Do you remember the Reading Rainbow song? Well, now you’ll have it stuck in your head. All day. I’m sorry. How about a butterfly free printable to make up for it? Available in Aqua:
And orange:
Looking for custom colors? Hop over to our shop to customize your own print. Happy Friday, and have a wonderful weekend!
But not the box tops for education. Instead, building tops for these $3 boxes from Target’s dollar spot. These plain wood boxes are the perfect size for Handy Sammy’s bookshelf/nightstand storage. But I wanted lids to hide everything inside. So I looked in the garage and found a scrap of 1/4 inch MDF that was slightly larger than my box. In a word, perfect.
I measured the outside of the box and the inside.
And cut four pieces. One piece the same size as the outside, and another 1/4 inch smaller than the inside, for both boxes. Plenty of wood glue to attach the two pieces and wait for it to dry.
Then I started painting. I’m a rebel and skipped primer, but it would help. And sand the boxes quickly. I wanted something similar to these lacquer boxes, so I covered the edges with gold craft paint.
After the gold dried, I marked off 1/4 inch on all sides, then taped off the corners.
Mysterious blue paint and primer left over from the mini dresser covered nicely.
I still want to spray the boxes for a smoother, glossy finish, but I love how they look.
To make it easier on myself, I painted the inside of the boxes blue and the covers all gold.
As we tackle projects for the guest room, I’m getting more antsy to finish it. Because I want to see everything together. If you’ve got a tray you’d like to cover, this was as easy as two cuts. What do you think? Are you willing to give it a try? Or have you done something similar?
Storage. Everyone needs it, but not everyone has enough. As is the case in our little guest bedroom that Handy Sammy now lives in. Well, not this week because he’s on spring break, but usually. Actually, his break is the reason we’re working in this barely touched since we moved in room.
By far the smallest bedroom we’ve ever had, coming in at a whopping 9 feet 9 inches wide by almost 11 feet long (including the bookshelf depth). The closet is proportionate to the room, just about three feet wide.
And it has to work for a young college kid with clothes, books, backpacks, and other necessities. The current storage system is lacking, to say the least. Left over mismatched bins on the top shelves hold socks, t-shirts, and more.
A small shoe rack holds extra shoes, but there’s little room to store backpacks and other large items.
Once Handy Sammy returns, he can fill the mini dresser I refinished, hopefully giving more room at the top of the closet to stow bags and such.
But we did take out the nightstand, so it’s a trade. Gain some floor space, making the room feel larger, but lose a drawer of small storage space.
I do have a loose plan. Instead we’ll make more space on the bookshelves. One shelf of magazine files for notebooks/paper and another for books. The shelf at bed height will function now as a nightstand. I’m working on a few boxes for that shelf to store small items, too.
Under bed storage bins (for 8 bucks a piece) can hold anything shorter than 8 inches. Out of season clothes, school supplies, or other oddities. That should help until we get a chance to build a bed frame with drawers below.
Clearly we have some work to do here, like get/make a bed skirt (in addition to other things). And, if you look carefully, you can see one change we started over the weekend.
Handy Sammy isn’t picky, but I’d like to make this room functional, clutter free, and pretty. We’ve never had to think about the needs of a teenager, so if you have any small storage ideas, please share.
Over the weekend, we started working on a new project. Hint, it involves taking everything off the shelves in the guest room, but more on that when we make a little more progress.
I packed the shelf contents into five laundry baskets. That’s a lot of stuff. I’ll need to pare down my stuff to make room for Handy Sammy and his stuff. After all, he’s the one living in the room. I could either haul everything but the books to the basement or find a place to put it. I’d prefer the second option, so I looked around. And decided my side of the closet was the perfect spot.
A mini collection right next to my socks and pajama pants.
I think it’s a fun, unexpected place to see art. Then I started thinking of other surprise art places. Like the back of a door.
Hanging above a stack of books on a shelf.
{from Martha Stewart}
Or over books, on the shelf frame.
{designed by Albert Hadley}
Even over a large mirror.
{I can’t find the original source}
Or in a very traditional place, but in an unusual arrangement.
{via Desire to Inspire}
Any fun places you like to hang art, even if it is a little crazy?
Hello and happy Monday! Well, as happy as a Monday can be. How was your weekend? Saturday brought beautiful weather with temps in the low sixties. A touch of spring that I’m desperately clinging to. Yesterday started out nice, but ended with a snow storm complete with thunder and lightning. Never have I witnessed a snow/thunder storm combo. We took advantage of the nice weather and ran errands and grabbed lunch on Saturday. Which is always a treat. And we made a little tweak to the entertainment center. But let me back up, several weeks ago, Ben put in all the drawers. Then I primed and painted the inside and outsides.
Last weekend he attached the drawer fronts using this technique.
After some debate and opinion gathering, we chose handle option number 1, the simple (cheapest) square ended one.
My favorite and so pretty. After all, hardware is jewelry for a room.
As usual, our projects are never in the quick one week and done style. Oh no, we like to drag it out, because what else would we want to do? Pshh, that’s totally it. That means we still have a few things to do. Number one, cut pieces for the toe kick, prime, and paint. The only wood accent I want is the pretty top, not unfinished pine.
Annnnd I still want doors on the upper cabinets. We don’t have a lot of clutter there, but the bounty of speakers and electronics doesn’t look pretty. Doors would also help cut down the amount of dust.
For now, I grin like a fool when I see finished drawer fronts with functional storage behind. The boys now have a place to keep toys.
The top drawer closest to the stairs is super handy to store hats and gloves (and other randoms like plastic pea pods) that normally get lost in the closet.
And that brings us to this weekend’s little tweak.
We hung the tv to the back wall, making it easier to clean under.
In addition to showing off more of the dark wood top. What do you think of the nearly finished entertainment center? Tall, dark, and handsome, right? Of course that’s about the only thing that is done in the living room. Now I want to repaint the walls with a little color (notice the blue swatches?) in a flat paint. Satin is entirely too glossy on the knock down texture.
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