Weekend Renovation Madness! Pt 1

This weekend T, my Dad and I did a little DIY Demolition Extravaganza at my parents house. They have these two horrible, space wasting, built-in entertainment centers. We tackled this monstrosity first.

As you can see, it is terribly out of place (in the dining room) and mainly used as storage (note the tons of mail/movie junk in the left corner and the prehistoric TV that we don't even use).

So we started doing this:

And by we I mean T and my Dad. I snapped pictures and hung out with this little guy:

 Please excuse my unmade face *shutter* scaryyy. But I know with this cute little guy  on my arm your probably not looking at me. Notice his look...100% Blue Steel. I foresee him being a ladies man in the future!

What's better than watching your Boyfriend and your Dad bond over manly activities. I love it!

I also love how handy T is. Look at him. He can do woodwork, electrical work and he is pretty easy on the eyes too. He is definitely a keeper. 

After we removed the center we found some water damage. So painting and flooring shall be done another day, once the water problem is tackled. The room (even with the lack of flooring, watery wall and the wacked out paint job) looks so much better!

So what did we do with the remains of the dreaded entertainment center?

Oh the things you can do with an axe and a truck!

I was worried at first. Part of me thought we were going to be putting HUGE holes beyond repair in my parents house but everything went better than planned. And now we have tons of firewood for some bonfire madness! Part 2 will be fixing up the wall, the paint and the floor. Then Part 3 will be taking out entertainment center #2. 

Happy Monday Bloggy Friends! I hope you all have an amazing week!

DIY for the Frugal Soul

Guess what I did!!!

I definitely made my own laundry detergent. I stumbled accross it on a DIY website, so of course I had to try it out. I am a firm believer is saving money. I would even go as far to call myself frugal (not that being frugal is a bad thing). So once I saw that making my own detergent would cost less than $0.05 per load, where as Tide costs $0.25 per load Surprisingly it was quite easy to find the ingredients and fairly simple to make, although I did make a slight mess in the kitchen.

So here are the ingredients:

The recipe is as follows:

*1 cup 20 Mule Team Borax (Borax is awesome because it is a natural product found  in nature. I personally am not an environmentalist but I am frugal and that big box cost less than $3, but if you are all for saving the planet Borax is the way to go. By the way, you can also use this stuff to clean just about ANYTHING without that chemicial smell, which I hate.)

*1 cup of Arm and Hammer Washing or Baking Soda (the recipie called for washing soda, but all i could find was baking soda. Come to find they are the same things.)

*1 Zote bar (Zote is an old school laundry soap bar but any bar soap bar around the house can be used. Just grate it up, I used the large hole grater, because it was faster, when I probablly should have used the small holed grater, but whatever, we all learn.)

I just threw all the ingredients in an old 32oz baby formula can and gave it a good shaking and PRESTO!! the homemade detergent is done!

Now, I was slightly apprehensive about two things.

One: Word on the street is that all you need per load is one tablespoon, two for a heavily soiled load. Really? One tablespoon? I am so used to pouring tons of detergent in a load I thought I would for sure need more than one tablespoon.

Two: Will this actually work? I was hoping it would work as well as people said, really hoping, because the cost per load is too much of an amazing cost savings to pass up.

So I tried one tablespoon of detergent out on a dirty load of "ugly towels" and YES! IT WORKS! Not to mention, this very same day I spilled some blueberry smoothie on my shirt and of course I let is sit there and dry so I could finish my smoothie. 20 minutes later I realized how blueberry stains SUCK to get out. Then poof! I had the idea to take a pinch of this detergent, wet it, and scrubbed it into the stain. After letting it sit for a minute and poof, the stain was gone. I have only used this detergent for a few things but so far it has not let me down therefor I decided to share my recipe and excitement!

P.S, on a totally unrelated topic. TJ comes home in 1 month!!! WHOOT!

And I will leave on that amazing note.

Much Love,
Delainey