Jewelry display

I just discovered Pinterest, and have become addicted to it.  It has replaced Amazon as my favorite - and much more wallet-friendly, I might add - site to browse during those restless-mind-keeps-racing-but-too-tired-to-do-anything-physical episodes that I often have.

Anyway, during a particularly intensive Pinterest-browsing period, I stumbled into these nice DIY jewelry displays made out of repurposed materials... frames, windows, wooden suitcase, what have you.  The creativity!  Lacking that, of course, I took these inspirations and copied the hell out of them.

Here are some of the jewelry displays that I like (most found on Pinterest, however I try to link directly to the primary source whenever possible):

Painted wooden suitcase with dowels and cup hooks

Cutlery tray and cup hooks

Old window frames with cup hooks (notice a pattern here?) and window screen

Frame - not my style, but pretty nonetheless - with window screen

Done by the pros

And I made this garish-looking one:

I like to make my pics very big

Ugh.  How do you like 'em yellow.  I can't believe I dared to compare mine with the pretty ones above.  But I did.  And there's nothing anybody can do about it.  Well, they can say something, but I'll probably just laugh at them.  Just like they laugh at my creation.  

I digress.

Materials:

• Frame:  From Goodwill, part of a poster artwork.  Originally in black, I lazily sanded and sloppily primed the frame.  As a consequence, it took six (SIX!) coats of yellow paint to make it acceptably yellow.  (I could still make out the black in natural light, but thankfully it will be kept in the fluorescent-basked dungeon that is my closet, so I'm not too concerned).
• Plywood:  The thinnest plywood I could find, cut to fit the frame.
• Cup hooks:  Cheaper than knobs.  I use 54 of them. the shortest I could find.  They're not fully screwed in, so as to not poke behind the plywood backing.
• Paint:  For the frame - Behr Instant Delight, or as I call it, Traffic-Sign Yellow.  But yes it does bring me instant delight.  For the plywood back - Behr Dark Granite.  For the wall: Benjamin Moore Silver Fox (Yes, I'm repainting the house).

Well now please excuse me while I go shop for more jewelry!

Linking to:

Dresser + Table top = Kitchen island

Ta-dah!

I was extremely bored, so in a whim I made this kitchen island out of an old dresser.  Ha!  Just kidding.  This project took me a couple of months from idea inception to actual start of work (the work itself is only a couple of weekends, and that's only because of the paint-drying time).

We needed additional counter space and a place to eat in the kitchen, and I thought a kitchen island would be nice.  When we remodel the kitchen (eventually, maybe in 5-10 years time), an island is a must.  In the meantime, I didn't want to spend a lot of money for the current project.  So, I used one of my MIL's dressers that she allowed me to keep/sell/makeover.  This dresser I actually used for clothes before we moved to the new house, but since I no longer needed it and it's a 35" tall (just about counter height), it got sacrificed (though not in vain!).

Here is it before:

I had already started applying the paint stripper on the top of the dresser, before I realized that I didn't have any "before" picture.  Oops!

After priming:

Because the dresser was stripped down to the raw wood, I used tinted Zinsser High Hide Cover Stain oil-based primer, which was leftover from the front-door painting project.

After painting:

The paint is Benjamin Moore Metal/Wood Lacquer in Brilliant Red, also leftover from the front-door painting project. The dresser top I left unpainted, because the counter top was going to cover it anyway. 


Now, for installing the counter top, I marked and drilled a few (10) pilot holes on the dresser top for screwing the top:

You might make out the barely visible X pencil marks, which indicate the pilot hole locations.

The counter top is Ikea Vika Byske, which was the perfect size for the dresser with some 10" extension on three sides for bar stools (the dresser is 40"W x 20"D x 35"H).  At 1", it's not as thick as normal counter top, but it's made of solid wood and relatively cheap for $80 (solid wood counter tops of this size can run about $300-$400!)

I wasn't sure if the the bottom of the wood needed to be sealed, since it's not being exposed to anything other than fellow wood, but I sealed it anyway with Feed-N-Wax.

Then, T and I put the dresser up-side down on the bottom of the top (in this case, picture is definitely better than words), like so:

Because drilling downward is much easier than upward.  I gave T 100% credit for this idea.

For attaching, I used screws with washers:

The washers because moving the unit means grabbing it by the wood top, so I thought they would prevent the screw heads from being accidentally broken off from too much pressure.

Underside picture after attaching:

Oh, I didn't use glue at all, in case we need to detach the top for whatever reason.

And here's the finished product, gloriously sitting in the middle of the kitchen like it owns it:

And the front:

Bar stools are Ikea Franklin, purchased from craigslist for $10 (not each; for both!).  One of them has some water stain, but I'm planning to either stain or paint them later.  Those are Hawaiian papayas, my favorite fruit for the moment (I buy 8 at a time for the whole week), and the wine-bottle-lookalike is some acai berry juice that was given to me (I use it exactly as pictured: for decoration).

Cost breakdown:
- Dresser: $0
- Table top: $88 with tax + about $20 cargo van rental
- Bar stools: $10
- Primer & paint: $0
- Knobs: $18 with tax (had to buy 4 new ones because of some accident in which the paint stripper is at fault)
TOTAL: $136


Not too shabby.  Now T and I have a place to sit and watch the sink!

Linking to: