You may remember this tallboy makeover from an old post. It started life as a chest of drawers but the drawers kept getting stuck and falling off their sliders. I decided to make it into shelves for linen storage.

This is what it looked like when I shared it back then.

It needed doors. So I made doors. The easy way. Basically I made 2 square frames out of pine, with a bar across the middle. Then I used peg board for the door panels to allow air to circulate and to strengthen the doors.

I even used my router to notch fancy bits out of the bars!

I painted the peg board in chevron type stripes white and the same shade of aqua I used on the holland blind to tie it in together. And to make it more interesting.

The project wasn’t without its delays and ‘oops’ moments. I’d originally measured to have the doors sit outside the walls of the cabinet, but decided that looked awful. And me and numbers ain’t a match made in heaven… That meant I had to trim down the doors so they’d fit inside and I could use simple hinges.

I also changed the knobs to plain black ones. I wasn’t sure the pumpkin knobs were working.

Well, not much in terms of excitement. Sometimes I feel like that hamster on its wheel… running flat out and still in the same place.

I’ve been going through the house and casita and purging to make space for projects and things I want to keep, instead of having everything stacked on top of everything else in every available shed and no space to work.

I’m being ruthless. I look at things now and think “is it worth keeping?”, if not, out it goes. I’ve dedicated the tiny yard beside the casita (formerly known as Stalag 13 and housing roosters) as the To The Tip Site. I have boxes of stuff I’ll donate to the tip shop, and piles of boxes of stuff to sell at a garage sale sometime early next year.

I’m making progress.

As I evaluate stuff I look at quality, usefulness and whether I’m likely to ever really do anything with it. If it doesn’t tick at least one of the criteria it goes to the tip, but not before I’ve removed hinges or handles or whatever I want to keep.

I’ve also done some work on the garden with the help of a friend. The weeds have been whacked, I have some fledgling tomato plants, beans, bells peppers and cucumbers in the vegie garden, some lettuce in a washing machine drum near the kitchen and some more colour in the garden. More tyres have been filled with soil and plants and pine bark mulch has been applied. Its a long way from being a great garden, but I’m getting there.

Inside, there’s still much to do. Mainly cause I got it into my head that I wanted to build a divider/tv unit in the middle of the living room and I wanted to do it now.

A friend said left brain people are never idle as they always have ideas they want to do, and they want to do them now.

I can relate.

So, since my divider/tv unit isn’t ready yet, I thought I’d share some pics which inspired me.

Firstly, I love those 1960s type bookcase dividers which were so common in living rooms of that time. Often they were between the front door and the living area. I also love cube storage units. But the thing is I wanted the divider to hold the TV… so I was looking more at something which was a cross between a credenza:

And a 60s style bookcase:

Or something like this – which is totally gorgeous:

Or this (if it wasn’t fixed to a wall):

I’ve been thinking about this since we moved in here. I hate the poles. They really cut the room in half both visually and literally, and make it hard to decorate. I considered cladding them in timber and then putting shelves between them first, but wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted.

Then I saw this and I liked it:

Here’s another. Its just a cube storage unit clad in rustic timber and made into a credenza. How great is that!

I was thinking I have one tall cube unit with a back… Its mdf, but if I clad it in old timber I’d have both rustic and industrial with the poles…

Then I saw this and all bets were off.