How Can Value be Reinstated in the Built Environment? Excerpt 2 from 'Design to Value: The architecture of holistic design and creative technology.'

When I think of summer decor, the first thing that always comes to mind is the advice that I used to read in decor magazines about how to switch your home decor up for summer.. And it was ridiculous.. And it kind of made me mad..

For the top itself, we just used one long piece of pine shelving and trimmed it out with some 2×2 pine pieces to make it look chunkier.The shelving that we got (I think these are also sometimes called “project boards”) was about 16″ wide and we just measured it to run the length of the room.

You can get these boards in all different shapes and sizes and they’re made up of long strips glued together so you get that authentic “butcher block” look!We attached the 2×2 trim pieces around the edges using clamps and wood glue and then sanded them down to be rounded on the edges once everything was dry.We’ve made this type of counter before and sometimes we’ll uses a few nails from the nail gun to hold everything thing in place too.

A little bit of wood filler helped to smooth everything out and then we were ready to finish it!.We did just a little bit of distressing around the corners to make sure things still looked a bit rustic and farmhousy and then I finished it exactly the same way as.

our floors upstairs.

I used the same stain and even the same floor finish for a top coat!One little tip that I love is to use inexpensive non-stick baking sheets to stain on instead of newspapers or cardboard.

Keep them only for painting and staining obviously!🙂 This really does help keep your stained and painted pieces from getting stuck down, like they sometimes do on newspapers and they really help keep the whole work area super tidy!.

Next I stained the lower shelf, the legs, and the skirting..If you were wondering what that floating red object is in the background, it’s the zip line tied up to the deck on the playhouse.