March 7th, 2013
this is not a particularly exciting or difficult diy, obviously. switching of knobs may be the easiest thing we’ve done at this house. the putting together of the dressers was a whole ‘nother matter though. and yes we did have extra parts left over after assembly. straight to the trash, if we don’t know what they were meant for now we certainly won’t know later. the real challenge was finding dressers that were not too deep or too wide for the spaces we had available on each side of the bed, and drawers were a must (which we filled immediately). of the many, many dressers i looked at from vintage to new i only found two that fit. these from ikea and another one from jonathan adler, that was of course amazing and also like $2000 apiece. it was a tough call but ikea won. the knobs are from the magic wonderland that is anthropologie. i had planned to paint the knobs that came with the dresser but these were fancy, and on sale, and no paint job would look as cool as these.
anyhoo, lest you be worried, much bigger diy’s are underway. husband is hard at work….
Filed Under: D-I-Y
Tagged: anthropologie, camp1899, home diy blog, ikea
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September 17th, 2012
did i mention we have new neighbors? things have been a changing on our little block. a renter moved out on our street and we’ll soon have a new, more permanent neighbor, we are so happy about this. and beside us a couple moved in who have already become such good next door neighbors.. although they did want to put a privacy fence up first thing so hmmmm?? haha.. it was actually a project in the making. dave (working hard in the above pic’s) and the husband made quick work of it, minus one small rain delay. we now have a privacy fence running almost the length of the property on one side, stretching over to the house. on the opposite side of the house we need to add to an existing privacy fence that runs half way up the yard and also stretch it to the house as well. it’s on the yard to-do list for ??? it’s amazing how much bigger we both felt it made our side yards seem. he and i are already dreaming & scheming on what we’re going to do over there.
we had a very full weekend, can’t wait to share later! what about you? do anything fun or productive?
Filed Under: D-I-Y
Tagged: camp1899, denver blog, denver colorado, fence diy, home diy blog
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September 6th, 2012
home is where the ♥ is.. designer keys found here.
Filed Under: p.s.
Tagged: ace hardware, custom keys, designer keys, home diy blog, p.s., stat key company
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in case we’ve given off the false impression of the glamorous life around here (i can hear you laughing already) i thought i’d show you just how glam some of our projects are. (; we tease about mr man’s hoarding of tools. yes he uses them for work, and renovating, and… but do you need 50 screwdrivers, 12 razor knives, 18 rolls of tape, 7 tape measures, 6 levels, approximately 387 drill bits, you get the idea. and that’s not even counting the big stuff like the air compressor, table saw, nail gun, and so on. so we laugh about hoarding and i wonder how many times in our lifetime we can organize the same tools.
but he did get rid of a few screwdrivers (fifty was no exaggeration), and we did consolidate a lot, and can you believe every last thing fit into that teeny tiny trailer with even a smidge of room left? usually (before this project) you opened the back gate of the trailer with long arms because you just didn’t know if an avalanche was going to come hurdling out like an overcooked sausage flying out of it’s casing. and he does do a lot of amazing things with those hoarded tools of plenty so no real complaining (as long as he doesn’t outgrow the trailer).
Filed Under: D-I-Y
Tagged: camp1899, diy blog, hoarding, home diy blog, tools
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September 1st, 2012
do you have any fun plans for labor day weekend? we cannot believe it’s september first, everything goes by so fast. this time last year we had so much work ahead of us that it makes this list seem like a kids to-do list. looking back i don’t know if we could do it again. i think it’s like that with so many things, starting a business, higher education, moving, renovating, building, all in hindsight seem unthinkable. we had brick walls and blue skies as a roof last september and it amazes me to look around and see what the husband has built for us. do you have anything you’ve done that when you look back you wonder how did you ever do it? our business is in it’s fifteenth year and that too seems unbelievable. this blog is approaching it’s two year mark, and what an experience it has been, a whole new world and i’ve learned so much. moving across country and starting all over has been more than i can put into this short story. and now it’s fall (well practically) and i’m already thinking about christmas and thanksgiving and halloween and leaves changing colors and cooler days, and college football (go hogs!). we have friends coming in town, i’ve been baking, we’re cooking out, and i hope you have a good long weekend!!
Filed Under: holidays
Tagged: camp1899, home diy blog, labor day
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August 31st, 2012
are you list makers? we aren’t so much, which may be why ours is so long, even if it is only in our heads.
to give you a rundown of where we are on the camp1899 to do d-i-y list we thought it would be fun to show you just how much we have left (in case you were worried by our lack of updates that we were near the end) ha! ready?
living room & kitchen:
paint the front & side door & install final hardware
finish trim (baseboards)
caulk & paint trim
build a fireplace
finish installing beadboard on island
paint beadboard
build drawers into island
paint island drawers & install hardware
purchase & install cooktop
build, install, and paint cabinet doors & drawers
have trim wood milled for center of ceiling
seal beams & ceiling
purchase & install 2 hanging lights
pour final layer of floor and then epoxy
install kitchen sink, including pouring a concrete counter surrounding
install beadboard as backsplash of sink area
half bath:
open wall up to inspect for suspected leak (fun)
repair wall after opening
caulk & paint trim
install surround sound speakers
seal ceiling
install door jam
paint door
hang wallpaper
tile floor
bedroom:
paint double doors & install door hardware, including door jam
finish floor same as living room/kitchen
install surround sound speakers
build a hidden door for crawl space
buy & install closet door
paint closet door, install hardware
paint trim
finish painting closet walls
build, install & paint shelves within closet
master bathroom:
paint door & install hardware & build door jam
paint trim
finish trim wood work for ceiling
paint/seal ceiling
install shutters on two windows
futilely attempt vacumming of teeny tiny hairs from frequent bang trims
(just making sure you made it this far)
p.s. half way through this he asked what is the fun of making this list? exactly why we don’t make lists! and is the reason it’s not double the length because the outdoor list is just about as long or longer than the above list, none of which is even on the immediate or near future of being done, so another day (and he would have had a hissy fit if i had insisted we go one more to-do further).
Filed Under: D-I-Y
Tagged: camp1899, home diy, home diy blog, list making
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July 18th, 2012
have you been wondering what we’ve been up to for diy around here? well…. we’ve actually have working on a really good project, but, it’s a secret. remember we’re collaborating with tinkernation? if you haven’t checked out the website yet, pop over to see, and they have a few big sweepstakes coming up soooooon, so keep checking back for your chance to win. anyhoo, we’ve been busier than we’ve looked, we’ll be sharing our project in the next few weeks or so on tinkernation first and we can’t wait for you to see!
over the weekend he finished off our trim around the living room windows, most had been finished earlier, see here if you missed it, but this big picture window needed more time and got waylaid. and we now have real curtains hanging, instead of dropcloths over expandable rods.. fancy. we’ve got all of our trim up now but none of it is finished, lots of screw holes to putty and sand, priming and painting, all on our still quite long to-do list… we’ll be diy’ing for a long time around here.
on a little side note.. our curtains are lined silk dupioni and dry clean only. oye. i called around to several dry cleaners to get pricing and oh my, it was going to be pricey. to the tune of around $150. now if you’ve got thousand dollar curtains it would be the only way to go. ours aren’t super cheap but they aren’t worth a $150 dry cleaning bill either. i was daring and threw them (one at a time) in the washer. i used the wool setting, cold water, a short cycle, and they came out just fine. wrinkled as all get out but fine. i ironed them, with my ultra deluxe travel iron, haha, i don’t think i’ve ironed in about a decade and neither has he so full size iron and ironing board are not things we own. anyway, they ironed just fine, the silk looks just as it did prior to washing. i used a high heat steam setting and ironed directly on the silk. if you’re washing machine doesn’t have good settings like wool, silk, etc. then you might not want to try it but if it does, it worked great for us!
June 21st, 2012
this week he’s been busy building all of the soffits for the house, although we won’t be spending lots of time on the exterior of the house (and yard) this year, a few projects are musts while the weather is good. painting the soffits (which he built using 4×8 sheets found here), the front porch roof has a bit more finish work, the gingerbread on the front is getting painted, and if all goes well today (you just never know..), he’s cutting and attaching the gingerbread to the back peak (above pics).
in other news.. our shiny new fridge was having an issue or two as well and sears is bringing us a replacement today, we just might have our first ice cubes by the weekend.. we feel like we’re in a seinfeld episode, no soup ice for you! and the vintage fridge went on it’s merry way yesterday to someone wanting just a freezer, so long live the golden egg.
and, it’s been nice and hot here which i love, but…. our ac/heating unit that we had installed has not been cooperating and we have not had the best of luck on finding reliable service for it. three hot nights of no sleep and it became numero uno on the list of must-be-done-yesterday. it’s not uber wallet friendly getting the problems fixed but we finally found a company that is fully versed in split systems (we have a fujitsu) and they’re coming back today to bring us cool cool air ( i hope), so fingers crossed for us people!! thank goodness it’s not 118 degrees here like lake havasu was yesterday, how do they do it?!
June 15th, 2012
we’ve got three new exciting things at our house…..part of our surround sound is installed and making movies much better. the last two pics are speakers that are hidden behind the tv, and…we have more going in the bedroom and both bathrooms. (we kinda like everything loud.. you?)
the vintage fridge is gone and our shiny new french door one is blessfully drip free. (and will probably never be this clean again) and hallelujah for this ceiling fan. here’s the thing, since, for the first time ever, i wasn’t going to be in the south in the summer, it was the perfect chance to finally have a fancy light fixture in the bedroom. but we missed that air flowing down on us at night so much we did not adapt well. this ceiling fan, best-thing-ever.
Filed Under: D-I-Y
Tagged: camp1899, denver colorado blog, home diy blog, rocky mtn national park, small house blog, southern blog
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June 8th, 2012
we’re baaaaaaccccckkkkkkkk!
camp1899 diy is officially on the move. he’s painting our living room/kitchen/dining room/everything room (; we’re painting the bulk of the house in charleston white to make the small space seem bigger, and allow accent colors to stand out more. we’ve chosen historic charleston colors for every color in the house, we can’t wait to get more painted. i hope you’re glad to see us back in action because we’re really happy to start checking things off of that to-do list of ours!
Filed Under: D-I-Y
Tagged: camp1899, charleston historic paint colors, home diy blog, home renovation blog, southern paint colors
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