Wood's best friend

Cole accidentally broke the drawer front to his Ikea desk. The desk didn't cost much but it seemed a waste to have to buy a whole new one. So instead I bought some wood epoxy and repaired it.


Here's the epoxy in the chipped out area. You just mix the two different parts of the epoxy to activate it and let it set.


Here's the epoxy after sanding it down so it's smooth.


Our exterior door frame started to get some water damage and dry rot. I had some estimates to fix it and originally I thought you could just replace the damaged wood pieces but it turns out that you have to replace the entire door frame. One of the guys suggested to use epoxy and then paint over it and replace the door frame after the whole frame gets worse.


Here's a picture of the epoxy before any sanding.


Here's after sanding (not the best job) and paint.


You can buy this product at Lowes but not Home Depot.

Divine Design - Master Bedroom Retreat

When we had cable, we would watch Divine Design with Candice Olsen and always dream about having her design our bedroom. So for sabbatical last year, we decided to hire an interior designer to redo our bedroom. Overall the experience wasn't quite what we expected but we are pretty pleased with the transformation. Here are the before pictures.


Luckily I was able to sell all the furniture on Craig's list.


Since I redid our closet, we didn't have a need for the dressers anymore.


Here you can see the faded carpet from the previous owner as well as our redi shades covering the sliding doors. Those temporary shades were up for over 2 years.


We added 7 recessed cans, moved the ceiling fan, and added another pendent light.


Here I'm having the painter smooth out the stucco wall to make it ready for wallpaper. Yes, wallpaper. Never did I think we'd be putting up wallpaper.


Here's our new wood floors to replace the carpet. They are 7" maple. You can also see the new wall color.


Here's the wallpaper lady.


Here's the finished product. We had just finished getting professional photos taken so if you look closely, you can't see any alarm clocks or phone chargers. You can see the TV and the console table on the left which were things that we had picked out. The designers weren't too keen on a TV in the bedroom.


Here's our sitting area.


Another shot of the finished product.

Now you see them, now you don't

We are almost done with our Bedroom makeover and one of the remaining pieces was mounting the TV on the wall. We picked up the framed console table at Crate and Barrel. It's nice but has an unfortunate design element. There's a reinforcing piece of wood running the length of the top in the shelf. As a result, the height clearance is only 2.5" instead of the 3.5" in the front. So in order to not have to cut into the furniture, we bought a Tivo premiere to replace our Tivo HD. The Tivo premiere just fits.


Here you can see the full motion arm. It took a while to find one that would sit close against the wall (only 1.3") and yet swings out over 24".


I bought a combo surge protector outlet and wire management unit from Home Depot that will go right behind the TV. Also, right behind the console table, I put in a wire outlet so I can pass the HDMI cables behind the wall and right to the Tivo and DVD players.


Here's the finished work.


You can see the outlet box and the HDMI cables going into the box and running in the wall down below.


Nice and flat!

Baby Poang

How does this go again? Maybe I have it upside down.



Good thing these instructions don't have any words. I can't read yet!



That was too easy!



Finally I have something comfortable. This chair is going to help my back soooo much. I swear this baby just eats, sleeps, and poops.

Cat Proof Chair

Our cats loved to sit on our old office chair leaving cat hair all over it. They also used it as a scratching post from time to time. As a result, it was time for a new chair. Here you can see our new modern chair. The cats have a very hard time walking on it and so far haven't been successful in sitting on it. Another side benefit is that the chair is very breezy which is perfect for staying cool in Arizona.

I hope we aren't missing a piece.

Ikea has modern design, low prices, and a million parts so you can build your own furniture. Dressers are probably the worst for having lots of parts.


Here you can see the 6 drawer dresser. The plan is to use this as the changing station. Only took us 2 hrs or so to build it.

Now we can have a baby....

Before....


...and after. Only took about 10 minutes with help to setup. The sides are stationary so it makes the assembly really easy.


The glider chair. I wonder if I'll ever get to sit in this one.


Might as well through in a few more pieces to fill out the house. Unfortunately my speakers don't fit on the lower shelf standing up. This is really strange since I measured the speakers and the shelf. Good thing I'm not an engineer...oh wait.


Sofa for the living room. You won't even be able to see the cat hair on it. :)

How many people sit in this chair at Ikea?

POÄNG chair from Ikea with Chester testing it out. Every time we visit Ikea, we usually test out this chair and without fail, we comment, "Wow this is pretty comfortable." The sitting usually follows with bouncing in the chair too. So we finally broke down and bought one during out last visit. After taking it home and assembling it, our test of the chair illicited a much different response. "Wow this is pretty stiff." I guess having hundreds of people a day sit in the chair loosens it up. Even though it's not as bouncy as the ones in the store, it's still pretty comfortable.

Why that's a large base you have

We noticed we had a crack in our dining room table base so Ethan Allen came and replaced the base. However the base they replaced it with had a slight design difference in the form of a wider end. I guess customers were complaining that the table seemed to wobble and so they flared out the pedestal base to better support the top. You can see the design change below. I didn't realize furniture had continuous improvement.

Ikea (Ick-Kia)

Nothing like visiting Ikea or Ick-Kia as Minja would say in Finland, to get some cheap assembly required furniture. We picked up a few bookcases, shelves, and eventually a desk once they come out with the beech color that matches their bookcases. Unfortunately, we had a little accident on the last speedbump about 1/8 mile from home. The trunk lock slammed into the box and punctured the bookcase's faux wood backing. Luckily you can't really notice it with the shelf in and the doors closed.

When 16" is not really 16"....TV stands

So here's the new TV stand from room and board. They actually shipped us the smaller unit so this one will be going back whenever they get around to delivering the longer one. Overall, the unit is pretty nice in that it has lots of ventilation for the hot components. I also took a lot of flack for measuring the inside depth of the cabinet in the store even though the info says the depth is 16". It turns out that the inside dimension is really 18". Might not seem like it matters but my receiver just fits. On a side note, our Tivo started freezing and rebooting during some shows. Basically the hard drive has some bad sectors that cause it to freeze up. Since the unit was under warranty, Tivo next day aired a new unit to us. Hopefully the unit is problem free this time. Nothing more frustrating than a tivo that freezes up.

What to do with all that space?

Early Xmas gifts

So our dining room table and chairs finally came in from Ethan Allen. Everything is coming together for the holidays. Overall the finish of the table matches the buffet table pretty well which is from Crate and Barrel.

Here's a shot fo the Peacock cushions. It'll go well when we finally paint one of the walls red.

Here's our other recent purchases, an armless sectional and coffee table from PB. We also have a leather slipper chair but there's no room for it with the tree up.