Encouragement for the weary do-it-yourselfer....

I was at the hockey rink with my little laddies yesterday talking to my dear friend about my do-it-yourselfer plans (which she is SO encouraging about) when I realized that perhaps I have not been altogether upfront about how hopeless I really am being a do-it-yourselfer. 

The entire point of my musings is to make even one person realize that if someone as unschooled as me can get going and create something amazing - then they can to! The fact that I talk about doing these things in my home is super important to me - what better place to add beauty and art than the place that our favorite people live?

So here are a few gorgeous failings of mine that will hopefully make you laugh and feel, well - hopeful!

Curtains.  We don't have curtains.  This is our second home.  We didn't have curtains in our first and we don't have them in our second.  I personally believe hubby has something against them.  Our first home was so bright that you couldn't actually be in the living room for about 4 hours of the day - especially in the winter when the sun was lower.  Now, hubby went off to work - and me and the children, like little worms, just kind of shrank away from the sun.  It was ridiculous until I ordered giant curtains from Sears.  The kind that we all grew up with - shiny, cream-coloured drapes: sharp hooks and all.

I seem to remember that hubby had ripped out the curtain rods in his renovating fury (all done while I was not present...), so that when I asked, with my most charming eyes, if he would put them up it was quite a grunting, sweating, swearing kind of affair.  The kind where the children have to be in bed - for a long time.

Now, in our second home, I have bought some kind of panels for our dining room windows which our beloved neighbours have to look straight into day after day.  It is also by far the brightest room in our house and can bump the temperature up through the roof in the summer.  They are brown.  They are bad.  My youngest has tugged on them so that the seam is now pulling apart, making them look (if you can believe it) - worse.  From the outside, the dark brown against our green house is atrocious.  So when they are shut it is actually an offense against our darling neighbours who we love.  Inside, they aren't - quite - big enough, so they look kind of gangly and weird.

My dear friend said yesterday - "Oh honey, can one of your projects be curtains???" 

I should say that she kindly offered just to make them for me - but she is semi-professional in my mind - so I feel guilty about taking her up on it - it seems to be cheating.  I have to decide if being a DIY-er means being smart enough to let someone more talented than you get 'er done.   (Probably)

Furniture.  All of our furniture with the exception of our kitchen table is a hand-me-down.  When hubby's grandfather died, we inherited his furniture.  Solid - but the pattern is disturbing.  The pattern reminds me of something anatomical that once you've kind of looked at it that way, never quite looks the same again.

That couch is in my living room.

The furniture in our family room is a sectional set that my friend's husband's mother gave to us.  It was her's from the time that we were all babies.  That's some serious time ago.  Just to give you a feel for how old this thing is - it came with a giant, round, padded, upholstered, circle that you could pull apart into 4 pie-shaped ottoman's that I think were once the right height for putting your feet up on - but over time as the springs in the rest of the couch sagged, seemed ridiculously high.  The circle went to the dump - but the couch still lives with us.

I say lives with us - because with the amount of people and creatures that have been on it - I think all of those particles have formed a new life.  Needless to say, that couch is destined for departure.

My dining room table came from my mom.  My boys have destroyed the table.  Thankfully, Project Mama's Mama is artsy by nature and holds on to things EXTREMELY lightly.  She doesn't give a fig.  One chair they pulled apart in about 5 minutes of knocking it over (not super sturdy evidently), so now we don't have all the chairs and the rest are on their last legs.

Our bedroom is a hodge podge of pieces.  We actually did buy the bed - a pine slatted frame and a mattress.  The rest is great furniture from Grandpa again - but does it match?  Do you need to ask?

The boys' bedrooms are furnished with hand-me-downs that are my age.  I'm sure that they are bomb proof, but is that always a good thing?  They were made before safety features were considered important.  So now the top bunk bed has a big, unfinished 2 X4 railing that my dear uncle put in place for me, and the captain's bed is backwards so that the edge board, that would normally go against the wall, keeps my son from falling out of bed.

Hmmm....



So you see -

If I can do it, you can too!

Project Mama