Friday, August 20, 2010

Hey Look! I DIY-ed Again!

I know my titled kind of looks like I died again spelled in lolcat or something, but in actuality, this is not what I meant. I was, in fact, referring to the acronym* DIY--as in Do It Yourself, which I'm sure most of you know, since, as far as I know, my readers are intelligent people. However, there is always the possibility that a dummy looking for a new religion could happen upon my blog, and although disastrous events most likely would not ensue, no matter how dramatic that sounds, I'm sure that at least the explaining process to said dummy could be annoying. Just kidding. There are no dummies. I'm a teacher, so I truly believe that.

*Side note on acronyms: why do we use them so much? I really don't know. I especially hate it when the acronym is harder than just saying all of the actual words, for example, SYTYCD (standing for an excellent TV show So You Think You Can Dance) I mean, that just takes longer to think about than to just write out the whole thing, and saying it is even more ridiculous since it has the same number of syllables. Even worse is when people say the the letter 'W' instead of the one-syllable word it is standing for. This just goes to show that my teacher philosophy of "there are no dummies" is wrong. One further thought on acronyms and me: as a member of both TFA and the LDS religion, I cannot escape acronyms, no matter how stupid they are. Thank you for reading my rant. Read on.

Believe it or not, the point of the post was not to get into the finer points of dummies, teacher philosophies, or the nuisance of acronyms. The real point of this post is so I can show off my mad skills: I created/upholstered/tufted a headboard for our bed! I got into the other stuff because I am feeling particularly silly and hyperactive at the moment. So sorry.

Back to the masterpiece: It all started with a piece of plywood, lovingly picked out at Home Depot and cut to 3x5' by some teenage jerk who doesn't deserve the job. Nah, just kidding. He just bugged me by telling me Home Depot doesn't cut things for you just because he was feeling lazy and chillin' with his friends. Good thing I knew they did from a previous online check--and the fact he was standing right by the saw.

After I got the foundation for my headboard, I spent a long time at JoAnn's picking out the perfect fabric (black) and buttons (after asking four people, finally someone knew where I could find the ones you cover with your own material. Success!) And I found a 10 yard roll of batting for $9. Sweet! Oh yeah, and at Home Depot, I also bought a staple gun (and staples so I could actually do some damage with it, of course) so I could develop upholstering skills. Something no one taught me, I just DIM (Did It Myself--acronyms: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em/make up your own to add to the growing ocean called alphabet soup.)

So I brought my loot home, drilled six carefully-measured holes into the wood, cut as many layers of batting as I could (8), and got it and the material situated under the board and started stapling like crazy. I mean, I started professionally upholstering a headboard to go in the blank space at the head of our bed to add to our reading-in-bed comfort and overall feng shui.

Then I used the buttons that I covered in the aforementioned material and carefully sewed them onto the spots where I had drilled the holes, using another button on the back of the wood to keep it from ripping through the batting and fabric. So now my upholstered headboard is tufted (which is a fun word to say).

Now, marvel at my beautiful tufted headboard:
Tufts!
Sorry for the spots on the lens. Anyway, my headboard! But I think our bed still needs some accessories, like some throw pillows...
...or Kelly. He accessorized our bed nicely, and enjoys reading while leaning against our new headboard.

Kelly is very nice and keeps telling me it's wonderful and looks professionally-made. So now I'm going pro. Just kidding. Kelly just lies to make me happy sometimes.

Thank you for reading my ridiculously silly post and letting me brag about my menial accomplishments. Hopefully the next post will be comprised of better stuff--like my birthday.

But to a more serious matter: I am awesome.
My staplegun madness!