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Handmade Holiday – Custom Beer Glasses & Carrier

Handmade gifts are one of my most cherished things. When someone spends time creating me the perfect gift, it means more to me than if they were to have bought me the most expensive gift around (except maybe an Audi R8, I’d jump in front of a bus for one of those.) Creating the perfect gift is rewarding both for the giver and the givee. Nothing is more awesome than the look on someones face when you give them the most badass gift around. To give you a helping hand on your quest for the epic gift, today a group of Canadian bloggers are showing you their best handmade holiday gifts for under $25. Check out #CDNHandmadeHoliday on social media to find some great gift ideas. Want to see what we made?

Custom Monogram Pint Glasses & Beer Carrier.

This gift is a remake of an old classic. Starting with our simple beer carrier plans, we made a pine carrier with brass nails, and added a brass bottle opener.

The holder will hold six short or tall cans, six bottles, or three bottles or cans and two pint glasses.

Next we created some custom monogrammed etched glasses. Using our Silhouette SD and a piece of adhesive vinyl, we cut out vinyl stencils.

The stencils were applied to the pint glasses, and firmly burnished in place. Masking tape was applied around the stencil to make sure no errant etching cream got on the glass.

The etching cream was applied with a paint brush while wearing gloves, and left on for ten minutes.

Then it was washed away and glasses dried. The simple yet classic monogram is the perfect addition to the classic pint glass.

The carrier & the glasses were all made for under $25! Just fill with your friends fave beer, and show up to your Holiday party like a boss.

SOURCE LIST:

Beer Carrier:

Materials:
Pine (1×6 x 2′) $3
Poplar (1/4″) $2
Dowel (3/4″) $2
Brass Finishing Nails $1
Bottle Opener – Target $5

Cut List:
2 – 9″x5 3/4″ – 1″ thick Pine
2 – 2″x 9 1/2″ – 1/4″ thick poplar (sides)
2 – 2 5/8″ x 9 1/2″ – 1/4″ thick poplar (bottom)
1 – 9 1/2″ dowel (handle)

Tools Used:
Miter saw – Milwaukee 12″
Combination Square
Drill – Milwaukee M18
3/4″ Spade Drill Bit
Orbital sander – Milwaukee
Measuring Tape

Etched Custom Beer Glasses:

Materials:
2 – Pint Glasses – The Bay $4
Etching Cream – Lee Valley -3oz $8

Tools Used:
Vinyl stencil – Silhouette SD
Paint brush
Gloves

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

two out of five

Total Cost: $25

What do you think? Would you like to find this gift under your tree?

Check out the #CDNHandmadeHoliday projects from other awesome Canadian bloggers:

Mason Jar Leather Lantern – NorthStory

Fabric Handmade Gifts – Rambling Renovators

Needle Felted Wool Socks – Fynes Designs

DIY Winterberry Branches – Vin’yet Etc

Homemade Sweater Mittens – Life is a Party

Pottery Barn Inspired Advent Calendar – New House New Home

Mr. & Mrs. Rudolph Towels – SewCreative

Mini Yarn Wreath Christmas Tree Ornaments – A Pretty Life in the Suburbs

Santa’s Sleigh Gingerbread Cookie Garland – Kitchen Counter Chronicles

DIY Anchor Fridge Magnets – Swell Conditions

Cranberry Pear Relish – Time with Thea

Burlap Photo Frame Display – Joy in Our Home

DIY Felted Bowls – Bear & Lion

DIY Beaded Star Ornament – lifeovereasy

Handmade Clipboard Photo Book – Personally Andrea

Handmade Holiday Decor – Brooklyn Berry Designs

DIY Shadowbox Mirror

Here is how we created a maple shadow box mirror for the powder room. Originally we sourced the Ikea Molger mirror, but in real life the shadowbox was much too deep, and would not only block the faucet, but also jut into the room too far.

This is what we made instead: Continue reading “DIY Shadowbox Mirror”

DIY Marble Shelf

The powder room is small. At only about 4′ wide and 8′ long, with a closet jutting into it, it’s practically miniscule. To even be able to fit into the room, a vanity was vetoed for a pedestal sink. It’s great for the flow of the room, but offers no storage, and barely a surface to sit a bottle of soap. If you want to set your phone down, or touch up your makeup, you end up having to use the toilet tank as a shelf for your things. Not ideal (or very sanitary for that matter). To gain a much needed horizontal surface in our Powder Room Makeover, we opted to install a small shelf. Take a look at what we made.

Custom Marble Shelf

Materials:

1 4″ wide x 3′ marble shower sill
1 pkg corner brackets
Spray primer
Krylon gold spray paint
1 tube PL Premium construction adhesive

Tools:

Wet tile saw
Measuring Tape
Drill
Level
Caulking gun

How To:

Measure available space (ours was 18″). Mark and cut marble to length with wet tile saw and diamond blade.

Prime & spray paint corner brackets. (We used Krylon Gold Metallic).

Install your corner brackets as shelf brackets screwing into studs, or using hollow wall anchors. We used black screws as we liked the contrast with the gold, and we have black accents in the room.

Spray painted gold brackets and black screws

Attach marble to the brackets with a small amount of PL Premium construction adhesive, and let dry for 24 hours.

The shelf is perfect for holding a few decor items, and a place to set down your phone and lipstick. Now to style it!

I tried out a few accessories, and decided I really need a piece of art to balance everything. A small print set off to the left side will be perfect .

The bathroom is really coming along now. I will be back with another DIY project later on in the week.

SOURCE LIST:

Materialst:
Marble – Home Depot
Primer – Zinnser – Home Depot
Paint – Krylon Gold Metallic
Brackets – Brass corner brackets – Home Depot
PL Premium Adhesive – Home Depot

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

two out of five

Total Cost $25

Basement Flooring

When we last left the basement, we had laid the DRIcore subfloor and installed the SMARTWALL wall finishing system. Then we ran into spring, and had to move our work outside. So what was left on our basement list? Get some paint on the walls, and some flooring on the floors. Then we could move to the pretty finishing touches!

So let’s talk basement flooring. I was inspired by white soaped floors while in Denmark. I even wrote a post on them.

I had grandiose plans to do inexpensive soaped floors. We even purchased a whole bunch of 3/8″ thick standard spruce plywood and had them cut into 7 3/4″ x 8′ planks on Home Depot’s panel saw (much easier than ripping it at home on our table saw).

But the floor wood cleaner, lye and soap finishing supplies were mighty expensive, and it seemed like a waste of money and an absolute ton of work for a basement floor. The problem is I still liked (and wanted) the look…

So how do I plan on getting it?

A few weeks ago I sanded and sanded and sanded a piece of the plywood, and applied some test stains. I tried Weathered Oak, Grey, and White Wash Pickling Stain. There was one clear winner. The Minwax White Wash Picking stain.

Along with the stain we plan on using Minwax water based pre-stain conditioner and Minwax Ultimate Floor finish in satin. That floor finish is a big one, as it has a non-yellowing formula. White washing floors only to have them amber when the poly is applied would be devastating. We have the finishing materials ordered, and they should arrive shortly.

Now to deal with the sanding issue. We could lay the whole floor, then rent a floor sander and go at the whole thing. Problem is, we could easily sand through the first layer of plywood with the big sander thus ruining the floor. Next idea… use a belt sander and orbital to sand each board before laying. Okay idea, but still very very time consuming. Third idea: rent, beg, borrow or ~~steal~~ a planer and gently shave off a tiny bit of the boards.

While a planer may be on my Christmas list (please Santa please!) Such an expensive tool could not be justified for this project. Enter the begging and borrowing. When we got our new Milwaukee sliding compound miter saw, we gave our old 10″ slider to my Dad. He was building a deck, and his saw wouldn’t handle 6″ wide boards. So I causally mentioned the gifted saw, smiled a sheepish good daughter smile, and asked to borrow his planer. He said yes! His beast of a planer (this thing is solid metal and must weigh 100lbs) came home with us at Thanksgiving. Thanks Dad!

This weekend we spent an afternoon planing those boards into perfect planks. It was a noisy, sawdust filled endeavor, but with utterly fantastic results!

We took 1/8′ off all the boards, and they look amazing (for cheap plywood! $0.59 a square foot!)

Left: before planing Right: after planing — Left: before planing
Right: after planing

We did run into a few issues with the knots tearing out in the planer. We will strategically cut out the bad parts when we lay the floor, and then wood fill and sand the others before staining.

We got all the flooring planed, and it is stacked back in the basement ready to be laid. I would like to get the basement wall painted before laying the floor. Is it wishful thinking that I could paint it after work one day this week? Hahaha yeah.

Pumpkin Spice All The Things

We at the Storefront are mantel-less home owners. As such, come fall or winter, we are the only blog on the entire internets to not have a decorated mantel. No really, find me another home/decor blog without a mantle post this week. Never to be left out, we tend to decorate the front porch (with heavy, and/or bolted down items of course.) One extension of our seasonal decorating, is the front entryway coat rack. With it’s small shelf, it is about the closest thing we have to a mantel.

We have a variety of canvases and prints that get trotted out seasonally to grace our front entryway. Feeling a little bored with our fall decor this year, I opted to add a new canvas to the repertoire. Enter my latest “masterpiece”.

Pumpkin spice all the things

How to:

$3 Dollar Store Artist Canvas

+$2 Dollar Store Adhesive Letters

+2 parts cheeky 😉

Whats on your mantel this season?

Fabric Covered Notebook

This weekend is the big Canadian blogging conference Blog Podium. Attending will be a plethora of Canadian lifestyle and home bloggers, great speakers, and even some of my fave HGTV show hosts. Continue reading “Fabric Covered Notebook”

DIY Concrete Side Table

As we continue to push ahead with the backyard reno, I am starting to think about the smaller details. Accessories, lighting, flowers, furniture etc. We are currently happy with our outdoor chairs, but the rest of our outdoor furniture leaves a lot to be desired. We were using a old chipped green table with a cigar burn as a side table. Not the best looking piece of furniture…

As a place to set a drink and small plate of food is a must have in any backyard, I did what any DIY’er would do. I set out to make a useful, stylish new side table.

Back before we embarked on our concrete countertop project I made a small concrete test slab with some cheap big box store concrete mix. It had some big flaws, and I cringe when looking at it now. I used the wrong mix, did some sketchy form caulking, used a product with too large aggregate, and didn’t get out all the bubbles! None the less, I had created it, and rather than throwing it into landfill, I opted to re-use it.

I fabricated some simple modern table legs, and this is the end result.

Concrete Table — DIY Concrete Side Table

The legs are made with some kiln dried 2×2 pine from our local lumber yard. It was assembled with some simple pocket holes and screws.

DIY TIP! I like to have two drills (or a drill and a driver) for working with pocket holes. One for drilling, and one for driving the screws. It saves having to change the bit every few minutes!

One for Drilling the Holes and one for Driving the Screws

The legs were primed and then painted with Rustoleum Universal Flat Metallic Soft Iron spray paint (looove this paint and colour).

Legs Fabricated with 2x2 pine — Legs Fabricated with 2×2 pine

Legs Painted with Rustoleum Universal Metallic Flat Soft Iron spray paint

We topped the legs with our recycled concrete slab and sealed the concrete with the Buddy Rhodes concrete countertop sealer. If was to do this project again, I would have used the Buddy Rhodes mix instead of the cheap big box mix (the BR mix is lot lighter and easy to use.)

Top sealed with Buddy Rhodes Satin Sealer — Sealed with Buddy Rhodes Satin Sealer

If you were to do this project, you could easily pour the concrete top yourself, or buy a prefab concrete patio stone at the big box store. If your patio stone has a texture on it, consider flipping it upside down so the raw concrete side is exposed. Make legs to fit your slab, seal it and you’ve got an inexpensive industrial table!

Here’s a few more shots of our finished table.

SOURCE LIST:

Materialst:
Concrete – Hardware Store
Concrete Sealer – Buddy Rhodes
1 2x2x10 kiln dried pine – Downtown Lumber
2 1/2″ pocket hole screws – Lee Valley Tools
Zinnser Primer – Home Depot
Rustoleum Universal Flat Metallic Soft Iron spray paint – Home Depot

Tools
Drill & Driver – Milwaukee
Measuring Tape
Kreg Jig – Lee Valley

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

two out of five

Total Cost $40

Beats spending $1155 at Restoration Hardware for this, doesn’t it?!

Restoration Hardware Belgian Trestle Weathered Side Table

What do you think of our new table? Would you give a try at making one?

DIY Housewarming Candle Holder

Nothing says housewarming like lighting things on fire… right? It is called houseWARMING after all.

No no, this post isn’t about burning your friends house down, but I will show you how to warm it with a small (controlled) flame.

Meet my adorable housewarming gift idea; the DIY Housewarming Candle Holder.

Continue reading “DIY Housewarming Candle Holder”

Outdoor Daybed

Most home projects are practical. Fixing something that is broken. Improving something that will make your daily life better. Increasing property value etc.

Then there are projects that are none of the above.

They are the impractical high heels of the home world. Did you need them? No. Are you going to wear them to walk the dog, or get the groceries? Not a chance. But are they absolutely gorgeous, sexy as hell, and so very impractical that they were bought solely out of love? Absolutely.

Our outdoor daybed project is the 6″ hot pink stilettos of home improvement.

…and I LOVE IT.

Before:

AFTER:

Here is how we did it:

The structure for the daybed was built using pressure treated 2×4’s. The back of the daybed was securely attached to the deck support posts, and the rest of the frame built as a box around it. (similar to how you would build a deck)

It was all assembled with deck screws. It was built to fit a twin size mattress, with a bit of room to spare at one end for a small built-in table.

After the frame was built, it was clad with 1×6 fence board. We broke out our new Ryobi cordless brad nailer, and it made quick work of the job.

We trimmed the edge where the skirt met the seat of the daybed with a 1×2. This way you would not see any unfinished boards and the edge of the daybed would not be rough against your legs. (Here you an see the trim in progress & Odin helping of course.)

I had lots of trouble finding an economical cushion. So in the end, I headed to Ikea and picked up a twin size 4″ thick foam mattress.

I would love to have a custom cover made for it, but until then an inexpensive twin size fitted sheet works perfectly.

All the linens come in each night, and in the winter, the Ikea mattress can be rolled up for easy storage.

It is incredibly comfortable. Great for lounging or having a nap. It’s my new favorite spot for reading my book with a cold beverage in hand. We are going to get a lot of use out of the daybed this summer!

Do you have an outdoor daybed? Would you try your hand at building one?

SOURCE LIST:

Materialst:
8 – 2×4 8′ pressure treated c/o Home Depot Canada
14 – 1×6 6′ pressure treated fence boards c/o Home Depot Canada
1 – 2×2 8′ pressure treated (cut in half to make a 1×2 as a trim piece) c/o Home Depot Canada
Deck screws
Galvanized brad nails (1 1/2″)Twin size foam mattress
Twin size fitted sheet
Decorative pillows

[Plant Pot – Home Depot, Candle holders – Dollarama, Concrete Candle – Loblaws, Mattress – Ikea, Sheet – HomeSense, Pillows – Ikea & HomeSense, Blanket – West Elm]

Tools Used:
Miter Saw
Drill
Ryobi Cordless Brad Nailer
Measuring Tape

Difficulty Level (on a scale of 1-5):

two out of five

Total Cost: $200

*Home Depot Canada provided a gift card to aid us in our project.

Renovation Stress

Generally our projects tend to go fairly smoothly. We plan and prep a ton, and usually stay on budget and don’t have many delays. However, it’s not always sunshine and roses. We too can be plagued with reno stress and generally a whole lot of crap that doesn’t go right.

This weekend the basement project fell into the not going so well territory.

Saturday:

El Granto headed to the motorcycle show to see a man about a motorcycle (more on that later) . I saw the sunshine from my bedroom window and thought “oh what a nice day, I’ll go to Ikea”. What a mistake. It was sunny but frigidly cold and windy. I took the subway to Kipling, and waited 45 minutes in the middle of the parking lot for the Ikea shuttle. Bonus points for Ikea making their shuttle stop without any shelter, and not in viewing distance of the station. Good work Ikea. After arriving at Ikea I braved the Saturday crowd and the arguing couples and screaming parents to pick up a (very large) counter for the washer & dryer as well as a few other accessories. I also needed to make a stop at the lighting department, as I had purchased a purported “ceiling light” which was actually a plug in light. I hoped I purchased the wrong version, and that they magically had a hard wired option, but alas no. Nor does Ikea have conversion kits or any easy way to turn their plug in lights to hard wire.

Discouraged I left Ikea with my purchases and carried a 20lbs 5×2.5′ countertop home on the shuttle and subway. By this point I was cursing myself for not renting a car, or at least going to Ikea with a pal to help carry.

I finally got everything home and went to install the countertop and realized that my lint trap above the dryer was too low and the counter wouldn’t fit. Awesome. I left the counter and called it a day.

lint trap is line 1/2" too low. — Really? That darn lint trap is line 1/2″ too low.

Sunday:
We headed out early to catch brunch at one of our neighbourhood spots only to find that the drunken hipster hockey fans had been up since 6am and were looking for some breakfast to sop up the booze, and all our fave brunch spots has lines out the door. (*Note to all the non-Canadians, our bars don’t usually open at 6am, but because of the early morning gold metal Canada vs. Sweeden hockey match, the government changed the rules for the day to allow bars to be open and serving for the big game. What can I say, Canadians love their hockey and beer.)

Sad and brunchless I gave up and headed out on some errands. I bused down to West Elm to pick up a light conversion kit. A $25 fix for my $15 Ikea lamp problem, but at least I knew it would work.

lights — The cute (but evil!) $15 Ikea light and the $25 West Elm Conversion kit to fix it

I headed home, dropped off my shopping then headed back out to Home Depot to pick up the cladding for the basement staircase ceiling.

Ceiling cladding options: Beadboard or Barnboard

I decided on pine barnboard planking and proceeded to go through each and every board in stock to find only three acceptable boards. Well that’s not enough to plank a ceiling, so out went the barnboard and in came V groove tongue & groove. Another slog through the pile to find acceptable pieces and then a long hard trip home on public transit with the lumber and supplies.

After arriving home I set out to priming my planks and finish wiring and installing my Ikea light in the basement staircase (there is no light there and it’s pretty dark/sad.)

After struggling with the wire I’ve discovered that the light switch isn’t wired with two hot wires and meretted neutrals, but alas is wired hot in, neutral out. Uhhhh… how am I going to add a light to this circuit? I tried a few wiring options and wired up the light to test, only to drop the two tiny black screws that hold the light to the ceiling down the stairs bouncing around and getting lost forever. Much swearing, yelling and a slam of a door ensued.

I unwired the light, reattached the existing wiring (so we would have some light in the basement) and left a ladder in the powder room, a compressor in the hall, beadboard covering every surface in the dining room, a nonworking light hanging from an unplanked ceiling and construction debris everywhere and went to bed.

Tonight I am going to try to muster up the courage to take another stab at it, or I may just sit on the sofa with a slice of pizza and hope that a DIY fairy comes to fix my problems.