Archives for March 2016

A Space-Saving Kitchen Spice Rack

March 29, 2016 by Ash 42 Comments

I love to cook, and I use a lot of spices – from sweet Hungarian paprika to spicy Jamaican jerk seasoning.

You name it, I most likely have it.

Eileen, on the other hand, loves to bake – so on any given day, we have all the ingredients to make anything chocolate chip bundt cake to spicy Bahamian chicken.

Unfortunately, with such a large spice and baking collection, it was getting very difficult to find something when we needed it.

We were storing all the spices in a corner cabinet, and they took up the entire cabinet. We tried everything for organization – a spinning rack, a mini spice organizer – nothing seemed to save us space or time.

When making a meal, I would have to dig through everything to find what I needed. And Eileen wasn’t happy when she was looking for cinnamon or baking powder, and it was shoved behind the seven spices I used the night before for taco seasoning.

Planning the Spice Rack

Shortly thereafter, we were having dinner at a friend’s house and saw their spice solution.

They were utilizing a 6-inch gap between their fridge and the wall to fit a movable spice shelf, mounted on wheels.

I thought it was such a brilliant idea. I googled the idea later that night and saw it was a very popular spice storage solution.

There were lots of incarnations on Pinterest. I was set on incorporating a similar design into my kitchen, but I wanted to take it up a notch.

I didn’t like the wheeled shelf design. It would limit you to one massive shelf. Also, without some type of track system, I thought the shelf would be wobbly.

After some thought, I settled on 2 independent spice shelves mounted to the wall on drawer slides.

Aside from the drawer slides, I had enough scrap wood in the garage to build my design.

I didn’t really plan this project out much (aside from basic measurements of available space), mostly winging it as I went along. Nonetheless, the sliding spice rack turned out well.

How to Build a Sliding Spice Rack

I started off building one of the shelves. First, I fabricated a box with ¾” thick boards and nailed a hardboard composite backing. I then made some compartments for organization.

I averaged the sizes of my spice jars to determine a good depth and height for the shelves.

Here’s an early picture of the shelf unit:

Determined to re-use scraps from the garage, I attached some wood trim to serve as fences to prevent the spices from falling out.

Also, I couldn’t just attach the drawer slides to back of the shelf structure in the picture above.

I had limited space between the wall and the fridge, and fitting the spices with a drawer slide behind exceeded my available width.

So my solution was to mount the drawer slides above and below the shelf, being almost flush with the shelf backing.

I attached a piece of 2×4 to the top and bottom of the shelf to serve as a mount for the slide.

I then attached some plywood to the front of the shelf and screwed on a handle.

Then I mounted the two drawer slides to the wall, and attached the shelf. The slides were attached directly to wall studs.

I also had to make sure that both slides were equally level. Any discrepancies in the slide angles would most likely result in a jamming drawer.

Here is a close-up picture of the mounted shelf with some spices in it (notice the repurposed wood trim):

Here is a picture from the back, showing how I attached the drawer slides to the DIY spice rack:

I built the second shelf much like the first. However, I increased the height to make the most of the available space.

After mounting this shelf, I painted the front facing plywood, blending in to match the color of the kitchen (see pictures below of the completed spice rack).

Using the DIY Spice Rack

The sliding spice rack turned out great. We adapted the top shelf for our most frequently used spices, while the lesser used ones ended up in the bottom shelf.

Whenever we needed a spice, I just pulled out the appropriate drawer and located it instantly – very different from before!

I should mention too that the corner cabinet that previously held all of our spices was now completely empty, giving us more space for all those pesky tupperware containers.

Anyone have a good storage solution for those?!

Time & Cost

Building the spice rack took about one weekend, and the total cost was less than $50 because of all the scrap wood I used (my estimate is about $70 if you are buying all the wood from the store).

The spice rack became the hit of many parties.

Our friends were always asking about those mysterious handles next to the fridge, and were amazed when the handles revealed a plethora of spices.

Our next door neighbors noticed the spice rack when we were moving out of the house and were fascinated with it, saying, “Forget all those updates you did, this is what sold the house!”

(As an aside, we replaced that dingy pantry curtain with French doors before we moved, check it out here).

If you are looking for a solution to your spices, building a sliding spice rack could be the answer 🙂

Making Sliding Storage Shelves in One Weekend

March 20, 2016 by Ash 72 Comments

My garage was getting a little out of control. Bulky tools from home improvements projects, boxes upon boxes of holiday decorations, gardening tools, piles of landscaping bags – nothing seemed to have a place.

It was hard to get work done efficiently – not to mention, find something when I was looking for it.

It was time to get smart about garage organization and storage.

Determining a Space for the Sliding Storage Shelves

I already had several prefabricated metal garage shelves doing a decent job of garage storage, but they had their shortcomings.

I had been eyeing this corner space next to our garage fridge. The space was 3 feet deep and about 6 feet wide, and it was currently underutilized.

There were just piles of boxes, gardening tools, and other things that had accumulated.

Corner spaces in the garage often become dumping grounds, as ours had become. I decided to capitalize on the vertical square footage, transforming this messy corner into garage storage shelving.

So, after a few days of pondering over garage storage shelving ideas and messing around in TinkerCad (an awesome 3D designing website), I came up with the idea below for garage storage shelves:

Garage Storage Shelf Requirements

I had 3 requirements for the sliding storage shelves project for my garage. My first requirement was deep storage shelves. The area had a lot of depth, and I wanted to make the most of the space.

I went with 3 ft deep shelves; this was twice as deep as the prefab shelves, so twice the garage storage space.

The second requirement (which is not evident in the TinkerCad drawing above) was sliding garage shelves.

Although 3 ft deep garage shelves would hold a lot, trying to reach something at the back seemed very burdensome. You would have to move things out of the way to get back there, which wasn’t very efficient, especially for vertical space.

Therefore, I wanted some of the deep garage shelves to be on drawer slides.

My last requirement was enough clearance at the bottom of the garage shelves to fit some of my taller tools (like my shopvac), and for them to just roll out (without having to drop off a shelf).

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Preparing Space for the Garage Storage Shelves

To start the sliding storage shelves, I first cleared out and cleaned the designated area for the garage shelves.

Then I located the studs in the wall (using my trusty stud finder), and used green painters tape preserve their locations.

The garage shelving unit was going to be bolted to the studs to make it stable.

Here’s the wall with the studs marked:

Building the Shelf Supports

The actual construction of the garage shelves was fairly straight forward. I just followed the design I created to construct the sliding storage shelves.

The whole garage shelf was made of 2 x 4 wood that was cut to different lengths.

Unfortunately, I was so caught up in the construction (it was a pretty fun project to work on), I forgot to take many pictures. Therefore, I’m just going to provide some visuals.

First, I made 3 vertical support structures for the garage shelves. I would install these on the ends and middle.

These supports looked like a 3 ft wide ladder – see pic below:

Next, I used 6 ft cuts of 2 x 4s to connect the 3 vertical supports, and to form a basis for each garage shelf.

I also added 2 extra 6 ft pieces at the back of the structure to bolt into the wall studs.

Adjusting for Sliding Garage Shelves

Before considering sliding storage shelves, I thought about making all of the shelves look like the very top one. However, that was going to be too simple, and I like to make things a little challenging.

Hence, the modifications for the garage sliding shelves.

The shelf slides were going to bear the load of the garage shelves, so it was not necessary to run as many 6 ft planks as the top shelf (which was just a static shelf with no slides). Three connecting pieces per row was sufficient.

Next, I needed structures to attach the slides to. I came up with the design below:

Building Sliding Garage Storage Shelves Notice the 4 slide supports on each row (one on each end and two in the middle). In between each pair of slide supports was going to be the actual sliding shelves.

At this point in the project, it was time to secure the structure to the garage wall. If I proceeded any further with construction, the DIY shelving unit would be too heavy for me to carry (not that it wasn’t already really heavy).

Also, there was just enough room for me to squeeze in between the 2 x 4s to get to back to bolt the structure to the wall studs.

Next, I wedged myself in the middle of garage shelving unit, picked it up like superman, and inched my way over to the wall. I used some lag bolts to secure the shelves to the studs.

Constructing the Storage Shelves

After that, I had to build the actual sliding storage shelves. Here is my design for each sliding shelf:

Building Garage Storage Shelves that Slide

During construction of the garage shelves, I did add an elevated piece to the back of each shelf. I didn’t want items falling off the back as I pulled the shelf forward.

First, I installed the slides on each slide support. Then, using ¼” scrap wood as shims, I elevated each shelf and secured them to the slides.

With the sliding shelves installed, the garage shelf project was pretty much complete. Last, I just had to install some gate handles for each shelf to be able to pull them out easily.

How to Build Storage Shelves for the Garage in One Weekend

Although, I did make a last-minute design decision though – I omitted the bottom row of sliding shelves and replaced it with a static shelf (like the very top one).

I realized that some of my tools (like my miter saw) didn’t have enough clearance to fit on the DIY sliding shelf.

Consequently, I settled for just 2 rows of sliding shelves, which was still plenty of awesomeness.

I took the pictures below of the completed DIY garage storage shelves:

Here you will notice the shelves’ height in comparison to the fridge.

There is also enough space to pull a car into the garage too – with about a foot to spare.

However, I was a little worried about bumping into the garage shelf with the car, so I got a cheap parking sensor to help (it turns from green to yellow to red as you get within a foot of the sensor).

Bonus Storage Shelving

After I finished the garage shelves, I had an extra 2 x 4 leftover. Still in a shelf-frenzy mood, I turned those into some normal shelves on the wall.

To the left of the sliding shelf structure was a hideous area begging for some DIY garage organization, and a prime target for a storage solution:

Creating More Garage Storage - Sliding and Floating Shelves Using some shelf brackets, I bought a while ago, I threw together a simple shelf for the garage with the leftovers from the main project.

Below is what I turned the above disaster into – see shelf at the top of the picture.

Using the Sliding Storage Shelves

The sliding storage shelves truly transformed a disorganized corner. We gained a ton of lost space through building the shelf tower.

Storage-wise, the garage shelves hold more than we could have imagined – most of the boxes of holiday decorations (Eileen loves that she can easily access these), tool boxes, and large tools such as the miter saw.

Underneath the storage shelves, I store the shop vac, jaw horse, and snow blower. It’s the perfect height.

Pleased with the outcome of my DIY garage organization, I found building the shelving unit one of the most fun and creative projects I’ve worked on recently.

I also completely impressed Eileen with doing the whole project in one weekend – that was the best part. She was also thrilled that the cost was less than $200.

If your garage is getting out of control and you have underutilized space, you should definitely think about building these sliding garage storage shelves.

The design worked beautifully, and you can’t beat the turnaround time and low-cost..

With phase 1 of “Project DIY Garage Organization” was now complete. Phase 2 of the garage construction is coming this summer – a dream workbench with fancy storage solutions.

How to Throw an Amazing Beatles Theme Party

March 18, 2016 by Eileen 38 Comments

I love planning a good theme party. I’m not quite sure whether it’s the cute things you get to create, the endless possibilities you have, or the way your vision all comes together for one special day.

A really great theme party is like having a living Pinterest board.

We decided to throw a 64th Beatles party for my dad based on the song “When I’m 64.” He loves the Beatles, and my sisters and I thought it would be a pretty cool theme to work with. We loved coming up with all of these DIY Beatles party ideas.

“When I’m 64” Photo Collage

Below is a collage my sister PK made with pictures of my dad through the years, with the song title “Glad All Over” hanging above.

Also, for more Beatles party decorations, we used old records hanging from the ceiling.

Beatles Song Signs

As far as my tasks, I began with the most time-consuming one, which was making the song banners – it was one of the best DIY Beatles party ideas, as it turned out awesome!

We picked out 20 Beatles songs – mostly Dad’s favorites, and cut out the individual letters so we could make these signs.

I used a pack of pre-cut letters from the dollar store, and I traced the letters I needed on yellow and blue paper. I used regular blue construction paper and a thicker yellow paper. Both worked fine.

Then I cut each letter out. I used an exacto knife for the holes in the Os, Ds, As, etc.

Once completed, I flipped the letters over and hot glued fishing wire to the back so that you couldn’t see the string in the trees.

We hung them in the house and outside. They looked especially cool hanging from the trees.

The songs we used were When I’m 64, You Say It’s Your Birthday, All My Loving, All Together Now, Come Together, Eight Days a Week, From Us to You, Glad All Over, Good Day Sunshine, Here Comes the Sun, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Johnny B. Goode, Love Me Do, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Twist and Shout, With a Little Help from My Friends, and You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me.

For another DIY Beatles part idea, I also cut out food banners based on song titles. Above the appetizer table, we hung “Come and Get it” and above the lunch table, we hung “Can’t Buy Me Lunch.”

The dessert table was coined “The Magical Pastry Tour,” and the drinks station was labeled “Fuel on the Hill.”

Food Labels using Beatles Songs

Hands down, my favorite of the DIY Beatles party ideas was creating themed labels for all of the food.

We altered song titles to make a creative label for each food item.

My dad helped us come up with the wording – and both of my parents were getting a kick out of how funny we found some of the names.

I still laugh when I read “I Want to Hold Your Ham.”

Pictured above are most of the food labels.

To make them, I dragged the Beatles picture into Photoshop and then added the name of the dish in a cool font. I love finding awesome fonts.

You could also use a basic program like Paint to create them too.

Listed below is the full menu we served at the Beatles party, along with the song title food labels. I hope it gives you some great Beatles inspiration 🙂

Lunch – Can’t Buy Me Lunch

Meatballs/Rolls – While My Meatball Gently Weeps

Mac and Cheese – Get Back Mac

Grilled Ham – I Want To Hold Your Ham

Pineapple and Hawaiian Rolls – Here Comes the Bun

Fruit Salad – Strawberry Fields Forever

Baked Beans – Let It Bean

Potato Salad – The Salad of John and Yoko

Slice and peel potatoes – All You Need Is Spuds

Green Salad – Lettuce Be

Irish Soda Bread – Hello, Good-bread

Hot Dogs (for kids) – Hot Dogs and Mean Mr. Mustard

Condiments

Hot Sauce – Do You Want To Know a Secret Sauce?

Butter – Help, I Need Some Butter

Appetizers- Come and Get it

Veggies & Onion Dip – Golden Cucumbers & Glass Onion Dip

Mini hot dogs – Piggies (in a Blanket)

Cheese, crackers, pepperoni – I Should Have Known Cheddar

Cream Cheese Pinwheels – Cheese Cheese Me

Dessert – The Magical Pastry Tour

Cake – P.S. I Love Cake

Butterscotch/Cut-Out Cookies – Cook-ie in the House

Blueberry Bundt Cake – Til There Was Blue-berry

Snickerdoodles – Yellow Submar-doodles

Dixie Cups/Chocolate Syrup (for kids) – Here Comes the Sun-Dae

Apple Tarts – Apple Record Tarts

Drinks- The Fuel on the Hill

Beer – Can’t Buy Me Bud

Wine – I Feel Wine

Sodas (Pepsi, Dr. Pepper) – Pepsi Lane & Sergeant Doctor Pepper

Juice – Hey Juice

DIY Beatles Party Hats

In addition to the other Beatles party decor, I also made these Beatles party hats. I figured they were cheaper to make, and I could personalize them.

We used the names of the four Beatles – John, Ringo, George, and Paul. My dad’s name is John, which added to the creativity.

We also had a cousin George coming – and he loved his hat shout-out too.

To make the DIY party hats, I used a free template I found online and purchased scrapbook paper. I did a bunch of test prints (on regular paper) until I got the words lined up right.

Then, I printed on the scrapbook paper. After printing, I hot glued elastic (you can get rolls of this at craft stores) to the insides.

Next, I used our own heads to get a good feel for how long of an elastic to use. Apparently, the hats worked for dogs too.

The Best of our DIY Beatles Party Ideas

The highlight of the Beatles party was this amazing, almost life-size, face cut-out board of the Beatles, created by my sister Bridget.

She collected the different paint colors from around the house and garage, and then drew, painted, and outlined.

As far as the face cut-out board, we bought a 4×8 from Home Depot and had it cut in half at the store – for the convenience of it fitting in the car and also for the convenience of storage later on.

Then, we connected the two pieces with hinges.

It turned out amazing! So amazing that we had to do a dog pic!

Abbey Road Photos

And last but not least, a Beatles party would not be complete without an Abbey Road replication.

We used the patio (and had to use inverse colors –but nonetheless, the point was made) for this fun little scene.

Overall, it was a fantastic party filled with tons of DIY Beatles party ideas!

My dad had a very happy 64th birthday, our guests loved all the little details of our DIY Beatles party decor, and we had a great time putting everything together for the Beatles party.

How to Make a Built-In Bookshelf

March 10, 2016 by Ash Leave a Comment

To put it simply, Eileen has more books than anyone I’ve ever known – books from her childhood, books from college, books of poetry – some she’s read and some she just likes to collect.

But long story short, she was running out of room storing them on a wobbly old shelf – in double rows, and then there were the boxes in the closet.

Eileen kept telling me that she had the perfect spot for a built-in shelf, so I pulled out a Post-It note and sketched out a basic design with measurements.

Planning the DIY Bookshelf

First, I planned out all the cuts I needed for the DIY bookshelf and put together shopping list for Home Depot.

I wanted to make a very sturdy bookshelf with minimal visible hardware. So I opted for dado joints and a center support column. Also, I decided to use pine for the lumber.

I did lack the proper tools for making dado joints, so I added a plunge router to the shopping list.

This was going to be my first router project, and I was looking forward to it very much.

Constructing the Bookshelf

After cutting all the wood planks to pre-measured lengths, the next step was to mark all the grooves for the dados.

Dado joints are the simplest joints there are but are very strong and perfect for bookshelves.

They are just grooves cut into the vertical support planks on both ends of the bookshelf, where the horizontal shelves slide right into and rest.

My pine lumber was ¾” thick. So, I needed to use a router bit of the same thickness for the grooves.

After the grooves were outlined on the two vertical support planks, I secured the planks side-by-side to prepare for the routing.

The grooves on the two support planks needed to be in perfect alignment. Therefore, I screwed the planks together from underneath with some strips of scrap wood.

It was important to keep the planks firmly in place to prevent shifting as I cut the grooves.

Routing the Dados

Finally it was time to use my plunge router.

I did a few practice cuts on scrap wood to get the feel for it and was now ready for the real thing.

For each groove, I affixed a straight piece of wood to act as a jig for the plunger. Without this guide, it would have been impossible to cut a straight line.

Below is a picture of the plunge router and some grooves already cut.

You can also see the outlines I made for the uncut grooves, as well as the strip of wood I used for a guide:

Here’s a close-up view of the dado groove. You can see how smooth the cut was.

The router bit went through the soft pine like butter, making a very professional cut:

Assembling the Pieces

With all the dados cut, assembly of the shelves could begin.

With the help of a rubber mallet, I inserted each shelf into its corresponding dado joint and secured each connection with two screws on the outside.

Here you can see how perfectly each shelf fit into the dado:Assembly of the shelves was almost done at this point.

Next came the center support column.

As you can see in the background, I did my work in my man cave. We didn’t have a garage to work in – hence the chaotic background and poor lighting.

Finishing with Wood Putty & Stain

Construction of the DIY bookshelf was completed at this point. All that was left was to fill the screw holes with wood putty and apply a wood stain.

Eileen stained the wood with two coats of a dark MinWax stain.

Securing the Shelf

The final step was to secure the bookshelf to the wall in the office.

I used some metal L brackets to attach a few shelves to studs in the wall. I strategically placing them so they would be hidden from view.

Also, I had to remove some of the wall baseboard trim so that the shelf could fit flush against the wall.

Below are pictures of bookshelf bolted securely to the wall.

I wasn’t too happy about the electrical outlet at the bottom left being partially blocked by a shelf. However, it was too late to do much about it now. The outlet wouldn’t be visible anyway because of the books.

Here is the completed bookshelf with actual books. We later replaced that old wooden door to the room with a white six-paneled one – but we don’t have any pictures of that.

There was no sagging at all with the weight of the books.

Eileen finally had her library organized on this built-in DIY bookshelf. I use the word ‘library’ because who else has enough books to make an Irish Classics section?!

Years later, the shelves remained perfectly straight, thanks to the dado joints and center support column.

Fast forward a few years, in our new house, I made another DIY bookshelf – a bookshelf with a window seat, using the background I had from designing this shelf.

It’s Eileen’s absolute favorite.

A Little Summer To-Do List Inspiration

March 1, 2016 by Eileen Leave a Comment

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Ash and I spend most of our spare time on our home projects. We always are talking about what is next on the list or what we can get done in the windows of time we have while our son is sleeping.

My mom jokes that little elves come and work at night because she can’t believe all of the things we get done.

However, last month Ash and I had the rare opportunity to attend the Philly Home Show.

It was a nice change of pace from our usual weekends of crossing as much as we can off our to-do list, and it provided us with some nice inspiration for summer projects.

Attending the Philly Home Show

We enjoyed walking through the show, but our dream list has definitely grown! From planter boxes to infrared saunas to contests and freebies, we definitely had a fun day.

A Little Inspiration

I loved this daybed swing, and one day when I find the perfect spot for one, I’m sure Ash will build it. Maybe after he builds our dream wraparound porch 🙂

Below Ash is looking at shingles, reminiscing over the roof work he did on the shed – he really enjoyed that part of the project.

And, I’m about to step into an infrared sauna. I LOVED with it. It is, for sure, going on my dream list! Apparently infrared saunas provide a lot of healing benefits too.

I just love a brightly colored door, but the challenging part is choosing a color that works with the home’s exterior.

Yet, I don’t know if a vibrant door would work with our home’s color palette. I have to keep thinking on that one – but I loved these colors!

One of the highlights of the show was looking at the outdoor setups, like this one centered around a stone fire pit.

Maybe one day we’ll incorporate an area like this into our backyard.

We came across these gardening planters of various shapes and sizes, which align perfectly with my goal to have a garden this summer.

We’ve been eating a lot healthier and opting for organic, and it gets expensive!

Having a garden will give us easier, cheaper access to healthy foods, and it will be a good summer project for my son and me. I’m sure Ash will build me an awesome structure.

Update: Check out the wooden planter box that Ash built for our first garden 🙂

Along the way, we entered some contests (we’re hoping to win the tractor!) and picked up some fun freebies – like this plastic hard hat that Ash is posing with here.

All in all, we enjoyed the day and the new inspirations.

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