Three DIY Memorial Day Projects

This weekend was a bust one around the house. We have house guests coming in a couple of weeks and Memorial Day weekend was pretty much the only time we had to get anything done. All three days were pedal to the metal when it came to cleaning up and getting things looking nice.

This weekend was a great weekend to plant the garden. Peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, pumpkin, Brussel sprouts and more went into the 80 sq foot garden bed. This project took a little longer than expected as I added worm castings and mycorrhizae to the root zones when planting. Here's to hoping hail doesn't take a toll on the newly planted vegetables.

Last year when we renovated our front lawn, this area got neglected. No better way to kick off summer than to have it looking nice. Weed barrier was put down along with 15 bags of mulch.

That wasn't enough, so we went back for 15 more bags. That still wasn't enough... 45 bags later, it was finished.

The grass has started to fill in nicely this season. It's hard to picture that it used to be a lawn that was in poor condition this time last year.

Side note: If you want your lawn and sidewalk to look great, get an edger attachment that will fit on a gas powered trimmer. These things are amazing for making your yard look cleaned up.

A cheap MDF shelf in the laundry room had seen better days and we needed a better solution for this room. I had every intention of making custom cabinets for the laundry room... I really did.

Then I weighed the cost, time and labor versus going to Ikea. Needless to say, Ikea won this round. Three cabinets for less than $170 and less than 2 hours of install time is better than 2 to 3 weeks of building when you're time is tight. Three cabinets give us plenty of storage for many things. All that is left is to patch up some holes in the wall, paint, and add filler boards to the sides of the cabinets. I am also going to add a bar to the middle of the recess in the cabinets to tame the wild hangers that seem to end up all over the house too.