u-bend pipes fit. When I explained my challenge to the clerk at True Value, he suggested I try the gray flexible rubber u-bend you can see in the photo above. After cutting off a bit of excess length, I clamped down the rubber pipe for a great fit– though I think the u-bend is technically installed in reverse. Hey, it works and it doesn’t leak.

Other than my challenge with the u-bend, working with plastic drain pipe was a pleasure. It cuts easily with a hack saw and the couplings can all be connected by hand and just given a simple final torque with a pipe wrench. Best of all, with my new plastic pipes I won’t have to worry about unnoticed pipe corrosion under my sink.

Where the drain had been a bit challenging, the faucet installation was a snap. I had resolved any faucet issues weeks before as I tried to find a single-hole faucet with traditional looks and a cost less than $150. I settled on the Belle Foret kitchen faucet above that I found online. In addition to meeting my basic criteria, I like that it has a convenient single-handle design that isn’t a right-hand biased side-mounted as so many similar faucets are. I do most of the cooking and dishes and I’m a lefty. The faucet is working out just fine, but I wish I had given more consideration to faucets with pull-down sprayers.

My mild restlessness about the faucet aside, I’m thrilled with the sink and countertop replacement. The before-and-after collage below shows just how big a change this made to the kitchen.

Great, right?

You also might have noticed the white subway tile sample in the “after” photo. I’ll have more to say about subway tile and my backsplash area in a future post.

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program and my DIY project as well as my posts about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

Merry Christmas!

As a way to share a bit of the season with you, I thought it might be fun to give you a little holiday tour featuring some of my favorite ornaments from our Christmas tree.

The Glitter Ball

This humble ornament is one of a few that Ms. Bungalow and I decorated together for the tiny Christmas Tree in her apartment before we were married. I guess for a couple of poor students, glitter + Elmer’s glue + the cheapest glass balls at Target = a hot date. It’s nice to have a reminder of the simpler times before I found international fame and fortune as a home improvement blogger.

The Pewter Heart

For several years I bought Ms. Bungalow pewer ornaments like this heart at the nearby Scandinavian gift shop. Partly a nod to our shared Nordic heritage, these ornaments were also my attempt to add some objectively beautiful things to the tree to balance all the tacky trifles we can’t bear to leave in the ornament box. I’m particularly fond of this heart because the lily of the valley motif has such a strong Arts & Crafts feel to it– it’s probably our most “bungalowy” ornament.

*Bonus Ornament* The puppy ornament in the background dates from 1997, the year I graduated college and got my first dog, a rescued beagle mix named Watson. Putting him to sleep at the beginning of this year was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

The Vintage Ball

This vintage glass ball is my choice for the coolest ornament on our tree. It comes from my paternal grandparents’ house and makes me think of many happy childhood Christmas memories: laughter of uncles, aunts and cousins; swedish meatball-eating contests with my brother; and handmade gifts from Grandpa’s woodshop. We lost Grandma to dementia years ago but she left us at last in August to join my Grandpa, who loved Christmas and died on a Christmas Day.

The Crocheted Butterfly

This is the last sad one, I promise. My cousin made a butterfly ornament for everyone in the family the Christmas after her mom, my aunt and godmother, died of breast cancer. My aunt hosted our big family Christmases for many years and I call on her spirit of hospitality whenever we display this ornament.

Kid-Made Ornaments

Ms. Bungalow and I give our boys an ornament engraved with their name every year, but my favorite kid ornaments are the ones they have made themselves. When the kids grow up and move out, they can take the personalized snowflakes and silver stars we’ve given them, but the goofy green-grinned gingerbread man and his yellow Christmas tree are staying with me.

The Photo Frame

My maternal grandma made this photo frame ornament and it hung on her Christmas tree for years as a testimony to a grandparent’s unconditional love. It must only work on grandparents, though, because my wife and kids giggle ridiculously through their annual visit from grade school me in my ’80′s short-shorts.

Thanks for joining my little ornament tour. May your heart and stocking both be full this Christmas and may you know peace, joy, health and hope in the new year.

A couple weeks ago, I got a letter from the city notifying me that my juniper bushes were encroaching on the sidewalk and needed to be trimmed. (Sorry, neighbors!) Within a few days I got out my anvil lopper and cut back the offending bushes, but because the city has stopped collecting yard waste until spring I have had a pile of evergreen boughs just sitting around.

So what better use for these branches than to make some holiday decorations? I put a few of the juniper limbs in my windowbox along with my standard spruce tips, but I put many more branches to use making a big Christmas wreath for the exterior of the house.

Here’s the spot I have in mind for the wreath:

The chimney is six feet wide and I think a wreath that is about four feet wide would look great on it. But I don’t have a wreath frame of any size, especially one that large, so I zipped over to my local True Value Hardware to see if I could improvise some wreath-making supplies.

For the wreath frame, I picked out some coated wire clothesline, along with some steel wire for attaching the branches and brick clips for hanging the finished wreath on the chimney. Although the clothesline wire is plenty tough and reasonably stiff, there is no way it is rigid enough to support the weight of a 4-foot wide wreath, so I planned to try braiding or twisting it to firm it up for my wreath frame. It turned out that my 50-foot coil of wire was just enough for a three-strand twisted 50″ hoop.

With my wreath frame made, I moved my project out to the front yard to start attaching the juniper boughs. I used short lengths of steel wire to tie the branches to the frame every 12 – 18 inches, and I spaced limbs same distance so that the cut end of each new branch was about a foot further around the circle than the branch before it.

Although my clothesline frame didn’t end up being very stiff, the branches themselves and the overlapping assembly pattern helped to firm up the wreath’s circular shape. I also tried to use branches of similar diameter throughout the project to help the wreath’s shape and stiffness.

After a couple breaks to warm up my hands (I happened to be working on the coldest day of the week) I had finished building the wreath. As the above photo shows, the juniper boughs give it a little different texture than the typical pine, and I left the edges a bit wild for a more rustic look.

With my stepladder in place alongside the chimney, I placed a brick hanger clip about nine feet up and hung the wreath from it. The results were a bit… droopy.

I’m sure the finished wreath weighs close to 40 pounds which is just too much for my clothesline frame to bear without sagging. But when I installed a second brick clip to lift and support the bottom of the wreath, the round shape came right back.

For $15 in hardware and some out-of-season yard waste, I think the wreath turned out brilliantly. The pine cone decorations are some giant sugar pine cones I had on hand from previous winter windowbox displays. They were just the right size for the wreath and they fit the cheapskate vibe for the project since they were already paid for.

Because our house is on a corner lot, this decoration on the side of the house is visible to lots of passersby on the street, so I hope I’ve successfully upcycled my shrubbery into a bit of seasonal cheer. In fact, this project was so easy and festive it makes me think I should just plan to trim my juniper bushes for wreath-making material every December– city property notice or not.

Happy holidays!

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program and my DIY project as well as my posts about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.