Wine Wine Wine

What do you do you do when you have lots of pretty wine bottles?

Why, make them even prettier, of course!

I have been collecting these pretty blue bottles for a while now and have been having visions of lace.

The Twin Bed Bandwagon

Hi guys! I am kind of between projects right now (plus I have a super busy month of May). So today I thought I'd would share the makings of a twin bed bench. These things are ALL OVER the internet. Can you believe this thing was almost headed for the burn pile?! The footboard was broken but had some salvageable pieces and that headboard just screamed "don't kill me!!!" I am pretty sure my dad thought I was a little crazy wanting to take this thing from him.

 Check out this photo that I labeled for y'all to see what's what. If you look close you can see I used pocket holes to join all my pieces. I used 2" outdoor Kreg screws.

The next job was to add a seat. I used a 1x4, then 1x12, then another 1x4. It overhangs slightly in the front so next time I do one I will probably use 1x3's in place of 1x4's. (Forgive the photos, one leg always looks out of square, GRRR! At least the legs kindly share which one gets to look wonky.)

After some sanding I used one coat of spray primer...

Then 2ish coats of indoor/outdoor high gloss spray paint. I don't normally spray paint my projects but I gotta say, it was great! I knew there was no other way to do paint this bench because of the spokes on the back. And another plus, I was able to do all of the painting in under two hours! Crazy fast! I used Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch Multi-Purpose Paint Spray in Sun Yellow.

After the yellow cured for a bit I roughed up some edges. Anywhere I had spayed to close (aka drips) got a distressing. I maybe should have stopped there, but didn't. I watered down some black paint to do a sort of glazing/distress. Problem was, I didn't move it out of the sun and it dried almost the second it went on so I couldn't get as much wiped off as I needed. YIKES!  So I sanded some of that off too (the yellow layer was incredibly strong and held up really well to all the sanding).

There, pretty perfect! I loved the kinda dirty look. Since I knew it would be going into a flower bed by my barn and my kids would dirty it up, this finish was perfect! Now I don't have to worry about wear and tear... the more dirt the better.

Now PLEASE, don't judge me for this nasty area of my yard. It once was cute-ish but was neglected in the last year. But my husband and I have big plans to add a retaining wall and make it pretty once again. I'll update with more photo's then!

Link up here:

Show Me What Ya Got #84

ReUse... pallets!

One of my top favorite things to do is to use reclaimed materials. And the best way I have found to do this is with used pallets. Now, they are a PAIN to work with and take a lot of time to cut or disassemble, but in the end you can end up with a very inexpensive shelf or piece of furniture. Really the only costs that go into working with pallet wood are the cost of your blades (cause they really eat up blades),  screws or nails, plus any finishing materials like sandpaper plus paint or stain. Here are a few examples of things that I have made on the cheap with pallet wood!

Below are examples of a few different variations of shelves and some different uses.

 Here is a bench that sits at the end of our drive. Perfect for waiting on the bus.

 Below is a pallet crate.

I've used these in the past as a book shelf hung on the wall and also as a crate to hold fire wood.

I love this planter box!

And here are two simple little bird houses made using only scrap wood.  

Thanks for looking! Feel free to pin. ;) And as always, search keyword "pallet" on Ana-White.com for more great ideas!



Trash or Treasure?

As promised, I'm back! Today's post is about taking a nasty thrift store piece of furniture and breathing new life into it. We had purchased a new, very large, television and had to upgrade from our old armoire. We hit the nearest thrift store and what do you know, it was 50% off furniture day! AND they had the perfect (and dirty) dresser that could be easily turned into a TV Stand. So for $30 plus the cost of a little sand paper and white paint, I give you this!

It holds so much! And inside the center doors are three drawers that work perfectly for all of our DVD's and gaming gear. On the left side I store my photos and albums and the right side are for all the kids coloring books and games. It's perfect for our needs. Proving you can take trash to treasure (although I did get lucky with find this as fast as I did)!