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It’s laborious for me to consider that after 9.5 years of engaged on this home, I’m down to simply two extra rooms (not together with the long run addition, after all) that should be completed — the house health club and my studio. If issues go as deliberate, I’ll have all the rooms inside the home completed earlier than we hit that ten-year mark in August. It’s been fairly the trip! And with the ability to look again from the place this home began to the place it’s now, there are a number of DIY residence enchancment tasks that I believe gave me probably the most bang for my buck. These are tasks that took a slightly plain home and gave it a extra customized look, and these items will be included into any residence transform to create a extra customized residence.
Bigger and Taller Window & Door Casings
After we purchased our home, it had very normal door and window casings with the skinny molding and 45-degree cuts on the corners. Right here’s a take a look at two of the bed room doorways within the hallway with their normal casings.
From the very starting, I made a decision that since I used to be going to be redoing each single window and door casing in the home, I needed to give you a design that may be beefier and prettier than that. And it was an enormous bonus that the brand new design didn’t require any 45-degree angle cuts! Each single board within the new door and window casing design required a straight 90-degree minimize.
It actually doesn’t get any simpler than this! Every door casing requires two 1″ x 4″ items, two 1″ x 2″ items, and one 1″ x 6″ piece. And that’s it!
Home windows require the one additional piece beneath the window sill. And, after all, should you don’t have a large window sill, that will should be changed to accommodate the width of the 2 1″ x 4″ items of the window casing. But it surely’s nonetheless fairly easy!
In order for you extra particulars on find out how to create this type of window and door casing, you could find that information right here:
Including Cased Openings
It’s nonetheless amazes me to look again and see how our kitchen seemed after we purchased the home. It simply felt so tiny and closed in, primarily as a result of it was! 😀 The room has no home windows, so it will get no direct daylight. And regardless that it had three doorways into the room, it felt so closed in, sort of like making an attempt to cook dinner in a shoe field.
I made some fairly important adjustments in right here, and one of many first issues I did was take away many of the wall that separated the kitchen from the room subsequent to it, which the earlier house owners known as the den, and what we name the breakfast room, and create a really giant cased opening between the 2 rooms.
The unique kitchen was additionally fully closed off to the entrance lounge, which is on the opposite facet of the wall to the correct within the photograph under…
So after doing the 11-foot-wide cased opening, I felt assured that I may do that one as nicely.
It’s actually exceptional what an enormous distinction these two cased openings made. The kitchen continues to be the identical small footprint that it was initially. It’s nonetheless the identical 9′ 9″ x 14′ 4″ kitchen that it’s all the time been. However now it feels about double that measurement. Simply with the ability to get some pure daylight into the room from the entrance lounge home windows and the breakfast room home windows made all of the distinction on the planet.
DIYing a cased opening can appear very daunting, particularly should you don’t perceive the construction of your own home (i.e., whether or not or not that wall is a load bearing wall, and what must be finished IF the wall is load bearing). In case you don’t know, please don’t begin flattening partitions. Earlier than you begin reducing into partitions, get a trusted contractor to return to your own home and let you know if the wall is load bearing.
Ours was load bearing, and I did DIY each cased openings myself (with assist from my brother on the large one), however earlier than I even thought-about taking up this challenge myself, I had a trusted contractor come over and provides me detailed step-by-step directions on find out how to do the entire challenge from starting to finish. And I’m so glad I did it!
Constructing A Hearth (Even If It’s Not Actual!)
The very first time I walked into this home and noticed the entrance room, I knew there needs to be a fire between the 2 facet home windows. That house simply appeared good for one!
And, after all, I knew I needed to DIY one thing. I didn’t want it to be an actual, wooden burning hearth. I simply needed it to be fairly and add some architectural element to the room.
It was a protracted course of, and took me a number of tries to get the fireside to it’s ultimate (present) look, however I DIYed the entire thing from starting to finish.
You possibly can see my technique of constructing this hearth (and tweaking the look, which went from craftsman type to conventional type through the years) on the following hyperlinks:
Constructing A Wall (Separating One Massive Room Into Two Rooms)
Along with taking down a wall, making cased openings, and opening up rooms to one another, one other factor I did that I consider actually improved the perform of a part of our home was to construct a wall to show the lengthy room that the earlier house owners known as a den into two separate rooms with very totally different features. That is what the again of the room seemed like in relation to the kitchen after we purchased the home…
And right here’s what it seem like now with a wall separating the room into two totally different areas, with the again space behind the wall as a walk-in pantry, and the world on the entrance of the room as a breakfast room (presently getting used as a sitting room, nevertheless it’ll finally return to being a breakfast room).
Constructing a wall is tremendous straightforward! Since there’s no wall there to start with, meaning you don’t have to fret about something being load-bearing. You might need to get an electrician to return out and add some new shops (should you can’t try this your self), however including a wall may add an enormous quantity of useful house to your own home.
Including Fake Pocket Doorways
Typically including pocket doorways simply isn’t possible. In my case, I needed pocket doorways in the back of the music room, however that’s the again exterior wall of the home (the sunroom was added later), in order that wall is carrying a complete lot of weight.
There was no manner I needed to chop into that wall and DIY some pocket door pockets contained in the partitions, or attempt to determine how what sort of load bearing beam can be wanted to span such a big opening.
So as a substitute, I left the wall as is, hung the doorways on the wall to perform as barn doorways, after which constructed bookcases flanking the doorways. These bookcases sit a number of inches away from the wall, and the house between the wall and the again of the bookcases create the “pocket” into which the doorways slide open.
So functionally, they’re pocket doorways, however they’re not true built-in pocket doorways the place the pockets are contained in the partitions. However I used to be in a position to get the look and the perform of pocket doorways with out the massive worth of making a large opening requiring an enormous load bearing header in an exterior wall.
If you wish to see the DIY particulars of this challenge, you could find these hyperlinks under:
I’ve finished a ton of tasks on this home, and so they’ve all added as much as a really customized “Kristi” look. But when I had to decide on the 5 issues that I believe have added the largest bang for the buck, these 5 can be on the high of the record.
Addicted 2 Adorning is the place I share my DIY and adorning journey as I transform and beautify the 1948 fixer higher that my husband, Matt, and I purchased in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do bodily work, so I do nearly all of the work on the home on my own. You possibly can study extra about me right here.
I hope you’ll be a part of me on my DIY and adorning journey! If you wish to observe my tasks and progress, you’ll be able to subscribe under and have every new publish delivered to your electronic mail inbox. That manner you’ll by no means miss a factor!
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