DIY Outdoor Garden Storage

I have to admit. I lost my touch for awhile. And maybe that's not even the right way to explain it. I've been in a funk and haven't been posting. I wish I could say it was because of something greater than me… but honestly, I've been busy with real estate. And the shop. And family. And everything else that life continues to throw at us. And you know what also was consuming my time. Not feeling good enough. I was too busy focusing on the things I couldn't do rather than the things that I could. And the things that were important rather than the things that weren't. I was too busy comparing myself to other bloggers and other people…and their homes. But you know what? I have a home. We own it. That is such a huge accomplishment within itself! Second, we have our health. And I have the opportunity to work and provide along side my husband for our little family. Ultimately, we are more blessed than 75% of people! WHY am I beating myself up?

 I've been searching for awhile now on why I blog. And where did my fire go? Why don't I ever post anymore? Why am I so hard on my house and myself? How come I don't ever post pictures of my house and we've been here a year in a few days? What is up with that? If I don't enjoy it, why am I even doing it? Why would I even devote time to something I have no faith in?

That all needs to change today. You see, this is personal battle with myself. And I vow to overcome it! I enjoy everything about "home" more than anything! And my dream is to one day help people with their homes. I want to be on HGTV. I want to be that person that folks like to look to for inspiration, advice and everything home. I want to be well known for good things about the home. I want things for Home by Ally, large things… things that are not going to come easy. But anything worth having is worth fighting for…and guys, I wanna fight! I won't go down without a fight.

So, today, is my first blog post back here at Home by Ally after a much needed break. My goal for our cute little beachside cottage is to inject as much character, functionality, storage and personality into this home as I can! Today, we are going to touch on storage.

In my head, I love to garden. But mostly, I just love flowers. I haven't tried to really garden yet but that is coming! Since we have a one car garage and we are saving up for a shed out back, I came up with this unconventional but functional garden area for myself out back. I challenge you to look at your space in a different perspective next time you are outside and get creative! Look for unconventional spaces to add storage that will functionally make sense for you and your life.

The planks you see in the background would be part of an outdoor shower we have on one side of our home. My husband calls this "his" space. I have to say its been totally convenient being so close to the beach and coming home not tracking in sand everywhere. We just walk to the back yard, (this is right off of the side of the house.) and wash off all the sand…etc. We also use this outdoor shower to give our puppies their bathes! I love that part! Have you ever tried to bath a lab/great dane mix in a bathtub? And did I mention he doesn't like bathes? This was the best thing ever for us.

So, back to the storage. In our garage, I had all of my gardening tools and supplies in one little corner and thought they'd be better accessible here in this little storage area off the back of our garage and against our outdoor shower. This space is the location of our A/C unit which is to the right of that irrigation pump. We only had trash cans back here and some other things such as grass feeder, extra stepping stones, watering cans, etc.

So here's what we did. We took a trip to Lowes and got some thick & chunky, pressure treated wood that could serve as the shelves. And then, I re-located this iron brackets from our open shelving in our kitchen to out here. More on that later. I could see it in my head. Here's what you'll need...

SUPPLIES

Level

Brackets

Measuring tape

Treated lumber (Pick your size)

Drill

Fencing screws

A husband, spouse, friend

Sharpie

I have a really bad habit of getting excited about a project and #1, forgetting to take a before picture and #2, forgetting to take our "steps" pictures. Forgive me just this once ;-) But I will do a quick run through… for y'all and if you have any questions, please ask in the comments section!

The first thing we did was measure our boards (6') to the length of the outdoor shower. They fit perfect.  We then got out our 3ft level (Any size will do) and our measuring tape and marked off where we wanted our brackets placed and also made sure we had a level service to work with.

We then drilled all brackets in and simply placed the wood shelf on each set of brackets. We took our level back on and placed on each wood shelf to ensure we were still level. And that we were! Hubby took more screws and screwed through the tops down to the brackets for extra support.

Up close and personal view of the brackets. I will be painting those screws ORB to better match the brackets. But you can see how chunky our wood was.

This has been a wonderful space for me to store my plant food, watering cans, flower pots and anything else I can think of! I really love that it actually gives just a plain old wall some depth and character. I would love to show you this space with all of my things on it but right now, it's raining cats and dogs in Florida so I hope you can envision my pretty space :-) We also plan to add some hooks for my tools underneath this storage so I will definitely do another post after we add those!

Do you have a spot where you can add some storage for yourself? Just do it! I encourage you again, to think outside the box and create spaces that are beautiful, add storage, are functional and most of all, spaces that you love! 

DIY Open Shelving

So, many of you may know, especially if you have spoken to me locally or followed along for awhile that I have a plan for our kitchen. It is the cutest little kitchen, just big enough and has a lot more space than I think most people realize... I checked off one of the things on my to do list before I left on vacation. Open shelving of course! I'm searching for the correct photo of this wall we have near this bank of cabinets. They left it open I'm assuming because they thought it might be crowded if they did add a full wall... but my decision was that I wanted something to display my dishes, towels and anything else for the kitchen. For some reason I cannot upload the BEFORE photos so I will add them later.. for y'all and hopefully you will check back!

I opted for these iron brackets from Hobby Lobby.  They are the smaller version and were $3.50 each after receiving 50% each since they were on sale. I already had the wood in the garage so that was FREE... gotta love when that happens! Total, this project cost me less than $25.00 since I had most of the supplies already on hand including the drill, anchors and screws, etc.

I'm really loving how much they break up this wall. I plan to do white dishes stacked and any other items that may be functional for me to have open. I simply measured how far I wanted the brackets to be and measured how long I wanted each shelf to be. I marked a dot where I needed to drill each hole for each bracket and got to work! This project probably took me about an hour to fully complete.

I did opt to purchase the smaller version of our old canisters for this house. They are from Walmart and I believe are under $10 each. We also installed puck under cabinet lighting. It really looks great at night and even has a remote with a dimmer! The lights are all LED and they are awesome!

I quickly added some layers to these shelves just to give y'all an idea of what you can use in open shelving, virtually anything! Like I said before, I will do my white dishes and well as linens and probably some fresh fruit weekly. I love the warmth of the stained wood tops with the black brackets!

Over all I am very satisfied with the look! Next up will be painting our kitchen cabinets. I am excited about the progress of this room and hope that y'all like this as well. If you like any of the images, feel free to hover over your favorites and pin them to your Pinterest accounts.