Ikea just launched new wall unit system Besta. I’ve always loved MDF Italia wall units, which are crazy expensive. I liked them so much I’ve been trying to learn cabinet making just so I could knock them off. Then along came Ikea. The configuration I got took about six hours to set-up and cost $550. Luckily my friends Joe and Jessica came over to help. After putting their Ikea kitchen together, they’ve become Ikea assembly experts.

Our friend Bryce was diagnosed with cancer last year. Before he started chemo they decided to take a two week family vacation to Hawaii. While they were gone we decided to do a quick make-over on their bedroom and bathroom. Bryce had been working on their bathroom on and off for 3 years and it still wasn’t finished. They were down to 1 bathroom for 6 people!

Two weeks didn’t leave much time to tile a bathroom, install a new window, paint and organize. We called in help and favors from everyone we knew and barely finished before they got home.

When we moved in we were focused on the interior renovations. What was supposed to take 6 months took 3 years+. The inside is basically finished and now we’re focusing on the outside. We have a really nice entryway, but it was completely overgrown and there was this weird pile of rocks alongside the stairs.

My overall idea for the exterior is to consolidate materials into fewer and more cohesive choices. Instead of 10 different types of stones, maybe 3. I already had a nice rusty metal planter that I liked, so I thought I’d bring more rusted steel into the mix. My concept was to visually extend the stairs and add low ground cover. We first planted Irish Moss but that didn’t live and this year we replanted Whooly Thyme.

We’re pretty happy with the results, I love the way the stairs have rusted.

The renovations continue and it’s time to for another project in the side yard (the fence was last summer). I got some ipe deck lumber from my friend Scott, who had it left over from some of design/build company’s jobs. The problem was I had a lot of short boards and there were some 1″ and some 3/4″. What to do? Ah ha, fly my 73 year-old, retired, engineer Dad for a week of manual labor. He’ll be able to figure it out.

We came up with a rough plan, use the 3/4″ boards for the small deck and because we had so many short lengths we hung the joist every 12″. I thought we’d have enough wood for the whole deck but we only had about 50%. Luckily MacBeath Hardwoods in town had a bunch of ipe boards in a pile out back of their warehouse. They had been there a while, so we were able to negotiate on the price, they even milled some down. Ipe turns grey over time so it didn’t match the other lumber I had. I was going to sand the whole deck but once it was installed I really liked the effect of different colors.

The problem with the lumber I had was a lot of the boards were warped and crowned. I did a little research and found this tool called the BoWrench which worked amazingly well. Without it we would’ve been hosed.

As for the hardware we bought screws specifically for ipe decks. Stainless steel, special threads, powder coated heads, but the crazy thing was they were 30 cents apiece! x 600. We had to counter-sink and pre-drill all the holes anyway so probably not worth it. It’s rock hard wood, funny enough the first hole I attempted to drill broke the bit. I had to get some Bosch titanium bits and they worked fine.

Anyway, the deck came out great. We lucked out on buying the exact amount of treated lumber for the structure. We weren’t really measuring the width of the boards to the final side but it worked out perfectly with out needing to rip the end board.