DIY Electric Fireplace with Built-Ins

Electric fireplaces are trending in the world of DIY. I'm going to share how we built our setup and try to give tips on planning your own fireplace built-ins. 

This idea certainly isn't new. It's been going around Pinterest for maybe a year or so. I saw the idea originally on Nesting with Grace (a fantastic home decor account to follow) and decided to really go for it in our new home. Our home is beautiful, but it's lacking some custom cozy touches. I thought a huge statement piece in our living room would be a good place to start. Plus the idea of sitting by a fire watching snowfall on the lake sold me. 

The first thing you're probably wondering is why we didn't just get a gas fireplace put in when we built our house. It was certainly an option. However, it was a 30k option. I like fireplaces and all, but not for that price tag. Electric fireplaces have really come a long way from a picture on a screen. Even a top-of-the-line one with real sound and heat will be substantially less than the gas fireplace quote we were given.

I can't give you exact measurements on what to do with your fireplace setup because the piece has to be built specifically for the space you have. However, I can explain how we came to our measurements. 

Graph paper is your best friend. I start all my projects on graph paper (or on the iPad with a graph notebook page and my iPad pen). Measure out your space. To determine the size of the fireplace, I measured our TV. My husband is not going to part with his big TV. I went fireplace shopping online. I found a fireplace that was slightly bigger than the giant TV. I graphed out a fireplace surround that was about 6 inches bigger on each side of the fireplace. The mantle is about two inches wider than the fireplace. 

Once I knew how big the fireplace was going to be, I had to decide on the cabinetry around the fireplace. I knew I wanted narrow-depth cabinets so the fireplace stuck out further but wasn't too far into the room. I looked at pieces of individual furniture like a credenza or hutch. (Faux Farmhouse has a piece that's built-in, but looks like a piece of furniture and it's beautiful) In the end, upper cabinets were the ticket. I could get stock upper cabinets in white from Home Depot that were almost exactly the correct size. I have small filler pieces to make them perfect, but it very close to the perfect measurement. Four 24 inch uppers were ordered and shipped to our local store. I did this early on because it's was a month lead time at the time. That was back before COVID. Now you might be waiting much longer. 

My husband went to work building the 2x4 framework for the TV and fireplace. You have to frame out the fireplace box and supports for the TV. He also worked in a "secret" door on the side so if we need to plug or unplug wires, we're able to get access behind the fireplace. The secret door is simply held in place with a sliding lock. One thing I would change about this project is the space behind the fireplace. It is VERY narrow. My husband can fit (barely) and the children can. I would probably add a couple of inches if I did it again. This framework was attached to the ceiling and wall studs and is SOLID.  

Once the framework was done, the fireplace is attached to the framework. My husband added a whole lotta shiplap. Shiplap is definitely a trendy thing right now, but you could easily use plywood and then add brick or stone if that's more your jam. I wanted something dramatic so the shiplap cut on an angle was perfect. 

I used a company called Samplize to get paint sample sheets for the fireplace. I loved this service. I imagine for walls it's even more convenient because you can move the sample around the room and sample different lighting situations. 

Once the fireplace was painted and the cabinets installed, it was time to add in a mantle and floating shelves. We are a handy family and my husband created the mantle and floating shelves using solid slabs of ambrosia maple (the floating shelves) and spalted maple (the mantle). They are attached to the walls using metal rods welded to a metal bar. 

I finished them with a new product. The name of it is and it's a poly wax hybrid finish. I used a matte finish because I wanted the wood to look raw without actually being raw. My kids will definitely leave wet cups on it, and I wanted to avoid watermarks. I liked the product. It did slightly change the color of the wood, but it was definitely better than poly. Overall we've lived with the fireplace for over a year now and don't have any complaints. I've upgraded to a Frame TV which is the perfect piece over a fireplace and the electric fireplace does a great job putting out heat on cold evenings.

Buying a Factory Built Off Site Custom Home

Surprise! We recently moved and built a new home. It was a year and a half adventure. I will try to give a honest review of our experience with building a home off site. This was a long process, so sorry for the length.

We weren’t going move again. The plan was to eventually build on to Ugly House and to retire there. I honestly loved all the renovations we made to the home and was excited for the next phase of renovations we had planned. 

One April weekend I was out of town buying supplies for a bathroom renovation we had planned, and my husband called me with an interesting offer. We had to been contacted asking if we wanted to buy an acreage. My husband had often commented to the owners that their acreage was his dream property, and as they retired and move into town, they had remembered his comments. I came back from my trip early, and we headed out to take a look. As we drove down the half mile winding tree-lined driveway and the lake came into view, it was game over. Ugly House had been beat by 20 acres of once in a lifetime lake front property. Land like this doesn’t come available in our area.

A week later the paperwork was being drawn up to buy the property. Our future plans were thrown out the window. Ugly House was a project to be finished by another family.

Initially we hoped to salvage the original farmhouse. We love historic homes. Well okay, I love historic homes. However, the cost of renovating, moving and, adding on was prohibitive. We decided to build. 

Anyone who has built before knows that building a house is not for the faint of heart. We found a floor plan we loved and had four different contractors give us estimates. They were expensive. Like a 100k over our budget expensive. We could have made them work, but we would have been stretching ourselves to stay in Ugly House until the home was built. Not to mention on-site builds take time especially with the unpredictable Midwest weather. Each minute we were in Ugly House was time were paying two house payments. Not to mention we didn’t want to show and sell while living in Ugly House. I worked from home, we have 5 dogs and 3 kids. The house would be a nightmare to keep clean and leave for showings. (We couldn’t have known then, but COVID changed the housing market completely. We had 10 so people inquire about buying our house the minute we announced we were building. We sold it directly to a couple we knew and never had to list it.)

At this point, we had officially owned the property for 6 months and had been pursuing building for 9 months or so. My husband had a client recommend a company that builds the homes off site and moves them on a foundation. We started working with that company. From the first interaction, we were very clear. Budget was our #1 concern. We could jazz up a house down the line (we do love DIY) so a floor plan in our budget was paramount. We had plans drawn up, and walked through another build they did. We worked with this company from October 2019 until March 2020. We (finally) got an official estimate. $100,000 over the budget they had promised to stick to. We walked away and a week later the world shut down. (Fun fact. Apparently their company was sold and decided to stop building off site and never told us. Their current operation couldn’t handle the plans they drew up for us so they were calling around trying to subcontract the entire job to another contractor including one of the contractors we had already got an estimate from directly.)

On a random day off, I stopped by Custom Touch Homes in Madison to tour their homes. After an hour with a sales associate, I had plans drawn up and an official estimate to take to the bank. It was incredibly fast. Everyone else took weeks to draw up plans then weeks for get bids and create an estimate. The reason everything goes quickly with their operation is because they have everything in house including the architect. One of the biggest hold ups during a build is the scheduling of subcontractors. Especially in a COVID world, this was helpful. This particular business basically went on lockdown. They kept their workers safe by keeping everyone else out and doing a ton of safety checks. We didn’t even get to see our house in person until it was almost done.  

Once we had the bank paperwork done (which took a couple of weeks even with preapproval) and contract signed, our house was scheduled. Honestly, the process was so quick and well organized that I sometimes had to step away and take a breath. I had a notebook full of what I wanted in the floor plan and all the finishes (I had after-all been planning this for a year now and I am very much a type A person). Even with all that pre-planning, I felt overwhelmed at the speed of everything. I think if you aren't prepared, you could get put on the spot and pick something you don't love. 

After the contract is signed but before building starts, you customize and finalize your floor plans. You have a choice day where you pick all your finishes. They do have a set of materials to pick from, but you can deviate from those. For example I had a particular flooring picked out for my bathroom in Ugly House. I gave them the information, and they ordered it for this house. I also had a dream bath tub picked out, so that was special ordered as well. Something that I found VERY helpful on choice day was my mood boards. Before choice day I had created a vision/mood board for each room with the finishes I wanted. I had made lists of what color tile, cabinets, floors I was looking for. So instead of feeling overwelmed to make all the house decisions on one day, I could just find the finishes that matched what I had carefully picked out over the past year. I also could look at the house as a whole rather than in pieces. I would recommend this for anyone that is building. 

Once building starts, our sales associate sent us weekly updates and pictures on the progress. Their set-up is basically 4 lanes of houses inside a massive building. The first houses in each lane are getting framed. Second house in the lane is getting electric and so on. So each department basically goes down the line and does their job. Slowly the house makes it way down the lane until it’s the last house. Then big warehouse doors open and the house is slid on a truck to be delivered. You have one contact person through the entire process. The house moving day is really quite easy. The house movers do all the work with getting power lines moved. You just wait for the house to show up and they handle placing it on the foundation. It's pretty remarkable to watch (and very unnerving). I have a video of the process on my instagram.

Here's the progress of our house in their warehouse:

I think one of the misconceptions I run into when I tell people we used an off site builder is that this is a mobile, manufactured or modular home. There’s nothing wrong with those homes, but this home is 100% stick built. It’s framed all in one piece like your on-site homes. It wasn’t pieces when it was delivered.  They make the house strong enough to be easily moved as one unit. There’s some preliminary research by FEMA that these types of homes actually are stronger than on-site homes based off post hurricane damage data. 

Over-all the process was  easier than the traditional contractors we were initially dealing with simply because there were no subcontractors. They didn’t need to get bids from them or schedule them. The process took 2 months from the date they started. The moving of the house took about 12 hours to get on the foundation (more on why that was longer than expected to come). Also our house didn’t go over budget because they don’t have to worry about a subcontractor bid not being accurate. The inspections are done just like an on-site build, but because they can do them as part of their assembly line, they are also faster. 

In the spirit of transparency, there are two things to talk about. First of all, while they make all kinds of modifications based on whatever your heart desires, their homes do have some limitations. There are size restrictions since it does have to fit on a road. Our home is rather large at around 3,700 sq feet with the basement, but it had restrictions on width, length, and height. So I could make all the floor plan edits I want, but it still had to fit in that footprint. You also have to stick to a ranch style which initially I did not want. However, with a walkout basement, we don’t have a traditional ranch. I would have pitched the vault in our living room higher if I could have. Also, there are some truly beautiful custom homes out there that my house can’t hold a flame to. There is a reason some builders are more expensive. The materials and craftsmanship is worth their asking price. You also don't get to see and tour your home as often since it's on their premises, not yours. We didn't have any issues with something being done wrong, but that's not uncommon during a build. We also decided to wait on a big deck on the front and a garage and do those separately. The cost on those two items seeemed high compared to other contractors.

Second, there was one aspect of the house build that was a sore point and added a couple of months to the build. We used the off site builder’s sister company to build the walk out basement. We weren’t going to finish the basement initially, so it was just the foundation, walls and some electrical/plumbing. We thought since they worked exclusively with these off site builds, they would be better equipped to build the foundation and coordinate with the house builder's specifications. Also, in theory, they are doing all the basement work while the main house is being built so they finish about the same time. Not so much. 

That relationship was tough. The sister company was hard to work with because they lacked communication. Sometimes I would hear nothing and see no one for weeks. As an example, the day of the house move, the house moving company had to get on the phone and very sternly talk with the head contractor to get him to our property, because the basement wasn’t ready. The house movers had to spend several hours moving dirt so the house could be moved up the hill...something that should have been done well in advance. I noticed after we closed that all the windows in our basement are the wrong color. I’m still missing a screen for a window because they brought me the wrong one. They put the stair railing into the drywall with anchors and it came out within a month. The construction site wasn’t kept clean, and I had to clean up cigarette butts and spilled spoiled milk when we moved in (yeah...not ideal on closing day). They did come and fix the railing within a couple of weeks. I didn’t bother pushing back on the windows because honestly I just wanted to be done with them. 

After we moved in and closed, we realized that building a home isn’t really done when you move in. We decided pretty quick the unfinished basement wasn’t going to work for us. So we hired an awesome general contractor to do that work (which is still ongoing). We also hired a landscaper to hopefully do something with the mud pit around the house. Five dogs and three kids do not do well with a dirt yard in the spring. Also, the bones of our house are pretty standard, so I'm wanting to add more custom touches here and there.

Feel free to message me any questions you may have. I would recommend the process especially if you are on a time crunch or need to stick to a budget. 

DIY Dog Water & Food Dish Stand

Hello!

Since my last post was for the cat people, I decided it was time to share one for the dogs.

Something we have discovered with four dogs (!) is that we need large dog dishes for water and food. Otherwise we find ourselves refilling them every couple of hours. Nobody got time for that! We also found out early on that they like to dump their water dish all over the floor. Which is especially problematic with a little one that thinks it's really cool to spread wet foot prints throughout the house. (Okay...they are really cute wet foot prints) A stand/holder for the dishes is a must.

However, they don't make stands for large dishes. About 10 years ago, my husband made a stand for our large dishes, but that was starting to look pretty darn rough. It was time for an update. I decided I wanted something that was open on the bottom so we could clean up any water drips. I also wanted something that looked nice. It was a pretty easy process to make this stand, so read on, grab a couple of supplies and get it done!

Supplies

Piece of plywood (Long and wide enough for both dishes to fit. Most home improvement stores have pre-cut wood so you don't have to buy a large piece of wood if transportation or cutting is an issue)

Table saw/circular saw (to cut the wood to length as needed)

Jig Saw (A jig saw with the ability to do some scroll sawing is helpful because you can adjust your angle as you go along)

Drill & Drill Bit (The big should be big enough that the jig saw blade can fit through the hole)

Sandpaper

Table Legs

Stain or Paint

Sealing Layer (Polyurethane)

Dog Food/Water Dishes

Directions

1. Cut Wood to Length

The first thing was getting the piece of wood a correct length. You will want a couple of inches around the dishes so you don't compromise the wood as you cut the circles.

2. Trace and Cut Circles

Once you have the wood cut to the correct length, you will need to flip the dishes over to trace around the lip of the dishes. Once you have traced around the dishes, you will need to account for the lip. Make a second circle within the larger circle to make a smaller hole so the dish will be held up. Erase the larger circle to avoid confusion.

To cut the circles, first drill a hole on the smaller circle towards the inside. This hole needs to be big enough that a jig saw blade can fit within the hole. Cut on the line in a circle. You may need to take it slow in order to make the curves. Repeat with the second hole.

3. Sand

Use some sandpaper to sand off the rough edges around the circle you cut out. Also sand down the rest of the board so it's smooth and ready for finishing. You can also use the sandpaper to round any sharp edges.

4. Stain or Paint and Seal

You can stain or paint the board/legs (which ever is your preference). Once you are done, you will need to seal the board and legs several times over. This surface is going to get some major moisture either from drool or water. Follow the directions on the label which usually includes a light sanding between layers.

5. Attach Legs

Using the appropriate hardware (the package will indicate what hardware to purchase) to attach the legs you purchased to the board. You're done!

DIY Cat Camper House

Hello,

As a self-proclaimed dog person, I do get the occasional inkling to make something for the cats of the house. I mean, at least one of them is nice. (The other one lurks around corners waiting for the best opportunity to commit homicide.)

I started to look at some small gift to give the cats for Christmas, because, yes, we are one of those families. I found an adorable vintage camper house for cats. If the cats are going to have something, why wouldn't it be a cute vintage camper? But the Amazon one was around $30.00. Um. I love my cats...well strongly care for...but that seemed a wee-bit over priced for a bunch of cardboard.

Speaking of Amazon...you know who gets lots of cardboard? This Amazon Prime addict. Also, I've got all this free time from not running into town for TP, so I could use those skills to make one bomb diggity cat camper, no doubt.

Supplies

X-Acto Knife (New blades really work best)
Cardboard (Keep an old box, or grab a new one or foam board from the store)
Pencil
Paint & Brush (I used acrylic and house paint..whatever I had around the house)
Packing Tape
Ruler (if you want to make sure your lines are straight and measured accurately)

Directions

1. Draw Outline of Front of Camper

You can make your camper whatever shape you want. Of course I had a wonderful example with Myrtle in our front drive.  (Check out Myrtle's Journey here).

2. Cut & Draw Outline of Back of Camper

Using your X-acto knife, follow the line you have drawn. Hint: When using an X-acto knife, it's much easier to pull the knife towards you, not push it away.

Once you have your outline cut out, you will need to make an opposite side. Use the cut out side as a pattern to transfer an outline to another piece of cardboard. Cut out this piece with your X-acto knife.

3. Draw Details

I decided my camper needed windows (the lever ones and jalousie, obviously). I also needed a door  as well. Using a system of scoring (not cutting all the way through the cardboard, but rather just the first layer so the cardboard bends freely), I created a door and windows.

 4. Paint

Before you can tape anything together, you'll need to paint the camper. This is the one step where I thought I might have picked the wrong material. A white foam board would have already been colored. Cardboard also sucks up paint like no other, so you'll have to do multiple coats. I didn't find the paint made the cardboard soggy by any means, just time consuming between coats. I used a Painter's pen for the dots.

5. Create Base

Using the side as a guide, I marked on another piece of cardboard how long the front was. I made the camper about 10 inches wide. Big enough for a cat, but not too big. You will want to add about 2 to 3 inches to the width and length in order to have a side to tape the front and back to. (See the pictures for a better idea of what I'm describing).

Score at the line of the extra "over hang." You are basically creating a box bottom. Tape up the corners to create the box shape.

You may need to trim the bottom box where the door is going to hit if you don't want the base showing. (Doubt the cats mind much)

6. Using the packing tape, tape the front and back to your bottom base. Tape from the inside so it's hidden from view.

7. Add Structure to the top

Cut strips of cardboard as wide as your camper (around 10 inches in my case) and tape them to the top and sides of your camper. This will add some stability and make it easier to attach the top/side piece.

8.  Create Roof and Sides

Using one long piece of cardboard as wide as your camper, you will want to create your roof. This is the longest of all the steps. Each time there is a curve (for example, when you are going from the roof to the side), you will need to score the cardboard to make it curve.

9. Paint the Roof & Attach

This is is pretty self explanatory. You'll need it to be painted before you tape it on. (Paint won't stick to tape well, if at all) Finally, using the packing tape, attach the roof. You probably will need this tape to be on the outside of the camper, so it will show a bit.

10. Enjoy!

Here's the nice kitty enjoying his fancy new camper. The other cat is probably googling "How to Get Away with Murder."