Big Storage in a Tiny Space

The biggest challenge with doing lots of canning throughout the year is finding a place to put it all. We don't have a pantry in our kitchen, but we are fortunate enough to have a closet under the stairs in the basement. Instead of leaving everything in boxes on the floor we wanted to create shelving, but the space is very narrow so shelving options were limited to narrow shelves on both sides, or a deep shelf on one.

I've been hoping to find a use for some old drawers I took out of an upstairs room. They are strong and sturdy and seemed much to useful to take to the dump or stick in the burn pile.

The drawers were absolutely perfect for this project. Brian bolted them all together and then to the wall. We decided how to arrange the shelves based on the size jars we had, and we had a built in storage system in no time flat. The only problem is, we plan to can more, and we used up almost all of the shelves we installed. I guess we'll just have to build a few more farther back in the closet, and it will just involve a little crouching to get things out.

Click on the picture below to enlarge it.

DIY Washboard Planter

Crafts are my domain. Like Brian, I like to do things myself when I can, and there are no shortage of Do It Yourself ideas on Etsy. I've spent many, many hours looking for things to decorate my home with, and realized that quite a few of them I could create myself.

I have seen many different styles of plant hangers, some ceramic, some wood, some mason jar. The one I was most impressed with, and have only seen one of, was a plant holder made out of washboard. Since then I haven't been able to get it out of my head, and went on a quest for the perfect washboard.

The one on Etsy involved putting a screw through a small metal pot and through the washboard metal to attach the two pieces together. I decided to use a different method (that I saw on a different plant holder) involving a hose clamp.

Here's what I used for my design:

• Metal Washboard with vertical wood pieces
• 3 skinny half pint mason jars
• 3 hose clamps that fit mason jars with a little extra room
• 3 O Rings
• Hens and Chicks (or other succulents that don't require much water)
• Gravel
• Potting Soil
• Preferred hardware for hanging picture frames

Assembling the planter was really easy, the most difficult part was lining up the hose clamp, o-ring, and mason jar while tightening the screw. I used the o-ring because I wanted something there to create a cushion between the curved wood and the curved mason jar. Any piece of rubber would work. The o-rings worked out very well. Once I got all the mason jars attached where I wanted them I leaned the washboard on the bench and filled the jars with a little bit of gravel, then a layer of potting soil, the hens and chicks, and then a little bit of gravel to keep the soil from falling out when I water it. Voila! Awesome plant holder for under $20.

I put the plant holder in the dining room where it will get a little bit of morning sun. The hens and chicks should be fine there, but if they need a little extra sun I can always take it outside from time to time.

Old Door Project Number 2: Coffee Table

Brian has a habit of going into a store where there are handcrafted goods and saying "I could make that". More often than not, he's right (although he doesn't always get to prove it).

A few weekends ago I went into an antique and "upcycled" shop that had lots of unique items, and many of them were made out of old doors. We love old doors! I was blown away by a kitchen island completely made out of old doors. I was totally ready to rip out our existing island for that one.

But a more reasonable and attainable discovery was that of a coffee table. A coffee table made out of an old door, and it cost $300 (after getting home and googling I found some as high as $1000). I knew exactly what Brian was going to say "$300!?! I could make that.". And I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he said when I dragged him into the store to look at it. "Great. Lets go buy a door", was my reply.

We drove on down to our favorite vintage and antiques shop, Farmer Brown's Mercantile in Ronan, MT because I knew they had an old door on display in front of their shop. It was perfect, even had the knob and hardware still attached. It was $40 and white, perfect for our living room.

We snatched it up and before I could even get a picture of it Brian had started cutting it up.

The door was a solid wood door (absolutely necessary if you are going to be cutting it up, hollow doors won't work) and had 5 squares or panels like many old doors do. Brian cut 1 panel off the top and one off the bottom (for either side of the table), leaving 3 panels to be the top. I'm not sure if he secured the 3 pieces together with anything more than L-brackets, I missed the first few steps.

After he put the 3 main pieces together he used some old barn wood to create the shelf in the bottom. This added a lot of stability to the piece. He used a vice of sorts to hold everything in place while he screwed in the boards. The last step was to scrape away some of the excess paint from the top and apply a clear coat of varnish to protect the top surface.

It turned out so amazing, I couldn't be happier. I'll be sure to get some more pictures of it once our living room is more put together. It took Brian about a day and a half and $50 to build.

Vintage Door Headboard

We recently discovered the coolest store in Montana, the Home ReSource store in Missoula. It's like the Habitat for Humanity Restore we used to go to in Oregon- but better. They have a little bit of everything you could imagine for home renovation. Every day there are new treasures to find, and each visit you come up with new projects that you want to do.

I wanted to create a unique headboard for our bed and we found the perfect thing at the Home ReSource store: 3 old doors that just happened to be around the same height, and were already painted colors that we liked and matched out room

You'll have to excuse my lack of construction knowledge and terminology, Brian is definitely the builder of the two of us. First we cleaned up the doors, washed them, scraped off loose paint, and attached some new hardware where doorknobs had been removed. Brian also had to cut a few inches off one of the doors so that they were all the same height.

It was easier to assemble the headboard in our bedroom since we have a king sized bed and the doors were heavy. I'm not even sure they would have fit through the door assembled. Brian used straight bracket thingies to attach the doors together, and L brackets to join the headboard to the wall. Easy Peasy.

At some point we might add a header to make it taller and a piece of art behind the glass, but for now we're really happy with how it turned out.