Plant shelf

Budget:

• $0 for shelf  (already had)

• $0 for paint (left-over )

Time:

• 1 hour

The shelf I had painted previous was actually only 1/2 of the original shelf.

The other half had been sitting on the side of our dining room, looking quite confused without a purpose.  We had used it to just pile on stuff that didn’t have a home and hide all the homeless stuff in the big closet before guests would come.  Finally, an ah-ha moment came.

I am going to put my herb plants on it.  The plants have been sitting on the cabinet in the kitchen, toward the side that’s hard to reach and getting too much direct sun.

I painted the middle shelves the same brown color as the dining chair.  Then, I tried using the blue paint I had for the side panels.  The blue I have is really too light and looked weird on a wood shelf in the dining room.  I then performed custom blending that I’m so *good* at… NOT!

Fortunately, gradually adding the darker paint into the lighter paint was the key to control the color change.  It also created better blending.  I’m quite happy with the shade of blue it ended up…. matches with the new blue carpet we got for the living room.  maybe some day I will do a post of apartment tour.

Until then… our newly trimmed herb plants are sitting quite nicely on the painted shelf.  The biggest pot is the newest addition — Tomato plant!  I can’t wait to start harvesting.

Updating bookshelf + arranging books by colors

Budget:

• $0 for bookshelf (inherited from an old roommate)

• $0 for paint (left-over)

Time:

• 2.5 hours

Our apartment was painted with a lot of cream wall colors & white trims through out.  It’s nice and  serene and makes white furniture disappear.

I have inherited a large white bookshelf from an old roommate years back.  It’s a nice size and decently built  but definitely showing its age. While brainstorming what color to paint it with by using what I already have, nice boyfriend suggested “grey”!  Perfect.  I have black, and I have light blue and white.  Isn’t grey just black mixed with a lighter color?

So the great mixing process began.  Hand mixing paint colors reminded me of mixing baking batter without recipe.  You have your base of whatever already in the bowl.  Then, you slowly pour in the additional ingredient.  Too much, your cake won’t rise.  Too little, you cake tastes funny.  My mixing bowl looked like this:

Oh, forgot to mention that before any paint job, you need to prep your surface.  That means sanding, wiping with damp towel, and taping the edges so you don’t paint over the area that you don’t want to paint.  This is also my least favorite part of the painting.  It’s time consuming, and I’m much more interested in taking my paint brush to the object.

I decided to go with grey on the exterior to the bookshelf while leaving the interior white so the color wheel that I am going to organize the books by will stand out.  To be clear, I didn’t invent this method.  I saw it on a HGTV show sometime and have been wanting to try it.  Here is my top 3 reasons why I think it’s a good idea:

1. Visually Appealing: organized colors make the space look more thought out, instead of just piling books on your shelf.  Would’ve been even cooler if I had a horizontal shelf.




2. Discovering new books: sure, organizing books by subject makes perfect sense.  I had been doing that for as far as I can remember.  It’s great for finding a book that you already know you’re looking for.  But what happens to the other less-favored ones?  When will they ever get read if you don’t pick it up?  This way or organization throws you in an unfamiliar order and forces you to pick up more books.




3. Why not?  I’m not operating a bookstore or a library here:  It’s really not like I have seas of books that I need to reference to all the time.  Besides, it’s in my own space.  As long as the 2 people living here are happy with the arrangement, it’s all good.

Adding a small detail to make it more interesting, I also painted the very bottom black.  It kind of reminds me of the ‘exposed legs’ of couches/sofa/love seat.

After painting, I left the shelf to dry for hours.  I touched up some of the backing with white paint I had because there were scratch marks.  The colors weren’t really a match.  Oh well… the books will color them.

Shelf finally dried.  I sanded it with super fine steel wool for the finished look.  Then the great arranging began.  I arranged the books by colors first.  Then within the piles of the same color, I divided them by shades.  Having a color wheel image near by was pretty helpful.

Here is the finished look!

Painting an old IKEA shelf

Budget:

• $0 for shelf (already had)

• $0 for paint (left-over)

Time:

• 1 hours

What to do when you take a very basic tall stacked shelf that’s lacking back support?

Unstack them and keep them low to the ground!

Sand, paint, *holding breath to not inhale toxic fume*, flip, and paint again.

Let it dry & sand it down lightly with steel wool.

End Product – shelf for DVDs and speakers.

random wire shelf turned spice rack

Budget:

• $0 for shelf (found)

• $0 for paint (left-over)

Time:

• 20 min.

When we first moved in, we found this wire shelf left by the previous tenant(s).  The back side is completely open/without wire on the back side.  We found it in the bathroom, and there was no logical place at all where this piece could’ve been used.

I painted the wires blue with an old toothbrush and hammered some nails on the wall.  Then I just set this shelf over the nails.  Now I don’t have to keep opening the cabinet to reach the basic cooking ingredients.

Wine Boxes turned free-formed shelf

Budget:

• $3/box -> $24 for boxes

• $12 for paint + small brush (used a $10 coupon)

Time:

• about 4 hours of actual work time. (definitely a learning curve)

After reading about the salvaged-drawers-turned-modular-shelf by Monica Ewing of Craftynest.com (post here), I’ve been yearning to try it out myself.  Finally!

I came across someone selling used wood wine boxes on Craigslist.  After hauling 10 of them home, I peeled off the stickers as much as I can, sanded the boxes, and wiped them down.  Not all the stickers came off cleanly… I need a better way of getting them off.  Any suggestions?

Repurposing IKEA shoe rack

Budget:

• Old shoe shelf – $0

Time:

• 20-30 minutes of measuring, cutting, and installing.

Bottom of our pantry has this large space with no shelf.  While it’ll be very useful to hold rice sacks large enough to feed a village, we are not really in the market of buying such item.  Most of other tall condiments and oddly shaped bottles still don’t fully utilize the height of the space.  Unfortunately, my trials of bringing home different racks & baskets from The Container store (a.k.a. Mango’s happy place) haven’t worked out so far.  Time to make our own solution instead of buying one.

I had an old shoe rack from IKEA like this, which I had previously spray painted red. My willing partner-in-crime said to me: “let’s cut it”.   He took out the electric saw, ruler, pencil, and went to work.  The 4 support pieces got attached to the sides of the pantry.  The two shelves were cut down to size to sit on top of the new side rails.

Tada!  Now we have shelves in the large, unused spa to store containers!