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Homespun by Laura

DIY-ing our beige house into a home one room at a time

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DIY Mud Room with vertical shiplap planks, hooks, 2x6 counters, and storage bench Reveal

Homespun House 2.0

Coming soon!

In the meantime…read more about a few projects that are making our second house feel like home:

DIY Old World Mud Room Reveal | One Room Challenge | Week 7

DIY Nursery Closet Shelving System

Fun, Colorful Laundry Room | One Room Challenge Reveal

Vintage Toy Nursery Reveal

Hello! I'm Laura. I use antiques, thrift store finds, and a heavy dose of elbow grease to make our house a home, and I write about it here at Homespun by Laura. From DIY to sewing, you'll find DIY ideas to solve your home decor dilemmas. Pull up a seat and stay awhile!

homespunbylaura

S l o w l y DIY-ing our beige 🏡 into a home. Mama to a 1-year old 👶 girl. Traveling the 🇺🇸 with @48nointerstate.

Laura
Now we’re getting somewhere! My #oneroomchalleng Now we’re getting somewhere! My #oneroomchallenge work is on pause until I can grab a couple red zippers for the final two pillows I’m sewing for the couch, and I’m also planning to design and print out some labels for these @folgers cans turned delicious smelling toy storage (rubber ducks, wooden food, linking rings, etc) this week as soon as the label paper arrives. Then it’s just a matter of waiting for the new @annieselke rug we ordered back in February to make it here; it’s been stuck in India for several months thanks to coronavirus. Take a look at my stories to watch the transformation of this formerly sad shelf into the room’s new focal point...I love it so much and wish I had fixed it up years ago! (Paint color: Naval by Sherwin Williams; stain: Red Mahogany + English Chestnut by Minwax)
Well, I totally missed Week 7 of the One Room Chal Well, I totally missed Week 7 of the One Room Challenge. In my defense, I was trying to keep this $20 fiddle leaf fig from @homedepot alive and working on about six things at once. And also I was out of town. But I’m back at it now and sharing progress on some of the remaining little projects in my stories for the next few days. Take a look at the recent posts at #oneroomchallenge to see some amazing before and afters!! I hope to add mine there within a week or so... #betterlatethannever 😂
Not much happened in our One Room Challenge space Not much happened in our One Room Challenge space this week, so I’m resharing last week’s progress: Week 5 was focused on framing and hanging artwork: Photo 1: The map is mounted and hung, and just about as well as I could have hoped for on my first attempt at working with mitred corners! Photo 2: The top half is the after...the bottom half is still the before. I chose photos from former travels to adorn the walls around the television. It’s probably not the perfect solution to filling this huge wall, but we like it! The photos it contains are a reminder of fun times in beautiful places with the people who will sit on the couch below the map to watch the television nestled among the photos. Here’s what did happen in week 6 (though I’ve taken precisely 0 photos of the progress): The sewing stash had gotten a little depleted from all those use-what-you-have-while-quarantined projects, so I had to run out to Hobby Lobby to gather a few supplies for our pillows, which I now plan to sew next week. Also, photos for the 11”x17” frames arrived, so we no longer have a random sideways family hanging on our wall; instead, several photos are reminders of fun times back when cross country and international travel were an easy(er) thing to do. I also found out that the rug I ordered for the room back in February has been sitting in a shipping container in India awaiting a month-long voyage (delayed multiple times by the pandemic) and won’t arrive here before August, well after the ORC is over. Progress has been made; more progress awaits. How’s your #oneroomchallenge progressing? #bhgorc @oneroomchallenge @betterhomesandgardens
So far, the little changes I've made in our loft f So far, the little changes I've made in our loft for the One Room Challenge have been free ones, but that changed this week. While we have PLENTY of photo frames in this house, none of them work quite right in this room. The ceilings are high, and the walls are long. And bare. And beige. Large white frames seem best to fit in with the white border on the television. The framed bulletin board is huge and has a dark stain, and the frame I'm making for the map is cedar, so I think (hope) that white ones are the right choice. I found some great (and pretty inexpensive) ones at Hobby Lobby, and they were 50% off last week! 🤩⁣ ⁣ Since the theme of this room is world travel, I relived a few vacations as I selected photos to print. It's your lucky day (or maybe tomorrow will be) because I just might share a few of the finalists with you in my stories. You can also find out more there about the cedar frame I made for my HUGE 33 cent thrift store map. I made mitred edges for the first time, and the result isn't terrible. 😂⁣ ⁣ You'll find more DIY ideas and inspiration through the link in my profile, where all the other One Room Challenge participants are sharing their progress. Four weeks down, four weeks to go! @oneroomchallenge @betterhomesandgardens
At the beginning of April, our front porch was bor At the beginning of April, our front porch was boring and uninviting. ⁠ ⁠ Elbow grease is a weird phrase but an amazing tool, and it transformed this porch - along with some paint, new handmade pillows, a DIY table, and a few new plants. And now it's just asking us to sit down and enjoy it.⁠ ⁠ Click the link in my bio @homespunbylaura to read all about the transformation and get ideas for your own!⁠
Thursday is #oneroomchallenge day, but today is Fr Thursday is #oneroomchallenge day, but today is Friday. So I'm a day late and a dollar short, but all my updates have been free so far so I don't think the saying applies anyway. 😂. So here's your week 3 update for our world travel themed toddler playroom + family tv space:
 I gave two pieces free updates with supplies and paint we already had from previous projects. The funny little card catalog cabinet reached its full potential and became a cool side table with an eiffel tower lamp on top. I DIY-ed the new hot pink shade for the lamp during a previous ORC a few years ago in our old house, but it hadn't found a home here yet. It's perfect in this room: bright and colorful, and it fits with the world travel theme. The second was to make the Ikea shelves look and function as one piece by closing the gap in the middle with mending braces. I also painted 3 craft foam boards with Naval by Sherwin Williams and stapled them to the back of the shelves to give them a more finished look (swipe to see!). Next week, I'll be focusing on the walls: I'll order a few large prints to frame and also build a new cedar frame for the large map, which is currently just hanging with thumbtacks. 🤦‍♀️ @oneroomchallenge @betterhomesandgardens
I'm sending some happy mail off to Wilmington, Nor I'm sending some happy mail off to Wilmington, North Carolina! ⁣ ⁣ Did you know Homespun by Laura has an Etsy shop? I don't talk about it much here for some reason, but it's there 24/7! Currently, I'm offering sets of notecards featuring watercolor illustrations. So if you ever want to send a handwritten 'hello' to a faraway friend or family member (or these days, one who's not even that far away as the crow flies) I can help you out!⁣ ⁣ Click the link in my profile to check out my designs and send a smile. 😊
A lingering project in this ‘new’ house is fil A lingering project in this ‘new’ house is filling the enormous walls in our open kitchen/dining/living room with appropriately sized and meaningful decorations (side note: how long can you live in a house before you should stop calling it ‘new’?). Early on in the quarantine I traced and cut out paper copies of plates I’ve collected to create a plate wall on one of these huge walls. Yesterday, I finally pulled out the painters tape and played with some potential arrangements. These plates and platters are from thrift and antique stores over the years or they belonged to one of my grandmothers and wound up in my care. They’re fun and colorful and happy, and I’m excited to finally get the stacks off the counter soon!! Swipe to see some of the plates and various possible layouts (you’ll also find a cute baby mullet in the the third photo 😂). Hoping to get the real ones up by the end of the month. Just being realistic!🤞#hometakestime
We headed out of town over the weekend for a littl We headed out of town over the weekend for a little quarantine-style mini vacation since our state has been opening back up. Getting a little change of scenery was great for all of us, even though the beach weather wasn't.⁣ ⁣ So there's been little progress in the toddler playroom/family tv space in our loft (though I did switch out a lamp before we left...at that rate I'll finish in 8 months instead of 8 weeks!), but I'll be diving in this afternoon during the little one's nap. First up: painting the card catalog end table and staining the new legs for the storage ottoman. And hopefully sitting down on the porch swing for a few minutes to share it all with you in stories.⁣ ⁣ I put together a general idea of what I've been seeing in my head so you can see it, too. This room is so beige and boring right now, and I'm so excited to add some bright colors to it. I haven't set a budget like I normally do for the @betterhomesandgardens @oneroomchallenge, but as always I plan to use what I have, DIY what I can, buy only what I NEED to buy, and share it all with you along the way! #oneroomchallenge #bhgorc
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CATEGORIES

Homespun by Laura | Art + Crafts
Homespun by Laura | DIY
Homespun by Laura | Home Decor
Homespun by Laura | Sewing

Recent Posts

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  • DIY Mud Room with vertical shiplap planks, hooks, 2x6 counters, and storage bench RevealDIY Old World Mud Room Reveal | One Room Challenge | Week 7

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Blog posts on Homespun by Laura occasionally contain affiliate links. When you purchase items through affiliate links, you pay nothing extra, but Homespun by Laura receives a small commission to fund future blog projects!

One Room Challenge logo from Calling it Home

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