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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

DIY-ing our builder-grade beige 🏡 into a colorful home. Mama to a 2-year old đŸ‘¶ girl. Traveling the đŸ‡ș🇾 with @48nointerstate.

Laura
What’s the longest you’ve ever taken from the What’s the longest you’ve ever taken from the time you bought supplies for a project to the time you completed that project? I can find no evidence of ‘before’ photos for this broken china mosaic tray on my phone, which means I took them on an actual camera. That also means I painted this tray before I got my first iPhone - and that was in 2012. So I think this project wins the prize at 8.5+ years!😬 I’ve been on a mission to clean up and clear out my sewing & craft space this month, which has led me to finally start (and complete!) a lot of projects like this one that have been too long in the making, cluttering up my workspace. It feels so good to check them off and finally enjoy them! (Don’t miss the tiny hands helping me arrange things in the second photo 😍)
It’s been so much fun watching this little perso It’s been so much fun watching this little person run around on the beach this week.
This dryer works today for the first time since Ju This dryer works today for the first time since June 1. We came home from a trip that day, and I threw in a load of sheets as we unpacked. When I went to fold the sheets, they were cold and wet. Two additional rounds in the dryer did very little. So we draped the sheets over every available surface to dry overnight. Fast forward two months: with multiple visits from the dryer technician and a dryer vent cleaning company, and we are back in business. Turns out, we had a birds nest in the end of the vent, which had caused alllll the lint to build up in the 15-ft length of the vent (laundry room is in the center of the house, so it’s pretty long), which had caused the fuse on the dryer to break (similar to tripping a breaker, as they explained to me). We had the vent cover replaced this week with a version that birds won’t be able to lift, so hopefully we won’t have these problems again. I shared all of this to say - the dryer is 12 years old, and we could have just said, well, the dryer’s old and broken so we’ll get a new one. We would have spent much more on a new one than we did to fix the problem, and a new dryer wouldn’t have fixed the actual problem; we probably would have set ourselves up for an eventual fire had we gone this route. Obviously we’re grateful we didn’t (and that we no longer have to hang our clothes out on the back porch to dry!). Hoping to keep the old dryer going for another 12 years, and from now on we’ll also make sure to have the vent cleaned out every year as recommended to avoid additional problems and fire hazards. Here’s your reminder to have your dryer vents cleaned regularly - not just the lint screen!
You know you’re a tired mom when you don’t mov You know you’re a tired mom when you don’t move the kid’s big food truck before you take an ‘after’ photo of a space (to be honest, it blended in and I didn’t notice it until later, but I did move the high chair so there’s something). It took this space almost two years to find its identity, but now that it has I really love it (swipe to see how it looked the morning after we moved in 😬). I refinished the hutch a few years ago and created the wall art this summer from pieces I’ve collected from thrift stores and family members. What’s your method for decorating a space - “Take your time and find what’s right” or “This is good enough. Next!” or something in between?
We did a weird thing earlier this year and moved o We did a weird thing earlier this year and moved our coffee table to the big (never used) sitting area in our bedroom. It gives us so much more space downstairs to play, read, and have tea parties with allllll the stuffed animals on the rug. I do miss having fresh flowers in a vase or doing a puzzle on it, but obviously those two things aren’t happening with a toddler in the house, anyway! What’s a weird thing you’ve done in on your house to make it function better for your family?
It’s just too hot to play outside, so we spent t It’s just too hot to play outside, so we spent the morning reading in the cozy little book nook in my daughter’s amazing closet (I might know all the words to Llama Llama Red Pajama now). It was a fun and challenging (and necessary!) project we tackled earlier this year. Swipe to see the before. đŸ˜± In other news, I made progress on the play house flip this afternoon! It was so exciting to finally start priming after spending a full week cleaning and scrubbing the dirty old plastic. There’s an update in my stories, and if you missed the beginning of it yesterday, you’ll find them saved as ‘Play House Flip’ (what else?) in my highlights. Have a great weekend!
What’s next after the One Room Challenge? A fun What’s next after the One Room Challenge? A fun and unexpected house ‘flip’ opportunity presented itself last week in the form of my neighbor kids’ old @officiallittletikes Lincoln Log playhouse. It had a few long-term residents in the form of 🐜 and other less desirable bugs, needed hours of cleaning (somewhere in the 18-20 hour range!), and there are a few damaged areas I’m having fun troubleshooting by walking the aisles of @homedepot discussing the problems with a few helpful and somewhat amused gentlemen. I’ll be sharing the progress so far and plans for the design (it’s fun and unusual and sooo cute in my head!) in my stories this afternoon. Hop over there to check it out!
Wow, May and June flew by! I just realized I neve Wow, May and June flew by! I just realized I never shared a recap of what we accomplished around here in May, so I'm rolling it in with June's #hblmonthinreview. Early in May, I finished up the nearly-free (primarily spent $$$ on plants) front porch refresh. I then dove into the spring One Room Challenge.... May turned into June as I added color and personality (and even some framed photos!) into our loft tv/playroom area. And last, we finished the plate wall and utensil art you see here, which have been works in progress for some time. Over several months, I gathered castoffs from family and searched my own collection of thrift/antique store purchases, then acquired the necessary supplies to compete them. It feels so good to see this fun art on the walls every day; it all adds color and helps define the kitchen vs. living room in out big open downstairs. June also saw the beginning of the Mister's return to work, which is in a town 2 hours away multiple days each week, so that's absolutely thrown me as I had gotten used to our little quarantine cocoon. The little girl got a few more teeth, her hair grew about 2 inches, and she’s been learning new words every day. I've improved my running-with-a-stroller skills, and am not using my limited time as a barrier to getting back into running. Looking ahead, I've got big goals for July (including finding the silver polish because as you probably already noticed, it’s suuuper tarnished!), and I'm excited to share them as they take shape!
Does anyone remember the early days of Pinterest w Does anyone remember the early days of Pinterest when so many pins featured little DIY + craft projects as opposed to the stunning (and let’s face it, often unattainable) beautifully edited photos of perfect spaces, recipes, & faraway places? The transformation of our informal upstairs tv space/playroom is sort of a throwback to that time. It didn’t involve rearranging furniture, knocking down walls, or a big budget. But many small makeovers came together to give it a much needed facelift; they brought color and personality into a boring afterthought of a space. Even more color will arrive in the form of an @annieselke rug soon đŸ€ž (delayed multiple times because of coronavirus). The goal for this room was to create a world-travel theme using photos & souvenirs from our travels, to give most of the furniture free or nearly free makeovers, to make a cedar frame for a huge 33 cent thrift store map, and stitch up some new pillows out of fabric I designed from my own watercolor travel doodles. And I did all of it! For perhaps the first time ever, I finished everything I set out to do during the allotted time of the @oneroomchallenge hosted by @betterhomesandgardens (perhaps only because this spring it was 8 weeks long instead of just 6, so my traditional 7th week fit right in! 😂). One of my goals is always to show that small + inexpensive changes can make a big difference in making your house into your home, and I think this space supports that statement. I kept the budget low by using paint from our supply, fabric I already had, souvenir postcards, keychains, magnets, etc. as decor, recycling old coffee cans into toy storage, and more. I only pulled out my wallet to buy photos + frames, and wood for the big map frame and vertical paneling on the TV shelf. Down the line we plan to paint the room (along with the rest of our house) to make these yellow-ish walls a thing of the past and replace the boring builder grade light fixtures (throughout the house, unfortunately đŸ’”), but for now we’re quite happy to spend time in this new space together đŸ€—. Make sure to check out #oneroomchallenge to see the amazing outcomes of everyone’s hard work this spring!
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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

  • DIY Front Porch Refresh | simple ideas for big impact changes | cleaned and painted roadside treasure tableSpring DIY Front Porch Refresh
  • vintage toy nursery reveal - using mom and dad's childhood toys to decorate a nursery; pops of pink make it a pretty, cozy, and feminine space.Vintage Toy Nursery Reveal
  • DIY Nursery Closet Shelving System
  • large DIY watercolor art - finished!How to Create Large DIY Art
  • 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!

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