Furnishing on a budget: $30 DIY Bike Rack

Since moving to North Carolina from Oregon, we have been on a very (and I mean extremely) tight budget. At the beginning of the month our friends helped us with our bills because all the moving expenses completely drained our resources. So needless to say, this young married couple hasn't been having very many date nights...

But now that pay checks are starting to stagger in and replenish what we spent to move out here, we are slowly being able to think about furnishing our apartment. I have all these cute ideas in mind (thanks Pinterest) but don't have the money to pull them all off yet. You've gotta start somewhere right? So we decided that maybe starting with the things that demand a certain amount of space should be worked out first. Namely, our bikes. 

I wasn't even really into biking until we went down to one car last year and Alex had to start commuting to work. He got super into the whole fixie craze and has since purchased me one (the bottom bike in the above photo) and spends a lot of time researching ways to make his bike cooler. Anyways...our apartment is much bigger than our place in Portland - 755 sq feet - but still not huge. So, we wanted to find the best way to store our bikes inside (we live on the first floor so it would be way to easy to take them off our back porch) without creating a giant contraption of hideousness. Cue Pinterest searching. We found lots of great photos but nothing that made us perfectly satisfied. Finally, Alex came across a photo of a DIY bike rack that used a 2x4x8 that propped against the wall with hooks in it for the bikes. 

We set out to Home Depot with our $50 bike rack budget for date night. Once we showed an employee what we were working on, he suggested we just bolt the wood board to the wall with lag screws and skip the part where we would have to build an anchor for the leaning version. Genius. We had the man cut 6 inches off the board (because our ceiling is only 8 feet high we were worried the board would be a tad tall) and went home with our supplies: 

1 - 2x4x8 (minus 6 inches) ($2.95) 

2 - 5/16 lag screws ($0.60 each)

2 - fold down bike hooks ($6 each) 

1 - Behr "maple leaf" paint sample ($3.95) 

1 - 8oz can of Minwax Wood Finish in "dark walnut" ($4.98) 

1 - paintbrush ($1.15) 

Total = $26.23 + tax

We called our buddy Justin to borrow a stud finder and a power screw driver. We started by pre-drilling the board and held it up to pre-drill into the wall for accurate placement where a stud was. Then we painted one coat of the Behr paint, followed by one coat of stain an hour later. We had to let the stain sit for 8 hours to dry thoroughly. The next day, I held the board up while my husband screwed in the lags. Then we attached the bike hooks and voila! 

Not too shabby! 

Emmaus - A Jesus Church

We officially launched our church this week. Sunday at 10am in Cary, NC was our first service in the location we have booked for a year. The Cary Arts Center is a beautiful building. It stands at the end of the street through the quaint downtown area of Cary, so the road literally leads to Emmaus. 

There was so much preparation that went into this service. The music team held three different practice sessions during the week leading up. I was worried I might lose my voice before Sunday! Don't worry, I didn't. Everything went wonderfully. It almost felt like, as a church plant, we cheated. We totally skipped the step where you meet in a school cafeteria and have really bad equipment for worship and the "kids ministry" meets out in the hall. We were able to go right into full swing with stocked up kids rooms, great sounding instruments, projector screens, and video for pod casting. An awesome beginning. 

The whole day was like we have been doing this for years. The team knows each other so well. The band has fun up on stage together. And we held a cook out in the park across the street afterward like a huge family. This really is a huge family. They take care of each other. When we were worried about how to pay our bills our family gathered around us and helped us pay for our rent. I was floored to watch four different families give us money to pay our bills. I was very humbled. It's always a hard thing to admit you can't pay for something, but then to accept other people's money is even harder. I don't know how to express what it has done to change my understanding of "generosity." On top of that, exactly what we needed came in - on the first of the month - all the money we needed was given to us. Amazing. Or as some of us have been joking: Emmaus-zing. 

God took care of us yet again. Why is it so stressful to trust Him after He had been faithful every time? Gosh I'm stubborn. He knows that. He knows I'm stubborn. He loves me anyway. 

This week, Alex and I have been enjoying a slight lull in the chaos before youth group starts up. We were able to go explore a bit at the North Carolina Museum of Art. 

There is a lovely greenway with art and a nice bike path throughout the grounds. 

Yes, in the above photo, that is my husband credit carding a naked statue. He has a great respect for art. We are hoping to get my bike up and running so this can become our new bike route. It needs some tuning up and we are just waiting until our bank account is a bit more stable. 

The museum has live music and movies on the weekend, so I think we'll try to enjoy one of those options this week or next. Even in poverty we have found ways to enjoy free dates. Being creative with our time together has been so good during the stress of last week's financial crisis. Oh and we're also going to go explore a big garage sale in Durham to see if we can find some furnishings for our empty apartment!