Anyone who lives in Philadelphia is familiar with the closet situation here - most of the houses are 100+ years old and either don't have closets or have teeny tiny shallow closets that aren't actually deep enough to hang anything in. I've ended up installing shelves in my shallow closets to create a workspace or shoe shelves in these shallow closets, but needed something that would actually fit hangers!

DIY PROJECT: A Tiny Workspace

One of the main projects I had in my guest room renovation was creating a small workspace for myself. By adding a few shelves to a small, shallow closet I was able to create a desk that takes up almost no space!

DIY PROJECT: Restoring a Vintage Trunk

I'd been searching for a trunk to set at the foot of the bed in my guest room and couldn't believe it when I found this brass-plated beauty! After a weekend of sanding and sealing the interior and giving the outside a good oiling, it really shines as a unique storage piece!

DIY PROJECT: Restoring a Historic Mantel

A few months ago I was walking through a rowhome in West Philadelphia that was about to be gutted and rehabbed. A large faux mantel in the corner of the living room caught my eye. I asked the builder if he would be keeping the mantel and he replied that they'd be ripping it out with the rest of the walls, but that I could have it if I wanted it.

I showed up the next day in our pickup truck and brought it back home, not really sure what to do with it, but positive that I couldn't let it get thrown out. And so began a project that took up the better part of three months.

DIY Project: Industrial Open Shelving

The last project in our kitchen rehab was one that I'd planned from the start - a large industrial shelving unit for open display of dishes, dried goods, and everything else that needed a home.

DIY Project: Floating Floors

We're so busy that there isn't even time to take photos, but you can see in-progress via instagram!

Before + After: Backyard Rehab

Nearly a year after we moved in, we finally started work on our backyard.

DIY PROJECT: Breakfast Nook

After a long weekend of work, we finally finished building our breakfast nook. I still feel like I'm only half done - I haven't yet refinished the table I found last weekend, wired in the blown glass pendant light, or found enough pillows to fill the whole corner. But at least the hard part is finished.

DIY PROJECT: Tiled Vestibule

When we first moved into our house the floor of our entryway was in poor shape - although it had a pretty cool custom jigsaw floor, it was covered in peeling red paint and a thick layer of dirt. We tried sanding it down and staining it black but it still wasn't quite right - the wood would get covered in dust and dirt and looked grey and dirty.

DIY PROJECT: Vintage Doorknobs

Last weekend we refinished our house's original vestibule door. While Patrick was sanding off the layers of old paint and adding a few new coats we repainted the hardware and replaced the knobs with some crackled porcelain knobs that I found the weekend before.

DIY PROJECT: Hand-Drawn Ceramics

I've always loved handmade and handpainted ceramics - there's something beautiful in all of the imperfections, especially in slightly squiggled lines. Using a porcelain paint pen, its easy to add some wabi-sabi to your own ceramics.


See the DIY at wit and whistle for more how-to information and more inspiration after the jump.

DIY PROJECT: Industrial Pulley Lamp

via Photonic Studio

Since the moment I moved into my new house I've been trying to find the perfect idea for our living room. Without any overhead lighting, I searched through torchieres and floor lamps, spotlights and chandeliers until I settled on this DIY for a pulley lamp.

I stumbled across this particular light via PhotonicStudio's Etsy, and fell in love.

It's perfect because it requires no hardwiring - just access to an outlet and a support beam to hang the pulley from. I also love that you can easily adjust the light to whatever height you prefer.

DIY PROJECT: Hand-Stamped Type

Patrick sometimes brings home odds and ends from his days at the naval yard - a few weeks ago he brought home a couple pounds of letterpress type that he collected while cleaning out letterpress drawers for the found objects department. i'm still looking around for a type holder so that i might be able to stamp out a few words at a time, but until then i tried making a few hand stamped business cards by using one letter at a time - it's in imperfect process, but i really like the hand made feel.

DIY PROJECT: Pipe and Flange Bookcase

patrick and i had been needing a place to store all of our books and cameras (which had, until recently, been living on the floor) since we'd moved in. unfortunately, almost all of our walls are very old brick, which has been problematic for us because half of the time we drill a hole for an anchor, the brick crumbles into dust. so we've figured out ways to bypass the walls altogether for both our open pipe closet and our new bookcase by running pipe and flange from floor to ceiling instead.

update

the daisies are blooming and the sunflowers are close behind

the lettuce is growing well in their little vertical pockets

the cucumbers are going crazy - this is one out of about twenty

the blackberries are ripening up

the snap beans are getting big and fat

our first tomato! we also had a surprise of another tomato plant in the flower bed - apparently patrick threw out a rotting tomato before we filled it with soil and it grew into a plant. it hasn't flowered yet but it's pretty big.

we dragged my old ikea dressers into the basement, painted the front with chalkboard paint, and are currently using them to store supplies

ziggy, the most handsome man

trashpicking on tuesdays

yesterday was a seriously successful day for finding free stuff. patrick spotted these two chairs while driving around and i brought home some polygon tables from a previous floor set at my store and some chandeliers i saved from the trash. the chairs have a few tears in the fabric and the chandeliers are missing a lot of pieces but i'm hoping to make one full chandelier from the parts from both. obviously i'm painting everything white, and i'm super excited to have a bunch of new projects to work on over the weekend.

backyard update

our plants are all starting to get super big. the peas are about a foot high and we've had to keep adding nails on the pallet to give them something to grab onto while they climb. the zucchini and squash in the planter are sending out vines so i'm trying to figure out the best way for them to climb around without suffocating the peas or any of the other plants.

the carrots are starting to get little tops and the snap beans are so big that we're trying to decide how to let them grow without shading the carrots from the sun. and, best of all, patrick planted a jade plant into a darth vader head and a spider plant into a millenium falcon toy that he's going to hang from the ceiling in our star wars media room.

snap peas, squash, and cucumbers

(clockwise from top left: strawberries, habaneros, hens and chicks, lavender, bell peppers, jalapenos)

our blackberry plant started climbing up an old fishing pole like crazy

cherry tomatoes planted upside-down in a paint can

little carrot tops

darth jade-er and the millenium falcon!

eggshell seed starters and vertical garden pt. 2

broccoli sprout in an eggshell starter

the first part of my vertical garden is up and growing! i had a little trouble at first (we needed to add more eyelets and zip ties to space out the weight) but i'm excited that everything is finally planted! we have the top few rows of lettuce planted - some of them are already big enough to poke out from the top!

(via patrickblake)

i'm using these 6"x6"x4" pockets for lettuce and spinach

and i planted zucchini, squash, and cucumbers in the 6"x8"x4" pockets

it was taking longer than i'd planned to get the canvas up so i had even started giving away some of the bigger seedlings that looked like they didn't want to wait any longer to get planted. so i started another tray of seeds - i've planted about half of them already and now i'm just waiting for the other half to sprout!

i like to start seeds in rinsed out eggshell halves in old egg cartons. it's a good way to reuse the cartons, they're the perfect size, everything stays neat, and once the seeds are big enough to transplant all you need to do is pick up the eggshell and crack it apart enough the the roots can eventually break through. it's much easier than trying to spoon out seedlings and worry about cutting the roots.

for the left side of the vertical garden pockets i started three types of lettuce (bibb, vivian, and a musclun mix) and spinach. i planted zucchini, squash, and cucumbers in the large pockets, and i'm putting scallions and broccoli in the pockets on the right side.

pipe and flange

we had a super busy weekend at the house - we finally hung up our bikes and built a closet for our room. i also hung up my little antlers to hold my necklaces. i've already found a little frame to use for my earrings - i just need to buy some screen to glue inside the frame for them to hang on.

our house has classic philadelphia closets - they're so shallow that you can't even use hangers in them. we ended up filling the closet with shelves (for folded clothes like jeans and shorts) and decided to build a unit to hang the rest of our clothes on. we ended up using pipe and flange - it extends from floor to ceiling and has two 60" horizontal bars for hanging. i'm going to take more pictures once i've gotten everything hung and organized.

we also used pipe and flange to hang our bikes. our longest wall was still too short for both bikes to hang horizontally, so they're both hanging at an angle. it's a little weird, but once we've put in a few shelves in the empty wall space i think they'll look much better.