matsutake

It's Only Drywall

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:45:00 +0000

Before you begin any DIY home renovation, you should ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do I have a basic understanding of carpentry, residential electrical wiring, HVAC, and plumbing?

2. Do I like dust?

3. Am I current on my tetanus shot?

4. Do my kids really need 3 meals a day?

5. If a poke unexpected holes in walls and stick my head through to entertain the kids, will that make up for the fact that there's no dinner?

6. Am I married to Chip Gaines?

7. Have I maybe been watching too many episodes of Fixer Upper?

8. Could all my nesting fantasies be satisfied by just trolling Pinterest all day?

9. Do I have enough coffee and wine on hand?

And finally...

10. How hard can it be?

If you answered yes or no to any or all of these questions, you may proceed.

Carpe diem! Carpe sledgehammer!

Dare Me?

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 13:20:00 +0000

I'm going to start a new feature on my blog called "Dare Me?" wherein I ask readers if they dare me to make something absurdly complicated and nutso with my bare hands. Maybe it will work, maybe I will fail miserably. Maybe I'll change my mind after my coffee wears off.

So...here is the first installment of my new game.

Dare me to make a moorish inspired fountain out of concrete blocks in my junky sunroom where the floor is so rickety that the whole thing might fall through?

If my husband is reading this, you are not allowed to vote.

photo source

I Made ABC Circus Alphabet Cards! (Updated 2/2016)

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 13:14:00 +0000

I've been on an extended honeymoon with Photoshop for the past couple of weeks. We're back now, and here's the outcome.

I made these ABC cards for Maggie's room. It was so crazy fun. Fun because I really got into creating each little image, and crazy because, OMG, there are 26 letters in the alphabet. If you're Chinese, you're probably laughing at me for thinking that's a lot.

Anyway, I think these circus animals are actually a troupe of prop comics. My favorites are the chicken with the yo-yo. And the pigeon with the umbrella. And the raccoon playing the little piano.

I printed them out onto nice, thick cardstock and then used a corner punch to round the corners.

Of course I went totally nutso overboard on the details, but it's really hard to find public domain images of donkey peanut vendors, so I had to make one myself. Really. Try googling "five baby pandas in a red surrey bike". Or "duck in a bowler hat holding balloons". I knew you'd understand.

I set up the whole collection as a printable in my etsy shop. Each card prints at 4x6 inches, so I put 2 images per file so you can print 2 on a sheet of 8.5x11 cardstock. I love that etsy has that new feature where you can upload a zip file and the buyers get it instantly upon payment. Sweet!

You can get the printable here..

Ok, I'm Back

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:07:00 +0000

My gosh, where have I been lately? What month is it? June? We moved from Minnesota to Maryland last summer? Yes. So...here we are in Ellicott City. It's a lovely little town just minutes outside Baltimore. The transition was...uh...a little rougher than anticipated due to a variety of things. The mortgage approval process was a bear. We first had to move into a small apartment while all the paperwork got sorted out, which was seriously like fax us just these 2 more things again and again and then fax another signed form and three more months worth of this and that, etc.

I had to start the kids in one school in September, and then a few weeks later when we finally closed on a house, had to move them to another school. Let's think about that a minute. Middle school kids. Starting a new school. TWICE in a month. I felt like I was really letting them down. Ugh.

Then just before Thanksgiving, I lost a friend to cancer. It's very hard to talk about. Very hard. So anyway, I've been very focused on who I am, what's important in life, my kids, being available to them, what sort of mother I need to be and become. The blog sort of faded away. Sorry this is such a downer.

All of this is not to say that I stopped making stuff. On the contrary, I really let the crafting and designing and planning projects save my mental state. You know those precious minutes at night, when you're done for the day, everyone is safely tucked into bed, and you have serious, real, relaxed alone time, just you and your own creative thoughts? That's my favorite part of the day.

So I have a lot of stuff in the works, but here's what I've been dabbling with for the past few weeks:

Gold dimensional paint. I call this series "Ma Vie en Puffy Paint". I'm addicted to this stuff. I can't stop. It's dried up under my fingernails as we speak, and the ideas keep coming.

First, there was a jellyfish.

We visited the National Aquarium here in Baltimore, and I fell in love with the moon jellies. I researched what's involved in keeping them in a tank at home, and I think that's not happening. Those little suckers are VERY hard to keep. They have to have special round tanks and fancy filters because they can't bump into anything and their tentacles are very fragile. How do they survive the ocean? Anyway. The gold dimensional paint squirts out in wiggley blobby lines just like their silly tentacles.

And then there was a golden longhorn.

Again with the blobby paint to highlight the strange characteristics of this animal. Can you tell I'm homesick for Texas? I miss you, University of Texas. Hook 'em! With golden squirty horns!

I hear they raise ostriches out in West Texas.

With semi-grotesquely realistic birdy legs.

I also got on a preppy kick and made this striped whale. Of course, I had to highlight the weird baleen mouth stuff. It's preppy eclectic. Prep-clectic?

And an elephant with gold tusks.

Are there any other animals with strange features to highlight in gold?

Of course. A pink plaid buck with crazy antlers.

A duck who may have had had a bit too much to drink. Somebody take his keys.

A horse (sketched by my daughter) who got the gold treatment from me. She's minty floral and probably needs a cutie mark to complete the look.

I had a rugby shirt this color once. I wish it'd had golden suckers on it.

And most recently, a golden jack rabbit. I think his floral pattern looks like a vintage sheet. My dad refers to the time before a person was born as "out chasin' jackrabbits", as in, "hey, where was I in this photo? Oh, you were out chasin' jackrabbits."

So I put these prints in a new etsy shop I've started called 4th Floor Housewares. Have a look!

A day in the life of Mr. Matsutake in a single image.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 13:04:00 +0000

This tragedy is played out at Michael's craft store. Every day.

Guest post with a teaser

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 02:43:00 +0000

As Michael McDonald said in Craft Wall Street - "Greed is good. Craft low. Sell high." Stay tuned on Etsy.

What a Man

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 20:47:00 +0000

Yesterday I texted my husband at work and told him that when females menstruate, our bodies produce extra chocolate metabolizing enzymes and that if we don't increase our chocolate intake to compensate, the enzymes will actually cause heart damage. I was afraid he'd say something silly like "enzymes aren't used up in a chemical reaction" or "that's not true" to which I was going to reply "typical patriarchal western allopathic answer...you think you know more than me about how my own body works??? It was in Mother Moon Magazine!"

But I didn't have to. You know why? Because he texted back "I suggest chocolate daily as needed. That's my rx." What a man.

Do you think he believed me?!?!

Either way he deserves this. So I made him a Valentine for a manly man.

I made it from a 12" x 12" piece of plywood, some corner brackets, and a small paint can lid.

First I stained the wood with Minwax wood stain in Early American.

Then I attached the brackets and paint can lid with thumbtacks to spell out "love" in a Robert Indiana style layout.

Doesn't get much easier than that. Better go eat my medicine now.

The Easiest, Fastest DIY Mirror

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 16:56:00 +0000

I love hanging mirrors all over my house, so much so that guests often say, "My goodness, you must really love looking at yourself in the mirror", to which I reply, "Could you move out of the way? I'm trying to look at myself in the mirror."

The problem with DIYing them, though, is that it can become pretty time consuming and tedious to glue a bunch of stuff around them. I made one of the ubiquitous wood shim starburst mirrors last year and although I loved how it turned out, it took forever to make and wasn't exactly the sturdiest thing to move into the new house. So I had this idea...

Ah ha! Cake pan! I bought a 10 inch cake pan and a 10 inch craft mirror at Michaels, and the mirror perfectly plopped right into the pan. Beware if you try this, the 12 inch mirror did not plop into the 12 inch pan. I walked around the store sneakily trying to wiggle and shove it into the cake pan trying to whistle innocently and look like I was shopping. I wonder if anyone noticed me. Glad I didn't shatter it. Anyway, it didn't work. I wish I'd tried the 14 inch cake pan and 14 inch mirror, and I also wish Michaels put the baking aisle right next to the craft mirror aisle. Oh well. It's not the craziest I've ever looked in the craft store, I'm sure.

So first you spray paint the pan whatever color you want. I used something antique brassy. Then drill holes into the sides of the cake pan, which was very easy.

And then you glue the mirror into the pan using any kind of glue with superlative words in it like "super" or "industrial strength" or animal words like "gorilla" are good, too. Then screw cabinet knobs into the the sides. Oh yeah, I also spray painted them to match. These little knobs cost me $1.50 each at Home Depot. Note: You have to buy shorter screws than the ones that come with the cabinet knobs so they'll screw in flush. I spray painted the heads of the screws, too.

Then you can use rope or ribbons or chains or dental floss or whatever to hang your mirror. I'm into a peach and navy thing lately, so that's what I used. Peach and navy ribbons. Note 2: The mirror will want to flop forward or backward when you hang it, so stick a piece of double sided foam mounting tape to the back to make it lie flat against the wall.

So there you go. And because I'm a blogger and it's January, I came up with some New Years resolutions to post. I think I was in the Target when I wrote them because it sort of ended up as a grocery list.

1. Eat more carrots.

2. Eat more tomatoes.

3. Come up with resolution that doesn't have to do with food.

4. Use more French phrases when I talk.

5. Eat more je ne sais quoi.

6. Pay more attention to my husband (except when he's talking about sports).

7. Be a better person.

8. Figure out what it means to be a better person.

9. Stop trying to be something I'm not.

10. Stop trying to be a better person.

11. Buy fresh cut flowers.

12. And some new socks.

13. Oh and I think we're out of half and half.

Can you make your own Clausometer?

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 20:12:00 +0000

Is there sugar in syrup?

Remember in the movie Elf when Papa Elf showed Buddy how Santa's sleigh works? Well, yesterday I was thinking how my Christmas spirit was rising, and then I thought, "Hmm, I wonder if I could make a Clausometer..."

Fifteen minutes later I bought a $4.99 clock at Target, and it was on.

Inspired by my lack of a plan for how to pull this off, I opened the package and discovered that the back of the clock pops right off.

Now what? The arms! Pop the arms off!

See how it's all coming together (apart)?

And I acquired alphabet stickers. Lots of them. Because there are lots of Os on the face of the Clausometer. And cut a circle out of new, thick cardstock.

I sort of laid it all out to get an idea of where the holes for the lights were going to go. Oh, yeah, the lights. I had string of 10 incandescent battery operated lights just sitting there waiting for a purpose. I had to cannibalize another string of colored lights to get 6 orange and 2 red bulbs (the yellow ones are just clear bulbs).

I figured where the holes would go and drilled right through the clock, which is plastic, so the drill went right through. First I used a small drill bit, then I went back with a larger bit to make holes big enough for the light bulbs.

Then I slipped the cardstock circle out of the clock again to decorate it. I used my daughter's watercolors and a sharpie and then carefully stuck on all the stickers.

Then I put the newly decorated face into the clock right over the old face, flipped the clock over, and pushed the lights through the holes. I secured all the lights and wires with electrical tape. Then I put the glass and front cover back on.

I love that it's battery powered so there's no electrical cord hanging off of it. I've been carrying it around since yesterday trying to decide where to put it. The mantle?

On the wall overlooking my desk?

In the kitchen? Where would you put it? I've been seeing lots of great Elf inspired quote posters on pinterest that would look so cute with it. Next year I think I'll remake the whole thing with a huge, fancy metal clock, and it'll go over the fireplace.

Hahaha, on a side note, my husband just caught me singing and said, "Look! The Clausometer is going up!"

DIY Christmas Ornament Diorama

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 15:42:00 +0000

I have a weird thing for miniatures. I know I'm not the only one. Because I got into a fight with a lady in the xmas miniatures aisle at Michaels. Ok, not really a fight. I pushed her out of the way, and it was over. Oh, you better watch out. You better not cry! You better not stop me in the miniatures aisle at the craft store oh my!

Kidding!

Would you like to see what I made with my little purchases?

It's a diorama! I put the little tree and deer inside one of those oversized plastic ornaments and hung it from my ceiling in the entry. I'll show you how you can make one...

You'll need a dremel. I bought a cutting bit to use with mine, and it went through that thin plastic like butter. Don't really do it one handed like this. That's just for the photo, as is that awesome vinyl floor in my basement. Yeah. Like a time capsule down there.

Then I used the sanding bit to smooth out the jagged edges. Keep it on low speed unless you like the smell of melted toxic Chinese plastic.

Are you seeing it now? No, because it's pitch black in there. So you need to pop a circle of cardboard in there for a floor (secure with hot glue) and then paint the whole inside white.

And now you can go nuts gluing your miniatures and glitter and whatnot in there. Also, I glopped a line of dimensional puffy paint around the edge of the opening to give it a more finished look.

Merry Christmas!

PS It's been so long since I've posted that I forgot all my passwords.

Oh, and here are a couple of tutorial ghosts from Christmas past that are fun, too, if you're into fun.

Mistletoe Hairpin

Mod Metallic Candleholders

Stained Glass Pumpkins

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 20:38:00 +0000

It's not really glass. But if you step back and cross your eyes and drink a big glass of wine, it totally looks like stained glass. It's really a balloon that I inflated into a pumpkin and then colored with Sharpies. And I shoved an LED inside. See the things you can come up with when you step back, cross your eyes, and drink a big glass of wine?

Before and After Fireplace Makeover

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 15:32:00 +0000

Remember my fireplace with the pine green tiles and the honey oak trim? No? Yeah, it was pretty forgettable.

But did you know that you can buy a few square feet of tiles and a can of white paint and change all that builder grade blah?

Not sure if you noticed but I also changed a strip of that oak trim that didn't jut out far enough around the edges and replaced it with my favorite egg and dart molding. I also painted the brass part of the fireplace insert with black high heat paint. Careful, that stuff stinks something awful.

Much better, huh?

Here's an intermediate picture.

I used a big pry bar to pop the wood column things off the sides. Then Jon broke off the tiles. Hulk smash! As I recall, the underlying drywall got pretty beat up in the process of pulling off the old tiles, so we just cut new strips of drywall (you can get small pieces at Lowes or Depot) and screwed them into any exposed 2x4s. Then it was smooth sailing. Smooth tiling. These tiles came in 12" square sheets, which makes the process much easier. Then I painted the wood and screwed the posts back on. Voila!

Budget Bathroom Makeover

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 01:26:00 +0000

Why didn't I do this ages ago? Look...here's the whole budget friendly bathroom before and after.

The whole makeover cost something like $400, maybe a little bit more, but definitely under $500. I'm not sure exactly. Ok, yes, like less than $450. Do I count the shower curtain? I'm not good with keeping track of stuff like this.

tub hardware: $100
faucet: 100
mirror: 50
wainscoting: 20
molding: 12
cabinet hardware 30
paint 15
light fixture 60
shower rod 20
towel bar 30

The bottom line is that if you're deliberating whether or not to paint your bathroom vanity, do it.

My Kitchen Before & After

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 15:42:00 +0000

Are you ready? First, some before(ish) pics of the kitchen. I say before(ish) because I can't find before pics that show the light oak flooring and white fridge from a million years ago. So imagine light oak floors and a white fridge, which died a year or two ago and had to be replaced.

So then I pulled off some of the cabinet doors, used my router to remove the inner wood panel, and replaced them with glass. And all the cabinets got painted (sprayed with a paint gun and compressor) white with a Benjamin Moore something or other paint that works like magic.

And I popped off the beige ceramic backsplash with a tile scraper to try to preserve the drywall behind it. Then I realized that the drywall was so damaged and dinged that I'd need to replace it anyway. No prob. New glass mosaic tiles. New stainless oven and dishwasher. New countertops that we saved and saved for. Granite. Shiny. And a new big, deep sink. Oh and new light fixtures. There was an old fluorescent box light up there on the ceiling before.

Finished just in time to move and out and let someone else enjoy it. That built in hutch thingy in the background used to be honey oak, too. It's amazing when you realize that you have the power to change your environment. And then move out. To a brown, dark, temporary apartment in Baltimore. Sigh.

The Good News:

We're just about to close on our new house. New home. New projects. Maybe I'll have an energy/humor burst soon. Hopefully. The temporary brown apartment is sucking my will to blog.

My Huge DIY Antiqued Floor Mirror

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 19:53:00 +0000

What do you think? Big, huh? Mirror tiles, antiqued with muriatic acid, corners snipped with tile snips, screwed with decorative mirror clips (Lowes) onto a big leftover piece of wall panel. 2x2 around the edges. Would you like a tutorial? I guess I just gave you one. Went a little nutty with the antiquing. What do you think? So cheap to make!!!

You can see my plastic cup in the reflection. That's classy.

Faux Crewel with the Kids (So Easy!)

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Mon, 27 May 2013 15:37:00 +0000

A while back Parents Magazine contacted me and said, "Got any fun craft ideas for kids?" I thought about it for a bit, and then the kids and I whipped these up. Caution: it's totally addictive.

All you do is peel the backing off some adhesive backed craft foam and go to town pressing yarn onto it.

Parents likes their crafts to be little kid friendly, too, all the way down to 3 yr olds, so for the little guys you can snip off strands of yarn and put them in a little pile.

You can use double sided tape to hold the craft foam in place on the table. Cotton yarn seems to stick better than acrylic. When your masterpieces are done, spray them with clear polyurethane and that will make the remaining sticky areas of the foam not sticky anymore. Voila! Instant art! No needles, no glue. Check it out in the June issue of Parents!

Removing Ceramic Tile from Concrete Slab? Let's Do It!

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:19:00 +0000

That's how my husband plans home projects. "Let's do it." No time to waste planning or deliberating or taking off baseboards before he's in destructor mode. I could barely snap a before pic before he had the old green tiles smashed to smithereens.

Turns out removing ceramic tile on concrete slab is a lot harder than popping it off upstairs where it was attached to backer board. So we had to run out to our local tool rental place and get the big guns:

I won't say it was easy, because Jon came upstairs after it was all done (about 20 minutes) and his shirt was soaked through with sweat and he was bleeding from his forehead, neck, and knee. Shards of tile were EVERYWHERE. Look at this:

Can you tell what that is? It's shards of tile stuck in the ceiling like Chinese throwing stars. And the dust? The dust made it all the way upstairs before we figured out to do this:

So messy. He also attacked the green fireplace.

Goodbye green tiles. I'm so excited!! What kind of tile should I replace it with? Look at that shard of tile that popped up into that yellow square candle on the right side of the mantle! So fun!!!

PS You should've seen us at the tool rental place. Jon was on two hours of sleep from a night shift at work. I'd had a breakfast of 3 cups of coffee and 2 spoons of cough syrup. We stumbled in there and were like, "Yeah, we called about the...uh...power hammer smasher thing?"I can't believe they let us leave with it. We hadn't even planned to do this. Just a spur of the moment, "Let's do it!"

Footprints

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:22:00 +0000

As a mom, wife, and blogger, I have struggled lately. Trying to paint, repair, pack up, and sell my home and make a smooth transition for my family across the country has felt overwhelming at times. And when I looked down and saw only one set of footprints in the sand, I said, "Jesus, are those your footprints?"

And he said, "Katie, no offense, but I have bigger fish to fry. And loaves to break."

"Oh," I said. "Then whose footprints are they?"

"Sherry Petersik's," he replied.

"I totally adore Young House Love! She's a mom and a DIY home renovator and she's always so perky and optimistic," I said. "And they're moving again!"

"Yeah," Jesus said, "YHL is pretty much my go-to blog for DIY home renovation inspiration. And the hip hop references crack me up."

"Me too! Thanks, Jesus."

"No problem. And Katie? Stop tracking sand in the house. You're going to scratch your new flooring."

Cool Discovery

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:47:00 +0000

For awkward paint masking areas:

Glad Press'n Seal. It's so perfect! It's oddly sticky so you can drape and stick it where you need to mask areas from spray paint. You don't even need painters tape. Will definitely keep this stuff on hand. (I started off with painters tape and plastic bag on the cord before I figured out the plastic wrap trick.)

Yeah, I'm in the garage spray painting lamps when I should be getting ready to move.

I Found My Dream House

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:15:00 +0000

in the Target catalog. Really. This is my dream house. Let's take a look inside...

at my kitchen. It has gleaming white subway tiles, a library ladder for climbing up to reach my Chewy Dips granola bars that I keep hidden from the kids, and a chunky wood island that gives me additional storage for my deer treats and extra seating for any wildlife that stumbles in through that large hole in the wall. See me arranging snacks for the wildlife? I'll take that $49.99 stool, too. GAWD I love this kitchen.

And here is my living room. Isn't it PERFECT? I want everything in this room. Including the blossoming cherry tree that I'm pretending to sleep under so that blue jay won't peck my eyes out.

My bedroom is a retreat for me and my photoshopped birds. Someday my prince will come! I already bought him some moccasins.

There's even a greenhouse that's been converted to a guest bath. For swans. I loooove swans. Convert the greenhouse and they will come.

So if I can only find this exact house in Baltimore, I'll be set. (No jokes about The Wire, please.)

Starting to freak out

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:45:00 +0000

about moving across the country. This probably should've been a tweet.

How To Build a Faux Fireplace

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 19:52:00 +0000

Step 1: Obsess about a blank space on your wall. Try for 5 years to figure out what to put there. Rearrange the furniture in attempts to draw attention to the big arch. Then away from it. Stick art, mirrors, tables, chairs there. Nothing looks right. What the F is supposed to go there? That's right. An F. A fireplace. It's the only answer.

Step 2: Research the cost of having a fireplace built. The internet tells you that a real, wood burning fireplace with a chimney can cost upwards of $10,000. The internet never lies. Can you build one for around a hundred bucks? Give up all hope of ever having a fireplace.

Step 3: Build one anyway. It will be faux. It will hold candles and fake bird eggs and that's all you really wanted anyway. A place to decorate. Internal debates of form vs. function melt away. The form is the function if the form makes you happy. And costs less than a hundred bucks.

Step 4: Decide to make the whole thing as fireproof as possible anyway. You know the whole entire internet will criticize you for making a fire hazard death trap in your living room. But as Aristotle once tweeted, “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” And as Dwayne Wade would say, "This is my house."

The base is a particular kind of drywall called X board. It has awesome fire resistance properties, which is why it was adopted by Professor Xavier in the first place.

Then you make a frame out of 2x4 studs. No, I don't have any dimensions or real instructions here because I was totally making this up as I was going along and I was trying to do it fast while Jon was out of town. You know those annoying husband questions..."Are you going to burn the house down blah blah blah".

Here's the frame sitting on the X board.

Now see what I did? I built an identical frame in front. And then stuck smaller 2x4 hunks between them to screw it all together nice and tight.

And now look. See that white board that looks like cement backer board? It's cement backer board. Specifically, it's Durock NextGen. Costs about 8 bucks at the store, is very fire resistant, and when you screw it into place, it feels like you're screwing a saltine cracker to the wall. Very crumbly. But, like the X board, it's pretty cheap, offers awesome fire resistance, and cuts by scoring and snapping with a utility knife.

Then I cut a big piece of X board to cover up the front. Screwed it into the studs with drywall screws. The sides were some old panelling that I had in the garage. Starting to look like a fireplace now!

This is the fun part. Adding molding and trim and tiles. This is where you can go nuts and make it pretty. I'm in love with egg and dart molding. And the tiles were inexpensive, ceramic 12x12 tiles that I cut down to size with a tile cutter. The mantle lifts off and on like a box lid, which is cool, because you have access to the two screws that hold the whole thing to the wall. Did I mention that? Oh yeah. I drilled 2 metal brackets into the interior 2x4 studs and then into the wall studs. The whole thing can be moved around if you ever want. The wall and floor are unharmed (except for 2 screw holes).

Then I "painted" the inside of the actual firebox part black with this stuff. This is also what I stuck the tiles on with. Very adhesive. Spreads on like peanut butter. Yum, tastes like fireproof!

I grouted between the tiles with regular old Quikrete mortar.

Are you still reading this? Wow! Thank you! I know these are crappy, vague, figure it out yourself kind of directions. Sorry about that. I just wanted anyone out there who wants to build a faux fireplace to know that it can be done. Just remember: this is decorative. It's not a functional fireplace. Be safe. Use appropriate materials. Don't light a real fire in it other than candles. Never leave burning candles unattended. And most important of all, don't burn your house down and blame me. I am not liable. Sorry if that sounds snappy. I just want you to be safe. And have pretty things.

Dear Matsutake

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:05:00 +0000

Dear Matsutake,

Recently while perusing the art section at my favorite craft store, I found nestled between the 10 Commandments posters and the Harley Davidson posters a beautiful, vintage-inspired botanical print. Quickly, I snatched it up. Do you have any ideas for framing it? I can't afford professional framing, and I don't really like cheap poster frames. My budget is around the $1.50 to $1.75 range.

Sincerely,
Art Connoisseur

Dear Art ConnoiHoweverYouSpellit,

I love to snatch up cheap finds at my favorite craft store, too! Sadly, store security almost always catches up with me in the parking lot. Now, on to your question.

Do you have any pieces of 1x2 lumber lying around? Perhaps from an outdoor sofa you made last summer? No? That's ok. You can pick up one from your local home improvement store for a buck or two. You'll also need a few screws. And some twine.

Cut 4 strips of the wood. Each should be 2 inches longer than the width of your poster. (You could also just use 2 strips of wood if you don't want the bottom part of the hanger.)

Stack two strips of wood and pre-drill a hole at the end like this. Pre-drilling keeps you from splitting the wood when you drive a screw in. The hole should be a tiny bit smaller than the width of your screw.

Now stuff something between the boards. Something like strips of cardboard or craft foam or rolled up duct tape bits but not bubblegum because that will leave a wet spot. This will help to hold your poster in place by providing gription, the force that holds two things together. Double sided acid free sticky tape helps, too. I know you don't really want to stick tape on your poster, but, c'mon, it's not fancy art. Would've been free if you'd run faster.

Between the top two boards, you should also slip in a piece of twine with a loop tied on the end. Select a strip of twine from your extensive twine collection. Because like Alexis Stewart, daughter of domestic guru Martha Stewart, once said, "Who needs friends and family when you have twine?"

Now screw the boards together at each end super tight. I used a big washer for decoration. If you buy washers at the home improvement store and the Hank Hill-esque employee asks you what size washer you need, tell him you need the prettiest one. Then he'll know you mean business.

And voila! Wasn't that easy?

Twinkle Twinkle Literary Raccoon in a Music Jar Video

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:47:00 +0000

Isn't Twinkle Twinkle Little Star the same tune as the ABC song?

I Made Something Totally New

noreply@blogger.com (Katie) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:54:00 +0000

that involves plastic animals. It's so silly. I just needed a break from large scale (for me) construction and power tools and dust. It's a racoon. He's typing. What is he typing? I don't know. Probably a post for Apartment Therapy. See those little letters and stars above his head? They revolve around his head as "Twinkle Twinkle" plays. There's a music box up in the jar lid. See the key up there on top? It's a music jar.

I think I should make more and sell them. As soon as I finish my kitchen renovation. I'm envisioning plastic chickens wearing party hats.