The Cat Box Box

Why, yes, we are still drywalling. It's been a month since we started on it and David and I are both soooooo very ready to be done with it. Fortunately, the end is in sight.

We have applied our final coat of mud and are just waiting for things to dry completely, make a few touch ups (you can see our markers as little dots of blue tape) and then it will be time for paint!

We did out semi-final sanding today (still have those wet spots and touch ups to do) and it was... dusty.
 

 

 Hopefully things will go a bit faster once we are on to painting. I am so jazzed to actually have some electrical outlets down there soon, instead of 500 extension cords strewn all over the floor! Then tiling! Then floor! And ceiling!

So anyway, the point of this post is to share a little project David and I did over Christmas. We have been wanting to find a way to hide at least one of the cat litter boxes both for aesthetics and also because the dog likes to *ahem* snack from it. We really liked the cabinet idea but not the price of a pre-made one, so when we found one that would work at Ikea a little while ago, we added it to our Christmas wish list.

This is what we chose. We liked it because it was the perfect size, doubled as a bench, and has a drawer that rolls out for easy cleaning.

So once we got it assembled, it was time to modify it.

We determined our hole size based on the size of our cat door. It was 8"x8". David used a jig saw to cut it out after I drew it on the outer portion of the bench.

Then we put the drawer in place and traced the opening onto it so we would be sure they lined up.

David cut that one out and we were in business. The cats were already very interested.

Then I just got some iron-on melamine edging from Lowe's and attached that to the rough edges.

I'll spare you a picture of the inside of the bench. Nobody wants to see that mess.

Eventually this will move down to the basement bathroom, but I wanted to go ahead and get the cats used to this new contraption, so I wasn't springing too many box changes on them at once.

Hopefully soon I'll be able to show off some pictures of my painted basement!

P.S. Check out my blog header - I updated with a more current picture. :)

It's Christmas Time!

Anyone that knows me knows that I love Christmas, especially when it comes to decorating. I had a big old Pinterest Fail a couple years ago when I tried to make one of those cute ornament wreaths, and since then I've been in need of something to spruce up the front door. I'd been looking around on Pinterest and was inspired when I saw a red burlap wreath. So off to Michaels and Home Depot I went.

 

Here's what I started out with. Red burlap from Michaels, an 8' section of pipe insulation from Home Depot. This is soooo much cheaper than buying a wreath form. This 8' section cost me $1.40 and it was enough to make two wreaths. The holly was from my holly tree outside, and a roll of duct tape that I already had.

The first thing you want to do it form your pipe insulation into a circle the size you want, cut it down to length (I used a kitchen knife) and then duct tape the ends into a circle.

Then I just wrapped my burlap around the wreath. I used sewing pins pushed right into the foam to hold the ends in place. Then I just started hot gluing the holly on in a pattern that I liked.

I hot glued a loop of twine-wrapped wire on top the hang it by, and pushed in a pin to keep the fabric from pulling away.

I also added a bow on, but I'm not sure if I'll end up keeping it or not.

The whole thing took about 30 minutes to complete and cost less than $4.00.

With the extra bit of pipe insulation that I had, I made a smaller wreath form and followed this super easy tutorial to make a coffee filter wreath.

I hung this one on the basement door by a velvet ribbon that I hot glued to the back of the wreath form and then duct taped to the back of the door.

I love the texture of this one and the best part is, I already had all the supplies so it cost me nothing.

So there you go, two Christmas wreaths for under $4.00! You can't beat that. Has anyone else been doing any Christmas crafting? I'd love to see it!