Monday, July 29, 2013

Bin For Your Buck

The other day I was Pincrastinating (procrastinating on Pinterest, can I trademark that?) and I found this pin from my friend Meghan. Now, I know that isn't food, but it's something for the home and we can't forget that's the whole inspiration for this blog in the first place!









I'd like to say that I'm just sitting around in the sun enjoying summer every day and have plenty of time for random projects, but that's not really the case. That being said, I obviously had to make this. And obviously I went to AC Moore the next day. If you know me, you know that once I want to do something, I do it. Like as soon as possible. And this time I dragged Nate along. As luck would have it (shocking, I know) my wood crate was on sale for $8 and I saved an extra 15% with my teacher discount. Score! Now our crate has handles, and if you actually click on the post, you'll see that theirs did too and they did so much work to cover it up. I don't know about you, but covering handles with wood just to add handles seems crazy pants to me. I made the executive decision to skip that step, unless we could find handles that covered up the holes.

So we popped over to Lowes to scope out the stains and handles. No handles big enough so we scratched that. We browsed all the stains and samples and decided on this one: Rust-Oleum Ultimate Wood Stain in dark walnut. We liked the color best, Rust-Oleum is a great brand, and really it was the cheapest at just $4.47. Score again. Then we grabbed a cheapo paintbrush for $1.12. We already had sandpaper, some plastic drop cloth, and polyurethane for another project, but honestly, because the crate was totally unstained I really didn't use it much, just to smooth any scratchy edges. And here's how it went down...

(It's important to remember that we have 2 kitten cats so you can remove the cat steps when you replicate this process if you don't)

1. Lay down plastic to protect area. Remove cats from rolling on plastic.
2. Sand the crate in any places that are rough or too smooth.
3. Find an old rag. An old white T-shirt with pit stains will do.
4. Open and stir the stain. Leftover paper wedding straws work great.
5. Chase down cat to get used, sticky straw back.Throw away straw.
6. Paint on the stain and apply it "liberally" as it says.
7. Give it a minute or two to soak in and then wipe down with shirt.
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7. It dries pretty quickly so I did the whole outside of the crate and left it for a couple hours and then did the whole inside.
9. Let dry over night so you can sleep and wash the stain off yourself.
10. Apply a coat of polyurethane and let dry.
11. Enjoy the glory and success of having completed a Pinterest project that looks good and didn't cause you to want to murder anyone. Ta da!


For about $13 we have a sweet new bin that looks old. Swoon. It's going to hold pillows and blankets in our new house and make Nate so glad he doesn't have to keep fluffing them on the couch. Victory for everyone! I just might need to give it a sibling.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Once Upon A Time...

Once upon a time there were two married bloggers who got very, very busy and turned into terrible, horrible, no good, very bad bloggers...

Clearly you've figured out that story is about us. We haven't forgotten about our blog at all, we just can't seem to find enough time to sit down and share our exciting news with you all (no, we are not pregnant, calm down). Between school ending, two vacations, multiple jobs and snuggly kitten cats, we don't even have five spare minutes (okay, fine, maybe we have five, but we need more)! But, we're back from the good ole southern lowcountry and pinky promise to update this week. Stay tuned.