Category Archives: repurposing

small things, big impact – improved phone charging station

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Its a new month and I’ve had an idea. I’m going to share the small things I’ve been doing lately that make life a little better around here. Its mostly those small things which I’ve been meaning to do for weeks, months, years… that I’m finally making a point of getting around to.
Ok, don’t cringe. I probably still won’t post daily, but for the month of May I’m challenging myself to not only finish a few of the niggly jobs I’ve been putting off for ages, but also to share them in the hopes that I’ll inspire someone to get up off the couch and fix that loose hinge, broken door handle (darn, that reminds me…) or whatever.
I actually started on this challenge last weekend, before I knew it was actually a challenge. Now its all up to me to keep up the momentum.
So, here is Day 1.
Improved phone charging station

I like to change things around a bit… Most of the time I re-arrange furniture (which Wayne LOVES), but I also like to update, change and re-make things I’ve got.

Like this phone station. I made this last year to hold the phone and as a place to charge up our mobile phones. Back then we had normal dumb phones.

Now we have smartphones and they’re bigger than the old ones…

BTW, who saw that coming? Mobile phones kept getting smaller and smaller, then suddenly the trend was reversed and they got bigger and bigger, the bigger the better.

With the new mobile phones and kindles all needing charging…

…and there’s another thing. Back when mobile phones were small and stupid, every single phone had a different charger cause heaven forbid they made things universal. Every household in the world had a drawer full of mobile phone chargers which didn’t fit any phone in the family.

Now, the kindles and smartphones use the same chargers. Will wonders never cease!

So anyway, as I was saying, the new smartphones and kindles didn’t fit on the narrow shelf which used to hold the old mobiles. And sitting them on the top shelf was to risk them sliding off and breaking.

It was time for an update.

This is what it looked like before:

This is what it looks like now with the addition of a couple of timber strips across the front, making a safe charging space.

A small, simple change which makes life a little easier, or neater.

Now if I could just convince Wayne that we should never cook in the kitchen, I might be able to keep the entire room neat…

z

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coal box upcycled to vegetable bin

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We have a new potato and onion bin.

Up till now I’d been keeping our potatos, onions and garlic in old flour bags in the vintage wire fruit basket thingy I’d bought a few months ago.

But you know potatoes like the dark… so when I saw this coal box at the auction last week I had to have it. Now the wire basket stand is holding fruit like it was meant to, and our potatoes are all snug in the pantry in their own light deprivation box.

All I did to the coal box when I brought it home was give it a clean and line the bottom with newspaper. It has some rust dots on it but I think that adds to the character.

I generally prefer things in their original rusty, imperfect state – and the handle is very unusual.

Here it is in its new home.

It fits perfectly in the little nook right next to the bit of timber I put in to hold the shelf up where it bowed under the weight of the microwave.

I may not always do things ‘pretty’ but they work!

z

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a slightly dirty clock

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I had a very busy weekend. A really busy one. I did more cleaning in the casita. I finished some niggly little jobs, I started some projects, I folded and put away washing, I vacuumed the living room.

Yeah, I know.

Wayne was shocked too.

This is one of the small things I finally finished.

I’d got a cheap clock from Kmart when I decided I wanted a clock in the living room. It broke soon as I got it home so I left it in the workshop thinking I’d use the face to make a new clock. I bought a new clock mechanism off ebay and it all just sat there, in the shed, waiting…

We didn’t really need a clock in the living room back then, I had the time up on my TV …but about 2 months ago my TV suddenly lost the ability to speak so it had to go.

Lucky for us, combining two households when we moved in together meant we had doubles of lots of things. Including TVs. We didn’t sell any of the doubles cause we knew that the day we sold them we’d need them. We’ve already been glad we had two washing machines.

Now its the TV’s turn.

Anyway, I can’t figure out how to display the time on Wayne’s TV, so a clock in the living room is a bit more of a need now.

I got the bits together: the new mechanism, the clock face, a battery and an old rusty flan tin. One of those ones with the removable bottom bit. Which I didn’t have anyway as this is a tip shop find.
I’ve had this tin rim for a long time, I picked it up thinking that one day it’d make a great clock. And do it has!

Putting it together was really easy and quick. I didn’t even clean the tin or try to remove any of the rust. I think it adds character.

Its now hanging in the living room above the stacked bookcases and where you can see it easily while watching TV.

I’m loving my new clock.

z

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retro flour sifter planters

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Last week I shared the new shelf outside the kitchen window.

I haven’t yet moved it down the 6 inches I think it needs to be moved, but I have made one change.

I moved some of the plants to make room for my flour sifter containers.

I think that technically, three of something makes it a collection, so here is my sifter collection. One is really rusty but the others still look respectable.

Not that rust isn’t respectable!

They all have (had) working parts when I got my sticky little fingers on them, so I lined them with hanging basket fibre stuff, then filled them with potting mix before adding a selection of succulents.

Yep. I like them outside the kitchen window, along with the 2 tiered caddies I made out of baking tins.

Other than that, I’ve done a whole lot of nothing at home. Did I mention I was sick for most of last week? Yep. Holidays are not the time to be sick.

Turns out it was food poisoning.

The Dr said it sounded like gastro, along with the flu, just bad luck to get them together. But I watched a segment on A Current Affair last night about bacteria found on chicken. And the symptoms the guy on TV listed were all my symptoms to a T.

Guess what I had for dinner a couple of nights before I got sick?

Makes sense. If it was viral Wayne would have got it too!

I think I’ll avoid pizza and take away food for a while…

z

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Beyond the Picket Fence

a new/old labrador tray

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A while ago a friend asked me to make her a tray featuring labradors. I considered her request and came up with the idea of doing a silhouette of a lab, super-imposed on a star in red, yellow and black. Something that would look like an old fuel sign.

I started by choosing a frame I thought would make a nice tray. I then cut a piece of plywood to fit into the frame I’d painted bright red.

I printed out my design on 2 sheets of A4 paper and (using the charcoal on the back method) traced it onto the plywood.

I painted the dog and background using my acrylic artist paints. I loved the natural colour of the plywood so I decided to leave the star unpainted rather than do it in yellow.

When the paint was dry I gave it a sand to make it look old and worn. I tried it in the red frame and didn’t really like it. There is such as thing as too much red.

So back to the drawing board. I cut some pieces of tassie oak I’d gotten for free from the hardware store – they were packers in pallets of products they were tossing out.

I did the steel wool in vinegar trick – I planned to age them with the vinegar solution then paint them and scuff them up to expose the aged timber.

Well… something went wrong. I have no idea what or why, but the wood turned black as soon as i painted the vinegar on it!

You can still see the grain, but its like I used black stain instead of vinegar. Wierd.

However, in my “go with the flow, all accidents are happy little adventures” frame of mind I decided to go with it and make it work.

I painted the bottom of the plywood grey and painted a bit of the vinegar solution over the sanded areas to age it. It went black too. But it works for me. It looks old and abused.

Then I made my first mistake.

I painted some of the vinegar on the sanded red areas. It left distinct stains.

Oops.

Go with the flow. Its all part of the adventure, right?

I stained the entire red area with vinegar to try to smooth it out. The blackness bled into the star.

Ooops again.

I sanded it out, did a bit more sanding, then decided it was good to go. Its just a bit more ‘abused’ than it was before.

Since this is a tray, and trays are used to carry drinks and food, I gave it a coat of estapol for protection. That’s causing the shine in the photos. Please look beyond that. I’m sure some use will take care of that.

I found a couple of old bent handles I had in my collection – they’d been removed from a couple of drawers I’d used in another project.

I used some pre-rusted washers under the handles when screwing them in place, cause the smallest black screws I had were a tad too long. Didn’t want the pointy end of the screws sticking out on the inside of the tray!

It worked. I actually love the little rusty outline around the handles.

The photos are giving the black a rather blue tinge which isn’t there in real life. Its come up quite good. I hope my friend likes it… Do you friend?
z

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an unwanted shop rack

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I’m sharing this quick project now, even though I finished it about 2 months ago… cause I wanted to share it when I had it in the office as I planned.
Of course, I had to clean and tidy the office first, and that was a job I put off and put off and put off and… you get the picture… But its finally done. Its clean and tidy (for about the next 2 days providing I stay out of it).
Who was it that said they get more cleaning done in the 30 minutes before visitors arrive than they get done in a week? That’s me. Only this time I cleaned 24 hrs in advance.
So, back to the shop rack. I found this sorry little cutie at a garage sale and was quick to grab it. It had been painted silver at some stage, not well, and the base was really wonky, but it had wheels.

Note the wonky base. Held on with string and tape.

I cleaned it up, scraped the scunge off it, disinfected it, and replaced the tape and string with screws and nuts. I gave it a fresh spray of silver, leaving the occasional old paint showing through (for character, doncha know).

Then left it sitting in the workshop for weeks, gathering dust and horse hair.

But today its in the office. Its new home.

Now stay tuned. The office cleanup miracle is coming.
z

the last chest of drawers

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Among all the ups and (mainly) downs in my life of late, I thought I’d share something creative and good.

You may remember that when I overhauled the ugly pine chest of drawers a few weeks ago I mentioned wanting to fix up the smaller one to match. Here is an old photo of the two chests side by side in the bedroom as they had been since we moved here.

That top doesn’t actually belong there. I found it in an op shop a long time ago, unpainted and missing its ‘bottom’. I thought I’d make a shelf out of it for the mud room, a spot to drop keys and stuff. I even made a shelf to go on top of it but I never got around to putting it up where I had planned.

Here it is when I first got it and after I’d put some paint on it.

My original idea was to somehow make it into a spot for my jewellery, which is why its on top of the smaller dresser. I even made this mock-up to see how it would look.

Luckily, I decided against that. I just wasn’t sure its what I wanted to look at.

This is what it looks like now (its actually quite straight, the photo makes it look wonky… not that there’s anything wrong with that…):

I obviously don’t stage my photos. There’s a cord between the dressers for the fan. It was hot…

So, what I ended up doing in the end was finding a frame that fit between the posts, or whatever you call them. The one I found was perfect as it was, I liked the white washed colour so I didn’t paint it, just added birdwire.

I then used some small metal brackets to attach it to the posts.

Everything was painted the same shade of off white homemade chalk paint that I used on the other chests of drawers, was distressed a little bit then waxed with clear wax.

Till I started reading DIY blogs I’d never heard of using wax over paint. I thought that’s what you did when you inherited granny’s furniture. But, being the gullible follower adventurous type I am, I bought some to give it a try… and I can tell you I love the satiny feel it gives painted pieces!

Lastly I changed the tiny wooden knobs. I didn’t try to match the black cup pulls on the drawers although I had black round knobs which would have done. I wanted something special… like these little crystal knobs.

Instead of displaying jewellery, I opted for photos. That way I can look at them as I lie in bed on lazy weekend mornings. (Ok, a couple of favourite necklaces have made it to the frame, but most other stuff is out of sight.

A leftover coat hanger wire heart I made a long time ago for some of my windchimes now frames photos of my mom and dad courting and on their wedding day. I love those photos.

Below that I have two old photos of my dad as a toddler with his mother and sister, and one of me as a 3 year old holding my brother while my favourite cousin PG sits beside me.

I have photos of mom as a child as well but want to frame them along with other old photos I brought home on my last trip to Greece.
I also added my favourite card, given to me by my dearest cousin Zefi (aka Little Zefi), her daughter Marouso, and my Aunt Marissa. The card says ‘Having a place to go is home, having someone to love is family’ and its not just that sentiment that means so much to me but the messages inside. Its the best card ever.
Anyway, I realised I’ve said nothing about the chest I finished. Not much to say really. I painted it with the same paint as the other, larger, one. I distressed it a bit, then put the same cup pulls on it to match. Looking back now I wonder whether I should have put handles on the small top drawers to match the top drawers on the large one… but eh, its done now.

There they sit, together, opposite my side of the bed. I like the way they look now. So much neater and calmer that what I had to look at before, the yellowey pine and too neat white mismatched look.
Just a reminder. This is how it looked before:
And this is how it looks now:
I can live with that!
z

what happened to the drawers?

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So what happened to the drawers when I decided to make over the tallboy into a linen cupboard?

They became hat and coat racks of course!

First some destruction was called for. I got out the hammer and clobbered the drawers till they came apart.
I then removed the timber knobs and filled the holes. I gave them all a light sand and went through my paint pots to find colours that were similar but not the same. I painted them all in shades of greeny blue.

Yeah, for those who’re observant, there are only four drawer fronts there. There is another one but I didn’t need it for the project I was working on. It’ll appear somewhere else later on no doubt.

I used different hooks – these hooks were sent to me by a good friend in the USA (we can’t get them here) and they’re perfect for hats.

I put the hat racks up high and the coat racks underneath. I had to stagger them in order to fit them on the mud room wall. You can see where I had to put the electrical cable over the top one. Ugh. Not pretty, but here in real life, as opposed to decorating blog-land, things like that happen.

The coat racks have mismatched hooks collected from tip shops over time.
I’d originally planned to paint the entire mudroom antique white. Now I’m not so sure. I’m starting to like the rustic timber look.
I’ll paint the pine lined ceiling white and I’ll probably repaint the two house walls to match the outside of the house. But I’d already started undercoating the left side wall (with the window and sink) back when I was sure I wanted it all white. I guess I’ll paint that wall to match the other two. That will leave one weathered timber wall. It’ll be a feature wall.
I love the way the coat and hat racks look on the old timber anyway.

I also found a home for my crystal dripping tap wall art. Its been in the casita since I made it cause it needs somewhere out of the wind. I added another hat hook to it and voila, another handy spot for a hat!

This one’s on the wall I have to paint (plus you can see the terrible paint job someone did on the toilet door!) so it’ll stand out more. But that also means it’ll have to come off one day. I hope I never have to take the other ones off. Ever.

…Am I the only one who manages to twist the top off screws?

z

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tallboy makeover

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Long time in coming, but its finally done! The second chest of drawers makeover.

Again, I’m sharing a before pic that isn’t the exact tallboy I made over, mine was 5 large drawers and two small top ones… but you get the idea. It was almost exactly the same as the before pic. Pine, boring, plain. After has some class to it with its fancy base and pretty colours.

It was a pretty major job for me as this was the first time I’d attempted something so big in terms of modifying an existing piece. I’ve done tons of modifying before but most of the time my modifications are the type you can knock up with a few nails in a few hours. This one took a few weeks to complete, and a couple of new toys to play with.

This old chest of drawers came to Wind Dancer Farm with Wayne when we moved in. It used to be part of his bedroom furniture which included two matching plain chests of drawers (see the first one made over here) and a wardrobe (started but not finished). Since I made Wayne his own walk-in robe (here and here) I’ve been using his items for my own clothes.

Yes. He needs a room. I make do with a wardrobe and 2 chests of drawers.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Anyway, I hated their pine plain-ness and the way this particular chest of drawers had the propensity to drop drawers off sliders everytime you wanted to get a T-shirt out. Hence the makeovers.

Firstly I had to put a bottom on the chest, thus the next few photos are of it upside down, so don’t get confused. There was no need for a bottom when it was just drawers. I used an old piece of bamboo flooring a friend gave me and attached that to the frame first.

I drew the fancy front design on a piece of paper, drawing only half, folded it in half and cut it out. I traced it onto the piece of pine and cut it using my jigsaw. I then got to play with my new router and do the edge.

I used glue and a couple of nails to fit the fancy front onto the base.

I had to create a frame for it to sit on, to lift it off the ground enough for the fancy front. A normal person might have made the frame first, then cut out the front to match the raised frame, but I’m no normal person.

Its very makeshift. I used a combination of pine pieces and particleboard pieces to get the right height on my frame.

Note: this blog is all about making do and making up. Do not try this at home. Google how to do things properly!

You can see where the old base board of the chest had two cutouts. I had planned to cover those with trim but ended up keeping them visible. They kind of add a design element to the base.

Turned it right way up… It was looking good!

Those little cut outs I mentioned earlier created little gaps for dust (and mice*) to get in, so I glued a couple of scraps of thin plywood to the back of them.

*Not that mice will have a hard time getting in as there are no doors!

You can never over-do clamps!

Next I added some trim to the back edge of the melamine bottom brace and some dado trim to the front to create finish the edges. I added some leftover bits of skirting board to the sides to cover the hodge podge of the frame. I also added a piece of pine under the drawer space at the front to serve as an added precaution to the drawers falling out!
I gap-filled my heart out.
Then came the easy part: painting.

I’d thought yellow would be a nice colour, cheerful, clean… I bought a small pot of a colour I picked in the paint store.

Too pale.

I played artist and darkened it up using warm yellow and some warm red. Hmmmm…

It actually looks nice in the photos but trust me, in person it was gag-worthy. Kinda like the colour of raw fat…

Out came the trusty, tried and true aqua/green I used on the kitchen doors. Maybe not original, but hey, if all else fails, go back to what worked before.

I added a couple of the leftover knobs from the kitchen makeover as well while Romeo oversaw progress.


The makeover wasn’t without its failures. You can see where I ripped off paint when I ripped off masking tape on the melamine bottom brace. But nice trim!

Eh. No one will ever see it… Once its full of stuff, which it will be forever more.

Here it is in the guest room. Ignore the blurred background of all the crap stuff I removed from the old cupboard (the one that now lives on the front porch). Some of this stuff will be finding a new home soon as part of the cleaning up and organising regime.

We don’t have pretty matching sheet sets and doona covers… and I can’t fold fitted sheets.

Now you know my shameful secret.

My grandmother would roll over in her grave.

I’m now thinking it needs doors as I’m not liking it all on display… so in-your-face. Fly wire or bird wire in the doors to soften the un-colour-co-ordinated linen…

One day.
For now I kinda like the way it looks and the old cupboard on the porch. I’m happy.
z
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old flan tin clock

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Among the multitudes of things I’ve had to relocate and find homes for in the last couple of weeks as I cleaned out and organised the casita, were a few flan tins. I’d collected them with the aim of making them into clocks one day.

Well, I’m pleased to say that one day finally came.

On Friday afternoon, while working on a chest of drawers makeover in the workshop, I found myself shoving a few items over to make space on the workbench. Among which was this old flan tin.

I remembered a bit of Donna’s (Funky Junk) advice to only handle something once, so I thought it was time to take heed.

Up till now I’ve not followed that particular piece of advice even though I wanted to. I’d pick up an item, go put it down a little further over, then remember the ‘no double handling’ rule and wander around with it in my hand for 15 minutes or so looking for its forever home.

It just didn’t work.

It would be ok if I had taken everything out of the room first (which was another bit of Donna’s advice) and got all my storage spaces sorted and allocated before picking up items to rehome, but I didn’t work that way.

No, I decided to empty the storage room, the grooming room and the workshop all at the same time.

Nothing like making a challenge really challenging!

So, there I was, chest deep in boxes, buckets, tools and dust, holding a jar of screws, unable to move cause there were things in the way, ready to burst into tears.

That’s about when I gave up and took a week off, till I realised that the way to finish was to do one room at a time.

Once I decided to do that I cleaned out the laundry, the grooming room and the workshop. The store room is messier than it was before, but hey, you can’t have it all at once.

But back to that clock.

When I found myself shoving over the old clocks and the flan tin I realised there was no better time than the present to make that clock. Or try to make that clock.

Firstly I had to bend the squished tin back into shape. Then I found that it had a broken bit on the side so I made that the top, drilling two holes on either side of the broken bit to put wire through. The thought behind that being that the broken bit wouldn’t be visible if it was on top.

What I didn’t notice till I took the photos was that the Willow logo in the middle is crooked.

Moving right along…

I then pulled apart a cheapie clock with broken glass I’d had in the grooming room a while back. I took out the clock parts and drilled a hole in the middle of the flan tin to fit the mechanism dooby.

Of course, I stuffed that up. I made the hole too small and the hour hand wouldn’t move and I broke the mechanism pulling it out.

Lucky I had another cheap clock. I think I bought 3 at the time cause they were like $1 each.

I used superglue to fix the clock mechanism to the back of the tin, put the hands on and put in a new battery. Then waited to see if it would work. 
It works! Its still telling the correct time 2 days later in its new home on the grooming room wall. I call that a win despite the crooked logo in the middle.
Oh well, if you wanted perfection you’d be reading another blog. On this one you’ll only see slap dash seat of my pants quality work. ‘Cause that’s how I roll!
z
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 Knick of Time Vintage Inspiration Party #175