Validation from Nick! I collected birch branches put out for yard waste pick up while on a walk with my kids and artfully arranged them in a copper urn in front of the fireplace. Was very happy to show my husband that this was Nick-approved.😂
I always think it's interesting to try to define the boundary between DIYs and professional crafting. There are definitely projects here I would call just basically furniture making point blank 😂 Really cool projects though!
Right. I wouldn't call that a diy, (though he did it himself) ...that was more like art. If my husband paints a picture for you, that's not a diy because he's an artist and that's his profession.
When I was young, broke, and living on my own for the first time, I decorated with 100% DIY. A wild storm dumped a big branch (with lots of smaller branches) outside my apartment door, so I spray painted it white and meticulously glued delicate silk leaves all over it. Then I lined the branch with tiny lights and hung it from the ceiling. It was gorgeous and quite a focal piece. That crappy apartment looked much better in the soft glow of those little lights!
My problem with DIY is that it's often presented as a cheaper alternative to a product available for purchase, but by the time you buy the materials and put in the time, it's often not much of a savings for an inferior product.
Agree. I spent $200 to makeover 2 ikea hemnes nightstands that cost me $180 to buy lol. BUT they look amazing now with higher quality paint and glitzy hardware. Plus it was fun!
That also depends on who you are and what you're doing. Pretty much all of the DIYs that I've done are pretty low level decor ones because I saw a cool piece that would've cost far more than a canvas and the paint that I already had lying around or whatever the connection of materials happened to be and then wound up with things that I wanted to keep longer because they mattered more. There are definitely times where you are completely correct, but for people who just enjoy the art of making the thing, you end up with a better product for less and those extra supplies get used in the next project so it is actually cheaper and more sustainable in the longer run
From memory, DIY made a lot more sense in the 90's - with a little know-how and some practical skills, you really could make something that was on par with an item from the store for a fraction of the cost. But now everything is mass produced and so much cheaper to buy, plus a lot of the skills are lost (I feel like everyone my mum's age had a sewing machine, and every dad had a workshop). Also, DIY seems to have changed from "here's how to create something yourself with some basic skills" to either "here's how to use advanced carpentry tools and skills to make your own cabinet" or "here's how to cover a mirror with foam and call it a hack."
Only DIY I ever did that I still use: needed 2 trays so I could set drinks on an upholstered surface, bought 2 moderately priced picture frames and nice mats, framed 2 pieces of patterned scrapbook paper. Makes understated accent pieces and serves a purpose. Total time: 45 minutes to run to the craft store, 5 minutes to assemble. Still look great 10+ years later after constant use. (2 trays costing what I spent this project would not be high quality and I needed a very specific size.)
I love spray painting things to be a more cohesive color palette, I have done it so many times. But please never spray paint anything that a child could potentially put in their mouth
My thoughts exactly. Even if you put it on a high shelf, I think it's unfair to display a toy that they can't play with. they might even do something dangerous to try to get at it.
@Xuěhuā you know, you might have a point. I'd say most importantly is asking your kids what colours they like, I would have loved to have a custom painted bedroom growing up:) I'm a big fan of desaturated tones, icy pastels, idk for some reason colours affect me a lot. I remember HATING the colours of my toys and clothes as a kid lol. Tldr: colours are important but also I agree, don't overstimulate with super Bright Brights everywhere. They might be the type of person who loves bright colours, but they'll definitely let you know if you ask:) Good luck ❤️
some advice about faux plants: don't put them in a place that gets lots of natural light if you want them to last, they will bleach out and get really brittle. I personally like to put live plants in that kind of prime real estate and put faux plants in spaces where I would love to have some green but any real plant would never survive
I'm a therapist and, while I'm a generalist and definitely not a child development expert, we do know that bright colors help especially little children because their things like depth perception and color range are still developing. However not everything needs to be brightly colored. It can be helpful for the environment to be more pastelly or even neutral with pops of color in things you want your kiddo to engage with... It can help them discern what's background and what's foreground. The biggest things are to have brightly colored toys and books, things that babies and toddlers will engage with while they're active and playing. A lot of mobiles, for example, don't have bright colors on them because the goal is not to be super engaging but to be soothing. So they'll have some contrast and movement to get the baby's attention, but they're often more muted colors. I agree with the beige and brown for little ones being stifling for their creativity and expression (and there is color theory in psychology, we do believe color impacts mood and things like creativity... But on the flip side too much bright color can actually lead to stress and overstimulation). The things like tables are brightly colored because that entices the kiddos to use the table and be attracted to it... But you could get the same effect with having a brightly colored table cloth, placemat, easel, etc that can be brought out during play time and then stored away when not in use.
On the Billy bookcases-- if you can't afford the hack in the video or you're renting and/or don't want them to be permanently fixed in place, what you can do is paint the background the same color as the wall behind them. Just scuff up the material a little with a sanding block or sanding sponge, spray prime them, and then paint. If you have more than one bookcase, this effect looks even more custom and can give a built-in look without having to actually build them in!
Phenomenal work, dude. What a brilliant way to use skateboards! I lived in Santa Cruz for a long time and I thought I saw every way to upcycle used boards of all kinds but NOPE. This took the cake. Like. WOW.
The skateboard Eames lounge chair is a brilliant piece of art. It must have been so gratifying to finally sit in that beautiful chair after all the hard work!
Do NOT cut green branches and use (or paint) them for a fake tree in your house. You need to dry and cure wood for months before you can use it in a project. This is how you end up with rotting wood and bugs in your house.
what? no! with a thinish, smallish, healthy (!) branch like that, you’re gonna be fine. if you have a thick log or partially already dead or ill wood, bugs will fester, of course, that is nature doing it’s cycle thing. any bugs that live on the healthy bark will die with the branch. the worst that can happen is that a dead bug will lie in some corner at some point or they might go live inside your indoor plants, but most indoor plants are tropical plants, so that will only work when your branch is from a tropical tree. PSA: bugs also can come inside flower bouquets. just recently hat a black rose bug inside a rose bud that was shipped from the netherlands to eastern germany by lorry… and it wasn’t an organic rose or something weird. it just happens sometimes that things are ALIVE (jaysus! that’s a good thing in the end! i’d rather have a bug once in a while than poisoned roses and salted soil all the times) also found a red lily bug in a bouquet of a friend. another real problem you might run into, is that with your branch or log drying (cause the air inside your home will always be dryer than a forest or a living tree) is that the wood will shrink and the bark might break and chip off, especially if you glue plastic shit on it. i have seen treefakery where they used cotton tread to tie leaves (cut from old book pages even), origami flowers or cranes on branches. it will always look fake to anyone who lives with actual plants and it also will always stink of old plastic (i hate that smell!) so maybe just make a statement instead of faking something that you won’t reach anyways. and it will stay compostable 😐
This. Plus you don't want people walking around neighbourhoods mutilating trees. Properly pruning trees requires some knowledge and clearly Lone Fox doesn't know how to do it right. I saw a video where he spray-painted stuff straight above grass. As if that won't hugely pollute the ground and subsequently waterways. I stopped watching his channel after that.
@@lsamoa yeah that sounds about right. He seems like a sweet guy, but it's pretty obvious he just collects ideas from other creators without researching how to do it properly himself.
With so much cheap mass produced furniture a lot of people tend to throw out solid wood items when it has the slightest nick or stain. I highly recommend checking out your neighborhood during bulk trash pick-up days because chances are someone threw out a beautiful kitchen table with an easily fixed wobbly leg. Add a new coat of paint or strip and stain for nicer wood and you just saved hundreds. I've gotten almost all my furniture this way.
I live these so absolutely no hate from me, but I think we need to acknowledge the difference between “DIY” and actual craftsmanship.. those last two were making furniture from scratch. I guess everything anyone does with their hands is technically a DIY, but it helps keep value in experienced artistry and craftsmanship when it’s not lumped into the inexperienced craft hacks. ❤️
A 5 minute craft I like is to string a few nice chunky beads on the end of a light pull. Must be ones that are easy to clean. Ive seen nice drawer handles were short strings of chunky beads.
The chair feels more like a woodworking project than a DIY project to me, though that's more about project difficulty and scale - it's a bit of a nebulous distinction, it's not like there's a line you cross from one to the other, but that project definitely takes a lot of specialised materials and power tools.
Please don't saw off a tree's branch if you don't know how to do pruning correctly. It's also potentially illegal. That DIY was really bad advice. Plus the branch will rot in no time and attract bugs.
Drew is just such a lovely guy. He’s soo creative and I just love that tree. He really does think out of the box. Those chairs are fantastic. Like you Nick I’m never going to make them. Thanks as always for what you do. Xx 😘
i appreciate the warning notice the artist posted when sharing how to spray paint toys for children’s rooms. Especially since most people don’t read the directions or warning labels on paint and may not realize the pain could chip off the item.
I'm not sure I would count a lot of these as DIY. Some of these require professional-level wood shops and carpentry skills. The spray paint one and the tree one are more DIY.
I'd love to see a Drew-Nick coop, 2 of my favorite youtubers! Nick, these ones were super interesting, keep them coming, I loved them more than Part 1!
as a child of the 90s, I'm just glad parents are now trying to put some pretty stuff in their kid's rooms. mine decided the best thing to decorate mine was clowns and really bright colors. it was a nightmare
Soviet-Era prison look for children's room...You always make me laugh! I married a VERY handy man. In fact "handy" was a requirement for me in my courting days. No tools, no date. 😂 He has taken my design ideas and made them work through out our entire house, including an entire wall of beautiful built-ins in our living room. He's currently painting more built-ins I requested for our family room to cover very dated brick around our '77 fireplace. It'll be gorgeous when it's done.
“Fake something that’s not”. Sums it up beautifully, as usual. Been thinking about this since the Met Gilded theme, which slipped by most people. Love these videos.
I like the skateboard idea, I could use precut planks of wood, secure them together and then pull design together into a variety of furniture or even shelving. Even cardboard can be re purposed in straps into molding, and shelves holding light things.
Beautiful Eames replica chair. Of course that’s for a master craftsman with the right saws chemicals screwdrivers varnish etc. I like the tree idea. Please do another of this content. Have a nice weekend🙂
About fifteen years ago, inspired by “Design on a Dime” (talk about a blast from the past), I made a headboard. It took a lot longer to get all of my materials together (plywood, batting, foam, fabric, Duct tape, staple gun, Velcro), than it did to make the headboard and attach it to the wall (about 45 mins start to finish). I was really proud of that headboard.
The spraypaint thing is great, too, for functional stuff that just looks ugly where it needs to be. I like my office to be really light and neutral because it helps with calm and focus while I'm trying to work. All the big black bulky computer equipment looks so ugly but it's surprisingly easy to rectify with the right kind of paint and detailed enough application of masking tape.
Please take your computer apart before doing this, I am not a computer science major but I'm pretty sure you don't want any stray spray paint particles on the internal components (Forgive me if you already know this, it's kinda for anyone who might read this. Spray painting your computer for the aesthetic is a dope ass idea and I WILL be stealing it lol, I just don't want anyone jacking up their PCs)
@@mightymeatymech Yeah, I didn't want to try and write an entire tutorial in the comments but you pretty much need to disassemble just to mask everything off properly anyways.
Once again….YOU SLAY ME! “…all brown, beige, soviet prison cell-style, kids bedrooms”. Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. ~ huge fan from your home city Vancouver
That Eames chair is not what I would call a DIY project 😂 It demande a crazy level of skills and special pieces and material… it’s super cool to watch but I’d never dream of replicating it!!! 😅
Here’s my hack although I hired someone else to do it. I took the advice of two interior designers to paint my traditional brass and glass coffee table and end table black. I found an excellent powder coating company who used a satin black. Beautiful! My living room is a transitional design and it coordinated well with the black dining room chandelier. Total price $220.
My pet peeve is those nurseries that are so beige and sterile looking. This room is for a CHILD and should be fun an colorful. While I agree that the spray paint is cute to make things look cohesive, save it for the adult decor. The Eames-style lounge chair is amazing. It is so labor intensive that I would never do it myself, but amazing nonetheless! My husband is a very handy person, and I'm somewhat artistic and creative, so we made our fabric covered headboard about 15 years ago and it has moved with us to our current house and we love it. We changed the fabric when we moved here to match our current decor and it is great. It will probably move to our next house too. I like a little diy. We made our fireplace mantel because the old one was ugly and dated and it made such a difference in the room. We also made some open shelving in our kitchen and laundry room and it gave me so much extra storage (both fairly small rooms) and looks great. I'm not a fan of a lot of those cheap diy projects, but the right diy can be very nice and functional.
Check your local laws for the legality of sawing off branches from trees! This is not legal in Sweden, you can only pick branchestthat are already on the ground.
This. I'm quite sure it's illegal in North America too if they're public trees or belong to someone else. Plus even if the tree is yours it's really harmful for the tree if you don't do it right. You can even kill it if you do it really wrong the way that guy did.
@@lsamoa yeh like cutting trees in summer is usually harmful. Can let in disease and also loses the tree a lot of energy. Always cut on a slant to let water run off the remaining branch so it doesn't pool and rot. And watch a video on where to cut. Like close near a junction (so you don't leave a sticky out stumpy bit but not through a junction. You need to watch a pruning vid to see. Better to pick branches off the ground. Eg after a storm or driftwood.
Love you channel especially the decorating principles, like the Traditional video. I live in a small mountain cabin and am working to use comfortable Scandi. Don’t like “stuff” so Scandi works but need cozy in winter. Thanks for all you show. DS in Colorado
Done the built in using IKEA cubes for cubbies in a bathroom. So easy! The skateboard chair is beautiful... he should sell on Etsy if he isn't already. Home made modern has so many DIY's based on easy to access materials. Some of my faves are using building blocks like leggo to make molds.
The last two are amazing but for serious woodworkers with a pretty extensive set of tools and skills. I really like Drew’s channel and did a variant on a woven DIY project, but I’m not a fan of fake trees, no matter how well they are made.
Keep making more of these, Nick! In reality, most of us won't make them, but they're fun to think about. One I have a slight problem with is the painted tchotchkes. Parents should be cautious if they have kids in the "put anything in their mouths" stage, or even having potentially toxic painted items in a child's room. Consult with experts to find what spray paints are safe.
Love this! Who knew what could be done to skate boards...a chair! Beautiful too. Amazing people out there. Thanks for giving them air space. You are a delight for the creative mind with all your videos! Keep 'em coming!
I made the tree from Drew's video. I'm terrible at DIYs, and if I can do it, ANYONE can. I messed up the concrete mixture, so my branch didn't end up as straight up and down as I wanted, but I was able to balance that out with the placement of the leaves. It looks so REAL. The imperfection of a real branch is magic, I highly recommend this diy.
I am glad that you showed Drew's tree! I had been searching for 7 foot long broken branches for weeks, but finally gave up & bought myself a tree. It does use real wood at least, looks real, & wasn't very expensive! I now live in the dry, windy Phoenix Arizona area & broken off tree branches are sometimes plentiful around here, but not close enough to my house where I could drag one home. I don't have a truck!
I really like the spray paint idea- I know as a kiddo my favorite color changed all the time, so this is a chance to have the new color be prominent without having to actually rebuy things, especially if the kid already has a deep attachment to an item. However, as someone already said earlier, it's not really safe if the kid puts everything in their mouth
The great con job ... that brightly coloured plastic is somehow Educational. It is worth studying classrooms in Italy, Scandinavia ... they're NOT all the same ... and they are not all PrimaryColours ... and I'd be prepared to claim some NotExpertButClose status. ☺
As an expert in child development with over forty years of experience teaching in and directing early childhood programs, as well as teaching early childhood teachers at the university level, I want to assure you that bright, primary colored toys and furnishings are not necessary for child development. In fact, there has been a movement in the field for a couple decades to create programs with neutral colors that are less stimulating. There are so many beautiful environments now that work to avoid the over-stimulation that bight colors create. A good early childhood program should have a homelike environment since children spend so many hours in these programs.
Hi Nick thank you for taking the time to make this video I really enjoyed it and the DIY's look amazing! I normally don't like faux trees but I have to admit this one looked nice! Take care and cheers from Ottawa🌷💖
@Nick Lewis, I highly recommend the DIY Danie channel because she is so much fun and does amazing DIYs! Her Billy Bookcase videos are out of this world cool, especially the ones she did in her home office. I would love to see her included in the next installment of your "DIYs I Don't Hate" series! 💜
If you go through all that work for the built-in Ikea bookcase, which is made of cheap materials, why not work a little more and put in actual wood shelves in yourself?
So, so cool Nick. Thanks for doing the research so I don't have to. 😉 Don't think I'll try any of these either, but I love seeing what people are doing.
The Eames chair was my favourite, those colours were amazing!! It reminded me of Michael Alm's patterned plywood videos, i'd really recommend checking out his channel if you haven't yet. I think you'd love his work! He makes all sorts of amazing patterns from layered plywood (chevrons, hexagons, triangles, even one he calls 'dragon scale'), and he's also using coloured veneers to get contrasting lines in the finished product.
Another DIY-er worth mentioning is Jorge Gomez. I love Drew's creations as long as it's not too boho or farmhouse... and does not include macrame.... His work for AD was mind blowing!
I need a never ending series of these videos!! So hard to find diy projects that are actually worth the time and money put into them, these videos are incredibly helpful!
Up-Cycling is a great new hobby for the Future. taking other objects at the end of their intended use and using the material to make something new and functional. The World needs to Change, True ReCycling must happen. no more landfills full of wasting resources.
I just lost my mother to Alzheimer’s. I don’t need to talk about the stress and horrendous situation she was in. When she left this earth, I looked around her home and saw these amazing things that she made with her hands and heart. I now cherish these odd things more than my life. I think that the most important thing is to be true to yourself. She did and now I have things to cherish!!!
Being a Halloween nut my home would probably horrify most people, but I did do the spray paint thing with some dollar tree bugs and mounted them to the wood cutouts they sell. I added them to my gallery wall to give it dimensions.
Now I know I live in an alternative Universe!!! Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I truly would not believe it! The guy glued artificial leaves onto branches he dragged into the house and then arrange everything to look like a tree. 🤦♀️ Instead of buying a beautiful living, breathing tree. Will he be dusting the leaves on that “tree” too because they will collect dust like all the other artificial plants? Not a fan is as polite as I can be about this project. On the other hand, absolutely love the very first one (“built-in” Ikea shelves), and the chair made from skateboards. Amazing skill and patience - well-done skateboard person (sorry can’t remember his name and am too lazy to go back).
Yeah that "tree" project was absolute trash tbh. Mutilate a perfectly healthy tree for this. Just no. One should only bring branches home that you pick from the ground and they need to dry out.
