Friday, August 17, 2012

Little Birdies

A while back on a shopping excursion to Michael's I came across these cute wooden bird ornaments.  They were carved out of wood with legs and feet made from metal wire.  I bought a few of them as I thought they would be fun to use as decorations.


I didn't want to hang them so my first task was to remove the metal loop from the back with needle nose pliers.  I then filled in the hole with wood filler and sanded it smooth.

 
I painted the birds in fun colors with craft paint I had and set them out on the shoe cabinet by the front door for a cheerful greeting as you come or go.


Thursday, August 9, 2012

Revamping an Ikea Shoe Cabinet

Hi Everyone!  It's been a while since my last blog post!  The last couple of months have been quite hectic because we have a new addition to our family.  Here's introducing our new baby girl Emma!
So my days of late have been occupied by feedings, diapers, and trying to elicit baby smiles :o)


Back to the blogging business!  When we get home first thing we do is kick off our shoes, so inside the door we had sneakers, sandals, work shoes, slippers all scattered around the entryway.  We were in desperate need of something to store all our shoes!   On a couple other blogs I've seen shoe cabinets from Ikea so we started our search there.  We found one we really liked but it would not fit the dimensions of the space we planned to put it as it would be too tall and cover a light switch.  The cabinets that would fit were far from attractive and since it was one of the first things you would see entering the house we wanted something that would look nice.

We looked around at other stores but didn't find anything that would work.  We contemplated building a cabinet ourselves but couldn't figure out how to make the bin drawers that swing down and out to open.  We decided the easiest thing to do would be to buy an inexpensive cabinet from Ikea and modify it.  Well, make that two cabinets to fit the width of the space where we planned to have it.

So here we have the beginnings of our cabinet.  As with everything at Ikea it came in a box and we had to assemble it.


Well, Brian assembled it :o)


And here is what one completed cabinet looked like.  Not too exciting.


As I mentioned before to fit the space we attached two of the cabinets together (and because I have a bit more shoes than would fit in one cabinet!).


After that was done we moved on to making the cabinet look nice.  We wanted the cabinet to have a sturdy (i.e. not cheap!) furniture feel so we added a larger wood top and trim and beadboard to the fronts of the drawers and sides.

For the top we couldn't find a piece of wood to fit with 1 inch overhangs all the way around so we combined to narrower pieces of wood.  We attached them together using a Kreg jig to make the connections invisible from the top.  Brian first used the Kreg jig to drill pilot holes on the underside of the wood.


Then he attached the two pieces with screws.


Here's a closer view of a pilot hole and screw.  The Kreg jig provides a nice angled hole for attaching two side-by-side pieces of wood that will be invisible from the top surface.


Next I sanded the edges and the point where the two boards came together to make everything smooth and flush.  Then it was time to attach the top piece to the cabinet.  Brian glued the top down and attached it from the underside with screws.  He made sure everything was firmly held while the glue dried as you can see by all the clamps and weights :o)


We bought beadboard and some craft wood strips from Home Depot to add some style.  To the front of the drawers Brian added the beadboard and wood strips for trim using Liquid Nails glue.


To the corners he added thicker wood pieces along with the beadboard and craft wood strips on the sides, glueing and clamping everything in to place.


Once everything was attached I filled in any gaps with wood filler, sanded everything smooth, and painted the whole cabinet white with Annie Sloane's chalk paint.  We also bought bin pulls from Home Depot, in the Martha Stewart style that I  have used on a couple other projects.  So here we have the finished product:


A big improvement over how it looked in the beginning!


Here's a closer look:


And here it is in action, hiding our shoes!


It was quite a bit of work but I LOVE it!!!