Home Made Harry Potter Broom

So my son has been wanting a Quiddich broom from Harry Potter to play around in, but I wasn't too into all the cheap looking plastic ones, and the more realistic ones came with a pretty hefty price tag. My husband and I decided that we could make one ourselves and so we got to it.

The first thing my husband did was go out and find a large branch that was about the right size and shape of a broom. Silly me forgot to take a photo of the branch, but that would have been nice, wouldn't it? (I'm still getting used to doing these DIY tutorials so please forgive me).

Sorry.

Anyhow my husband started stripping away with his knife to get all the bark off of the tree branch and get it to some sort of shape. Once he did that he sanded it like CRAZY and got it silk smooth and to the right shape.

We were not trying to go for a prop replica.  Our son is only TEN and he will probably wear this thing out playing with it, we just wanted something similar for him to goof around with! I found  GREAT tutorial online here at Instructables, but it was WAY after we had all ready been building ours.  Anyhow, it's a great post so I recommend you check it out!

We stained it first with a dark walnut stain, then went over it with some Java gel stain.

I then went to Hobby Lobby and found some Prairie Grass for $9.99 (minus 40% off coupon) that I thought would work for the bristles of the broom.

I grabbed an old towel and curtain that I was no longer in need of to wrap it as padding and give it the shape underneath that it needed.  You could also use foam or styrofoam.  I just went for what I had on hand.

 

 

After I got the general shape of it my husband and I added the prairie grass to it and taped it.  There MAY or MAY not have been a slight argument about how to get it to stay on there properly.  I really need to stop questioning his judgment.  The man is always right.  (Please don't tell him I said that though.)

We taped it on there as a temporary hold then went and got pipe clamps to clamp the top and the bottom and screw it on tight.  My husband then COATED the thing in spray adhesive to get it to stick, cut off the top and bottom of the bristles to make it even, then wrapped it in twine.  If I had to do anything over again, it would be that I would have taken the time like the guy on Instructables did to painstakingly put on the bristles, but we were running out of time nearing Christmas eve, so we went for a quick fix.  Also, this is a kids TOY and I'm certain one day we will be replacing the bristles on it.  When we do that I may change some things up.

Next I went and added "Nimbus 2000" in gold paint on the handle.

Then last added a coat of polyurethane to the handle and it was complete!  Someday we may go back and add the footrests, but for now, he is perfectly happy with it how it is, and the total project cost us less than $10.00 to complete for a pretty awesome gift!

I think he was pretty thrilled with his gift!

Decisions...Decisions

Yet another blog post that mentions my hero Thrifty Decor Chick. Seriously, this gal is my hero. Ever since I saw her post on her staircase I was all like "hey, I could TOTALLY do that".

Here is my vision:

From Thrifty Decor Chick's blog, her staircase

Here is my reality:

My carpet is just gross

Anyhow, the railing is worn from 20 years of wear and tear (and one suicidal dog but that is another story) and it is in need of some desperate TLC.  The problem is the wooden boards underneath my banisters are HIGHER than the wood underneath the carpet.  Therefore I would not have that nice brown stained uniform look all the way across.  There would be this "drop off".  Therefore I axed the idea of actually having the wooden stairs of my dreams and decided I'd just do the railing and leave the stairs carpeted.  Also because of having little ones, the carpeted stairs were a better plan.

See, the carpet is "level" with the wood on the side (those are my dogs marks there you see)

But if you know me, that's just not good enough.  Once I have a vision in my head, I need to find a way to complete it.  So I started doing some research.  I ran across one blog where the girls stairs were the biggest mess underneath.  Her trim on the side was not level with her treads either and she made it work.  I thought that maybe I could just keep ALL the trim-work white, and add molding to the inside next to the stairs, then do the treads only dark (either painted or stained depending on what type of wood I'm working with.)

See white trim higher than black stairs (mine would be brown)

The carpet NEEDS to go, but that just isn't in the budget right now.  I COULD do the rails and give the carpets a GOOD cleaning, but to do the stairs properly the carpet REALLY needs to be removed to make sure all the trim-work gets covered properly in the paint/stain.

My crazy thought is lets just rip up the carpet and I'll do it and make it look decent.  If we hate it, well we re-carpet it later down the road.

My poor husband.  I don't know HOW he puts up with me.

So, I started pulling back the carpet to see what I was dealing with. 

My wooden stairs do not nearly look like the mess she had.  In fact, they looked pretty decent to me.

This is not my BEST visual.  Please don't mind my UGLY tile.  I can't do anything about that now.

My husband is like 190% sure that we have builders pine underneath there (and I'm pretty sure he is right because he usually right like 99.9 percent of the time - he is a REALLY smart man), which pine doesn't stain the greatest.  It's not the best wood to be working with.  Still, crazy stubborn me thinks I can somehow pull a rabbit out of my hat and make it work.

I want to get this done, but I want to do it right.  But I want to get this done, like NOW.  The war rages inside of me, and in the meantime I can't think of anything else but THIS PROJECT.  Can you say OCD?  It's maddening I tell you, just maddening!

Bathroom Reveal

So, I just glued together my DIY mason jar soap dispenser, and decided to call the bathroom "done" enough to post photos.

We still need to nail down the baseboards and I have some other art I'm working on for the wall, but I was ready to wrap up this portion of my blog on my bathroom.

I had a LOT of fun with this project, and some frustration as well, but I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out.

So (drumroll) here it is:

Before:  Yellow walls, dingy cabinets, creme switches, brown trim.

After!  I am SO pleased with my dark cabinets, neutral walls and white trim!

Painting behind the toilet was NOT fun.

I went back to home depot and had them darken the color.  The first time I brought it home it was too "purple".  It's still a slight bit too pinky for my taste, but since my accent towels are purple, it actually works pretty well.  I also painted all the trim white in the room and I will eventually switch it out for a paneled white door when I get the funds.  Baseboards are all white now and I'm LOVING the contrast of the colors.  The dark trim was just SO not me.

I used my old flowers but made a new trough to put them in on the back of the toilet.  An idea I got here from my hero Thrifty Decor Chick.

I love how it turned out and it was super easy to make.  Just used scrap wood I had in the garage, wood glue and some nails and stain and voila.

Isn't it pretty?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

I'm so into this rustic meets modern look.  Farmhouse meets modern decor.  LOVE it.  Another Pinterest find was the mason jar soap dispenser.  I decided to make one too, and I love how it looks in there.  I just followed the easy instructions.  The hardest part was getting the pump to stick on.  Hot glue did NOT work, and I had no plumbers adhesive, so I used good old superglue and it worked just fine.

My mason jar soap dispenser.

The vase I had in the attic for like...um, forever and I forgot about it.  Added some branches and voila!

I had a lot of fun on this project, but I'm glad it's over!  Seriously though the photos do not do justice to HOW MUCH better it looks, really.  Now I'm working on my den cabinets.  They are painted and I'm working on adding the decor to the shelves, that blog is coming soon!

The Half Bath Redo

A while ago I got the brilliant idea to stain my half bath vanity cabinets a darker color, and to paint my den cabinets white. Then I could decide which I liked better for my kitchen, dark or white.

My half bath was actually one of the best looking rooms in the house, the cabinets had the least wear and tear and the paint job was much fresher than any of the other rooms. Seriously there are probably about a thousand projects that should of taken higher priority than this. However since it was the cheapest project and a test on how I will handle the rest of the house, it was actually the perfect place to begin.

I've had this idea in my head for a while and finally I came home last week and my wonderful husband had taken everything out of the bathroom and started sanding the cabinets for me. We taped a tarp over the door and brought in his shop vac and reversed the air flow to eliminate a lot of the dust from getting in my house. It worked pretty well. The dust stayed mostly on us and in the bathroom!

Once we got down to nearly raw wood (we weren't extremely particular because we are going darker), we cleaned up and vacuumed all the dust off the cabinets.

Oh, and I'm SOOO putting shelving paper on those shelves.  They are disgusting, I know.

The next day we began staining.

If you know me well, you know I have trouble making a decision. I sat in Home Depot Sunday morning with a can of Ebony and a can of Jacobean stain for about 45 minutes while surfing the net on my iPhone at what these colors actually looked like completed. I finally went with the Jacobean and came home, because the people at Home Depot were starting to think I was weird.

So we stained.

We stained more. And more....finally four coats in they just were NOT getting any darker. I wasn't happy. It was not my vision, but I sighed and figured I'd just live with it.  They did look a TON better than the old color, but still not my vision.

My wonderful mother in law (who knows a LOT about staining) told me not do do anything else until she came over with some of her stuff. I wasn't certain we could fix the cabinets, because they are pretty cheap pine plywood (seriously the edges of these cabinets are NUTS people...they just soak up the color like crazy).

Anyhow, she came over with a couple other options for color. She took one look at my cabinets and said "those aren't very dark."  She confirmed EXACTLY what I was feeling.  (It's so good to have her opinion, she is such a great lady).  She had a gel stain (Java) that she got from Woodcraft and she said I should put that on top. I tried it on the back of the cabinet and I LOVED it. It just gave it that richness that the Jacobean was lacking. So, I started staining....AGAIN. Gave all the cabinets backs, fronts and built in's in the bathroom another coat of the gel stain and it turned out just about perfect.

I may need ONE more coat on the cabinet fronts. For some reason the base is taking the color better than the cabinet doors, and I don't want it to be mis-matched. The flash doesn't help, but it really does look gorgeous.

I'm SO over staining and ready to move on to painting my bathroom, putting down new baseboards and getting the decorations back in there. I almost have my paint color picked out. That was a funny story in itself. Proves how brilliantly crazy that I am.

Thrifty Decor Chick has the most gorgeous colored walls I've ever seen in her stairway, and that is the color I'm wanting to go with. She got the color at Porter Paints. So I found the place up in Edmond that sells the paint and went up there. The color is discontinued but they still had a swatch of it and said they could match it for $32 a gallon. Uh, yeah, I can't pay that it's WAAAAY out of my budget. Of course since it was discontinued they didn't have a swatch they could let me take. So I took the swatch around their store and found one similar to it that would work, grabbed that swatch and plan to try and color match it at Home Depot later this week.

I told you I'm nuts.

I think I've decided though that painting my kitchen will be a LOT easier than staining. I'm getting this vision for it. White cabinets with a black glaze in the cracks, dark granite or poured concrete counters...oil rubbed bronze pulls....dark espresso beams across the ceiling with some canned lighting. Farmhouse table with a bench in the dinette area, with dark hardwood floors. Are you seeing my vision?

Anyhow, stick with me, the full reveal will be coming soon!