kokokara

DIY Home Decorating Projects, Tutorials, & Shenanigans

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A Tour Of Our New Beach Duplex!

If you haven’t already heard the news: we’re doubling down in the beach house department. And I mean the “double” part quite literally because we lost our minds and bought a DUPLEX! If you caught our podcast yesterday, you already know the whys, hows, and wheres of this story. The price was right (we even got them down 30K), the location is awesome (close to the park, shops, and a few blocks from the beach), and we didn’t feel like we could ever afford this much house in such a great spot if we waited much longer. This small town only has so many affordable fixer-uppers available before everything gets renovated and we get priced

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Living Simply: Our Go-To Household Cleaners And Personal Care Products

Since sharing this round-up back in 2009 and an one from 2012, we’ve been getting quite a few requests for an updated breakdown of the household cleaners and personal care products we’re using to keep our home (and bodies!) clean these days. We do our best to keep our collections of soaps and cleaners pretty simple and streamlined (including my makeup, which all fits into a bag the size of a pencil case) because less stuff = more money, more time, and more space. So if you’re looking for a few ideas on what you might be able to cut out or simplify, hopefully this quick little post will give you some ideas. Ok, let’s go. Household

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Labor Day Furniture & Home Decor Sales!

I’m doing that thing where I tell myself I’m writing a post to help you guys find all the best deals but really I’m adding a million things to my own cart and whispering “I should just click buy because everything is such a good deal right now!” So whether this post is truly for me or for you (debatable – can’t we just say BOTH?!), here’s what I’ve found so far: Target has a lot of things that are up to 30% off with an extra 15% off at checkout with the code LABORDAY. These arm chairs at Target are so well rated and look awesome in every room I’ve seen them in (like this

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HOLY THINSET, BATMAN! The Beach House Bathrooms Are Tiled!

We had another progress-filled week at the beach house thanks to clocking over 40 hours of tiling across four days to finally finish all of the tile (well, almost all of the tile). Just like last week’s super-sized post on trim, doors, and tile, we made a video to show you guys all the good stuff that’s happening over there – including two other not-tile-related milestones. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.    We tiled the floors and shower pans by zooming in and out for two 2-day trips and tackling them together, but we knew knocking out EIGHT shower walls would be

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Beach House Progress: Original Trim, Doors, And Lots of New Tile!

Compared to the last nine months of gradual progress on our beach house, it feels like things are moving at breakneck speed lately. So this post is one big smorgasbord of updates (but the good kind of smorgasbord, with exotic cheeses and chocolate fondue). Just like I consider this picture of the house’s foyer to be the good kind of messy. I guess practically anything is a good kind of mess compared to the actual mess we had at the start of this project. Memmm-ries…. I know, I know, those two photos don’t look all that different, but what you can’t see is the repaired not-collapsing foundation, the new not-leaking roof, the fresh not-rotting siding,

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How To Install An Irrigation System (But Why You Maybe Shouldn’t Do It)

Welp, I’ve found it guys – the DIY project I most regret undertaking: installing an irrigation system in our yard. Don’t be fooled by my friendly wave below. Why? The short answer is that it was much more exhausting and took much longer than I expected. A professional crew could’ve knocked it out in a day or two  (I know this because I watched two neighbors get theirs installed in no time while I sweated and stressed through my own installation over a three-week period). Sure, DIY projects almost always take more time and elbow grease than just writing a check – but usually, the satisfaction of doing it yourself, learning a new skill, or saving some dough

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Kids Room Ideas From The Cutest Kids Bookstore Ever (Really, It’s AMAZING)

When we were visiting the Bowers this weekend, we shared some fleeting photos of a super adorable kids bookstore on Instagram stories. Then we got a barrage of messages and comments to the tune of: PLEASE DO A POST ABOUT THIS STORE SO IT WON’T BE GONE IN 24 HOURS! So here we are, with those photos (and some more we didn’t share on IG) for anyone who’s looking for some fun kids room ideas. Or adult room ideas. We all LOVED this place so much. It’s in Monroe, Georgia and it’s called The Story Shop – and it’s the cutest bookstore we’ve ever seen. You think I’m exaggerating with that description but in the words of

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The Beach House Has Drywall And It’s Glorious

This has been a LOOOOOONG TIME COMING, and we couldn’t be more excited: our beach house has walls again! When we first “met” our house the original crumbling plaster was full of mold and termite damage, so it has taken over eight solid months to rebuild this baby from the studs up, including adding new electrical, plumbing, an updated HVAC system, and even tearing off a side of the house to rebuild it from scratch. So this stage may not look like much, but it feels enormously momentous to us. I’ll toss in a few before photos as a refresher. You can see the whole house’s “before” state here and the fully torn apart/demo stage here, like the shot below.

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A Little Wooden Playhouse In The Woods

Yup, we’re following the blogger trend that seems to be sweeping the internets: our kiddos officially have a playhouse. It was actually a gift from my mom for their joint birthdays back in the spring (yes, our 7-year-old and 3-year-old both agreed on precisely one thing, and it was that they wanted a little outdoor house to call their own). “No grown-ups allowed” was actually uttered during the request. So we looked around for one we thought they’d both like that wouldn’t break Nonna’s budget. We came across this cute playhouse that was made of solid cedar, was the right price, and even had little flower pot holders out front. So we sent my mom the link, enjoyed

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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico

You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise. As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area. Why Puerto Rico? After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska

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Our Patriotic Front Porch + Front Yard Planning

Just dropping in with a quick little patriotic update out front and some future yard plans. We’re no strangers to decorating in reds, whites, and blues outside, and the good news is that the back of our house isn’t having all the fun anymore. That’s right, the purchase of a $25 flag has me grinning every time we come home to it (and it only took us two tries to get it right – ha!). The funny thing is that when we moved into our house there was an old flag holder in a similar spot… but we were about to repaint everything from cream to white so we removed it. And then, well, the house

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Easy Makeover: A Hardworking Homework Room

Remember how I’m slowly slinking around my BFF’s house and eating all of the food in her fridge making over rooms for her? (You’ve seen her living room upgrade here). Well, I’m back with a sweet and simple homework room that we pulled together for her kids….juuuuust in time for school to be over for the year. #FlawlessTiming Thankfully they’ve already found that it’s pretty useful year round. Our goal was just to create a space that’s functional, not too spendy, and something that can grow with them (the kids are 2, 6, and 7). And since it’s right off the foyer, we wanted it to look nice since it’s one of the first things

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