Barn Door Baby Gate

Hello Dearies!
So my move in day is almost here! I am determined to get into the new house before Halloween. But enough about me. Haha! This week I made a project that not only looks awesome but was very much needed at the new place. Our stare case is lined up weird with the wall and normal baby gate measurements just won’t hook up properly. I tried three brands and wasted over 175 bucks to find that out. We discovered my banister was four inches too short to line the gate up with the wall and my window frames were 3 inches too short to allow the gate to line up with the banister. This was annoying but turned out to be a blessing in disguise. First off I have several baby showers before the end of this year so the gift is taken care of. Everyone needs baby gates right? Haha. Secondly I was very excited to  get to build my barn door. I really wanted to build a barn door for my bedroom but the hubby was not interested. Now I got my barn door… it’s just a third the size. My brother helped me build this gate with left over scrap wood from our other house projects. We used a large 1 inch thick rectangle baseboard. Several 2 by 1's to make the frame and a couple 4 by 1’s. The hardware cost about 20 bucks. WAY cheaper than the baby gates. I should have started with the barn door. I used wood filler to fill in the gaps in wood, because we aren’t perfect and cut a couple wrong. Haha! Then I painted it and my brother installed it. It was pretty easy. Just took some time.
 
 I’m really happy with how it turned out! I’d love to see all of your fun projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Halloween Decor

Hello Dearies!
 Hope you are all having an amazing week. Sorry I’m posting so late tonight. We’ve been spending long days at the new house. Look what we did today!
 
 It’s running water! I’ve never been so excited for indoor plumbing. We still have more to do but the kitchen sink and bathroom sinks and toilets are hooked up! Woohoo! It’s finally starting to feel like a house. Most things are done. We have a few things we are still working on but we are also moving lots of stuff in. It turns out we have lots of stuff. You’d think going from a tiny house to a big house would be easy. That is not the case when they little house has lots of closets and the big house has almost no closets. I’m really not sure where I’m going to put all of our stuff. But anyways, Lookie! My yellow chairs found their permanent home. I couldn’t be more excited with how good they look.
 
 And you’ll notice that I’ve gotten some Halloween décor out

 This little bit is the only stuff I have inside. I’ve put up a few of my babies outside on the porch. Spoiler alert, they aren’t real babies. Haha. I like my halloween scary. Here are some old photos of my babies at the old house. I will post new pictures of them soon but it’s late and I have no light. WARNING! SCARY DÉCOR PICTURED BELOW!
 
 Before you ask, My neighbors do love me. I’m a really nice person. I swear There are 3 Halloween projects I want to do (and have made myself a promise that they will get done in time) Courtesy of pinterest of course The first one is Painted Eyeballs on Rocks. These look so realistic. I don’t know if mine will turn out this good but I am going to try. The second one is these awesome Spell and Potion Books. Best part is I already have all of the supplies needed so I won’t need to go shopping! The last (and my favorite) is this Googly Eye Monogram. I actually bought all the supplies for this one last year but for some reason I never had the time to do it. I’m really excited to finally make this one and put my own spin on it! I’m very positive that I can get them accomplished and I’m going to work extra hard to make sure I can. I’d love to see all of your fun projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Fixing Whoopsies!

Hello Dearies!
 First off I know I wanted to post all Halloween Decorations this month but I have been so busy trying to get us into the house that I haven’t had any time to do any Halloween stuff. It’s actually making me really sad because there is a chance we won’t be moved before the holiday and I’ll have to cancel my party and that just makes me wanna cry. But enough of the sadness, onto this weeks project. One lesson I would like to teach everyone about renovating an entire house is getting used to the fact that everything goes wrong. EVERYTHING! I feel like any problem that needed fixing has needed to be fixed at least twice. And while some of that is our mistakes (we’re only human). Most of it is because of things that our out of our hands. We were sold bad paint so we had to scrape clean the two rooms and re-paint. The previous owner had done bad wiring so we had to cut holes in the walls and repair outlets. The kitchen cabinets and countertops that the previous owner promised would fit back into the empty room that was the kitchen… Surprise! Didn’t fit! So we had to spend an extra 6 grand on an all new kitchen… which brings me to my next project. You see that spot in the photo below? The spot where it looks like their should be a counter top but there is none?
 
 I ordered the cabinets and the counter top at the exact same time from the exact same place and yet somehow, they gave us a counter top that was too short for my cabinets. 10 inches to short! They didn’t want to replace the counter top because that would cost them (the store where we purchased this kitchen) too much. They offered to send a new cabinet but I didn’t want a tiny cabinet. I liked my big one. I decided to just say “forget them!” and somehow fix it myself. I decided to make a cutting board. At first I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this. Then when my brother started cutting the frames for our windows, I noticed the angle was perfect to hold my pretty tiles and I was inspired! For this project I used: *16 pieces of scrap wood with one edge on each cut at a forty five degree angle. I believe this wood is maple but it might also be pine. (I’ve bought a lot of wood lately. It’s hard to keep track) *Wood Glue *4 Four inch tiles *Tile adhesive *a thin base board. I found this in the scrap pile on my back porch. I have no idea what kind of wood it is.
 
 After setting up the wood and tile how I wanted them, I noticed the tile would need to be doubled up to make the board even. I picked a couple ugly tiles for this job.
 
 To make sure everything lines up ok, I did the tiles one at a time. First I used ceramic adhesive to glue one of my ugly tile face down on my base board. Then I used wood glue to attach the first 8 wood pieces to each side of the tile.
 
 If any of your boards are shorter than the others, put those near the horizontal points of the tile (where my measuring tape is in the photo below). It will make them stick out more  so you can keep you board wide. I needed mine as wide as my counter (25 inches) so keeping it long was very important.
 
 After the first 8 were in place, I glued in the pretty tile face up on top of my ugly tile. I did the same pattern for the second tile.
 
 Let dry. wood glue and cermaic adhesive both take awhile so I let mine sit for a couple days while I worked on other projects. I think just one day would be enough though. Then I had my brother measure and trim my board to size.
 
 It fits perfectly! I still need to sand it but I am so happy with how it turned out. I’m going to bring the tile down the back wall to line the board the same way I did the countertops.
 
 What do you think? Have any big whoopsies forced you to get creative lately? I’d love to see all of your fun projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Happy October

Hello Dearies! So I know it’s still early but I am already in full October mode. It is my favorite month, has my favorite weather, my favorite holiday, I love it so much! Since we are still working on the house, I don’t yet have the opportunity to decorate so I wanted to share with you some awesome Halloween nail art instead. Not all of these are new so you may have seen them already in my weekly nail posts. This is just a collection of Halloween nail art photos :)
 First my daughters nails… Minions!
 
 My skeleton nails. They didn’t turn out as perfect as I would have liked but I still really loved this mani.
 
 The below manis ware a mix of crackle polish (my favorite!) glitter, jack o lanterns, frankenstein’s monster and bride of frankenstein’s monster. I don’t know about you but I love when my nails are all non matchy.
 
 And of course you can never go wrong with eyeballs and stitches.
 
 I’d love to see your nails! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Painted Door

Hello Dearies!
 Hope you are all having a great week. Let me start by updating you all on our house. Our plumbing (done by my dad) is the only thing that hasn’t had any updates. He’s a busy truck driver and farmer and with harvest going on, I really have no idea when he’ll finally get over to the house and hook things up for us. That being said, We were very productive this past weekend and the rest of the house will most likely be done NEXT WEEK!!! I’m so excited! We’ll still be stuck in the old house until the plumbing gets hooked up but at least we’ll be able to start moving most of our stuff in. Ok so for todays project, I did another awesome thing this weekend. One of my favorites… And now I’m just realizing that I refer to a lot of these projects as my favorites. Haha! I can’t help it. I’m getting my dream home and my excitement is off the charts :) So I painted my door. My favorite Aunt (she knows it!) has always painted her front door a fun color. I always wanted to do it but my hubby was never on board with the idea. The other day, out of the blue, he asks me what color I’m painting the door. I didn’t remind me that he hated the idea, I just told him I needed to shop for colors. And then I did! I picked out an amazing orange! I’m so in love. Everytime I open my screen door (which is plain white) and the orange pours out at me, I just get so giddy! Ok so for the details. The was not an easy slap on the paint job like my awesome yellow chairs, this took some prep work. For this project I used *Screw Driver *Wood Filler *Sand Paper *Painters Tape *Razor blade * Paint. Since this door is my front door I used an outdoor paint. First, I uninstalled the blinds from the window. If your door has no blinds, you won’t need the screw driver. Then I gave my old door a good washing. It was super dirty.
 
 This door is really really old, and has a lot of wear to it, so I had to use wood filler to patch a whole lot of little holes and scratches. After the filler dried, I sanded and sanded and then sanded some more. Haha!
 
 Then I taped up the windows. This part was the worst. You’d think since the windows were all straight line and the tape is a straight line that it would go together really smoothly. You’d be wrong, This was a giant pain in the bootie! But worth the hard work because it looks great now.
 
 A smart person would remove the door from it’s hinges at this point but I was all alone and the old door was crazy heavy so I left it all hooked up. I probably should have taped up the hinges too but after taping up the windows, I though “screw it, I’ll just be careful.” And I was. And it turned out just fine. Haha!
 
 The first coat was a bit streaky so I did a second.
 
 Wait until the paint dries to remove the window tape. Use the razorblade to cut the tape out. If you just rip the tape off, you could rip out a lot of paint with it. It took two coats of my pretty orange to cover the door. AND I have lots of paint left over so I can paint something else orange too :)
 
 Please ignore the horrible floor. My living room is the only floor in the house I haven't done yet. I've decided to do it last because the boys are messy and I don't need them ruining my new floor while they are building the banister and framing out the windows. It will be pretty when we move in! Feel free to ask me any questions at all and as always, I’d love to see your projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie