I saw on Pinterest lots of examples of making trees out of wood and Dollar Tree faux tin tiles and thought I would give it a try.
I plan on my trees going on our deck table so they are sturdier than a lot I saw. The need to hold up with wind and rain. The triangles are cut out of leftover pieces of wood from our stash. I made sure they would fit the tile.
After the wood was cut, I traced the shapes off on the tiles and cut them out with scissors. Several sites talked about using hot glue but my things get stored in a super hot space. Hot glue doesn’t hold up so contact cement was the best choice.
Everything got a coat of Kilz Gripper Primer. It is made to stick to slick surfaces.
I used the same paint I used on my mural to paint the trees then dry brushed the high spots with black and white paint. Literally you dip just the tips into the paint then take off most of the paint before lightly dragging it across the surface.
I cut some small blocks for the tree trunks and Mr. Math cut the bases. He then screwed them on. If you are doing something like this for indoor E6000 glue would work fine. We always overdo.
I really like how they turned out.
It is really warm here now and we are spending a lot of time outside so we get to enjoy the trees.
A funny thing happened on the way to the antique store this week.
The Social Planner, her sweet husband, Mr. Math, and I took a quick trip to a town I am falling in love with, Crockett, Texas. The town has some of the most beautiful old homes, a walkable downtown, and great food. It also has some really nice shops, resale, and antique stores.
The Social Planner hanging out with me in Crockett.
This was The Social Planner and my second visit in less than a week. I found something that I just had to go back for on our first trip and luckily it was still there when we wrangled the guys into going back and they were troopers. We found several more shops on Goliad Street that we hadn’t visited before and met the nicest people.
The unexpected visit on the trip started when we, four grandparents who looked like exactly what we are, walked out of an antique store to the roar of a chopper pulling out of the garage next door. It was beautiful. It looked like something off television and the rider could have been an actor from easy rider. As we stared at the chopper pulling away a sweet young lady walked out of the garage to tell us hello. She was so welcoming and pleasant we stayed to visit.
Robin and Ronnie own Filthy Gringos. They make custom parts, build custom bikes, laser cut designs in metal, and ship a lot of it to other places. They moved from Houston to this small town because they wanted a simpler life and lower cost of doing business and it didn’t really matter where they are located. I learned they bought the building two years ago that was literally falling down, rebuilt it, and got permission from the city to convert part of the building into living space. We visited long enough that we got to meet their son Oden and see the awesome home they are in the process of creating/finishing. As soon as I saw the space I knew they were my people. Reuse, redesign, reimagine. The building was originally a cotton gin and has 16 inch thick walls, at one time had a huge skylight, and still has the vault for keeping records and money when cotton was bought and sold. They retained as much of the original items as they could.
Welcome to their space: I am so sad I didn’t take more pictures. The entrance to the home is a wide barn door that was original to the building but I was so shocked she invited us in I didn’t get a picture. It takes a lot of courage to let a stranger come into your home with no warning and allow them to take pictures of the home.
The main living space.There is so much cool and unique stuff there,The kitchen area. That vintage sink is cool.You can see some of the reused materials here.There are no walls in the interior space. Rooms are divided with these repurposed bookcases from the high school which was torn down.
The bathroom was my very favorite. They literally turned the vault into the bathroom.
The safe door. The yellow cabinet is so cool. Ronnie did come back on the chopper while we were inside the home part of the shop and had a good visit with the guys.
Never pass up the opportunity to meet new folks. We got to see a super cool space and learn new things. if you get the chance, visit Crockett, Texas.
I love the look of reclaimed wood and I have been smitten with reclaimed wood signs for a while. This week it was my turn to do the craft project for our ladies craft night so of course I planned a reclaimed wood sign project. We picked up a ton of cedar fence pickets off the side of the road a while back and have been putting them to good use. We have used them to cover my office wall, our bedroom wall at the lake, and I covered the top and drawers of a dresser with the wood.
This week we cut the wood to length for 8 signs and I glued and nailed two thin strips of scrap to the back of each set in order to make a canvas for our signs.
I used the vinyl cutter to cut out some sayings, brought a set of stencils, paints, painter’s tape, brushes, sanding block, sander, and anything else I thought we might use.
Each lady chose a canvas and set off on their project.
First, several of us whitewashed our boards.
The steps are easy. Remove the letters from the vinyl and keep the part that you removed the letters from. Lay the vinyl on the wood, make sure to press it all down really well.
Lightly apply paint to the spaces.
Allow the paint to set for a little bit the gently peel off the vinyl. You will end up with a picture or saying.
One of our friends decided to paint a picture on her canvas. Wow!
It was a fun, rainy night. You will see my “Kiss me” picture in our new place. It still needs some work to be done,
I have wanted a similar headboard to this one for a while. Â The only thing standing in my way was the $2400 it would cost to buy and have delivered. Â The bed is by Viva Terra and it is stunning.
Recently my friend Cheryl offered me some reclaimed cedar that came off her lake house during a renovation. If you grew up going to Texas lake houses built in the 70’s then you probably saw some of this one foot wide cedar hung vertically.  A lot of those homes are still covered in the cedar but most of them are now painted, not stained like they were originally, which by the way causes cedar to rot over time.  A new king sized bed along with the gift of the wood meant it was time to get my headboard built.  If you read the post yesterday you know we also added a ship lap wall to the bedroom.
The headboard was easy to build especially since we opted not to make the bed frame. Â This girl needs storage under her bed for art that changes seasonally ( a bed skirt is a must to hide my stuff) and I love having a bench at the end of the bed to put on shoes. ( My bench needs to be recovered but we are still negotiating the bedroom color scheme.)Â
I drew off a template on roll paper folded in half. Â It isn’t exactly like the picture above, but it works for me. Â We taped the template up on the wall to make sure I liked the height once the wall was completed and the new bed was assembled to make sure I liked the height. I even added the big square pillows to make sure I liked it.
The nice folks at Viva Terra even provide their bed dimensions on the website. Because we went with a traditional frame and box spring our mattress is higher than the one pictured above. We had to make our headboard 70 inches high vs. the 65 inches on their diagram.
Hubby built a frame from 2 X 4’s to support the wood. Â He doubled the 2 X 4’s on the vertical portions. Â ( Do you see his drawing? Â Wonder why I call him Mr. Math?)
I sanded down one side of the cedar with my sander until it was smooth then we cut it to length based on the template then we nailed the boards to the frame. Â I drew the template onto the wood with chalk then Hubby cut it out with a skill saw. Â I can use a skill saw but by this point the whitewashing and sanding had taken a toll on my arm.
Once it was cut out, I sanded the boards again then painted on three coats of poly.
My one small, and I am not sure if it is a regret yet, Â is that I sort of wish I had stained it a little darker. Â The cedar ended up a little lighter than I wished but all in all I really like the look. Â The cedar from our lake house was darker once it was polyurethaned as you can see in our table top.
It took three coats of poly to even tell I had any on the bed and there is no way I would sand it back down, but eventually, if it bugs me, I may add tinted poly to the bed. Â Right now I am oh so very pleased with the results of our weekend’s work. Â It took three 2 X 4’s , a package of 60 grit sandpaper and left over polyurethane to complete this project. Â We have $15.00 in this beauty if you can believe it. Â The end tables and lamps are thrift store pieces that I worked on two years ago. Â I love them still and I am very happy about how they look with the new wall.
I am really proud of our effort on this space.
Doesn’t the bedroom look beautiful?
   Â
Full disclosure here. Â I took this photo this morning and don’t like that I can see the 2X4 frame. Â You can only see it from this angle but it will bug me. We have plenty of wood to clad the legs so that is on the agenda tonight. Â We thought the legs would be totally behind the bed. Â That will be an after work project this week. You often don’t see the errors until you take a photo. Â
 grrr.
Here are some updated photos with the fixed sides and the coral added.
Thanks for taking the time to look at our work. Â This week I am going to have you help me with he color scheme in the bedroom because we are stuck. Â I used teal accents because my inspiration photo showed it with those two colors but Hubby is not a fan. Â He is also not a fan of navy and coral. Â hmmm.
We found this beauty sitting on the side of the road outside a rental house. Â There wasn’t much I loved about the piece except that it had some great French Provincial hardware hiding under layers of paint but I just couldn’t leave it sitting on the curb waiting for heavy trash pick up.
We stopped and got the dresser along with this piece I am still thinking about what to do with it but I am thinking gray and creamy white.
After a month of the ugly lavender dresser sitting in our garage I decided that this was the weekend to get busy and do something with the piece. Because the piece was not real wood and had some areas that the fake wood had gotten wet and was swollen, I knew it would need a lot of sealing.  First it all got primed with Zinzer primer then I made my own version of chalk paint for the second coat out of a grayish, greenish OOPS paint sitting in the garage that I thought would work for the piece. Here is a trick if you like the look and feel of latex paint with poly on top for durability but like the way that chalk paint will cover nasty surfaces, use one coat of chalk paint then sand lightly, then paint over it with the latex paint.
After painting the whole piece I could see it still needed additional help.
I decided  to take the dresser in a whole different direction.
I took off the French Provincial hardware and added cedar fencing we picked up when our neighbors changed out their fence. Â One board covered the front of each dresser drawer, one to cover the bottom part and three to cover the top. Â Only one board needed to be cut down narrower on the table saw. After the boards were nailed on, I gave them a good sanding to bring out the color of the wood.
The hardware I decided to use out of my hoard was some shiny brass hardware that had been given to me by a neighbor. A coat of Rustoelum Flat spray paint designed for metal was just the ticket to getting the look I wanted. My math-minded husband figured out where the pulls needed to go on the dresser and drilled the holes so that they would line up vertically.
Here he is in all his glory. No one would guess that this dresser was a cheap, feminine, not wood dresser headed for a landfill.
It is going to be a gift for a hard-working friend.
What do you think about the finished $2.00 project?
Ever since I started blogging,  I have stopped 25 thousand page views to look over what happened since we started. I just hit 100,000 page views.  I had not been paying much attention to the stats so this one was a bit of a surprise.  It used to take a long time to reach 25 thousand page views. I mean a really long time. This time took 5 months. I was worried that in the last five months I wouldn’t have much to show you guys. It felt to me like we were sort of stuck and not getting a lot done. The kids moved out of the country, the garage is full of unfinished projects, school got started, life happened.
When I actually looked back over the last five months , I was pleasantly surprised. We got a little more done than I remembered.
My favorites from the last five months are below.  If you click on the link below each picture it will take you to that actual blog, complete with DIY and pictures.
Our biggest project was updating our suburban bathroom and figuring out how to get that restoration hardware weathered wood look on a dresser. Â Board and batten, cool shelf, zinc finished towel rack and chandelier made to look like wood beads.
I worked off and on for a while on a funky dresser that is now 99% complete. Â I love the look of this piece that is going to be an entertainment center.
Not too bad for a “slow” few months. Being a weekend country girl is a great life. Â I am blessed to have the opportunities that I have.
Thank you all so much for joining my husband and me on this empty-nest, third quarter adventure. Repurposing furniture and blogging has helped me to stay active and has enlarged my circle of friends.
I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog and travel with us on this adventure. We have a lot in store and look forward to the future.
I saw this fall mantle at Its Overflowing as a fall mantle. Â The rustic deer head really spoke to me. Last year when we moved in to the burbs I decided that Christmas needed to remind us of our favorite place, Star Hill not a tract home in a master planned neighborhood. Â I spent a week creating deer heads and rustic elements. Â One of them was a giant stained deer silhouette but it sold almost immediately when I wrote the blog so I knew that a new mantle piece was needed. Â I have a whole Pinterest page dedicated to deer head. Â Feel free to check out my Pinterest Boards here.
When I saw the fall mantle at Its Overflowing, I knew I had found it!
I laid out a bunch of cedar fence pickets that we picked up on the side of the road a month ago. I only had to cut one to get the haphazard look I wanted.
There are no pictures at this point. Â The camera was in the house and I was on a roll so I didn’t stop.
I sketched out a rustic deer head with chalk- using a wet rag to fix my boo boo’s. Â we decided to leave all the pieces loose while it was being cut out. Â I planned on cutting it out myself but…
I discovered that at  the lake house we dont have our scroll saw right now, but there is a jig saw there.  I hate jig saws.  Hubby had to man it because it bounces so much.
I ran inside to get the camera but Hubby got impatient and started cutting.
I carefully turned everything over after it was all cut out and attached scrap wood to the back to secure the pieces together using a an air nailer.
All in all we have about fifty cents in materials into the project.
I know that this is not something for everyone, but I love it. Â It is restful to me and the simplicity makes me think of an old home Christmas.
What do you think about our finished project?
I still need to get some white tapers for the small candle sticks but we are just about done.
I hope you have a wonderful day,
Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. Â I appreciate your comments.
This weekend we cut up some double bed foot boards and turned them into arms for benches. That meant that parts of the foot boards had to be removed.
Some people would have thrown the cut off parts away.
Let’s face it, some people would have thrown the double beds away. Since I was able to pick up all five of these beds for a total of $77.00, they are not very valuable these days, but I digress.
Back to the stuff I don’t throw away. I keep all the solid wood pieces cut off and try to reuse them. Here is a sample of the things I had laying around the Garagemahal this weekend:
I never, ever, throw away a chair or table leg.
I have even been known to rescue legs out of trash cans. At garage sales.
I don’t throw away solid wood boards. I keep it and it always seems to find a purpose. These old fence boards became my reclaimed wood wall. This was cedar wood taken down and headed for the landfill.
I don’t throw away drawers or even drawer fronts if the drawer is shot because I have used them for a lot of projects. Here is my sweet daughter in law’s Christmas gift to her buddies last year:
I do not throw away hardware. Hinges, knobs, handles, and even screws get saved. It may not work on the current project, but it has been my experience that I will need something as soon as I get rid of it. I even buy odd hardware at garage sales and thrift stores.
I also don’t throw away cut off sections of anything that was solid wood. This section of a door we cut off to make a headboard became a coat rack in my office.
I am not sure what I will be doing with the sections of headboard I saved… Do you have any suggestions?
I also save wood. Because we save every usable scrap, even scrap from building sites and out at heavy trash pick up, we don’t have to buy as much new wood. I love reclaimed wood and will keep every scrap until it is too small to save.
Paint gets used down to the last drop. I love buying oops paint when I can, but I am pretty picky about my paint (Behr paint with primer), so I do buy a lot full price and it is expensive. It gets treated like it is, too. I make sure the lids are sealed and try not to waste. When I am trying out a color, I always buy the sample first to make sure I love it.
I am not alone in the saving. When I visited Jeff at Facelift Furniture, he had this whole storage unit full of bits and parts. I have a feeling that most furniture repurposes are savers of spare parts.
I guess I am a hoarder. My husband accused me of being one this weekend when I was digging the spindles we removed from the trash can. I prefer to think I am doing my part to save the environment. That is my story and I am sticking to it.
If you have been following me at My Burb Home, you know I have wanted to put a sliding barn door into our new suburban, plain vanilla, generic, home. The study center at the front of our home does not have a door. With my son and daughter in law living in this area, we wanted to be able to allow us all to have more privacy. I also really like the way that the door will look!
When I came up with the sliding door idea, Hubby suggested we go back to his home place for barn wood.  No one lives there now and the buildings are literally falling down, but some of the wood from the barns is still in usable condition.
We loaded up a pile of wood along with something else very special I have coming up. Here is the pile of wood we brought back.
The dimensions of the opening mean that we will need a door a smidgen over 108 inches tall and 40 inches wide. Do you know what a door those dimensions would cost? More than we would spend?… that is all I’m saying.
When we woke up Saturday morning it was like the stars and planets aligned to make this door possible. It was 60 degrees, sunny, low humidity, and even more unbelievable where we live, there was no wind. Perfect outdoor work conditions.
We got busy.
Hubby got busy and cut the boards into 40 inch lengths. I was so proud he got out his safety glasses and ear protection without my fussing that they got a photo. Yay Hubby!
Because the wood was so rough, he trimmed the sides of each board on the table saw so that we did not waste any wood but got rid of the rough edges. It took 9 of them plus an additional six inch board. Look at those rings. This wood grew slowly and is dense. I love how beautiful the wood looks on the edges.
Once they were cut, we laid them up against the fence and gave them all a scrub down. I used the jet sprayer on the hose and a scrub brush.
Here they are before:
Here they are washed:
Here they are dried:
Once they were cleaned up it was obvious we had some pine, cedar, and I think…cypress? Not sure about the third type. It held up well like cedar, but did not have any red or smell. This was real deal barn wood and the builder of the barns, who was probably the farmer, used what was available and it wasn’t always the same wood.
We laid the wood out on two 2 X 4’s so that it was off the floor. I was in charge of arranging the wood, but Hubby had veto power if the piece was too hard to nail in. Here they are laid out.
Hubby nailed long sections of cedar we took off the lake house when we changed out the siding around the edge then added an X of wood through the center. I wanted the look of a divided door so there are two X’s on the door. Here it is put together:
The back we decided to leave pretty much alone. We just added trim around the outside edge. I wanted to be able to see the wood from the back when the door is closed.
You can see the different types of wood in this close up.
I decided to polyurethane the whole door. I debated keeping it raw, but I wanted the wood to have a richer look in our entry way.
I used Rustoleum Oil Based Clear Satin
Here is the difference between the wood polyurethaned and raw. I like both.
Here is the barn door with poly on it.
The door will be hung in a few weeks. I really like how it turned out. More to come
This is just a coat of polyurethane. There is no stain or color added, the poly just brings out the rich tones of the wood.
I have wanted a rustic wall in our master bedroom for a while. This weekend that was the project. I first wrote about the wall in April but we are just getting the garage cleared enough that I didn’t feel guilty starting something new. #Hashtag inspired me to get moving on this long overdue project. I actually started two projects and finished a few other small projects too.
We found this old cedar fencing on the free part of Craig’s
List. Hubby did pay the guy $20.00 to help him load it.
It has been sitting in the wood hoard since April. Here is how the project went up:
7:30 am We set up the table saw, carried 50 pieces of wood to the porch and got busy. We have had Ole Betsy, our table saw for more than 25 years and bought her used all those years ago.
Hubby got busy “Truing up” the boards. That just means he cut the boars all exactly the same width and straight by running both sides through the table saw. He cut about a 1/2 inch off each side.
Yes, I made him use a wood pusher but in this picture he was finished with the cut and I wasn’t able to take the picture and help him catch the wood.
8:30 am Hubby got busy cleaning the sawdust and I carried all the boards down to the fence to clean them. This should have been step one but we don’t do easy at our house. I used the jet spray choice on the sprayer It took off the dirt but an added bonus was that it took a lot of the silvery aging off the boards. I made sure not to leave lines from the sprayer but I really liked the results. The wood looked a lot more like barn wood and less like fencing.
9:30 am Hubby got out the compound miter saw ( chop saw) and, even though the wood was damp, he got busy cutting off the rotted ends and the dog-eared tops of the boards. That left a lot of different lengths of wood. We wanted a random pattern in the joints so we were happy with the wood left.
10:30 am We moved all the furniture to get started, went to borrow a stud finder and level… We left ours in the burbs. We removed the
crown moulding and baseboards,
11:00 am I decided to paint the wall behind the wood. I was concerned that the light wall would show through at knot holes or cracks. In the end, it was probably paint and time wasted, because Hubby did such a good job with the wood there were few gaps and none showed through. As soon as I finished painting Hubby marked a level line and marked the studs with tape ( I will tell you why later.)
12;00 pm At this point we realized we only had a few nails for the 18 gauge air stapler but decided to go ahead and get started. We decided to put the row up below the window first to make sure we had that row where we wanted it and level.
Hubby manned the air nailer and called out measurements. I found the wood and cut it to length. He was able to move the tape as he went along to keep up with where the studs were in the wall.
4:00 pm We ran out of staples. Bummer. At this pint we were hot, tired and grumpy. We cleaned up, moved stuff so we could sleep bathed then headed over our friends’ house for supper.
8:00 am Hubby went in search of nails. I cut the boards to go on either side of the window while he was gone.
10:00 am Nails were found and we could get back to work.
Well, some of us got busy. Others conked out on the floor and made us walk over them.
The wall went up quickly and we were able to get finished quickly.
2:00 pm The wall was finished! Enjoy the finished wall. I love the color.
Did you notice the door headboard? We finished it when I painted the French Provincial furniture, but I wanted you to see it on the wall first. It even has door knob- that it did not have when we bought it thanks to my friend, Tanis.
We are going to have mason jar lights on either side of the door bed and I am planning to make roman shades for the windows. I am trying to figure out what color bedding. Any suggestions?
 
 
 grrr.
