Sud Shack the before

So, this is a combination laundry and bathroom. it was, in the beginning, our only bathroom. yes, it is outdoors and disconnected from our home. there were the occasional nights when it was cold and people probably thought we were crazy but we loved...well, we made it work haha. 

now, it mainly serves as our laundry only since we built our larger home...larger in comparison, but still small. anyway, it was ugly and i hate laundry anyway so i was unmotivated. these pictures are semi-before

i say semi before because i had already put up a chandelier and a support frame for the shower curtain.

obviously, we don't normally have the tools laying on the floor but otherwise everything is as it normally was, a complete mess.

junk everywhere, no organization

the black in that photo is part of the after.

ok, now it is that pipe and all the others that really motivated me to finally tackle the laundry room a.k.a. our Sud Shack.

after pics and story coming soon, as in i just finished it and need to load photos....so, we will just see how quickly i get to that

we got a mini

I cant recall if i mentioned that our goats had to be re homed.  it was a sad day when our female, Bella, went to live on a farm with a cousin of mine. We decided that it was best for her to be with "family" so we could still visit. i put family in parenthesis because while we are distantly related we are not close. turns out we haven't been allowed to visit her and it still breaks our hearts. short story with our male. once he didn't have a female he tried to mate with everything. i mean everything and if you know goats then you know the spraying and the smell was just too much.

 let me introduce y'all to Marron.

i will be posting more about Marron soon. plus, the pallet paddock and how we built it. 

till next time, keep it Green, clean, and classy. 

concrete LadyBug part 2

there it is!!! its finally finished...well the statue is and now i need to landscrape around it, haha.

so, y'all know that this project started with dirt, lots of dirt. 

my brother came by on day two and helped me shape the mold. i had done some shaping on it day one but then the chickens came by and investigated my work and ended up chicken scratching it to a shapeless blob.....thanks chicas

 finally it was shaped and right away we started adding concrete to it. i first put a crocheted shawl on it so the concrete would have something to grip to. ..... I'm giving instructions of what i did, not what you should do. i have zero sculptor/concrete/statue making skills but what i did, did work.

oh yeah, to apply this concrete my brother and i just used our hands which i highly suggest you NOT TO DO. The concrete will chemically burn your hands. 

after, we had it covered half way...we ran out of concrete, my brother stood guard because the chickens kept coming over and trying to get on it and leaving chicken foot prints all over. ugh, sometimes farm life is a pain.

day 3 my brother and i got up early and headed to lowes for even more concrete, this time i got even more than we thought we would need. we got the ladybug covered!!!!! 

day 4 i covered the ladybug with the second coating of concrete and for this i wanted a smooth finish so it wouldn't be all bumpy and scratchy on my baby Z.

now, for this one i didnt use my hands...ok, well i did but that was not making it smooth enough and i had a brilliant idea to use a stick on tile because they are flexible and very smooth

the white heart is where Z put her hand prints in the wet concert. i knew i couldn't make it look realistic so i went with cartoon and added the black border at the bottom to blend it in. i will be putting a circular border around it and filling with mulch

old medicine cabinet repurposed

y'all know I've mentioned before that my house is small so storage is key. i picked up this old metal medicine cabinet for $10 and knew right away i liked that it was metal,  the storage it could provide for all of our small junk, and that it opened three ways. what i didn't love was that it was a mirror. i have one open wall in my living room that it would fit perfectly on but i wanted the wall to have art not a mirror.

in comes decoupage. i did a d.i.y. modge podge with some generic school glue only 57 cents to adhere an old world map that i had laying around, so free.
 there it is. done didn't take but maybe 20 minutes and total cost was $10.57

the map i used is actually big enough that i could wrap the frame with it as well. you can see i did it already on the bottom middle section, to see if i like it and i do.

ill post the cabinet frame wrapped when i get it done.

chicken coop on WHEELS

i have been meaning to post this one for a long time, over a year. we were tired of the chicken coop clean up and wanted a new design that would mean less cleaning time. around the same time my brother, works in construction and remodel, had a job with a tongue and grove demo. he asked if i wanted the wood...free lumber that's a big YES PLEASE!!!!

my brother is the greatest y'all. he delivered the lumber and stayed to help me build it.  we live in Texas where it is 100 degrees 90% of the time...i may be slightly exaggerating  but keeping the chickens cool and not warm was the main objective. so, that is why the walls are mostly just chicken wire and not solid. i wanted whatever breeze we had to be able to blow in. we do add a heat lamp for the few cold nights that we get. 

we ended up using sheet metal, for a roof, as the walls on the upper part to keep chickens safe from predators. even in a coop a  raccoon can reach in and hurt or kill one or several chickens. chickens like to perch up high so they are never on the lower beams. we put them in just as a step to the higher beams. 

the inside view. we only put in perching beams and no boxes. we have their boxes built somewhere else and its so great! if the boxes are part of the coop the eggs get so much poop on them, its way better this way

so the above picture is what the bottom looks like from the inside....dirty. this is real life, chickens poop like 24/7 haha. the coop is on wheels and every few days we roll it around and usually i spray the inside down before movoing it but i havent kept up with it due to a crzy cold front in texas. we got snow!!!! that never happens and it was before freezing for days. my husband even had to take a snow day at work haha. 

i do have pictures illustrating the build step by step so comment if yall want more pics or instructions. till next time.

DIY Sring art

So, my brothers girlfriend asked if i could make some string art (specifically this one  and i knew i could but i hadn't in forever so here is a little refresher course for everyone.

  i started with drawing out an outline of the shape i wanted, or shapes....print them to save yourself more time. for this my shapes were the outlines of the good ole USA and Brazil. my brother is currently in a super long distance relationship, she lives in Brazil. which is why she asked me to make this for him instead of making it herself. its their love from one country to another, how cute right?

 back to the instructions.... get ready for some time to pass as you slowly nail in the nails along the outline. when you are done just rip the paper out

then, weave your string between the nails. i chose to go vertically but it doesn't mater

its a neat project with a cool finished look. 

Plain ottoman to toy storage

Half Dozen chicken coop

So, this is the start of our newest chicken coop. We had a devastating loss of all of our chickens and ducks. Long story short, even with a fenced in yard a pack of wild dogs broke in and killed them. For a long time we didn't get more; we had our daughter and a million homestead projects plus we were sad. 

I got us more chickens so we were ready to get the coops built. My brother works in construction and remodel so he often has access to scrap wood. He was working on a tongue and groove ceiling and the clients were going to just throw this wood out!!! Obviously, he took it for me. Thanks Theo. 

Not only did he snag the wood for me but he built this coop too! He started with the side walls. 

The pictures kind of explain the process. This coop will house six chickens and the nesting boxes we have are for our backyard so my brother built in three boxes. Mr and I originally thought that each chicken needed it's own nesting box but they don't so this coop got three perfectly sized boxes and that'll be good enough. 

Till next time, y'all know the drill keep it green, clean, and classy

Shalimar and Z

Trash to Treasure

This is literally trash to treasure transformation today, because i repurposed a trash bin!  I removed the bottom flap and filler. Drilled a hole through the bin into the base. Added my light kit and a LED bulb and presto chango; I've got my over the kitchen light. I love it. When it's on it shines a neat pattern on the ceiling. Till next time keep it green, clean, and classy
Shalimar and Z

$2 Trunk before

I got this trunk for, you guessed it, $2. I needed the storage but it obviously needs a makeover. Which will come in a different post because im not done but thought talking about it would help motivate me to finish!
Till next time

Painting a 90's chandelier

If  you're painting the inside and outside of light globes different colors, paint the inside first. Then, use a plastic drink bottle turned upside down in the light bulb hole to keep overspray from getting on the inside.
Green, clean, classy
Shalimar and baby Z

Another basket makeover

This is a plastic basket that i picked up at the dollar store. They only offered this one color. I need that I wanted it to have a somewhat worn look. I first spray paint the whole thing black. Then, just using some acrylic crafters paint in gold(this stuff is i think 50 cents at walmart) i applied gold accenting with my finger, haha. It is a washable paint. Now, i have a chic basket to hold Baby Z's diapers.

Easy DIY basket update

I picked this basket out at a resale shop for baby Z's nursery. It was the perfect size for her cloth diaper hamper. I love that it had a lid because, well we are talking poopy diapers here:) The colors were wrong but a little paint and a couple minutes and it was perfect.

Insulation, wiring, sheetrock, oh my

A lot has been going on over here at the lakeside homestead.  we finished all the wall framing. Next, we put in all the insulation. Regular R-13 is standard for wall insulation. for the floor and the ceiling we used R 30. Then we put in all of the wiring for outlets and light switches and the lights themselves. Next up was putting the actual wall up for that you use sheetrock. So many hours of measuring and cutting reader almost all of the sheetrock is done.