I don’t know about you, but I usually have a pile of scrap wood in my garage from previous projects. These 1 x 6 scraps were remnants from having built barn doors for my basement.
I drilled pilot holes where the screws would go (to not split the wood) and then screwed six pieces together in a stairstep fashion using wood screws. The lowest board is screwed directly to the wall. The top board has a picture frame holder on the back to attach that to the wall and keep it from sagging. I made two sets of these shelves and placed on above the other. Then, I had a ton of books that I have purchased from Goodwill over the years and I really like the way that the colors from the books pop on the dark wall.
It’s a super quick DIY and you could customize this in so many ways with paint, stain, or by using whatever your favorite decorations are. You could also add this to any room, including your kitchen, your sun room, or your kiddos rooms!
Can you even believe these beauties! I do realize they’re not everybody’s style, but it’s like they were made just for me! They weren’t stinky, faded, dusty or anything. I’m so in love!
The dang things don’t photograph well from across the room, but the closeup is what they look like.
In case you’re bored, I made a coloring page of the most popular shoes (in my house) for 2020. You can download it, make a poster of it, whatever you’d like.
Can you find the one that’s not like the others? I’ll tell you why they’re not like the others, they’re for painting and mowing the lawn. I wouldn’t want to ruin my good Crocs!
Who am I kidding? I’m not the kind of gal to change my shoes to paint, mow, powerwash the world, etc.
I got these for my birthday this year.
I got these for our anniversary this year. I was also proud of myself for putting actual pants (bibs) on this day. 😀
And my trusty Haflinger clogs. These are not new, but I didn’t wear them in the summer so I’m excited to be bringing them back out of hibernation! I am not excited for the snow…
(like my pants and socks?)
Cheers to the high heels around the world that are still getting worn. I miss ya ladies. I’m lying.
Real Life: when we’re actually camping and not just playing pretty-photoshoot-day with the renovations, the door looks like a dorm room exploded. We almost always have towels, swimsuits, or hoodies hanging on the potty closet door… I had not anticipated that.
To poop, or not to poop…Our Shasta didn’t come with a potty – so operation closet-potty is in progress. To convert the closet into a potty, we needed that area to be a bit more accessible than the hinged double door frame.
We started by removing the closet doors and drawers. I stored them in our attic at home for safe keeping.
We brought Miss Shasta to a vintage camper expert to get their opinion on potty possibilities. For now, we just have the closet down to the shell and the new sliding bathroom/screen door.
We bought the screen door at Home Depot. While we were there we found a 1/2″ copper pipe and we also put the door on casters. You can see in the pictures how it’s all attached. The next thing we did was shorten the door by about 7 inches. It was too tall for the camper.
We carefully removed the screen from the top of the door, cut the top of the door off and then cut 7″ off of each side. Once that was done we screwed the top of the door back on and put the screen back in place. Vwalla! Now it will fit in the camper!
We found a pint of oops paint at Ace. I love this bright green color as a pop against all of the neutrals!
For added closet-potty privacy, I also added a vintage white curtain to the back of the screen door. It’s still a little see-through, but I can’t imagine the claustrophobia we’d get in there otherwise.
Our closet-potty sits above a wheel well, which means some of these camper options won’t work for us at all.
Jen has done a ton of research on these if you’re curious and want to learn more: porta potty, gravity, incinerating, composting, and macerating.
For this year, we’re going to bring our handy dandy shed port-a-potty that you can read about in a different post. It’s worked well for us and as long as we keep number two’s and TP out of it.
I can’t imagine waking up in the middle of the night and having to leave the camper, so this potty closet has been a lifesaver. Maybe literally…
We only have a few more reno editions of Miss Shasta left in 2020 so stay tuned for more!
Our Shasta came with the original wood paneling from FIFTY-FIVE years ago!
Overall it was in really great shape. For resale value, it’s best to keep as much of the original Shasta as possible. But Shasta McNasta didn’t get her name for nothin’…
She had a smell that we just couldn’t get rid of. The smell was a mix of ultra lavender and mold. Our noses would stuff up after being in there for just a few minutes. It was such a stubborn smell that we had to use oil-based Kilz to get rid of it.
We started Kilz-ing the wood paneling in the dining area and ended up doing all of the seating, ceiling, drawers and closet. There were also a few cabinets where the wood paneling needed glueing back together. After the Kilz, we painted my favorite white paint (Behr eggshell, Polar Bear White) throughout the dinette area and into the closet.
For the “Master Bedroom” in the back, we left the original paneling and I found peel and stick wallpaper with PINEAPPLES to go over it. How fricking cute is that!?!
It even has the original light fixture
Now that you’ve seen the flooring, paint and wallpaper together, you’ll have to stay tuned more!
Our Shasta came with a few layers of flooring. We removed carpet and found 1980’s linoleum. That was expected. Then we removed the linoleum and found the original tiles. That was not expected!
There were orange accent squares and I absolutely loved it! Unfortunately, the floor was “repaired” by a previous owner and the original floor had to be covered back up.
We chose peel and stick tiles and a diamond plate entrance to add durability to the busy entryway.
Stay tuned for what comes next!
OMG I’m so excited to show the full transformation!
Our Shasta is from 1965. We chose this model because we LOVE the wings and this particular year has windows up front that the other years don’t have. We’d looked at several other Shasta’s before we purchased ours. We even drove 9 hours away to look at one, but unfortunately after we stepped foot in it, we realized that one was a little beyond our DIY skills. One of the others that we looked at had an extremely patched and caving roof. One peek at that and we were not interested.
I saw so much potential in ours and I can’t wait to show you the changes that we’ve made, but first I need to show you the before pictures!
The pictures that I have here were from 2 owners ago. The owner that we purchased the Shasta from had painted over the vintage orange stripe.
We’re so happy that you found our little piece of the world and can’t wait to share more of our DIY projects with you.
For a little background:
Where you met: Work, and also online dating (because Jen didn’t remember meeting me at work so she found me online )
First date: work conference room, or Panera (depends on what counts as a date).
How many years together: 2+some
Age difference: 3 years
Who was interested first: Amber in person, Jen online
Who is taller: Depends on who is wearing heels
Who said I love you first: Amber
Worst temper: Jen shows it faster
Most sensitive: Jen
Most crazy: Depends
Loudest: JEN!!
Most stubborn: Tied
Falls asleep first: Amber
Cooks better: Amber
Better morning person: Amber
Best driver: Jen
Most competitive: Tied
We got engaged in the fall of 2019…
We said yes to our dresses in February 2020
We were going to be married in May of 2020, but in the beginning of March, we knew our wedding date was at risk of being cancelled. So, we had a kitchen wedding! Thankfully we had our wedding license and officiant already. Within six hours of planning, we were married in March of 2020, right before quarantine.
Besides DIY projects, we loved to travel together. Airports are still out of our comfort zone due to Covid, so we looked into renting an RV for 7-10 days. Due to the high demand, the price was so high that with just a little more money than renting, we were able to buy a vintage camper of our own!
I don’t know why we hadn’t thought of this sooner! We love renovation and we love travel – now we have the best of both worlds! We even bought ourselves a vintage tandem bicycle to bring camping with us.
Stay tuned for the camper renovations and the experiences we have while camping for our first times ever. Let’s just say, we’re learning a lot!
We’re so excited about the new addition to our already crowded driveway! She’s a 1965 Shasta. I’ve always wanted a retro camper and this has been an amazing transformation (that is still a bit in progress). Stay tuned for all of the before and after fun that we’ve been having.
Loose tiles on the shower wall…that’s all it takes.
Those loose tiles turned into a big demo and a fun DIY wall and shower rebuild. This was May of 2019 and I needed to hurry this along because summer was right around the corner!
I’m always really good at demo and decorating, it’s the middle part of putting it back together that I’m not as big of a fan of.
This shower is in the basement and is my teenage boys’ bathroom. They had been complaining of standing water in the shower base. When I went to inspect it, not only was there standing water in the corner of the shower pan, there were loose tiles that looked molded and suspicious.
Before I knew it I had removed the glass surround and was pulling the shower pan and wall up. The lower half of the wall where the tiles were loose had gotten water in it and the sheetrock and insulation acted as conduits and spread the moisture upward. This leak had gone on for a while.
I don’t think anything was done properly by whoever originally installed this. The shower pan was sloped incorrectly and there was insulation on an inside wall surrounding the hot water pipes. At some point, that insulation was hot enough to burn. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened.
Once everything was removed, I turned the fans on high. The cylinder blocks needed a few days to air out and the studs needed scrubbing with mold remover.
Once everything was dry, I was able to waterproof the cylinder block, reinsulate the exterior wall and plastic that back up. While that was drying, I started working on the new base. Since I am super familiar with concrete and I love the look of my concrete shower upstairs, I decided to stick with what I know works. I made the base with concrete and built up a curb with 2×4’s for the edge.
Once the curb was built, I added a waterproof vinyl around it and mesh on top of that. The mesh helps to hold the concrete in place. The waterproof guard actually goes over the curb, on the base and up the wall behind the Durock as well.
The drying time between each of the steps was what took the longest. I would only be able to get so much done before I had to turn the fans back on high and come back to it the next day.
One of the most interesting steps was the application of the RedGard. It truly is red and it’s another water barrier layer that needed to happen after the Durock was installed.
I had Alexa playing 80’s songs while I was painting this stuff on and, “I believe the children are our future,” by Whitney Houston came on. I don’t know if the fumes were getting to me or what but I had Alexa repeat the song over and over and over while I was down there. I was really feeling it!
Getting the RedGard done felt so close to the home stretch! The calendar had just flipped from May to June. I had to get this done. Summer in MN is so short and I didn’t want to miss a single day of it!
I was getting to the part of the shower that I am so familiar with, the skim coat! I had also gotten far enough along where I was shopping for all of the fun decorations that you get to crown a renovation job with. The shower curtain had me stumped, but I found the perfect one!
Now that the skim coat is done, I just have to wait 48 hours to seal it. While I waited, I took a step back and thought about how dark it was in there. I grabbed my go to paint color from Behr, Polar Bear White, and lightened the room up.
I think it looks fantastic and I can’t wait for the boys to be showering back down in their own shower again!
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