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A Pretty Happy Home

Life, DIY and Random Things That Make Me Smile

  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Contact
  • Shop
    • Apparel and Shoes
    • Books
    • Crafts and Sewing
    • Decor
    • Furniture
    • Home Improvement
    • Kid Favorites
    • Kitchen
  • Projects
    • Cleaning
    • Clothing
    • Colonial Farmhouse
    • Crafts
    • Decorating
    • DIY Projects
    • Holidays
  • Adventure
    • Moving to Ireland
    • Living in Ireland
    • Visiting Ireland
    • Travel
    • Family and Parenting
    • Humor
    • Learning
  • Privacy Policy
  • Home
  • About
    • About
    • Contact
  • Shop
    • Apparel and Shoes
    • Books
    • Crafts and Sewing
    • Decor
    • Furniture
    • Home Improvement
    • Kid Favorites
    • Kitchen
  • Projects
    • Cleaning
    • Clothing
    • Colonial Farmhouse
    • Crafts
    • Decorating
    • DIY Projects
    • Holidays
  • Adventure
    • Moving to Ireland
    • Living in Ireland
    • Visiting Ireland
    • Travel
    • Family and Parenting
    • Humor
    • Learning
  • Privacy Policy

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  • carriage house stone building with metal grate for a window
    DIY

    Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 3, Old Windows

    May 7, 2025 /

    Work on our stone Carriage House gym continues and today we’re going to discuss old windows. It is hard to explain the window situation on this half of the building. I think the short answer is someone thought windows were overrated. Natural light? Who needs it? Glass panes? Metal grates are stronger. The longer answer is that on the end of the building we are currently restoring, there are two small window openings with cast iron grates instead of glass panes. Were glass panes ever there? Maybe. There is no longer evidence of them if they were there. Poof. History erased. One of the grates on the west facing side…

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    annisa 0 Comments

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  • buried treasure searching for treasure on a 250 year old property but mainly finding old trash in the ground like tin tiles from vikon tile company in washington new jersey
    colonial farmhouse,  DIY

    Did We Finally Find Buried Treasure?

    April 30, 2025 /

    If you’ve been reading this blog for five minutes, you’ll know that I am unabashedly on the hunt for buried treasure on our 250-year-old property. Surely, surely, there must be something hidden around here somewhere. Preferably, this something would be valuable enough to pay off our mortgage, but I’m not picky. We recently dug a trench alongside our Carriage House and that trench was full and I do mean FULL of buried treasure. I don’t mean the valuable sort of treasure. More like this was someone’s garbage pile. An actual garbage pile that had been buried over time, and now I’m donning my proverbial Indiana Jones hat and saying under…

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    annisa 2 Comments

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    The Most Satisfying Staircase Makeover You’ve Seen Today

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  • carriage house gym expansion demo a fieldstone wall to prepare for repointing removing concrete from a stone foundation with a chisel attachment on a hammer drill
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    Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 2, Demo

    April 28, 2025 /

    If you missed it, we are expanding our home gym. This space, that I affectionately refer to as the ‘little torture chamber,’ is located in our stone Carriage House. The part of the home gym we completed in 2024 looks like this now. The other half of the building, where we want to expand the home gym, looked like this (see photo below) last month. It was a tad bit creepy. When I say creepy, I mean that’s where the cave crickets lived. I think they are gone now. *fingers crossed* You can catch up on why we are doing this expansion and feast your eyes on all the creepy…

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    Searching for Hidden Treasure in Our Home

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    Back Staircase Before and After

    January 6, 2020
  • entryway refresh with buffalo check curtains and new front door window insert
    colonial farmhouse,  decorating,  DIY

    Entryway Refresh and a New Front Door Window

    April 16, 2025 /

    Last month we did an entryway refresh on our home and now I’m wondering why we waited so long? That’s how it always goes. I prefer to sit with things before I write about them. It gives me some perspective on the change. It helps minimize the number of instances where I have to apologize because whatever thing we changed didn’t hold up or perform as expected. Also, it gives us time to “laugh about this later” when things go wrong and they always do with our projects. I really want to meet these people where things seem to run like clockwork for them. What’s that like? How do they…

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  • DIY

    Faux Garage Door Windows – Easy Curb Appeal Upgrade

    April 7, 2025 /

    I’m about to blow your mind with how easy it is to upgrade the look of a garage door with faux garage door windows. I know you have your skeptical eyes on right now. Good. That will make this even more impactful. What are these so-called faux windows made of and how “easy” is this DIY really? The faux garage door windows are made from magnets. If you can place a magnet on a metal surface, that’s how easy this DIY is. A toddler could do this DIY, but they’d probably put the faux garage door windows on the bottom of the door and all on the same panel like…

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    annisa 2 Comments

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  • DIY

    Stone Carriage House Gym Expansion Part 1

    March 26, 2025 /

    Last year, we made over one room in our stone Carriage House and turned it into a home gym. It took us at least six weeks of continual work to make that happen, partly because it’s a long, laborious process and partly because there are only two of us. The DIY experience is one constant reminder that you are limited by the amount of time in a day and the number of hands you possess. You’d think evolution would have fixed one of those problems by now. The Carriage House is a separate building on our property and it is divided into three parts. The entire top floor is a…

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    annisa 4 Comments

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    Kitchen Refresh Part 5: Backsplash Dilemma

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    July 12, 2023
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    Hide A Router and Modem In An Antique Radio Cabinet

    July 31, 2023
  • The-Gloss-Magazine-Interiors-Gillian-Sherrard-photo-Dylan-Thomas-via-mygloss hidden bookcase doors
    DIY

    The Case for a Hidden Bookcase Door

    March 24, 2025 /

    Hear me out. Our house *needs* a hidden bookcase door. Do you know what I’m referring to? A wall that looks like it has a gorgeous bookcase, but you pull a secret lever and the bookcase opens to reveal a hidden room behind it. How cool is that? No question about it. We DEFINITELY need a hidden bookcase door. I just have to convince Handy Husband that it wouldn’t be a colossal pain in the patootie to build one. Just the normal amount of pain. For instance, we don’t need to have a curved arch over the hidden bookcase door. I could compromise and let that idea go. See how…

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    annisa 2 Comments

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  • bedroom peg rail above a dresser in a colonial farmhouse with tiffany lamp
    decorating,  DIY

    Bedroom Peg Rail – One Entire Wall of Storage

    March 12, 2025 /

    By adding a peg rail to one entire wall of our bedroom, we gained 15 feet of storage and organization space and an unlimited amount of glee over this addition. Is there a Guinness Book of World Records category for the world’s longest peg rail? If so, I’d like to submit our bedroom peg rail as an entry. You’ll have to use your imagination a little because it was hard for me to get a decent photograph of one gigantic wall broken up by a door. That’s why I’m showing the two sides of the peg rail in different photos in this blog post. The hardship, I know. Thank you…

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    LED Candles for the Master Bedroom Fireplace

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  • DIY under a table pull out trash cabinet rustic farmhouse kitchen partially fitted kitchen
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    Under-A-Table Pull-Out Trash Cabinet

    February 17, 2025 /

    With limited kitchen cabinet space and nowhere to conceal the trash and recycling cans, we got creative and made a pull-out trash cabinet to go under a table. Yes, a table! We have a partially unfitted kitchen, meaning not everything is fixed in place. We use furniture to supplement our lack of kitchen cabinets and counter space. In particular, we have a rustic table pushed against one wall that serves as a counter, coffee station, and eating area. That’s where we decided to tuck our pull-out trash cabinet. Here’s that rustic table before we started this project. And, ahem, here’s how that table has looked on any given weekday with…

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  • DIY Copper Toe Kick For Built-In Desks to solve the problem of feet scuffing the trim using adhesive copper toe kick cut with metal snips farmhouse style desks
    decorating,  DIY

    Copper Toe Kick For Built-In Desks

    February 10, 2025 /

    Allow me to acquaint you with the most amazing thing – a copper toe kick with an adhesive backing. If copper isn’t your color, don’t write this idea off. Brass and nickel toe kicks are a thing too. Sure, toe kicks or kick plates are not a new invention. They’ve been around since women started complaining about people and pets damaging their gorgeous front doors or so I assume. Seems like something that would drive me nuts. However, we’re not getting distracted by assumptive history today. We’re focusing on what drives me nuts creative problem-solving with gorgeous materials. I most often see a toe kick or kick plate on the…

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    annisa 0 Comments

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Hi! I'm Annisa.

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