Show Off Your Stuff

The top of your kitchen cabinets is a great place to show off antiques, souveniers, and other small items. Oops - my cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. Now what? I bought a 10" shelf and some brackets that can be mounted on top of the shelf (to act as bookends) and hung it over the pass-through window in my kitchen. A doorway or over a window works too. It created instant space to display my STUFF

Warning - Math Involved

Okay, it's not tomorrow, but it's close. Thought I would share one of my recent projects. I had a half wall with a funny little handrail on my stairs which I have always hated. This involved a little demolition. Karry couldn't wait for that part. I came home one night to find he had started to take the wall down before I could take a before picture, so this will have to do.

After cutting down the wall we started to assemble our new balistrade. To save money, we reused the board at the base of the old handrail as our base for the new balistrade. Because it was oak, I bought a newel, a half newel, handrail, and a shoe rail in oak and stained them to match. I also bought 11 primed balisters and painted them white to match the trim in the rest of the house. In all this came to about $150.in

The tricky part was figuring out the measurements and angles. I had to reach way back into my memory to the geometry class I had in 9th grade. Code requires that the balisters be no more than 4" apart, so I used that measurement and the length of the pre-cut balsisters to figure out the measurements for the handrail and newels.

The finished product? (drumroll please...) A traditional staircase which fits the traditional style of the house and makes the room feel larger and more open. Bonus: now I can see when the kids are on the stairs eavesdropping on our conversation :)

Bad, Bad Blogger!

I have been a very bad blogger. All my remodeling projects (some of them unplanned due to a little flooding) have kept me a little too busy. I promise to do better - starting tomorrow! (I'd start today but it's midnight and I'd have to turn back the clock to do it today.)