Tag: storage

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Our New Bikeport, An Open Air Bike Shed

Posted on by chris

Once the winter rains in California subsided, our family wanted to ride our bikes more.  Our current bike storage location is in the garage, but was inconvenient to get multiple bikes in and out of on a regular basis.  Our large driveway/walkway on the side of our house seemed like a great location to store our bikes.  However, we wanted to protect the bikes, both from the rain and the gaze of bike thieves.

Chris thought of a lightweight structure that had a roof sort of a carport for bikes, i.e. a bikeport.    It’s not a full-blown bike shed because it’s not fully enclosed but it serves the same purpose. Here’s a view of the finished product.  Total cost ~$142

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DIY Designing and Building A Redwood Craftsman Gate (for under $200)

Posted on by chris

After our fence and driveway project (which was completed 4 years ago), we had planned to build a nice gate.  In that previous post, the following line appears:

Chris has plans to build a nice gate, but that project probably won’t get done for a little while.

So here we are “a little while” later and after some gentle nudging from Shirley, I (Chris) am finally going to make the gate.  I had been planning for the gate for quite awhile, including figuring out the design and buying tools, so when it came time to actually build the gate, it didn’t take too much time at all.  Overall, it took about 1 week or so (maybe ~20 hours of actual work) to build the gate.

Here are the finished two gates that will span the narrow driveway, sitting on our back deck.

building redwood craftsman gate

Continue reading “DIY Designing and Building A Redwood Craftsman Gate (for under $200)” →

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IKEA Hack 2: Besta Built-In Family Room TV Bookshelf

Posted on by chris

We love our latest IKEA built-in hack in the great room! (See the built-in IKEA Besta/Pax hack in the living room we finished a year before.) In the great room, we’d had a dark IKEA shelving unit on the TV wall. We decided to replace that shelving unit with a full wall of built-in shelves with lower cabinets, using IKEA Besta shelves, with a few creative touches thrown in. “We” (loosely used; here, meaning 95% Chris, 5% Shirley) probably spent a few hours a day for the better part of a week on this project.

Here’s the result:

 

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DIY: Built-ins using IKEA Besta shelves and Pax wardrobes

Posted on by chris

Here is our IKEA built-in shelf/closet project in our living room!! Read on to see how we got here…

Also see our latest IKEA built-in project. . .

IKEA built-in shelves

The latest project is one that we’ve seen on HGTV and online (like here and here): to take premade bookshelves and cabinets and add molding and baseboards to make it look built-in. We especially wanted to try this on the first floor because Shirley has a lot of books and there’s not a single closet on this floor. We started with the living room, in part because we wanted some place to put the vacuum cleaner. Continue reading “DIY: Built-ins using IKEA Besta shelves and Pax wardrobes” →