Category Archives: Other Upgrades and Repairs

On this section, you will find information about topics that may not necessarily be about home improvement, but about other home-related issues, upgrades, maintenance and repairs!

Building a DIY Storage Shed from Scratch

While framing the shed’s walls

Wow! Time really does fly! A little over a year ago, I posted the first part of this project. In that post, I explained how we built the foundation for this DIY Storage Shed (my apologies if you’ve been waiting for me to show the rest of the work before you start working on your own shed!).

To be honest, it didn’t take me a year to build it, it has just been taking us way too long to work on posts for the blog. There are way too many different things taking our time these days, from virtual school right after the quarantine started in March, to the birth of our beautiful daughter in April. Everything is taking longer in our home now.

The good thing is that it is done now, and we got all the landscaping tools, including the lawnmower, and the wheelbarrow out of the garage! There is also enough space in there for the table saw and other smaller tools. I’m just super happy to finally have those in their own storage shed, instead of taking space in the garage like they used to.

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Walk-In Master Closet Remodel

Our walk-in master closet before the remodel

We had been wanting to “fix” our walk-in master closet since the day we moved to this house. We believe that whoever designed it thinks that people only use their closets to hang clothes. He or she forgot about shoes, towels, bed sheets and other everyday items, there was no space for them!

The shoes on the floor were a big problem. They looked disorganized and it was a pain to move them out of the way before vacuuming the carpet. The bed sheets and comforters were way up high in the top shelf, hard to reach and difficult to organize.

While working on many other projects, we kept thinking that we had to work in our master closet, we had different ideas, and layouts in mind to fix it. At the same time, we were overthinking the “inconvenience” of working in it. We kept asking ourselves, where do we put everything while we work in it?

One day, we said, enough! This has to change! So as part of our house’s organization efforts, we decided to get it done!

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Building the Foundation for a DIY Storage Shed

The area where we are building our shed

I never considered building a storage shed before. I always thought that if we kept the clutter down, we could live without one. On the other hand, I’ve never liked storing a bunch of landscaping tools in the garage. They look ugly and take a lot of space, In my opinion, there’s no easy way to store them so they look nice and organized in there.

What we have been doing until now is storing all the shovels, rakes and other small landscaping tools in one of our Kobalt tall cabinets. However, we still have a lawn mower and a wheelbarrow taking a lot of space. We need to take them out of there!

In agreement with what I said above, and because (in case you don’t know it yet) we love working on projects, we never considered getting one of those huge storage sheds they sell at Home Depot, Lowes and other stores. We are building our own!

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Fixing a Dripping Delta Single Handle Kitchen Faucet

My sister’s Dripping Delta Single Handle Kitchen Faucet

A few weeks ago we went visit my sister in Texas. Not long after we got there, I realized that she was having a hard time making sure that her Delta Single Handle Kitchen Faucet would not drip after closing it.

She kind of had already figured out a way to do it, but it still took longer than it should. When I asked her about it, she complained that my brother-in-law had not had time to take a look at it.

Do you have any tools? I asked her. So she found me a small box with some screwdrivers, pliers, and other small tools. That was all I needed to get the job started.

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Spray Painting Vent Covers To Match Floor Color

Choosing the right spray paint color for our vent covers

Is it just us or wouldn’t it be better if vent covers didn’t stand out as much as they usually do? In our area, chances are they are beige, even though your flooring is a dark walnut (our case). They may be white, even though your carpet is beige. Or they may be dark brown even though your flooring is a really nice travertine tile.

Does anyone really think they look nice like that?

We don’t. In a perfect world, they’d be completely invisible. However, since that may be next to impossible, we believe that spray painting them is one of the best alternatives you can try to hide, blend or disguise them as much as possible.

On this post, we show you how to do it.

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Turning a Bedroom Into An Office Part 3: Building a Wood Desktop

The lumber we used to build our desktop

As you may know by now, this whole “turning a bedroom into an office” project idea started when we decided to resolve the lack of desk space in what was then our home “office”.

We started painting the room. Then we went ahead and used an old desk from craigslist to build our new desk. And finally, we moved on to the last part of the project, building a wood desktop.

This was not your typical desktop, though, but one that is long enough for a double desk, so both of us can work at the same time. It is 11 ft. and 6 inches long to be exact, and on this post, we show you how we did it.

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Turning a Bedroom Into An Office Part 2: Building a DIY Home Office Desk

The old desk we bought to built our double home office desk

As you learned in our previous post, the main reason why we decided to move forward with this home office project was the need of additional desk space for both of us to work at the same time. While the walls color had nothing to do with the lack of desk space, it was an important part for us. It made sense to take care of them before moving on with the rest of the project.

So, right after putting a fresh coat of paint on the walls and deciding the new office’s layout, we started looking for desk ideas. We came across many different options, but at the end of the day, for several reasons, we decided to try something similar to what we found at Young House Love.

Obviously, we like what they did. When possible, we like recycling and reusing stuff. It seemed like a relatively easy and inexpensive project for us to do, and most importantly, we had most of the supplies we needed to work on it.

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Turning a Bedroom Into An Office Part 1: Changing The Walls Color

The small computer desk we used until now

Even before we moved into this house, we knew we were turning one of the bedrooms into an office. Then, the day we moved and started organizing our furniture, we decided which bedroom it was going to be.

At that point, what made this bedroom an “office” was a very small computer desk I’ve had for years. It is the one I have used to work on many projects until now, including the creation of this blog. Later on, we added a day bed, which we use to read and as an extra bed to accommodate friends and family when they visit.

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How to Do an Oil Change

The basic tools you need to change your oil

Changing your engine’s oil is perhaps one of the most common maintenance items we have to deal with. Long term, it can also be one of the most expensive ones, because, depending on how much you drive, you may need to change it often, at least several times a year. Fortunately, though, it is also one of the easiest ones to do yourself.

Until not too long ago, I would go to one of those quick oil change type places to get it done. Then, I realized that I was paying as much as twice what it would cost me to do it myself. I said, no way!

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The Least Popular Posts Of 2016

No Caption Needed

The end 2016 marked the end of our first full year blogging. In case you have not realized, this blog went live on October 20^th, 2015 the day I posted My First Project Ever! So on December 31^st, 2016, the blog was 1 year, 2 months and 10 days old! Exciting huh?

When we first started, the only traffic we were getting was from friends, family and some spammers. Eventually, though, our organic and referral traffic started showing up! The excitement of seeing the traffic grow is what has kept us going until now (well, we could have kept blogging without traffic anyway, just with less excitement), so we would like to give thanks to all of you who decided to check out our blog. We hope our posts have been helpful and have also encouraged you to complete some DIY projects. That’s the reason why we’re here.

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