How to build a wooden trellis

After we moved into our house we discovered a young grape vine growing in the back yard. Well, it wasn't growing when we moved in, at that point it really just looked like a stick in the ground, but before long it sprouted leaves, and vines and even a solitary little bunch of grapes. We're still waiting to find out what type of grapes we have, and whether they're good for eating (or making wine?). In the meantime I thought I'd better do something to support the vines that were getting ganglier by the day, and starting to lean out onto the ground.

I checked out trellises at my local hardware and garden stores, and was shocked to find that even basic wooden ones cost at least $30. Forget what you'd pay for a fancy wrought-iron one! The one I made cost about $6 in materials, and took me less than an hour to make. I used five 8' 1x2s, a hand saw, a drill and a handful of 1.5" screws. If you have any scraps of 1x2 around, this is a great opportunity to use them up, since this project requires some shorter pieces, and it doesn't really matter how long they are. Here's my setup:

I started by laying an 8' 1x2 that would be the center piece on the ground, and attached a short (about 1') cross piece to it about 18" from the bottom using two screws. If you want to be sure that the wood won't split, you can pre-drill the holes, but I just went ahead with the screws themselves and backed up and drilled if the wood looked like it was starting to split.

I then attached two more 8' 1x2s, one to each end of the cross piece, using only one screw each so that I would be able to adjust the angle between each of them and the cross piece. This is how you control how much wider your trellis is at the top than it is at the bottom. I just sort of looked at it and adjusted it until it seemed right.

I used a scrap piece of 12 that I had lying around for the next cross piece, attaching it where the vertical pieces were the same distance apart as it was long. I then cut one of the other 8' 1x2s into two pieces, one smaller and one bigger, and attached them lower down and higher up on the trellis, respectively. I attached each one to the center piece and each of the other vertical pieces with two screws. 

At that point I decided that the trellis had enough bars and vertical pieces for my purposes, but you could certainly add as many cross pieces as you want. If your outside vertical pieces were farther apart, or you wanted to build a very tall trellis (or a short wide one), you could add more vertical pieces. I would recommend attaching them to the second or third cross piece, so that more structure is added to the trellis as it gets wider. 

Here's how the trellis looks now that the grape vines have grown a bit more, and are used to being supported by it.

Grapes are, of course, far from the only type of plant that a trellis like this could be used for. It would be great for roses too, and you could use different sizes and widths of trellises for raspberries, cucumbers, pole beans or any kind of climbing vine. 

You could also paint or decorate this trellis in any number of ways (red, anyone?) to add a splash of extra colour and interest to your yard or garden. Do you have a home made or decorated trellis? I'd love to see what you've done, and hear your ideas for how I should jazz mine up a bit!

Makeover: Adding Colour and Contrast in the Kitchen

 I am one of the very fortunate women (who are becoming more and more common, it seems) whose husband loves to cook. And I'm not talking about barbecuing, which James also does exquisitely, but the real gourmet stuff. Don't get me wrong, I can hold my own in the kitchen, but since James cooks most of the dinners, it seemed only right that he have a proper kitchen to do it in. And so the kitchen makeover began.

These photos were taken by the folks at Homes in Motion, who kindly gave me permission to use them here, to advertise our house before we bought it. The door on the back wall opens out onto the back patio, and the one in the opposite corner leads down to the basement. Since we don't have the money to tear out any walls at the moment, the basic structure of the room had to stay the same. 

We love how bright the kitchen is, but hated having the fridge all the way across the room from the stove and sink. For financial reasons the cabinets, counters and floors had to stay (at least for now). Lucky for us, James' parents gave us a generous housewarming gift, so we were able to replace the fridge from 1986 (yup, that was the date on the sticker on the back) and the 27" electric stove with miniature oven. (No turkeys or full size baking sheets would have fit in there, never mind dutch ovens full of lamb roasts, which are not unheard of at our house.)

The other important issue for us was the lack of a dishwasher. We had to have one, not least because I abhor washing dishes, but also because it apparently uses less water to wash dishes in the dishwasher than it does to wash them by hand. (That's a convenient rationalization, isn't it?) Since it had to be installed close to a water source and drain, and we didn't want to lose a cabinet and 4 drawers, we opted for a mini dishwasher that was only 18" wide.

The biggest design challenge was figuring out what to do about our stranded fridge. We didn't want to put the fridge beside the stove, not only because having a heat source right next to the fridge isn't a great idea, but also because we didn't want to block the lovely window that's there. But where else could it go? After a few days of mulling it over, James came up with a brilliant solution. We would seal off the door to the hallway (after all, we already have access to the living room from the kitchen), and get a shallow fridge that would fit in the space between the liquor cabinet and the door to the basement. Eureka! (One of these days I'll post about the experience of hanging a 26" door in a 27" door frame that's not square, but that's a story for another day.) You'd never even know there used to be a doorway there now, would you?


We decided on black for the new appliances, since stainless steel appliances are significantly more expensive, and the ones that just look like stainless still seem to cost more than black. Also, we like black. We think it looks modern, and it's easy to keep clean. In order to unify the look of the kitchen given the black appliances and white cabinets, I had the brilliant idea (is it okay not to be modest? I think it was brilliant!) of replacing the white cabinet handles with black ones. 

In addition to jazzing the place up by adding black accents, we decided that the walls needed a splash of colour too. Along with our bright yellow/orange accent wall (which friends who helped us paint were really not sure about at the time), we opted to paint the bulkhead above the cabinets a lovely dark Georgian brick red that matches our banister.

For storage we used shelves that we already had, selected mostly because they fit the space. We also added a fantastic kitchen island that we found for $250! We love having the extra counter space, and it has a drawer and a shelf for added storage too. Best of all, we fluked out and found a mahogany one with the wood of the base stained in a reddish tint, to match our red accent bulkhead.


One of our favourite features of the kitchen was the built-in liquor cabinet, which you can see between the door to the living room and the door to the hallway. We wanted to highlight it as a special feature, so removed the door and painted the inside of the cabinet dark red. James had to use a screw extractor bit to remove the hinges, but once we had the right tool, the job went smoothly.


When it came time to decorate we were thrilled to discover that the faux-window painting that my mum had created for our kitchen wall in Austin, based on a photo that I took while we were travelling in France, was a perfect match with our new yellow wall colour. It now hangs over our kitchen table (you can see it in the photo, above). With a few more little personal touches, like these great canisters with little yellow flowers that match our yellow wall that James' mom brought for us from her house, the kitchen has really started to feel like home. 


I am amazed and what a difference we have made to this room without changing its fundamental structure in any way. It feels modern, bright and fun, which just goes to show what updated appliances, paint and and the right island can do for a kitchen!


Have you ever made a dramatic change to a room in your home without altering its structure? Perhaps you've changed it's purpose or layout just by swapping out the furniture, and updated it with fresh paint. If you have, we'd love it if you'd share your tips and experiences in the comments!

Makeover: From Back Patio to Outdoor Oasis

One of the spaces in our home that we have come to use the most since summer has arrived is our back patio, so I wanted to share with you how it came to be so nice and comfortable, since it wasn't that way at all when we moved in. Here is what the back patio looked like when we moved in:

Since then, it has come a very long way. The first addition was the cheap plastic greenhouse that we brought over from our old place. It was a set of poles and shelves with a clear plastic cover that goes over it. I won't recommend it here, since one of the zippers broke almost right away, and it kept falling over (which really isn't good for the plants). In any case, I managed to stabilize it by attaching a 1x2 diagonally across the back, so at least it doesn't fall over any more, and it now provides at least a little covered outdoor shelving for storing gardening and barbecue tools.

Early in the season we picked up a great table and chair set that we love, on sale for only $99. They're metal and really sturdy (although storing them will take up a bit of space in the winter), so we're hoping they'll last a long time. Next, we added a 8' x 8' canopy for shade, which we got at a steep discount because it was discontinued. We picked up a Weber charcoal barbecue and chimney starter (a must-have for any charcoal grill-master, which James is planning to post about soon), and then it was just a matter of adding a few finishing touches.

Our whimsical new door mat!

When James' parents came to visit last week, his mom got us a great outdoor rug for under the table and chairs, and a whimsical bird-themed doormat (above), to help keep the mud from the garden from making it's way onto the kitchen floor. His dad helped us to replace the old outdoor light with a one with a motion sensor for security (and savings, since it won't get left on like the old one sometimes did.) And there you have it, our wonderful outdoor oasis!

Choosing Paint Colours

One of the first things we have decided to change in our new home is the colour of the walls. We want to paint right away both because the existing paint is old, and needs to be refreshed, but also because putting our colours up on the walls will make the house feel like our home, rather than someone else's.

Here are a few tips that we used along the way:

Tip #1 When choosing paint colours is that it's important to see the colours in context, preferably in a variety of the different light conditions that the room you're planning to paint will be seen in. Try taping paint swatches to the wall and living with them for a while to see which ones you like best at different times of day.

Tip #2 Invest in a small sample pot of the colour you're thinking of buying for about $5, and go ahead and paint it on the wall. Be sure to do two coats, so you can see what it will really look like. This was key for us in deciding which wall to have as the accent wall, and which to use a more neutral tone on.

Tip #3 Remember that you can order any colour at full strength, 75%, 50% or only 25% saturation. So if there's a colour that you like, but you think it's too dark, this may be a good option for you. 

Tip #4 When you get your sample pot, you can ask them to mix it at 50% and show it to you, and then decide whether to leave it like that, or have them top it up to full strength. That way you can get an idea of what it would look like at half strength before you commit!

Tip # 5 Did you know that any paint company can match the colours in any other paint company's swatch book? We ended up using Benjamin Moore colours, but Behr paint, which was much less expensive!

It is pretty clear to us that pink isn't the right colour choice for our bedroom, and that we don't really love shiny ceilings, deciding which colours we do want to live with from here on out is more difficult than deciding which ones we don't like.

The very pink master bedroom in our new house.

In our last home, a condo in Austin, Texas that we sold last summer before moving to Toronto, we did a lot of painting, and we were really happy with the colours we ended up choosing. So, we seriously considered just using those colours again, since they worked so well the last time.

 Here's our old living room painted in Behr's Yacht Harbour.

 

Here's our Austin kitchen with 

cabinets in Behr's Pollen Grains.

Here is our old bedroom.   

The colour is Behr's Green Tea.

On the other hand, we felt that it would be nice to have a fresh start in our new home, and that these colours (especially the blue) were cooler and so better suited to a warm climate like Austin. 

Since we decided to go back to the drawing board, we thought that consulting with James' design-savvy Aunt Sue (who used to be an interior designer) would be a good place to start. She consulted her colour book (which happened to be from Benjamin Moore), and came up with some really out-there colour ideas for us, including Cool Aqua, Turquoise Powder or Bahaman Sea for the kitchen, Pale Avocado for the living room and accents in Marblehead Gold, Concord Ivory, orange, brown and purple.

Here are some of those colours: 

Cool Aqua

 Pale Avocado

Marblehead Gold

After thinking about it, we decided that these colours were a bit too bold for us at the moment, and that we wanted colours that would coordinate better with our stuff (since we don't have extra money for new furniture right now). So we went back to Aunt Sue with a request for a more subdued palette, and she had some great new suggestions including Benjamin Moore's Golden Harvest and York Harbour Yellow for the kitchen, Nantucket Gray or Georgian Green for the living room, Dunmore Cream for the foyer and hallways, and Copper Clay for the banister.

Here are some of those colours:

Golden Harvest

York Harbour Yellow

Georgian Green

Dunmore Cream

Copper Clay

Feeling better about these ideas, and having checked out the colours online, we headed over to our local Benjamin Moore store to check out the colours in person and to pick up some swatches to take over to the house. We discovered that the ones we liked the most were part of the Historic Color collection. So, we decided to see if we could get all of our colours from that collection. 

Here are the colours that we settled on after that trip:

On the left you have Bryant Gold, which we decided to use as an accent wall in the kitchen, along with Dunmore Cream for the non-accent walls. Because we really wanted the house to have some unity, we decided to use Georgian Green for three walls of the living room, and Dunmore Cream for the fourth. The accessories that we already have are navy blue, dark red and chocolate brown, so I think they'll go well.

We chose Georgian Brick, which is the red in the centre, for the banister, and Monterrey White (which Aunt Sue also suggested) for the banister spindles. The three colours on the right are the ones we're considering for accent walls in the upstairs bedrooms. They are Kennebunkport Green, Buckland Blue, and Hawthorne Yellow. We haven't made a final decision about the upstairs colours yet, though.

Before making a final decision, we used tip #2. We went to Home Depot and bought $5 sample pots of each of the colours we were considering for the living room and kitchen, which we wanted to paint first. 

We used tips #3 and 4 when deciding on the Georgian Green and Dunmore Cream. As soon as we saw the sample pots of these colours at half strength, we knew that the Georgian Green looked too pastel for us at 50%, and had the sample bumped up to full strength. The Dunmore Cream looked better at half strength, since we wanted to use it as a nice bright neutral colour to offset the saturated accent walls, so we left it that way.

Deciding which walls to use the accent colours on and which to paint the more neutral half-strength Dunmore Cream took some time and some thinking. We used the sample paint to try out some ideas, and in the end we will be painting over some of the walls that the sample colours ended up on, since we changed our minds about which would be the accent walls. I'm glad that we tried it out though, because it really gave us a good idea of how each colour would look in context.

We painted the first coat on the living room ceiling (just plain flat white ceiling paint for that) and walls yesterday, and will be putting up the second coat this weekend. It's looking great already, and I can't wait to post photos for everyone to see.

Do you have any tips on how to choose paint colours to add to the list? I'd love to hear what techniques you use to feel confident that you'll like the colours that you've chosen once they're up on the walls, and see photos of the results!