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From Bubblegum to Pure Gold

From Bubblegum to Pure Gold

Does any one else besides me watch the Today Show every morning?

I try to convince myself that I watch to catch up on what is happening and what happened in the world while I was sleeping.

But…that’s not entirely true. You see, my celebrity crush is Matt Lauer. He seems so kind and generous, not to mention fit and those dreamy brown eyes, don’t even get me started about his dreamy eyes. 🙂

When I saw that the Today Show was at West End Salvage one week after Sam and I where there, I was so disappointed. So close to meeting my crush and yet so far. 🙂

Stores like West End Salvage are great places to find an unexpected item to repurpose into something fabulous. But you don’t always have to go to salvage stores to find that certain something.

As I mentioned, last weekend Wade and I, along with our neighbor Nikki went to Becker Furniture World in Becker Minnesota to check out the furniture collections. Nikki is in the process of searching for a new couch and she had not been to Becker Furniture World. We walked every square foot of the self proclaimed, Minnesota’s Largest Furniture store. It was glorious. This store is so big that they actually have a three bedroom model home inside the store. And let me tell you, it is amazing!

The final section we walked thru was the home décor Clearance section.

That is where I found these metal beauties.

Each one of them had paint chipping off of them somewhere which earned them a spot on the Clearance table.

The color was a very happy bubblegum pink. Not a bad color, just not a very common color used when decorating a home.

Instead of painting over them, I decided to try my hand at paint removal.

With the help of the staff from Hirschfeld Design Center, they guided me towards this paint removal product.

After creating a good ventilation stream in my studio, putting on eye protection and rubber gloves, I dumped about half of a cup of the remover into a cleaned out green bean can.

Within seconds of dabbing the remover onto the candlesticks the paint was falling off. Truth be told, it was sort of scary how quickly this product started bubbling the paint. Per the directions, I let it sit for 15 minutes before taking a paper towel and wiping off the majority of the old paint.

From there on out it was dab, dry, wipe, repeat. It was a little tedious towards the end trying to get every speck of pink, but the final result was so worth it.

After giving each stick a final soap and water wash, I let them air dry once again before painting them a new color.

The first stick I spray painted a Pure Gold color from Rustoleum. Three light coats of spray from about 8 inches away with 10 minutes between each coat for it to dry and it was finished.

I decided that I am going to paint each stick a different color. My intentions are that they be used as something to add to your existing décor not necessarily as dining table candlesticks.

Something like this.

I was reading Miss Mustard Seeds post the other day and she painted a metal stool with her in line of paint. I had no idea that milk paint could be applied to metal. Double checking my brochures about her product, sure enough it can!

I ordered sample sizes of the Linen, Typewriter, Schloss and Trophy.

Be prepared for an Epic or Fail blog about how they turn out. 🙂

See you on Friday,

Wendy

Speaking of Epic or Fail, I have added an Epic metal sign to the shop. Click here and check it out!

 

Fish Fry, DIY and Pinterest

Fish Fry, DIY and Pinterest

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had a great weekend. It was a top 10 day here this weekend in Minnesota!

I took this picture yesterday. You can see what amazing weather we had, June temperatures in late September. Beautiful.

Let me introduce you to my neighbor.

Everyone, this is Jimmy.

Jimmy, this is everyone.

Jimmy and his cute as a button wife Nikki live two doors down from us. You may remember me mentioning my neighbor that works at the local tree farm? He cuts the birch tree branches for me that I use to make these candlesticks.

This is him. (Nikki said she wasn’t ready for a photo, silly Nikki. I’ll catch you next time.)

Jimmy and Nikki both love to mill around on Pinterest. Not only do the pin ideas to their boards, they actually make the ideas they pin.

Last weekend they invited us over for a fish fry.

Fish fry. Someone else making dinner. Win-Win.

They deep fat fried the fish out in their garage. Very smart, plus it was another beautiful Minnesota evening.

While Jimmy was frying, I noticed this tool organizer on the wall.

I asked him where he got it and he causally said that he made it off of an idea from Pinterest.

So today I would like to share with you the steps he took to make this.

He started with 2×3 boards. In hindsight he should have used 2×4’s, but he used what he had in the garage at the time. He then made this template to use as the cut out for his tool handles. The rounded top is a 1.5 inch diameter and the length is almost 4 inches.

His next step was placing the template onto the 2×3, tracing it about every six inches.

Here is where he drilled out the top rounded section with a 1.5 inch drill bit.

After that section is drilled through, he simply took his circular saw and followed the black lines until they connected to the rounded out section.

Place, trace, drill and cut each area until you have the desired amount of spots for your tool handles.

There will be a lot of weight on these brackets so for the final step Jimmy attached each one of these brackets into a wall stud.

Another suggestion he had was to attach a horizontal brace behind the vertical brackets to make them stick out further. That way the deeper tools such as shovels would sit nicely into the slot.

I love how everything is on the wall, organized and ready to use without digging in a barrel or a pile for the right tool.

I hope I can convince Jimmy to share more of his DIY Pinterest influenced items. The guy has so many skills. 🙂

Here’s to getting organized! See you Wednesday.