I’ve always loved DIY projects ever since I was a young boy, making wooden swords and ice skate boards with scrap metals and woods, etc. In middle school, I got pretty good at making silver necklaces that I was commissioned by several teachers to make their’s. Also sold some rings made out of copper pipes to local neighborhood kids for nickles and dimes.
As I grew older so has my projects over the years. As a semi-professional photographer, I did countless photography related DIYs, such as attaching caster wheels onto my tripod using some plumbing materials, flash diffusers using ripstop nylon fabric, speedlite flash gel holders using downspouts from Home Depot, wheeled lightstands and monitor stands with PVC tubes, a beauty dish (sort of a “softbox”) made out of plastic party bowl, and the list goes on. I have a DIY home photography “studio” in my basement that I built. All of my family’s formal photo needs were met there.
As a home owner, my DIY projects involved the reflooring of all three floors from carpet to luxury laminate woods, refinishing our 25-year old bathroom and kitchen countertops with epoxy resin and new back splashes, and converted our kids’ (now in colleges) swing set into a vegetable garden with hanging flowers. The latest DIY of mine just completed involved a construction of a 13x13’ pergola in the backyard deck with the “bar” countertop with Tiki torches around it, as well as 48’ string lights in the ceiling. The pressure-treated red woods were so heavy to work with all by myself, but I had so much fun working on this project that I didn’t want it to end.
I’m sure there are many of you who are DIY’ers, and I’d love to learn about your favorite projects you’ve been working on.
I just came inside from building a retaining wall from field stones. The rocks came from the family farm and, before that, the Canadian glaciers. The shapes and sizes vary and each piece has to fit into the puzzle created by the adjoining rocks. Its an exercise in geometry, problem-solving, and aesthetics to make the pieces join tightly with as few gaps as possible and create a visually-pleasing variation in size, shape, and color. Do it right and you can turn irregular pieces into a vertical wall. There is no perfect solution and you just have to build with whatever elements you have on hand. A lot like life.
When I was married, my ex used to like to do few DIY projects around the house. I think we stayed married as long as we did was because I had a handyman on call who would come over to finish his projects.
As an example, he would put up a door to the kitchen, but wouldn’t finish painting it.
Now I live in an apartment, I just pay to have my building’s handyman to do what needs to get done. No nagging.
I have a good friend who is a great carpenter (make kitchen cabinets without nails). He drove his wife crazy by making/installing kitchen cabinets, and couldn’t bother to put up the cabinet doors.
Tigger, I have a DIY Kitchen. It’s my… pride and joy. I made myself a wish list and checked off every little detail that I could for my dream kitchen. It’s all in the details… down to the under cabinet lighting, to the retractable drawers for pots and pans, the the tip out trays in those faux sink drawers, etc. I went as far as to custom order blinds and everything, just to make it exactly how I wanted it.
Are we just talking about remodeling DIY? Or do little things count? My husband and I made a cat tree. He built the structure out of PVC pipe and I made the perches out of heavy duty canvas and industrial strength hook and loop. It’s six feet high, the cats love it and I can wash the canvas perches when they get covered with cat hair. Very satisfying.
When my boys were taking Taekwondo lessons, I brought home those boards that they were required to break for belt promotion tests, thinking that they’d be useful for something one day. One summer day, I cut down a ton of dead aspen trees in my backyard. The result of using the broken Taekwondo boards and some dead Aspen branches? Cabin-style birdhouses. Four of them now hang in trees in my backyard.
When we needed to get a biofilter for our pond (also a DIY big dig project), we had a choice of either burying the filter in the ground or hiding it abocve the ground. Mr. B made a wishing well around the filter using scraps of lumber and added a horizontal panel of glass at the top to create a small waterfall to return water into the pond. It was amazing.
TiggerDad, and to think I just chucked S2’s years of Taekwondo boards about two months ago…what a great idea!
Around the house, I’ve made all the curtains, painted all the walls, made a tiled mirror and other small projects. I don’t do plumbing or electrical. Until my cardiologist vetoed it, I did all the yardwork (yeah blood thinners).
I do crafty things. Wedding decorations of all kinds, Judaic fabric art, curtains, clothes, costumes, wedding gowns, and these days, quilts for a local women’s shelter and new babies. The fabric donations for the shelter quilts has become overwhelming and I’m sorting through them to pass on some fabric to another group that makes quilts for kids in the hospital. I have to do this while my DH is out of town, because if he knew just how much fabric I have, his head would explode.
Why do people who don’t sew care how much fabric sewers have? This is like a meme among my sewing friends. I neither know nor care how much lumber or sheet metal my husband has and would certainly never comment. Nor is he keeping track of my fabric. Or my needlepoint yarn. Or my paints. Or my patterns. Or my markers.
I’m working on building a water fountain. It’s a four part structure of interconnected square teak boxes of varying heights. The water will cascade from box to box to box to the lowest box and then be pumped back up. Building the structure was the easy part; the plumbing will be easy too; the challenge will be choosing and installing the finish materials for each of the pools and waterfalls.
I think DIY projects should include cooking, gardening, etc as well as construction projects - because, they are all construction! You construct and follow directions for a recipe. A garden takes planning to scale space, proper tools/accessories for best growth (trellises and such) and regular maintenance to achieve a product.
If these count, I am a DIY’er.
The definition of DIY is:
the activity of decorating, building, and making repairs at home by oneself rather than employing a professional.
I DIY decorating. Generally do all the painting in the house!
Yes, baking etc. counts! Our kids DIY big kid’s wedding cake (cupcake tower with a hand–painted top depicting bride and groom in lab coats). It was a huge hit!
DH is an engineer, so everything is a diy in our house. Sigh. Over the last two weekends, he replaced the front tires on our 25 year old lawn tractor (which came with the house) and fixed a fuel line hose leak with a piece of hose he just happened to have saved from some other project. He was downright giddy about that.
Those fuel line hoses don’t last long. Fuel and these hoses don’t seem to be compatible, yet they keep making these hoses with the same material. My Hitachi weed trimmer has the same issue, which many consumers complain about. These hoses crack and thus the leak. It just needs to be replaced from time to time.
I’d be interested in being updated as you go about building a water fountain. I’ve had water fountains when I was living in Tucson a couple decades ago, but the interest sort of faded as I moved since. Keep us posted.
Way back when Trading Spaces was relatively new, I watched it regularly. One weekend when DH was out of town, I looked around and thought, hmm, if I spray paint that planter gold and move these items around, this corner will look much better. So I did and it did. I also once redid a guest room by painting the walls and moving some pictures around - and bought a new quilt. Does that count as decorating by oneself?
