Second hand store treasures

I love little second hand store treasures. They only cost a dollar or two and can be painted up to give them new life, or just left the way they are to create retro decorations to brighten up shelves. Here are some little things I found the other day. I used paint test pots to paint them:

 

 



 

 

 

(I already started painting the frame in the top right)

 

Here are some of the items with cream coloured paint brushed on them to give a rustic shabby chic look. The little jar has some cream paint swirled around the inside, but I still need to add some other colours to make it interesting. I also painted the basket (in the second photo, above) in the same colour and I'm planning to put a lavender plant in it.



Here are the little wooden goblets painted in bright blue:

Here is a ceramic bottle (or vase?) that was dark blue but I didn't take a 'before' photo of it. Its now a lovely purple colour. I brushed the colour on leaving some of the underside showing to make it more interesting.

Old army boxes get a new look

Old army boxes painted in Cherry Red

We collect up all of our old newspapers to use in our log burner, except that in summer they build up into a big pile. I was putting them in a cardboard box, but it overflowed and ended looking like this:

 



In the garage we had some old army boxes that we were using for storage and I thought they'd look great painted red to bring some colour into our living room and tidy up the overflowing paper monster.

The smaller box is older and has some damage but the larger box is in great condition:

 

I bought a test pot of Resene's Cherry Red and mixed it water (50/50) to create a paint wash. I used a paint wash rather than painting over it in undiluted paint because I wanted the old writing to show through. I then took some diluted brown furniture stain and brushed it onto all of the edges and sporadically around the middle to create the impression that the red paint is old and worn. Lastly I used two coats of acrylic gloss spray to seal it and bring out the colour and shine.

And here is the new tidy and colourful paper corner. Both boxes are full of paper and I added some logs on top for decoration. I painted the little heart painting on the shelf to tie in with the red of the army boxes.

Building a tile top side table

This was our entrance way before. I wanted a tall side table so we can leave keys and coins on it when we come home. I'd read about other people making tiled top coffee tables, so I decided to have a go at making a tile top side table for this space in our entrance way. 

 



Before

Here is a close-up of the finished table top. Its a faux marble ceramic tile. Its difficult to see in the photo, but its white with grey marbled lines running through it and it has a high shine on the surface which makes the entrance way look brighter.

The tile is 300x600mm (one foot by two feet) and it only cost about $7 at the hardware store. I built the side table base especially to fit it. I made the table 90cm tall (3 feet) because that is a standard height for bench tops and I find that height comfortable.

Close-up of the marbled tile top table

I won't go into detail about how I built the actual timber table because this was the first table I'd ever built so I am no expert at explaining the best way to build a table. I didn't follow any plans when I built this, and I mainly tried to use up timber I already had but I bought the timber for the legs.

I used dressed radiata pine for this table and stained it in a dark stain before spraying it lightly with an acrylic lacquer. I had started using polyurethane over the stain but it went it on unevenly and left some lumps, so I sanded that back off and went with the spray lacquer after the stain had dried and it was so much easier to apply :)

I used tile adhesive to fix the tile onto the table top. I did a bit of research and some people say to use tile adhesive since its designed to fix tile onto plywood etc, but other people say they prefer Liquid Nails because it can flex as timber expands. I went with tile adhesive because I'd built the top of my table with two slats of timber, allowing a gap in between them in case of any expansion. Because I am only dealing with one tile, its not as problematic as tiles fixed between several others where movement is limited.

I also stained the faded mirror in the same colour as the table to create a match. This wall will look much better once we paint it a calming dusky blue and add some colourful items to the table top. I'll add some more photos after we paint the wall :)


Build an old farmhouse style outdoor seat

We had some materials left over from when we built our fence, so I decided to build a rustic "old farmhouse" bench seat to sit under the magnolia tree next to the Buddha statue.

This is a very simple design and it didn't take me long to put this together. For the top I've used two old fence palings that I had kept after we replaced parts of the front fence. The fence palings are 1.2m (4 foot) in length and were painted black. For the legs and the horizontal seat supports, I used left over "two by fours" - 100x50mm rough sawn fence railing timber.

It didn't cost me anything to make this since I had used left over materials, but if you had to buy new materials it wouldn't cost more than $10 to $15. Make sure all of the timber is treated for exterior use.

You will need:
- a mitre saw
- a hammer
- tape measure and pencil
- a drill to pre-drill the nail holes
- 2.4m (8 feet) of "two by four" (100 x 50mm) rough sawn timber.
- two 1.2m (4 foot) fence palings
- 100mm (4 inch) fence nails (flat head galvanised nails)
- 50mm (2 inch) fence paling nails. These have grooves along the shaft to give better hold for the nail.
- white exterior paint and a paint brush

1. First I cut my seat support pieces. My fence palings are 150mm wide (half a foot) so together they are 300mm (1 foot). I wanted my support pieces to be just a little smaller than the seat width so I cut the two support pieces at 280mm (11 inches) using 90 degrees on the mitre saw. I then cut the bottom corners off at 45 degrees.

2. I then set the mitre saw to cut 10 degree angles for the legs. The legs are 450mm each (1.5 feet). The 10 degree angle gives the legs a bit more stability on uneven ground compared to straight cut legs. And that is all the cutting that is required.

3. I marked the mid-point of the support pieces with pencil and then lined up the legs so that they meet at the mid-point and the tops of the legs were flush with the top edge of the support pieces.
I pre-drilled four nail holes and then used the hammer to drive the 100mm (4 inch) nails through the support piece and into the legs.

 

Do the same for the other side.

4. Now its a simple matter of attaching the two 1.2m palings to the top. I allowed 150mm (half a foot) of clearance on each end.
The two palings will need a slight gap between them to allow to for expansion. Lightly bang a small nail in between the two palings to create a small spacing before nailing them down. Remove the spacing nails after nailing the palings in properly.

 

I used two of the 50mm (2 inch) paling nails on each end of the palings. I placed one nail  through the horizontal support piece and one through the top of the leg like this:

5. I mixed up two thirds of exterior white paint with one third of water to create a white wash for my seat. The old fence palings were faded black with lichen on them, but I didn't bother with sanding before painting since I wanted a weathered look.

I did one coat of paint and left it in the sun to try. And here is the finished "old farmhouse" look:

If you want it more shabby chic, then just sand along the edges and rub some diluted dark stain into the edges.

Building a closet organiser

In my previous post I wrote about building a shoe organiser for our entranceway closet, and mentioned that I'd bought extra timber to build a closet organiser for my bedroom. Here is the original link with the instructions for building the shoe organiser:
http://diykiwi.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/how-to-build-shoe-organiser-to-tame.html

The closet organiser was built in the same way, except that I cut the MDF to make two 1.5m (5 foot) lengths for the sides and then cut four shelves at 30cm (1 foot) each so that they are 30cm squared.

This organiser is great for storing jeans, winter clothing, socks, handbags etc. My photo looks a bit dark but once I put a closet light and some more colourful clothes in there, it should brighten things up. I've only got my dark winter clothes in there at the moment.

After (except I haven't finished painting the right side of the closet)

This is what the closet looked like before:

Before

The closet was just unpainted plasterboard before so I had to plaster up the corners and plaster over the nail heads (all of the closets in the house look like this incidentally). On the right side there was a 1cm gap along the whole edge where the plasterboard had been poorly fitted, so I had to use a fair bit of plaster and plastering tape to cover the gap. It took a while for it dry so I sanded and painted the left side and left the right side for later.

Constructing the closet organiser:

I placed the bottom shelf 30cm (1 foot) from the bottom to create a space for handbags or shoes. I spaced the other shelves 40cm apart. I was originally thinking I'd build this so that it had five 30cm (1 foot) square cubby holes, but it makes it harder to reach your hand into a small gap so I allowed 40cm instead and did four shelves.

I used a roller this time to paint the organiser and I found it gave it a better finish than using paint brush, plus it was a bit quicker that way too.

How to build a shoe organiser to tame a messy closet

This was our entrance-way closet before:

So I decided it was time to build a shoe organiser to tame this mess. Here is the finished product (sorry about the darkness - we don't have a light in that closet yet). I've added hooks on right side of the closet to hang our dog leashes and bags on too. 

Our entrance-way closet is under the stairs so its one of those Harry Potter style walk-in closets that is fairly spacious so I decided to build a 1.2m (4 feet) wide shoe organiser that is 90cm (3 feet) tall, with four shelves. If you don't have a Harry Potter style under-the-stairs closet, this shoe organiser would also look good just placed in the hallway/ entrance-way.

I made this using MDF because it is cheaper than using plywood or pine. It was also cheaper to buy MDF in 2.4m (8 foot) lengths and cut it to size using my sliding mitre saw than to buy it in several smaller lengths (such a buying four of the 1.2m lengths, two of the 90cm lengths etc). I bought four of the 2.4m lengths for this project  and used the left-overs to build a closet organiser in my room.

Difficulty: This is fairly easy to assemble, providing that you have cut everything exactly right or it won't fit together properly.

Materials.
- Four 1.2m (4 foot) long pieces of MDF that are 30cm wide (1 foot) and 18mm thick (3/4 inch thick). These are the horizontal shelves.
- Two 90cm (3 foot) pieces of MDF, also 30cm wide and 18mm thick. These are the vertical sides of the shoe organiser.
- 1.8m (6 foot) length of MDF, 30cm (1 foot) wide and 18mm thick. This is to build the six shelf dividers. Do not cut this yet. Because the middle shelves are 18mm thick, the dividers will not be 30cm high each - they'll be closer to 27cm-28cm high.
- a sliding mitre saw, capable of sliding to cut 30cm (1 foot) wide MDF panels.
- screws. I used 50mm (2 inch) screws to attach the horizontal shelving, and to fix each shelf divider in place I used 38mm (1.5 inch) screws.
- a cordless drill to pre-drill your holes.
- a counter-sinking drill bit is best, but using one small (the size of the screw body) and one large drill bit (the same size as the head of the screw) is fine instead. 
- a tape measure and pencil
- white paint and a paint brush

1. I started out by making a rectangle using two of the 1.2m MDF pieces and the two 90cm pieces:

 

I used two 50mm screws to connect each corner together, pre-drilling the holes. I don't have a counter-sinking drill bit, so I just used a small drill bit (the size of the screw body) to drill the holes and a large drill bit (the same size as the head of the screw) to drill 2mm into the top of the hole so that the screw head could sit slightly under the surface of the MDF. This means it is completely hidden once the wood filler has been added later on.

 

Counter-sink the screws

 

2. The next step is to connect the first of the two 1.2m middle shelves. Use the tape measure and pencil to mark out 30cm on each of the two 90cm side pieces. Pre-drill two countersunk holes on each side and attach the shelf using 50mm screws.

 

3. When I measured the distance between this shelf and the bottom shelf, it measured 27cm so that is the height to cut the first three shelf dividers. Double check yours before cutting because it depends on how all of the other pieces have been measured, cut and assembled - you might find you actually need to cut them at 27.5cm or 28cm. If I had measured everything with rocket science precision then technically each shelf divider should be 27.6cm high each (and that's assuming the manufacturer has produced these at exactly 18mm thick). This is why I wait to cut them, rather than cutting them all at the start. If your divider height is larger on the bottom, it just means that the other shelves will need shorter dividers to compensate.

 

4. Measure and mark where each divider will go. I placed the middle one in first, at 60cm from the edge, then attached the other two 30cm from the centre divider. Attach the dividers using the 38mm screws - two screws at the top and two at the bottom.

I find it easier to work on the shoe organiser when it is lying down, but I just stood it up for this photo.

5. The next shelf is a similar process. I marked out 60cm from the bottom of the side pieces and placed the shelf there. I then measured the distance between the two shelves and found that this time it was 28cm, so I cut the two dividers at 28cm and attached these.

 

 

5. I measured and cut the top divider at 27.5cm and attached this, then applied wood filler to all of the screw holes. I had drilled a couple of mistake holes in the wrong places too, but this is no drama because with wood filler added its completely unnoticeable.

 

After the wood filler had dried, I sanded it down and it was ready to be painted:

 

6. I used a paint brush for this one, but a small roller actually work really well on this type of project. I used the same white paint that I used to paint our fence because the paint was designed to withstand exterior conditions such as rain. I'm not planning on putting wet shoes on this shoe organiser, but just in case someone does put muddy, wet shoes on it, I'd rather have a waterproof paint on it that will protect the MDF from turning to mush.

 

 

I used white paint because our closet is dark but I think this shoe organiser would look really good if it was painted in a more fun purple or blue colour. If you are planning to place this in a hallway where it would be seen by other people, I'd recommend using a more interesting colour.

 

Shabby chic style dollar store photo frames

I've seen a few blogs where people have made their own photo frames using left-over pieces of timber moulding. The main problem with building your own photo frame is that you'll need to purchase glass or perspex to go into your frame, and this can be a bit expensive. I find its cheaper to buy dollar store photo frames and fix them up so they no longer look like a plastic dollar store frame.

I had a few of these frames lying around already and decided to try out spray painting them with a creamy white coloured spray paint and then sanding back the edges to get a bit of a shabby chic look.

Both frames are made of plastic - one is silver coloured plastic and the other is a fake timber plastic with gold painted on the inner edge. I removed the glass and backings and gave them a clean before spray painting. I did two coats to get it even, and to get all the sides.

Once it had thoroughly dried, I used 150 grit sandpaper to rub the edges to get the silvery colour showing on the right side one and the gold and timber colour showing on the other one. If you want it to look a bit less scratchy, a sanding block would achieve a finer result (one of those foam sanding pads).

Close-up of the sanded back edges
 

After sanding, I dusted off all the sand dust and added a photo of my grandmother into one and in the other I put one of our wedding thank you cards. The photo doesn't show up the silver and gold bits very well.

The frames are a big improvement over the plastic look.