A Quick DIY Tip

Picture this-

You're driving down the road and suddenly you see two abandoned chairs on the side of the road. You stop immediately, jump out and rush over to throw them in your car. 

But wait! Oh No!!!! One of them has a broken leg and the joints are all in disrepair. You have to leave them behind right?

Well maybe not... fixing a broken peg on a chair is not as hard as you may think it is! I had a similar situation happen to me a few weeks ago, I didn't find my chairs on the side of the road but at the thrift store for $5 each!

One is in good shape but joints were all out of whack and a leg was broken on the other. Hence the cheap price. Today I am here to share with you a quick fix for those broken pegs in the chair legs. 

All you need is- wood dowels (I used 1/4"

                            - drill 

                            - drill bit (the same width as your dowels- in my case a 1/4" drill bit)

                            - wood glue

                            - clamps

First I drilled a pilot hole with a smaller size drill bit than the one you will use for your final hole into the old dowel. Try to center it as much as you can, and be careful not to knock off any other legs in the process! Do this in both the chair leg and the spindle that supports the leg. Once the pilot hole was done use your 1/4" drill bit to widen the pilot hole. This is where we will insert our dowel.

Get your wood glue and dowel out. Start by putting wood glue into the holes you drilled and then onto your dowel. Insert the dowel into one hole and attach the other side to the open end of the dowel.

Finally add wood glue to any other joint that could use some reglueing and clamp all joints. 

Wipe off any excess glue and let dry overnight! When all finished drying you'll have a chair that's fit to sit in!

I wish everyone a happy and safe Labor Day Weekend! 

Deep In The Heart of Texas

You probably know by now that I hail from Louisiana, I went to LSU, and love all things Cajun. But you may not know that I did a lot of growing up in Houston, TX. And you probably don't know that my youngest sister lived most of her life in Houston and even though she now goes to LSU herself her heart belongs to Texas. So when she asked me to make her some Texas wall art I wasn't surprised. A little heart broken but not surprised.

She wanted something rustic, with colors that matched her room, and was in the shape of Texas. Soooo....

DIY Mod Plant Stand from a Stool!

Hey Friends! I'm here with my first official project of 2013. Whoo!

If you read up on Monday you may remember this guy I picked up at a local furniture auction:

A sad little stool that was likely headed for the burn pile before I bid $5 on it and took it home. I have actually been looking for a little stool for a while. My plans were to cut it up so I'm glad I got this one for cheap.

DIY Candles Holder out of Chair Legs

Hello All! Today I have a fun DIY for you that costs next to nothing to make. I found an old chair in the garbage (no picture :/) and picked it up for my friend who is a photographer. She had been looking for a chair that she could saw the legs off of, paint a fun color and use as a prop in her photos like so:

Source: Mia Bella Photography (check out her site she is awesome!)

Since I cut the legs off the chair for her I was left with a bunch of spindles. 

Some More Bedroom Dreaming

I've been playing around with Olioboard lately. I had signed up for it way back in the day- like when it first came out- and never really did anything on it since.

Lately I've had ideas for our bedroom floating around in my head; and the only way to get my mind off something is to get it onto paper. Enter Olioboard~

Barreled Over

I just want to start off by thanking everyone who entered my giveaway! I'll post the winner shortly. We got back in town from our Louisiana vacation late last night- we had a great time visiting family and friends as always.

Speaking of Louisiana; I wanted to talk a little more about the barrel I found last time we were in New Orleans. 

I bought it on a whim- it was so cool and it was cheap! 

The shop owner said it is Pre-Civil War based on the square nails and wood rims (instead of some type of metal) holding it together. There's no way to prove it though; hence the price.

Scrap-Tastic!

This past weekend I finally made it back to the wood shop after a several week absence. It's been tough getting over there with a new baby and their new limited hours. But this weekend the Hubs volunteered his time and I took advantage.

I mainly went to continue work on our dining table. It's been slow going but I finally made some visible progress. If you follow me on Twitter you would have seen this picture:

That my friends would be a nails removed, sanded down, glued up panel basketball flooring that will soon be one section of my future dining table! Yay!!

While I was at the wood shop I noticed in the scrap pile some pieces of wood that were of interest to me.

I liked how the wood is already cut down into strips and thought I could glue it up in a similar fashion to my dining table top. My specific idea is to make a cutting board. Similar to this one:

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And while I was digging through the scrap pile I decided that there is no such thing as scrap wood. You can pretty much always use leftover pieces to create something. So here's a little round up of fun scrap wood projects:

Make some fun and unique napkin rings:

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IPhone Holder anyone?

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The ever popular and easy Tea Light Holder:

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And you may need to save up your scraps for a while or score a really big haul for this one but wow- this bed would be cool to make!

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Again can we say "Wow!"? This would be one awesome dining table.

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And this is an interesting application for scrap wood. Here is it used on a desk front but it would be cool on a wall as well!

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So now that your wheels are turning with all the cool stuff you can do with leftover wood let's get scrappin!!