[doityourself]

Going blog crazy today! Actually, I'm just trying to take full advantage of the fact that I already cleaned the house today and my dogs are entertaining themselves long enough for me to write a few posts and take pictures of the house so that I can do some house posts! Normally I spend the day following Bear around making sure he doesn't go potty in the house, steal Penny's toys, eat things he's not supposed to [especially rocks and power cords], and following Penny around making sure she doesn't get her muddy paws on our new couches, steal Bear's toys, and put things in her mouth that she's not supposed to [like Bear's whole head].

Last weekend, when the pup's were not behaving well, Paul and I decided to stick them in the house for the day and have some fun of our own! I don't know how normal this is, but apparently our idea of fun usually has something to do with going to a hardware store and randomly deciding to build something we have no idea how to build. In reality...that's more Paul's idea of fun.. I just go to the paint isles and day dream about painting our ugly-brown walls a better color! And so, last weekend, we did just that! We hopped in Q, Paul's weirdly named truck, and made our way over to Lowe's while frantically looking up how to build an outdoor table and color schemes for bookshelves.

We've been planning on buying an outdoor patio set, but in this spur of the moment Lowe's DIY trip, we [Paul] decided to build it himself! During this super-macho day dream of his, I was day dreaming ways to make our house look, well, less brown. Everything is brown here! The houses are all brown adobe brick, the ground is completely brown everywhere, our house is painted brown, and it just so happened that every single piece of furniture we brought down here is brown too. Gross! So, I decided that because Paul was doing his weird DIY builder man thing, I was going to re-invent the one piece of furniture that is my favorite, and the one that was the most brown- our bookshelf!

[our unfortunately brown bookshelf, pre makeover]

[At this stage I had no idea how he was going to make a table]

After probably three hours at Lowe's, we made our way back home with a truck-full of lumber, drill bits, wood stain, wood conditioner, outdoor sealant, paint brushes, paint, paint trays, and painting tape! We might have been  a little over-ambitious, but we were definitely determined! I started painting the inside of the bookshelf, and found that the colors I picked were a liiiiitle more bright than I thought, but nothing was going to stop me at this point! While Paul was drilling holes into every single piece of wood we bought, screwing them all together and somehow making a table, I was casually painting my book shelf and watching the office! [and drinking a beer].

[starting to look more like a table, and less like scattered 2x4s]

[seriously, way brighter than i thought]

It took two days and probably eight hours, but we were done! The bookshelf looks 1000x better, our house looks a lot less brown, and we have a patio table... just not chairs yet :). The only thing left to do is stain the table, and then we are in business!

 [much less brown, much more cute]

[he did it! I'm not sure how, but he did it!]

Perfect weekend? I think so!