Industrial Style Desk Makeover

       We've been having some really lovely sunny days lately. Definitely not the sort of days I want to spend holed up inside slaving over some boring wall that needs painting. On a nice warm sunny day, the thing to do is dress your kids in grungy clothes and let them go stomp in the mud puddles to their little heart's content, while you pull out some random piece of junky furniture to fix up.

      I found this beauty at a thrift store and immediately liked the sort of old school industrial vibe it had. The top was particle board and the seat was some ratty vinyl stuff, so that all needed to come off. I freshened up all the metal with some spray paint.

      I needed a new seat for the chair, and decided to make my own with some scrap wood.

       Only one problem, I had no foam for the seat. Well, good thing I'm not picky about these sorts of things! An unused throw pillow did the trick for me just nicely.

      Using some fabric I found in my stash, I stapled it all directly to the back of the wood.

       It made just the nicest little seat you ever saw!

     There was one other problem with this little arrangement that I needed to do something about. The desk was just a smidgen too short for my rather tall self. I scrounged around amongst my treasures and found some wheels I had saved off of some discarded piece of something who knows how long ago. It really does pay off to save things you might be able to reuse! The wheels added just the needed amount of height. Wheels make anything niftier anyway.

       Luckily, I had some wood left over from making our counter tops (Which I am dying to show you, because I looooooooove them!) that was just the perfect size for the desk top.

      A coat of stain and two of poly later...one super cute desk!

       Totally more fun than painting walls, wouldn't you agree?

         This little desk is currently operating as my sewing table, and is pushed up against my horrifically ugly unpainted cinder block wall. Which pretty much is a daily reminder that I need to paint the thing, and fix the floor, and....ok, anyway, back to my cute desk...

      In other news, I'm in the midst of painting my kitchen...and if the tedious time consuming-ness of it doesn't kill me first, I'll be giving you the grand tour soon! I love what paint can do for a room! It sorta shocks my eyeballs when I walk in there, and I'm still at the priming stage! Love it!
P.S. I'm having a Spring sale in my shop, all bags 50% off!

Luke 6:35   But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

Linking to:
Tatertots and Jello
Miss Mustard Seed

Home Stories A to Z
Suger Bee Crafts
Kammy's Korner
Not Just a Housewife

A scrappy wall storage unit - My first building project

      Power tools and I have never been friends. Not too long ago, I instructed my mister to pick up a pack of screw drivers at the hardware store...and he came home with a new drill instead. I was not happy. I don't like drills. I wanted a screwdriver.

     Very reluctantly, my drill and I became friends. I have my inpatients to thank for becoming friends with power saws. I have way too many projects I want to get done to sit around waiting for my mister to have time to cut wood for me. What's a girl to do, but suck it up and learn how to cut wood?

      Originally, I planned to make wall storage along these lines for this wall. (You can read more about my cinder block wall here.)

Sylvie Liv

      Turns out, shelves like that, the size I wanted, was not exactly cheap. Have you looked at the price of pipe lately? Maybe I'm missing some important part of pipe shopping, but it's rather pricey. I needed something more along the general price range of free to properly fit my budget.
     Plan B involved scrounging around and using anything I had on hand that could possible be turned into a shelf. I started with these two doors that I pulled out of my kitchen a few weeks back.

      I cleaned them up, and primed and painted them.

      Next up I made a long shelf using some 2x4's I had left over from another project. I used screws for everything so I can take this thing apart later, if I so desire.

      I cut four legs from a 4x4.

       At this point I dragged everything inside to assemble it all. The four legs I screwed onto the shelf, essentially making a long bench.

     I screwed the doors to the "bench" along the back. (Uh hum, so ya, I maybe skipped painting the back of the doors. Perfection was never my stongest asset.)

      I decided to my doors needed more stability, so I added 2x4 scraps to the front connecting down to the main shelf.

      I made another shelf using scrap board that actually was originally in this room behind the paneling I pulled out.

     Using brackets I had laying around, I added a few more shelves. An old ladder, a former pigeon nesting box, and crate helped round out the storage options.

 I couldn't help myself and added a little color by dry brushing random paint samples on the boards.

       And what will I do with these super cute shelves? Why, use them for storage, naturally.

      I can't stand pawing through totes, smashing everything to bits, looking for the one piece I need. Now, I don't have to!

       I can just "shop" my wall. This room is my work/sewing room, and I can't think of what "art" I'd rather look at while working than loads of random textures and colors.

      Besides, if I ever wanted to have a garage sale...all I'd have to do is open the front door. =) Seriously though, isn't knowing what you have so much nicer than having it all tucked away in some dark corner?

      And before you kindly suggest I might have hording tendencies...let me just remind you, there are only two rooms in my entire house that have been fully furnished. (See the entry here, and the guest bathroom here.) These shelves will clear off quite a bit as each new room is fully finished.

      In the mean time, I have decided wood working isn't so bad after all! It's not much different than sewing really...axcept fabric is more forgiving and doesn't give me a back ache.

        The only thing I specifically purchased for this project was the 4x4...making the total cost for my shelves $6.57. Now that's more like it!

Colossians 3:23   And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; 

Linking to:
My Girlish Whims
Someday Crafts
Tatertots and Jello
Miss Mustard Seed
Homemaker on a Dime
Under the Table and Dreaming
Lolly Jane

Closet Built in Shelves Tutorial

     Organization. It's the difference between feeling stressed out in my home, or relaxed. I could get on a soapbox right now, and tell you all the reasons why I am a proponent of an organized home...but I'll spare you. I know some folks actually work better with everything in a jumble, organized chaos I believe is what they call it. I married a type like that in fact, and let me tell you, we both have our oppinions about whose working method is better. Mine, obviously.
     Anyway, I'm actually here to show how you can turn any unused closet (or nook) into well organized piece of valuable real estate in your home. You may have a closet that looks like this...the potential for it to fill up and become a major threat to bodily health is almost certain.

      I have two of these closets in my soon to be work shop, and I knew I needed to something about them before they got hopelessly out of hand. The solution was quite simple and inexpensive ($12 to be exact)... built in shelves!

        Music to my eyes! Here's how I did it. First measure the width and depth of your closet. Mine was 46 inches wide and 20 inches deep. You need long boards to across and smaller boards for the side supports. I used scrap wood for the side supports and some very inexpensive press board for the shelves. I cut them down using a jig saw, because that was handiest at the moment. ( Ok, really...circular saws still sorta spook me.)

      My closets are weird. One side of them is cinder block and the other is wood. On the wood end I just screwed the support boards where I wanted them. (hhmmm why yes, there is termite damage on these closets...yet another reason I went as cheap as possible for these shelves. They will have to be gutted and re-built at some point down the road. Thanks termites.)

      On the cinder block side of the closet, I had to glue the support boards. I don't have the tools for screwing into cinder block, so this was the next best thing.

        Just keep adding supports for however many shelves you want.

      I just laid the long boards across without attaching them. I wanted to be able to remove them easily if I ever wanted to use this as a regular closet again.

     I put two shelves in both closets which created a huge amount of storage. One closet holds fabric bolts and remnants.

     The other holds craft supplies and sewing notions.

      An over the door pantry organizer really added to the storage options as well. I'll probably get another one for the other closet, because it's so handy for holding small things.

      Here is a shot of how this room began and you can see the closets I am talking about. I think I will be doing the same thing with shelves to that center nook. I think it will make a great spot for storing all my totes of folded fabric.

      If you missed seeing the other changes so far to this room see here and here. I'm currently working on shelves of a different sort for side walls ... and I am so excited to finish them I looooove them! This room will definitely be my favorite spot in the house when I'm finished.
     So what about you? Do you work better with things tip-top tidy or in organized chaos?

 1 Corinthians 14:40   Let all things be done decently and in order.

Linking to:
My Girlish Whims

The Great Wall of Indecision

     Once upon a time, there was a massive cinder block wall that was very ugly. (Actually two of them.)

    Cinder block has many redeeming qualities like being termite proof and indestructible. It's major problem is it seriously is lacking in the glamour department (or the "mildly pleasant to look at" department for that matter). The second major problem is that it reminds me of my elementary school class rooms. Not so much the vibe I want in my work shop. Once I finished my brick wall there on the end, I began devising way to use paint to hide the cinder block. At the very least, I thought I could use the paint job to distract the fact that the paint was on a cinder block wall.
    First on the agenda, stripes. I always wanted to paint a wall with stripes.

      They were very nice fat grey stripes. Very pretty. Very wrong with my brick wall.. They looked too, I don't know, coastal-ish or something. Not what I had in mind. Maybe a stencil would help?

       Hmm, no. Looks like a wall in a nursing home. Maybe if I painted the grout white, that would do the trick. Still, a big fat no. But the contrast was nice, maybe the other way around? Minus the stripes?

      Ahhgh! Just the thing to bring joy to my eyeballs. And so the story has a happy ending...with grey grout.

     Which, in fact, does NOT hide the cinder block at all, it accentuates it. Funny thing, what I thought was this wall's worst factor, was it's best. It just needed to be shown a different way. There's probably more than a few things that are like that in life, come to think of it. I think God loves to "paint" our flaws and imperfections into being our greatest assets, if we will let Him.

        I really like how these two walls play off of each other with the colors and patterns. They aren't too crazy, and they aren't too snoozey.

     I threw a frame up on the wall to see how I would like it with stuff hanging on it.

     I have concluded, my wall and I are officially best friends forever. (The other cinder block wall will most likely also receive this treatment once I have excavated it from all the boxes under which it is currently buried.)

Romans 8:1-2   There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 

Linking to:
Crafty Confessions
Kammy's Korner
Home Stories A to Z
Suger Bee Crafts
Not Just a Housewife
My Girlish Whims
Someday Crafts
Tatertots and Jello