A House We Built

Custom House Designed by Husband & Wife Team | Modern Farmhouse Inspired

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How to Make Textured Canvas Art (With Drywall Mud)

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We made a huge textured canvas art piece for our dining room and I’m going to show you how we did it!

I made everything completely from scratch meaning I built my own canvas frame, I did my own art, and I made the floating frame but you can also skip part of these by buying a canvas frame or skipping the floating frame, so I’ve separated the tutorial into 3 steps so you can skip down to any step you want.

Ok so I literally made everything out of scrap wood and unused materials that were lying around my house but in case you don’t have these things on hand, I’ve tried to find sources for as much as I could.

STEP 1: HOW TO MAKE A CANVAS FRAME

Note: if you don’t want to make your own canvas from scratch, you can totally just buy one. I actually couldn’t find one that was the size I wanted (5′ x 4′), but depending on what size art you want to make, it may be easier to just buy one. Here are a few that are very similar to the ones I made:

If you want to make your frame though, you’ll need these materials:

  • 1×2 wood: Home Depot (My canvas was 5’x4′ so I needed 3 for the frame + 1 for supports)
  • Cotton canvas fabric: I got mine from a small fabric supply store a long time ago but I think this is the same or similar: Amazon | Amazon.

Tools:

Instructions for making the frame:

  1. Determine how large you want your canvas to be. I wanted mine to be about 5ft x 4ft so I cut two 1x2s down to 60″ each and another one in half (two 48″ pieces) and used that for the exterior frame. If you have a small frame, then you can get away with just little diagonal support pieces in the corners, but if your frame is as large as mine or larger, then you’ll also need additional support pieces so I also cut an additional 1×2 in half to create two more support pieces. Then I used the cut-offs from the two 1x2s that I got the 60″ pieces from to create diagonal support pieces. The exact sizes don’t really matter as long as they functionally support the frame. So in total I needed:
    – 2 x 60″ lengths
    – 4 x 48″ lengths
    – 4 x diagonal support pieces with 45* corners so that it could brace against the exterior frame
  2. Using pilot holes & screws, assemble your frame starting with the 4 exterior frame pieces, then interior vertical supports, and finally the diagonal supports.

Instructions for attaching the canvas fabric:

  1. The basic idea here is that you’re going to wrap the canvas over the front of the frame and staple it to the back. But you have to pull the canvas tight or you’ll end up with ripples and nobody wants that. So here’s how we did ours: First, we smoothed the canvas out to get rid of any fold lines, then placed the frame over it and secure one side all the way, stapling it to the wood every 1-2 inches, but be sure to stop about 2″ before the corners because you’ll do the corners at the end.
  2. Then continue on to secure the other sides with more staples. We always would start in the center and work our way to the corners. We used locking plyers to help pull the canvas tight – but be careful because you can rip the canvas if you pull too tight.
  3. Finally do the corners. I’ve shown a picture to kinda show how I folded it. There’s no right or wrong way to do it – just make it look neat and well tucked and give it a couple extra staples.

STEP 2: HOW TO MAKE DRYWALL MUD / JOINT COMPOUND ART

Materials:

  • Joint compound/drywall mud: Home Depot (I always use this dust control one)
  • Paint (I used BM Simply White in matte)

Tools:

Instructions for mud art:

  1. Before you begin texturing your canvas, you’ll need to paint the entire canvas with any type of house paint you have on hand to essentially seal the canvas fabric. I saw that pros do this with something called “gesso” (?) but I figured that house paint would probably function the same and it worked for me. Basically the way I understand it is that the idea is to make it so that the fabric is a little stronger base to hold your mud and so that the moisture won’t sink into it as much. Anyhoo, just paint the whole thing and let it dry fully before starting anything else. I used matte wall paint and a paint brush – really making sure that I got the paint into the weave of the fabric.
  2. Once your painted canvas is dry, it’s time to texture! There are no rules to this process. Just gloop a bunch of drywall mud onto the canvas and shape it until you’re happy with how it looks. [Tip #1: if you’ve never worked with drywall mud before, I would suggest practicing a little on a scrap board or something just so you get a feel for it. I’ve mudded and taped a ton of drywall at this point so I’m really familiar with how the mud goes on and what textures to look for but if I wasn’t, I think I would have liked to practice a little first. Tip #2: if you add a little water, you can create different consistencies in the mud, which in turn will look a little different as you smear it so play around with that. Tip #3: have a few different tools on hand. I actually just used my drywall taping knife and trowel so it doesn’t have to be fancy but I suggest at least two different sizes of tools.]
  3. Allow this to dry FULLY, especially if you have some thicker mud sections. I let mine dry for about 5 days before moving to the next step. Left pic below is after about 1 day of drying.
  4. After it’s fully dried, you may notice that sections of the mud have cracked. Don’t worry, this is normal. Just go in with a gloved hand and a little bit of mud and use your finger to *gently* repair the cracks by adding a small amount of more mud over the cracks (also if the crack is larger, fill in the gap with mud) but smooth it back over so you don’t lose the shape of the texture and lines you created. I did this in sections all over my entire canvas. The idea here is that you want your mud to be firmly secured to your canvas and if there are cracks, I’d be worried it would just crack and fall off once you moved it to a vertical position so I wanted to repair all the cracks to strengthen the overall mud structure. I’ve shown some before (middle) and after (right) pics below:
  5. Allow the crack repairs to dry FULLY. I let mine dry for 2 days.
  6. Once dry, seal everything by painting over it with wall paint. I used the same matte paint that I used to seal the canvas prior to applying the mud. Paint it by hand with a paintbrush and CAREFULLY go over everything – like get right into any cracks and gently go around all the texture. You want to create a seal-coat without hiding any of the more subtle texture so this takes some attention. Also paint down the sides of the canvas too just to really seal it all up.
  7. Allow this to dry FULLY. I let mine dry for 24 hours.

STEP 3: HOW TO MAKE A FLOATING FRAME

Materials:

  • 1/4″ strips of any material (I ripped down MDF)
  • 1×2 wood (if you plan to stain it) or MDF (I used MDF)
  • Paint (I used BM Revere Pewter in Satin) or Stain

Tools:

Instructions for floating frame:

  1. Now, obviously this is totally optional and there are many ways to frame art, but if you want to create a floating frame, this is how I did mine: Essentially you need to create a gap (I did a 1/4″ gap) between the canvas and the exterior frame you’re going to build. My frame was made from 1×2 (meaning it had a depth of 1.5″ so the way I created the gap was to simply nail a strip of wood that was 1/4″ x 3/4″ between the canvas frame and the exterior frame. I created my strips by ripping down some MDF I had on hand but plywood would work fine or I think some hardware stores might have something already made that could work. There’s no rules for this, it just has to be a shallower depth then your frame to create the gap. And it doesn’t have to be perfect – the idea is that these strips won’t really ever show.
  2. Then you nail the strips to the canvas frame. I also painted mine a darker gray (black would work too) to accentuate the shadow line but that’s optional.
  3. Then measure & cut 1x2s for your final exterior frame (I mitered my corners but that’s optional) and nail them into place. I then wood-filler’ed the seams and once that was dry, I painted it all gray.

That’s it! Now your art piece is ready to hang!

If you’re not in the mood to DIY or just not feeling particularly artistic, here are similar art pieces that you can buy ready-made: McGee & Co (rectangular) | McGee & Co (square) | Anthropologie | Pottery Barn.

And if you’re following us on Instagram and familiar with the layout of our dining room and you’re wondering how on earth I got those straight pics of the art piece, I was sitting on our dining table lol! Finally, if you’re wondering why these pics are a little darker than my other pics, I took these at night so there’s no natural light so for those of you asking what our house looks like at night, this is an example.

Other sources from these pics:

For more sources from our Dining Room, click here.
For more of our DIY tutorials, click here.
To explore the other rooms in our house, click here.

How to Build a Sideboard

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We built a sideboard for our Dining Room for less than $200 and I’m going to share how we did it here!

I’ll be honest, we originally didn’t set out to build a sideboard from scratch. Even though we’ve done a ton of construction work at this point and even built furniture before (see our large farmhouse dining table and console table and round game table), for whatever reason a sideboard just seemed soooo much more complicated to me so we didn’t really even consider making one at first. But I kept coming back to this Restoration Hardware sideboard and I just loved the style, but it didn’t come in the width we needed so I took a closer look at it and was like hey… I bet we could build something like that. And so we did.

Our sideboard’s depth is just under 12″ deep which is very shallow by traditional sideboard standards and it’s almost half the depth of the RH piece we were inspired by (whose depth is almost 20″). In our dining room, we wanted to keep our furniture minimal so a shallow depth was key but we made ours longer as we had a lot of width to work with and wanted to make this a statement piece. I’ve also never seen the RH sideboard in person and I couldn’t find pic of the inside so ours is just ‘inspired’ by it.

So it’s actually a simple piece of furniture when you break it down: It’s a 4-sided frame (mitered corners optional) with a middle support piece, 4 doors, one shelf, a backer panel, and a floor board. That’s it!

For the frame, we used the same thick rough sawn solid pine boards that we recently used for all the open shelving we built in our basement so they’re an actual true 2″ thickness (not 1 1/2″) by 12″ widths in 8′ lengths. For the doors and shelving inside, we used the same type of wood boards but in 1″ thickness (true measurement) instead of 2″. For the floor and backer panels, we used 1/2″ MDF sheets.

So here’s how to build it. Bear in mind that you don’t have to fasten it all together the same way we did. We used what we had on hand but other ways of fastening pieces would also be fine.

Building materials:

  • 3 x 2x12x8 rough sawn boards (true dimensions, not like framing lumber)
  • 4 x 1x12x8 rough sawn boards (3 for the doors, 1 for shelf)
  • 1 x 1/2x4x8 sheet of MDF
  • 10 x small L-brackets (Home Depot) + screws
  • 8 x door hinges (we used these: Amazon)
  • Some longer screws (about 1 3/4″ – 2″)
  • Some shorter screws (about 1 1/4″)

Finishing materials:

Tools:

Plans:

Instructions: Creating the frame

  1. Cut your 2x12x8 to length for your frame. You will need:
    – 2 pieces at the length you want (we did 93″), with back-cut mitered edges
    – 2 pieces at the height you want (we did 36″), with back-cut mitered edges
    – 1 middle support piece at the height of the middle of your frame (ours was 32″). This one is shorter because it goes in between the top and bottom boards.
  2. Dry-fit all your frame pieces to make sure they all fit.
  3. Attach your frame pieces together using wood glue in the joints and L-brackets on the inside.
  4. Attach the middle support piece in the exact middle of your frame using L-brackets at the top, but you can use a really long screw to screw up from the bottom of the unit to secure the base since that won’t show.

Instructions: Creating the doors

  1. This involves some math, but I’ll tell you what you need to calculate. Each door is made up of 2 boards with 2 bar-support pieces holding them together in the back. The idea is that we need to create 2 doors on Side A and 2 doors on Side B. Each set of doors spaced about ~ 1/8″ away from the frame. In between each set of 2 doors, we’re going to leave a gap of the same width as the support piece (ours was 2″). See my diagram for additional clarity. So, for each side (A and B), you need to calculate:
    – the total width of available space
    – then find the middle and mark it with a pencil
    – then mark 1″ on either side of the middle point to create a 2″ space (or however big you want your gap to be) directly in the middle of each side and mark your frame with a pencil
    – then find the width of your doors: measure the distance from your 2″ gap-mark to the frame, deduct ~ 1/8″ (clearance for your door) and that’s your full door width. Then divide that by 2 to find the width of the two planks that make up your door. Write this down.
    – then find the height of your doors: measure the distance between the top and bottom frame, deduct 1/4″ (1/8″ clearance x 2), and that’s your door height. Write this down. Note: if your wood is warped, the heights may vary along the length of the frame. Each of our door heights varied by about 1/8″ to 1/16″ but you can’t tell in the end because we fit them well to the space and your eye accepts it as straight.
  2. Cut and rip your 1x12x8 planks to size for your doors. We found it was easier to first use the miter saw (Home Depot | Amazon) to cut the full boards into the heights of the doors (marking them on the sides 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 so we could identify each door), then use the table saw (Home Depot | Amazon) rip them down to the widths you need.
  3. Cut 8 backer support pieces out of any straight material you may have (you can even use cutoffs from the boards you just ripped down. Make them roughly 1.5″ wide x 3/4″ thick x 12″ long.
  4. Once you have all your door panels + support pieces, lay them face down on a perfectly flat surface, wood glue the seams between them, then wood glue the support pieces to the back at approximately 1/3 and 2/3 along the planksand let them dry overnight. The next day, we added 4 screws/door to secure them together. The reason we didn’t screw them from the start is that using rough sawn lumber means the wood has isn’t always perfectly straight and we wanted to let them dry flat without the screws pulling them in any direction. This resulted in very flat door panels.

Instructions: Final cuts

Now that your frame is complete, it’s time to cut your final misc pieces so that you can stain/paint them along with everything else. You will need to make the following:

  1. Cut two backer panels from 1/2″ MDF for Side A and Side B.
  2. Cut one floor panel from 1/2″ MDF (optional). Dimensions: 2″ shorter than full length, 1″ less wide than full width. We used scrap MDF so ours is actually in two pieces but it doesn’t matter.
  3. Cut two 4″ strips from the 1×12 boards (for the strips that go behind the doors). The length should be the same as the doors.
  4. Cut four 1″ strips from the 1×12 boards for supports under the shelves (ours were about 7″).
  5. Cut two shelves out of your 1×12 boards for Side A and Side B at whatever the inside dimensions of your cabinet are. We actually cut this piece last after we’d fully assembled the sideboard for more accurate measurements, but you can also do it now.
  6. The following are optional depending on your hinges but we needed them:
    – We needed four 2.5″ strips of the 1×12 board (same height as the doors) to attach the hinges to inside the frame since we chose to recess our doors by a 1/2″.
    – We needed two 1″ strips of the 1×12 board to go behind the doors to prevent them from closing too far. Calculated by taking depth of the board behind the door strip, minus 1/2″ for the backer panel. Ours were 8.5″ long.

Instruction: Sanding & Staining

  1. Use an orbital sander (Home Depot | Amazon) + 150 grit sanding pads to smooth out your entire frame and doors and miscellaneous bits to your desired smoothness. Since we were using rough sawn lumber, I wanted to leave the saw marks visible so I just sanded down the roughness lightly but kept all the indentations and markings in the wood for a more rustic look. This is personal preference. Sand down all surfaces (even the inside).
  2. Apply pre-stain conditional (Amazon | Home Depot) to all surfaces that will be stained. This is an essential step. Every time I forget to use this, I regret it. I don’t know how it works but it just makes the stain absorb so much better. Apply using either a rag or brush. Allow it to dry for about 15 mins (or as per manufacturer’s instructions).
  3. Apply stain (Amazon | Home Depot) using a combination of a brush and rag. I applied a fairly thick coat and really rubbed it in with the rag. Allow it to sink in for however long it takes you to stain everything. Then go over everything in the same order you stained it in with a clean rag and wipe away any excess stain. Allow it to dry for as long as the manufacturer advises.
  4. Apply a matte top coat (Amazon | Home Depot) with a paint brush using even clean lines. I did everywhere with one coat (since my poly was triple thick) but I would have done multiple coats if I was just using normal poly. Then I did a second coat on the top surface which is the area that will see the most traffic.
  5. I also separately painted the inside of both MDF backer panels black (I used leftover BM Black Panther from our theater room and sofa pit projects). This was just an optional design preference.

Instructions: Assembling the Sideboard

*Please see the plans above for location references for this part.

  1. Now that we had created our frame, our doors, and all our pieces, we moved our sideboard close to the location where we’d finally display it and did all the final work on site since it’s quite heavy and hard to move once completed.
  2. Install the doors: We set our doors 1/2 back from the frame and installed two strips behind the doors attached to the frame to attached the hinges to. We used a concealed hinge jig (Home Depot | Amazon) to make holes for the hinges then screw them into place.
  3. Fasten the 4″ strip that goes behind the doors to the outer 2 doors using wood glue & screws.
  4. Fasten the strips to the bottom and top of the frame that go behind the doors to stop them from closing in too far.
  5. Fasten the shelf supports behind the hinge strip at whatever height you want your shelf.
  6. Dry-fit your shelf then cut out a section of it with a jig saw (Home Depot | Amazon) so the strip behind the door can fully close.
  7. Attach the shelf to the supports with screws.
  8. Attach the backer panels and screw them into the various support pieces (you should be able to do one screw into the top and bottom (at the strips behind the doors), and left/right/middle along the shelf, but no screws in the 4 corners cuz there’s nothing to screw into there.
  9. Flip the sideboard onto its side and attach the floor panel flush to the back (should be 1″ set back from the front and two sides). Screw it directly into the bottom of the frame. Optional: add furniture pads.

If you don’t feel like doing all this work, I’ve also found some similar sideboards that are less expensive than the original RH piece we were inspired by here: Wayfair | Crate & Barrel | Crate & Barrel.

Below are some finished pictures of our sideboard:

Sources: circular vase| wood links | light fixture
Tutorials: Canvas Art Tutorial | Dining Table Tutorial

 
For more sources from our Dining Room, click here.
For more sources from our Kitchen, click here.
For more of our DIY tutorials, click here.
To explore the other rooms in our house, click here.

How to Make a Wood Bead Garland | Decor DIY

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Wood bead garlands with jute tassels are such a fantastic piece of accent decor and they’re very easy to make so I’m going to show you how I make mine in this tutorial.

If you’re not into DIY, here are a few ready-made options: Amazon | McGee & Co | Crate & Barrel.

If you just need one garland, it might just be worth it to buy one ready-made and save yourself the time and trouble of making them. But I wanted several lengths of them for various uses over the holidays, so I decided I might as well learn how to make them and it was actually a very relaxing and fun DIY project!

MATERIALS & TOOLS:

  • Wood beads (I used 1″ raw wood beads): Amazon (100 pack) | Amazon (150 pack)
  • Jute twine: Amazon
  • Scissors
  • Piece of cardboard around 6″x3″

INSTRUCTIONS:

For the instructions, I’m going to use pictures rather than words to explain how to make them because I just think that it’ll be easier to follow and in this case visual instructions may be more clear. Here goes…

Again, if you prefer not to DIY, here are some ready-made wood bead garlands: Amazon | McGee & Co | Crate & Barrel.

For more of our DIY Tutorials, click here.
For sources from our dining room (top pics), click here.
To follow us on Instagram, click here.

How to Make Clay Links | Decor DIY

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I made these easy decor links out of natural, air-drying clay and they were not only an easy DIY but also such a fun item to add to any styling moment so I thought I’d share how I made mine here.

The only material you need is natural clay: Amazon | Amazon | Michaels. I linked a few different options so you can shop the best price. 10lbs might seem like a lot, but I went through the whole box I bought.

Here are some ready-made examples of chain links and I have a longer list at the bottom of this post: Bloomist (pale wood) | Bloomist (dark wood) | Bloomist (extra large) | CB2 (marble)| McGee & Co (stone)

There are no specific rules to this DIY and these are extremely general instructions. I made 4 link sets with 4 different shapes and sizes of links so this is just an overview on to how to make them. You can use as much or as little clay as you’d like and you can make your rings as thick or thin as your heart desires.

Instructions:

  1. Start with a chunk of clay. I cut a slab about an inch thick off my whole block of clay, then divided that up into sticks. You can just use any kitchen knife to cut the clay.
  2. Roll out two pieces of clay to start (same rolling technique as play dough) until it’s the thickness of link you like. Since I made 4 link chains in total, mine ranged from about 1/2″ to 1 1/2″ of thickness.
  3. To interlock the chain links, lay them over each other crosswise, then close up the links using a little water to help seal the join between the clay ends.
  4. Continue adding links to your chain, making sure you interlock them as you go. You can make as many or as few links as you want – I think the most I did in one chain was 8 links, and the fewest was 2 (much thicker).
  5. This is optional but you can use a finger that has been dipped in water to gently smooth over any imperfections in the links. Don’t use too much water, but just a little allows you to ‘erase’ lines or bumps.
  6. Allow to air-dry on the counter for several days. I recommend placing small pieces of parchment paper in the places where two pieces of clay are resting against each other so that they don’t fuse together as they dry. They’ll take about 4-8 days to fully dry depending on the thickness of the links.
  7. Once they’re dry, you can paint them any color you want, or leave them natural. So far, I’ve left all of mine their natural color but that’s just personal preference – you can do whatever looks best to you.

Here are ready-made links if you love this look but don’t feel up to making them:

  • Pale wood chain: Bloomist (regular – 5 links)
  • Pale wood chain: Bloomist (large – 3 links)
  • Pale wood chain: Bloomist (large – 5 links)
  • Dark wood chain: Bloomist (regular – 5 links)
  • Dark wood chain: Bloomist (large – 3 links)
  • Dark wood chain: Bloomist (large – 5 links)
  • White marble chain: Bloomist (regular – 3 links)
  • White marble chain: Bloomist (regular – 5 links)
  • White marble chain: Bloomist (large – 3 links)
  • Dark marble chain: Bloomist (regular – 3 links)
  • Marble chain: CB2 (3 links – squared)
  • Marble chain: CB2 (7 links – rounded)
  • Dark soapstone chain: McGee & Co (3 links – rounded)
  • Natural wood chain: McGee & Co (6 links – organic)

Other sources from the pics:

For more of our DIY Tutorials, click here.
To follow us on Instagram, click here.

How to Texture Bowls & Vases | Decor DIY

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An easy way to upcycle old vases and bowls that have a good shape but whose color/pattern perhaps no longer fits in with your style is to simply add texture to them and then repaint them in a new color. This is so unbelievably easy that it almost seems weird to dedicate a whole tutorial to it but here you go:

OPTION 1: HEAVY TEXTURE

Materials:

  • Joint compound: Home Depot
  • Vase/bowl. If you don’t have any old ones, try finding options that are maybe on sale. Here are some similar to what I used: Amazon | Amazon | Target | Target | Crate & Barrel | West Elm
  • Paint (any kind will do, I used BM Simply White in matte that was leftover from our house)

Instructions:

  1. Start with any old vase/bowl. For the example in this tutorial, I used an old glass salad bowl I no longer used but that had a fun shape.
  2. Smear it with joint compound either using your gloved hand, or even an old paint brush. You can make any kind of texture you like. In this example, I just used my fingers to create a natural texture around the bowl, but you can do anything you like and use as much or as little mud as you want.
  3. Dry it overnight.
  4. Paint any color your heart desires.

Progress pics are below, final result is pictured above.

OPTION 2: LIGHT TEXTURE

As an alternative to using joint compound, you can also do a similar technique using baking soda mixed with house paint to create a lighter texture that closely resembles ceramic or terra cotta texture. Most of the vases I label as “DIY” in my sources are done with like this.

To do this, just mix a little house paint with a large scoop of baking soda until it turns to a thickness you’re happy with. I like mine to be quite thick so I do approximately 3 part paint to 1 part baking soda.

Then paint it onto the vase/bowl with a paint brush. If you want even more texture, a trick is to wait until the paint you’ve applied is mostly dry, then run a dry brush over it to create even more texture.

The example I’ve shown in these pics is from the vase in our Home Theater Room. If you’re wondering why the color changes, I had originally painted it gray then changed my mind and switched to white.

Other sources:

For more sources from our Office Room, click here.
For more sources from our Home Theater Room, click here.
For more of our DIY Tutorials, click here.
To follow us on Instagram, click here.