Fawn from Frugal Home Design has an awesome blog with one of my favorite labels – “DIY”! If you haven’t stumbled across it yet, now is your chance. Here are two projects I absolutely love.

I love her book display! I want to make one for my home. I don’t have kids but we do have magazines all over the place. This would be such a great idea for organizing most recent magazine issues too.

$20 DIY Book Display-4 Shelves

I have FINALLY found a solution to the great book storage problem.

I have a 2 year-old and 3 year-old (non-readers) so when they want to read a book they pull every book out to see the front! Not to mention, they didn’t know how to put them back standing up with all the backs facing out. It was making me crazy. I have tried several options (THIS, THIS, THIS). Nothing was working, until I saw this on Ohdeedoh
I was in love. They used something similar to the Ribbia Picture Ledge from Ikea. We don’t have an Ikea near us and I didn’t want to pay $ 20 dollars per shelf. I thought it looked like a pretty easy DIY so I went for it.

Off to Home Depot I went. I wanted 4-36 inch shelves. Here is my shopping list…for a total of $20.

4-6 foot 1×3
2-6 foot 1×2

I asked the nice guy at Home Depot to cut them to length for me then we were out the door. I already had the other materials I needed: wood glue, nail gun with nails, and caulk.

First step, attach 2 1×3’s together with wood glue and nails.

Step two, attach the 1×2 to the front, again using wood glue and my awesome nail gun.

Last steps:caulk, fill nail holes, and paint. Easy Peasy.

I attached the shelves to the wall with 3″ screws into studs. I love them and it has renewed the kids interest in their books, but best of all, the kids can pick out and pick up their books with ease.

The lion mask in the above picture was made by my mom.

This is another one of her projects and it is exactly my style and something I plan to do in my home too. Fawn – thanks so much for the inspiration and helpful tutorial. I LOVE your motivation:

Board and Batten Entryway/Coat Rack

So I live in a house built in the 90’s with no character to speak of. Slowly but surely I am trying to make it feel more comfortable and give a more character. This was my first attempt at board and batten. I absolutely love it and I definitely want to do more treatments like it in my house.

This is the entry we started with. It doesn’t really have room for much. Both the front door and closet door open to the wall, limiting space immensely. I have tried several things, but nothing really worked.

Inspired by these beautiful pictures and wonderful tutorial from Karla and Will at It’s The Little Things That Make a House a Home I finally figured out what I needed to do to my entry (and now I had my nail gun I got for my birthday) so it was time to get started.

So I came up with a plan that looked like this–very professional.

Then off to Home Depot I went to purchase my primed MDF, came home and got to work.

It is amazing I can get anything done with these two rugrats running around “helping” me. I love this picture because it truly depicts what happens when I (and probably most of you) get involved in a project. The house gets trashed. And yes, my son is wearing a skirt, but in his mind it is his superhero belt.

I did this project back in November so I don’t remember exactly how much it cost, but I think about $4o. I absolutely love it.

Now some new tile and a pendant light fixture and I will be completely happy.