How to Make a Corner Window Cornice

Our Master Bedroom has a windows on each wall in a corner and high ceilings. Installing a corner window cornice will tie the windows together and solve several window decorating problems:

• A window cornice will add visual height to the wall while also visually bringing down the high ceiling.
• I can use small scale curtain rods I already have. I don't need to buy new curtain rods that  meet in the corner or need to have a custom corner window curtain rod made or cut to order.
• I can hang off the shelf curtains lower on the wall and just touching the floor so they look like custom length curtains. The cornice hides the curtain rod and hardware.
• I can make a lightweight custom window corner for practically nothing because I am using cardboard boxes to build it.
• It’s a no sew project. If you can use a stapler, you can make this project!

How to Make a Cardboard Window Valance

 

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How to Make Bottle Cap Tiles

I want another ear phone, phone, and table charger organizer for the living room to hold the overflow from the Cigar Box and Wine Cork Storage Box I made last month.

I found a decorative Indian spice box during a 10 minute tidy in the kitchen that will a few quick tweaks will fit the bill just fine thank you.

 
The interior wood dividers easily popped out of the box in my hand. I wanted to add feet to the bottom of my DIY decorative storage box.  What to use?

Bottle caps!

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DIY Allergy Friendly Homemade Furniture Dusting Spray

Dusting is not my favorite chore. I tried to make it easier by using a feather duster to dust the stuff on bookshelves and other hard to reach up too high places.

Until my allergist put the kibosh on that. He says feather dusters push more dust around than they pick up (including my fancy ostrich feather duster as well as the even fancier lambs wool dusters.)
Which for most of you will still work all fine and dandy but not for me. I have a litany of seasonal allergens including and especially dust mites.  So how exactly am I supposed to dust the furniture without commercial dusting sprays or a feather or lambs wool duster?

In this instance, my allergist recommended the best way to clean dust and dust mites is also the most non toxic and cheapest cleaner in the world – water!

How to Make Nontoxic and CHEAP! DIY Dust & Allergen Furniture Spray

 

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DIY Cigar Box and Wine Cork Storage Box

More often than I want to admit, phone and table cords, earphones, and eyeglasses are strewn about the side tables in my living room.  I put the stuff away. The next evening we need the stuff to read books or watch movies on our tablets and plop it on a table before heading off to bed. I put the stuff away…

It’s a never ending cycle.

A friend found a bunch of empty wood cigar boxes in the basement of her wine shop. I was drooling when I found out. Old cigar boxes are the gold standard of recycled project material just begging for an upcycle!

Needless to say, I made my way over to her shop and came home with a cigar box to make into a decorative storage box with wine cork feet to contain the flotsam and jetsam littering the living room.

 You have no idea how much work it took to to win the eBay auction for these vintage metal frames. I had my optimist fill them with my prescription. I love them!

How to Make a Decorative Cigar Box Storage Box 

How to Make an Office Chair Mat

The plastic mats under the rolling chairs in our home office have seen better days. No matter what kind of office chair mat I buy, it eventually cracks, breaks, and sheds plastic chunks all over the carpet in the office.

I need to use a chair mat under our rolling chairs to protect the carpeting we aren't ready to replace.  Replacing the mats every couple of years isn’t sustainable. More than that it is a pain!

I solved our problem by making durable office chair mats from laminate flooring I bought at the Habitat Restore. I went with laminate flooring instead of plain plywood because I was concerned the plain plywood office chair mats would crack and break. Laminate flooring isn’t my favorite look but it is built to do the job I need it to do – be a floor.

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Our Favorite Condo Blues DIY Projects in 2015

We’re celebrating the New Year by looking back at some of our favorite Condo Blues DIY projects for 2015.

From the looks of it, we are all extremely organized people! Or at least we all want to be extremely organized people, myself included!
 

Our Top 10 DIY Projects on Condo Blues in 2015

 

Organize Your Garage in Three Easy Questions   

 

6 Smart Strategies to Organize a Garage and Workshop 

How to Make Wine Cork Napkin Rings

I want to switch up my dining room decor for Thanksgiving. One of the easiest and cheapest way to do that is to decorate with fall colored napkins and napkin rings. The cloth napkins I have. The cute fall napkin rings I do not.

I have a TON of wine corks in my craft room, just waiting for a crafty wine cork project. Time to get my upcycling on and recycle some of the corks into handmade napkin rings!

Recycled Copper Beaded Wine Cork Napkin Rings

This is a quick little project you can do for yourself or make and give them to someone as a homemade gift. Christmas is just around the corner you know!

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For each napkin ring you will need:

16 Easy Halloween Tutorials

10 Amazing Pirate Ship Beds

Ahoy ye matey!

In honor ‘o International Talk Like a Pirate Day I be roundin’ up a bevvy of pirate décor for ye children be they wee pirate lads or wee pirate lasses. Yaaaaarrrrrrrrrrr!

 

Pin for later ya scurvy dog! 

</end pirate voice mode>

I’m using International Talk Like a Pirate Day as a big fat crazy excuse to dive head first into my Pinterest boards (follow me @condobues on Pinterest pretty please?) and share with you 10 of the most spine twinging, shiver me timbers and blow me down pirate ship kids beds that will make you the coolest parent on planet earth.

Or if you can fit one into your master bedroom, make your inner pirate child happy.

How to Repair a Crumbling Dry Stack Garden Border

Husband and I finally got several days without rain in a row to repair and landscape the front yard – again. I think this is Landscape 4.0 of our promised “easy to care for landscaping’ that keeps dying and makes us sing the condo blues.

But at least I got the name of this blog out of the deal. So there’s that.

We were so sad when the harsh winter killed our lavender bushes.We spent many cool summer evenings chilling on the porch and watching the biggest bees you’ve ever seen flit and play amongst the flowers. The on demand organic lavender is something I miss too.

We tilled the soil in the front flower beds and planted lavender instead of traditional evergreen bushes. Next I turned my attention to the crumbling brick garden border.

Why Your Dry Stack Brick or Stone Garden Border is Falling Over and How to Fix It

Why You Should Never Center a Design on a DIY Project

t is amazing how a few brushstrokes of paint can totally transform a piece of old furniture. By merely changing the color, you can make what started as junk in the trash into a whimsical piece people fight over in an artist’s shop. Even more so if you are talented enough to add decorative paint elements to the piece.

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DIY: How to Decorate and Paint Earphones

Back to School season is a great time to buy office supplies.  It is also a tempting a time. Sometimes the logical The Greenest Thing is What You Already Own side of my brain and the computer IT geek I Don’t Care This One is So Much Cooler Than What I Have side of my brain do battle. Well, not  exactly battle but more like I end up buying something cute that’s not on my shopping list just because it is a cuter version of what I already have.

Now in the case of something small like earphones, the purchase won’t break the bank or anything like that but it will clutter up my house. Especially when I found several pairs of very good ear buds while cleaning and organizing my desk. It was a good surprise because I can keep a pair in my gym and dance bag, in my purse, my desk, etc.

 Keep reading for my step by step painted earphone tutorial!

So why am I tempted in the store while staring at a rack of cheapola 5 dollar ear buds that probably sound worse than the good ones I love and use?

I’ll tell you why. The cheapie headphones are in pretty and cute colors. The spendy and great sounding earphones are plain Jane black.

How to Make Cute Earphones

Cheap and Easy No Slip Tool Chest Organizer

After I built my recycled pallet and cabinet workbench, I needed to organize and load in my tools.

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The power tools were easy to organize. I already keep my power tools in their cases. I stashed those in the workbench cabinet. Boom. Done.

How to Repair a Quad Camp Chair

One of Husband’s coworkers has a HUGE Fourth of July parade party and cookout.

Food was made. Watermelon cut and cubed. Coolers were washed and ready. The one thing we didn’t double check were our first generation armless folding quad lawn (camp) chairs. (aff link)

We discovered one of rivets holding the chair legs to the seat broke after we set up the chairs at our parade viewing encampment. Whoops!

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Replacing a broken rivet on a folding quad lawn chair is a super simple fix. It takes barely any time at all. If you have a jar of odd nuts and bolts laying around, it could be a zero dollar repair. What’s not to love about that?

How to Fix a Folding Lawn Chair

CREATE: Vintage Jewelry and Burlap Letters

I have a big, fat, crazy love for vintage jewelry. I always surf the jewelry section when I’m in a consignment or thrift store just to drool over what I call Grandma Jewelry- the glitz rhinestone stuff.


When Husband and I played nobles at our local renaissance fictional I finally had a reason to buy some. Renaissance rich people love to wear their jewels but as two real life people acting in a 10 acre field, I didn’t want to spend much on it. Why? The pile of orphan earrings in our costume jewelry box from losing them while performing is the answer to that question.

I hung onto them to either make over into a prop or for crafting. From time to time, I cleaned out my everyday costume jewelry box and added pieces to the Some Day My Project Will Come Pile.

25 of the Best Ways to Reuse Old Pill Bottles

Husband and I are relatively healthy people but every once and awhile we get sick enough to require prescription medicine. More often than not the medicine comes comes in a plastic bottle that aren’t always recyclable.

I really hate tossing something like that into the trash and sending it to a landfill to sit on a mountain of garbage for a thousand years.

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How to Cut a Glass Bottle with Hot Water

The most difficult part of when reusing a wine bottle for a DIY recycling project is cutting the bottle. I tried several methods and had varying levels of success with each one.

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Cutting a bottle by lighting string dipped in acetone on fire method doesn't work for me. I can’t get a clean break and I  am afraid I’m going to burn down my house because acetone burns scary hot.

How to Make Extra Money Flipping Furniture

I bypass a lot of cast off furniture that would look stunning with a little DIY love. If I don't, my small condo would quickly look like an episode of Hoarders.

If I had the room to store the pieces AND work on them (for me its an either/or not both situation) I could make some cash on the side fixing up old furniture and flipping it - selling it for a profit.

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11 Creative Ways to use Industrial Pipe Shelves

Pipe shelving is one of those projects where I wish I had more room in my house to install a big, crazy wall of industrial shelves. While I was drooling over them on line I noticed that there are more styles of industrial wood and pipe shelves that  could fit into my small home. Come dream with me, won’t you?

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Refinished Retro 50’s Diner Table and Chairs

It may not be fashionable to admit this, but I kinda have a thing for theme restaurants that hang all sorts of crazy things on the walls. My dream job would be the designer who gets to hunt for and decorate with all of those forgotten treasures.
What can I say? I never met an old advertising sign I didn’t like.
You know what is even better than old advertising signs? Pairing them in your house with a dining set straight out of the 1950’s Daddy-o!

You will never believe what Morena used to replace the peeling laminate table top – fabric!
I think the bold 50’s print and takes it to the next level. Learn how she made a durable replacement table top with fabric on:

Crafts Unleashed from Consumer Crafts: How To Refinish a Table With Fabric and Resin

ycle
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