Fan 'o' Recycling

My balcony is a great place to be, but when its a little too warm and I want to use it anyway: it gets stuffy because there's not a lot of air circulation, due to it being within the footprint of the building, rather than cantilevered out.
I took a gander at Home Goods to see if they had any clearance fans that could help a sister out; but they did not. Seems small, attractive fans are in high demand due to the season and therefore not likely to be on clearance: my bad.
In my parent's garage I re-found (as I'd used this thing many times) an old office fan that worked well, but looked quire unappealing.

Reliving the 80's through beige and tan.

As I do love free things, I went about making it work for me.

I took the thing apart and cleaned 20 years of dust and schmutz from the surfaces and motor. All the plastic surfaces were super smooth, so I gave them all a light sanding with a sanding block. I taped all the pieces off so the lines would be crisp and paint wouldn't get all over the blade cover. Any paint on the grating would be a pain in the @$$ to scrape off.

I primed the whole thing to further ensure that the new paint would stick to the plastic surfaces. Using some black and minty green spray paint I already had, I gave each piece several light coats. The mint colored paint did not provide great coverage, so it those pieces got about a million coats.

Because I'm in a condo, don't have a private yard, and I mainly do these projects in the evening after dark; I execute the spray painting of small objects a little oddly. With outstretched arms; I lean out over the balcony railing and work in short bursts. I wear a latex glove on the hand grasping the object so that I wont walk into work the next day sporting the overspray as a crappy hand accessory.

picture this holding fan parts

With some trial and error; I reassembled the pieces.
Blow me over: that's one good lookin fan.

A retro-redo for $0.

-Lindsay

Creating custom adjustable shelving, ala the Container Store

Aside from painting top to bottom, built-in closet shelving was the first homeowner improvement project I tackled. I was giddy, I was broke, but I had a plan.

I may have mentioned it before, but my place is the condo-o-storage. It has more useful and plentiful storage than any ~1000 condo I've ever seen. Clearly, it was meant to be mine.
There are a remarkable FOUR hallway closets; a pantry, a linen closet, a coat closet, and a big empty space closet with a single upper shelf.
With a myriad of tools and materials for all my renovation projects, and no garage; I had to come up with a better storage solution than tossing everything in the big-empty-space closet.
I dreamed of Container Store Elfa shelving with vertical silver tracks and wooden shelves.

same size and # of shelves as I needed in the closet

Only $745 installed or $565 'DIY'........
Oh please to the %*#$ no.

I had a pile of fantastic old pine boards salvaged several years ago from a house I'd rented that was being torn down. They were the standard closet upper shelves, already finished in a pretty amber color.

comme ça

Using them for the shelves' surface was the linchpin in making this project possible, as I couldn't afford to buy all new hardwood boards, and saggy MDF was not gonna happen.
The hallway closet door doesn't run the full width of the closet, so I planned for 2 deep shelves on the bottom and 3 shallower ones above to get as much surface space as possible while allowing easy access to all shelves.

There were several different shelving systems at  my local Home Depot.
Pricey name brand ClosetMaid? Um, no thanks sister, I'll keep the $150 you would have cost and keep lookin.
Rubbermaid was the champ at $8 an upright, $3.75 for long brackets, and $3 for short ones.

upright

bracket

This broke out to:

$8 x 2 uprights =$16

$3.75 x 2 pairs of brackets = $15

$3 x 3 pairs of brackets = $18

    $4 x 1 box of anchors and screws = $4    

$53

Since $53 is about 9% of the high end $565 price tag: I was a proud, proud, thrifty gal.

Handy Dad and I ripped out the single upper shelf already in the closet to install the new tracks. The two holes we accidentally punched in the wall were just a bonus.
We hung the tracks starting about 6 inches down from the ceiling and ending about 8 inches up from the ground. This covered all the areas where I'd possibly want to have brackets for a shelf.
We then used the ripped out shelf as a guide to cut the pine boards to size. Something we learned here, that we keep re-learning; is that in a 40 year old building: nothing is square. Start with a pattern and then adjust for each instance of that item. That being said, unsuprisingly some shelves came out with a little wiggle room and others had to be trimmed down to fit. Between the track and the pine boards, we used scrap wood from Handy Dad's impressive garage collection to fill out the depth each shelf needed.
Each bracket has a hole for a screw, but I have neither done anything with that nor noticed the need to since construction.

hello there Garage Closet!

Not the prettiest girl at the dance, but heck, she's gonna be a glorified tool box. No worries princess.

Having gotten the hang of it, we went ahead and knocked out another set in the 2nd bedroom closet. There were two identical closets in there, each with a top shelf and hanging bar. Shelving was badly needed in one of them for office/sporting/random items, as all that hanging space would be wasted.

The wall came out unscathed on this one, but still no beauty queen in sight with those two franken-shelves on the bottom. Again though, its a closet. No one but the 5 people that read this blog (hi honey!) will see it; and inexpensive/functional/awesome always beats accumulating more debt. The mortgage alone is plenty!




-Lindsay

Dining room pendant project - part 1

I oogle lighting during my lunch break. I have lights in every room, but most are far from ideal.
My current target is the dining room chandelier. It came with the house and is cute, but only sort of worked with my dining set, and I knew I'd probably change it down the line.

9 person thanksgiving. before I actually lived there.
at least the walls were painted.

bling bling

I'm giving away that dining set, and now the existing chandelier really really doesn't work with the new round table and settee arrangement.

Side note: More to come on the new dining setup when I get a chance to take pictures. The table got brought in only last night and needs some work, but the pictures below give a general idea of what I'm going for.

Back to lighting. I've waffled on what would be the best replacement. I like the diffused light and modern appeal of drum lights:

every modern barbie house needs a bowl of pears

While barn pendants and their rustic, minimalist look make my heart go pitter-patter:

pears for all

My big issue with barn pendants has been their single bulb. Would not sufficiently light up the dining room, much less my life. Drum pendants with multiple bulbs are more $$ than I'm willing to part with, especially since I'm leaning towards the barn fixtures. What to do, what to do.....

While running errands the other day, I spotted a torchiere lamp sitting by the side of a dumpster. Ugly lamp on its own, but upon closer inspection, the ceiling facing shade was metal and barn-ish shape. And had TWO light sockets. Mind made up for me. Thank you dumpster fairy! 

woop, there it is

Good thing one of my back seats was already down, cuz that baby was in the car 3 seconds later. 

don't mind the perma-coats of sawdust in the trunk,
and spare cardigans in the back seat

Does it work? Who knows, but it can be rewired if necessary. Either way, it has all the components of a great barn pendant lamp, I just need to take a hack saw to the thing and get it disassembled.

In terms of refinishing, I'll leave the brushed aluminum outside alone, but the inside is cruddy looking and needs help.

yes, that's a home depot receipt sitting on the seat.
they litter my life.

I recently spotted an unopened can of minty green spray paint sitting in the back corner of my  'garage' closet. The tone would compliment the other colors in the living space, and would be pretty to look up and see a pop of color at while sitting at the dining table.

Kind of like this:

But inside out. And no white. And no wire cage. And two edison bulbs. And swag hung rather than mounted:

But you get the idea. Hopefully.



-Lindsay

Something to interest your pallet

Ill start by saying I hate throwing potentially useful things away. Believe me, I LOVE throwing junk out. Taking arm-fulls of junk to the dumpster gives me a deep and sincere sense of accomplishment. But, if something could be recycled, repurposed, or used in another project: I horde that sucker away for future use. My place does not have a garage, so my 2nd bedroom/office has become the best place to store stuff, but I digress into matters for another day. Be warned though: ALOT of what I do is using what you/friends/family have, or what is cheap or free and available.

Onto the project at hand! I'll start with one that was fun to do and came out really well.

Rolling Pallet Box Table

she's a beauty

I knew I wanted to build a coffee table for the porch off the dining room, and had been drooling over the incredible pieces from the amazing lady woodworker over at Brooklyn to West.

oooh the chevrons and stripes

The combination of angled pieces and recycled materials really jumped out at me, and I wanted to translate that idea and feeling into a piece that worked for my home.

My dad has been helping me screen in the two porches on the back of my unit: building out the framing, cutting and installing screen, etc. (Thanks Dad!) There was some excess pressure treated 2x4 wood lying around, so I cut 12 equal lengths while the saw was out and set them aside for later. I didn't measure or draw out plans; just cut  11 pieces to match the smallest usable piece.

While on duty at the fire station the soon afterwards, I grabbed a pallet from the old fire hose graveyard, a sawz-all from the engine, and went to work dissembling said pallet. Using a metal cutting blade, I simply sawed through the nails attaching the top and bottom planks to the frame by going right between the frame and planks. Another firefighter even came over and helped me for a while when he though this was something I'd been told to do. But alas, I let him know it was just for me and finished up myself. The next time I cut pallets, I'm going to try and figure out how to secure the pallet somehow so it doesn't bounce around when sawed. Other than that, it was an easy process that produced a good number of free, character ridden boards for building a table.
I built a rectangular box frame out of the 12-2x4 pieces and attached some wheels I had on hand to the bottom. While the main use of this item will be a table, its certainly sturdy enough to work as a seat or ottoman, and since it is heavy as a horse; wheels make it easily movable for whatever job it will do.
After that, both my drill and I were outta juice, so I stopped for the night. This, to the mild disappointment of the guys who had all asked what the heck I was doing, seemed to like the idea, and wanted to see a finished table. Ah well.
Several healed blisters later, I set up my borrowed (dad's) mini-miter saw at home and went about piecing together a different pattern for each side of the box. This part of the project was seriously fun: figuring out what would work best for each side, cutting a first piece (without hitting any of the nails), attaching it to the frame with a nail or screw (depending on how warped the pallet plank was, and how many screws were left in the limited supply I had that night), then piecing together the rest of that side by; measuring, cutting, and attaching each piece.
I was a puzzle-loving kid, and this was a puzzle with power tools where I got to cut the pieces to fit??? Sold. I could make these all day.
A word of warning though: pallets may turn your hands black with some sort of tar or grime that wont scrub off. For the next week I looked like I had just come in from the fields. Thanks for taking me out to that nice dinner the next night honey....sorry I looked like Nell.

i once caught a fish thiiiiss big

Broken nails, cuts n scrapes, and paint/tar/glue/etc. covered hands, arms, and legs seem to now be a hallmark of my highly polished appearance (riiight. especially laughable on Monday mornings).

But anyway, I gave the table an all over sanding to smooth out any jutting edges and prevent splinters. The pallets' patina and texture is their main attraction though, so I definitely didn't sand the bejeebers out of the thing.
I toyed with the idea of staining either the whole table or some individual pieces with a darker color. A test with some of walnut stain on a scrap piece totally masked the interesting characteristics of the pallet wood, and just looked like crappy cheap ugly wood. No thank you. I like my cheap crappy wood to look beautiful.
To bring out the different wood tones and lightly seal the table, I gave the whole thing a quick spray with some poly-acrylic and called it a day. Acrylic or poly-acrylic is great for a no-yellowing light protective coat, and bonus for my antsy self: it dries in about 15 mins.
I may eventually do some edging with some stained or colored wooden paint stir-sticks once Home Depot recovers from an apparent run on the things. But for now it is done and living the good life on the porch, fulfilling it's table destiny and avoiding getting sent to the pallet chipper. Pheobe would be proud.

one of many DIY projects on the balcony

Pardon my lack of step-by-step pictures. That's going to haunt posts for a while. I've been a bit trigger happy over the past 2 years with this phone and filled up the memory to the point that I couldn't take any more. But, that is no longer an issue, so I can snap pictures as I go along with my phone. Perhaps I'll even get in the habit of using a real camera. Probably not for the time being. I'll definitely be farming out as much to the über-talented Mr.Al as he'll let me. 

-Lindsay