Upcycling...

One of my passions is finding little treasures I can rescue, and rescued treasures don't come more rescued than upcycled things. 

For the past few years I've had an old butchers block/kitchen trolley that has had numerous stages of life... Firstly I bought it new (and cheap) from Ikea and had it in my kitchen in my old house. When I moved here it became redundant and took on a new phase of life as a potting shed table. The weather slowly crept in and it started looking a little worse for wear so it entered phase 3 and I chopped it in half and turned the bottom half (the shelves, wheels and legs) into a shoe rack, painted it and added a little cushion and it kept my shoes in order for some time. That left me with a sort of table/bench in the garden with two drawers under the table top. Again it got battered by the weather and the top of the bench warped and split in the lovely west country rain, so I rescued the drawers and had a little think. And this is what happened next.





First I took the drawers apart. This kind of happened for me when I took the drawers out! The joints had got the weather in them so they kind of fell apart really, but it made painting them a lot easier!

 Where they had got wet the wood was quite blackened. They needed 3 coats of white undercoat to cover the stains.

When the blackened wood was covered completely, I put the drawers back together, and glued the joints, then painted the insides orange. My favourite colour at the moment! :-)

Masking tape became my best friend while I was painting the insides!

Last of all was the job of hanging the drawers on the wall. I managed to drill holes in the tiled wall without breaking any tiles (phew!) and used joining strips and small L-brackets to join the drawers together and strengthen those dodgy joints. Then hung them on the wall using mirror plates.

Now I finally have a bit more space in the cupboards and plenty of room for my vast tea collection. I think these turned into an enormous tea caddy rather well.

What an improvement on this...

 

Oh, and in case you are wondering, the shoe rack has moved outside now and is a sort of bench again, because I found this fantastic cupboard for my shoes - good thing I have small feet! :-)