When he set out to renovate the kitchen of his West Hollywood condo, Cyrus Deboo discovered more than how to paint cabinets and lay a tile floor. The do-it-yourselfer also found out some things about patience and perseverance. “The incredible lesson I learned from that kitchen rivals anything I learned in therapy,” said Deboo, a…
Over at the Casa de Solariego blog, which is chronicling the building of a straw bale home in San Luis Obispo County, blogger Mark explains how he stained his new concrete floor with ferrous sulfate, a common fertilizer, for only five bucks: "We started out by mixing up ferrous sulfate and diluting it in water.…
There’s a cute and savvy seven-point tutorial over at the Becoming Home blog on how not to paint your kitchen cabinet doors. Here’s tip No. 2 from the author: Don’t Use Pure White Paint: You probably know this already, but no one (except me apparently) paints anything pure white — and with good reason. There…
When Arnie and Lily Richards remodeled the kitchen in their Downey home — doing every single task themselves — Lily’s wish list included a custom stove hood. Arnie was a little tired from the months-long process when the job of building the hood came up. But he’s a good husband, and so he made it…
In this kitchen, the backsplash tile sets the tone. If your kitchen could be jazzed up with tile, installing a backsplash is a good DIY project. I saw step-by-step instructions for this in a great book from The Taunton Press called 52 Weekend Makeovers, so I got permission from the editors to reprint their excellent…
The great thing about living in a metropolitan area is your access to so many shops, supply houses and enterprises. Daniel Gonzales and Janice Stango took full advantage of this when they set out to convert their old, dirt-floored garage in North Hollywood into a sitting area (they will build a carport to replace it…
If you’re a serial remodeler, you’ve likely got half-full cans of latex paint around house. What to do with it? CNN reports on two cities, San Francisco and Miami, who take in extra latex paint, mix like colors together, and give it away. Here’s another idea, from Santa Monica decorator (and my friend) Kitty Bartholomew:…