Chris found this cabinet at a council clean up (When everyone sticks their unwanted items on the curb and the council trucks, or passersby, remove all the stuff. I know more than one person who has completely furnished their house by driving down the rich suburbs on council clean up day). Actually, he found two. The other one was a beautiful, beautiful cabinet made from dark stained and polished timber that I absolutely loved. He offered the one pictured above to a young married couple but the young man said that their T.V was too big for it, so could he have the nice one (!!!). Being a giving, generous man my husband said yes. So I took all my stuff out of the lovely cupboards and the perfect little shelves and scrambled to find other spots for them. I was sore about it for days, lol, and even had to tape a Bible verse to the top of it while I was waiting for them to come and pick it up (you guessed it: "In honour prefering one another.").
So I was left with this chunk of timber, and it sat around uselessly in my bedroom for months. We don't even own a TV to put in it! So - I decided to convert it into something useful. It really bugged me that there was a big "tv hole" where there could have been extra shelving. I'd already taken to it with a hammer by the time I took this photo. There were two deep shelves in the left section, so deep that they were hopeless. There was a glass pane in the door that smashed. It had no handles, as you can see. And the top shelf on the right side came to the front of the giant hole area and made looking for anything incredibly difficult. In short, it was the ugliest, most useless thing I'd ever had to put up with. At least, I have to say so to paint the most dire picture possible, so you'll appreciate the transformation even more ;-)
Behold, the new beautiful creation:
Isn't that something? It's amazing what a bit of paint can do. In between the first and second coats of blue I tried distressing it, and then tried glazing it, and found that those looks were a little too old for something as sweet as a Babydrobe (Is that even a word? Oh well, it is now!) so I just went with good old plain paint.
The left side, with the door, now has two rails to hang clothes (thanks to Chris' amazing building skills!). On the right side we have a shelf for the baby changing mats, another shelf for little baby bits and pieces and a bucket of essentials (like bonjela, panadol, massage oil, powders, moisturisers, sorbene...what a spoilt kid!). Under the new little blue shelf (yay - no more gaping hole!) is a pull-out basket for extra blankets. The big wooden tub is the new toy box. And best of all - those cutsie doors hide the baby bath. That ridiculously cumbersome essential that never had a home and always ended up in random places - under my feet, on top of the wardrobe, out the back deck, under my feet, in the crib (!), under my feet... Of course the little bath mat, the bath lazy chair, the bubble bath, the rubber ducky, etc all live quietly behind those cutsie little doors too.Who would have known that babies come with so many accessories (Each sold seperately... lol. It's late.)
I just love it! I don't think I've ever been so satisfied with a project before. Since we are quite restricted with space it is a major blessing to have one place where all Manny's stuff can be found.
Poor Chris is always befuddled as to where I keep Manny's things (possibly because I constantly change things around) so I printed up little tags to show where everything goes. I added some quotes that I thought were cute, to keep me smiling just in case one day I get short tempered as I reach for the umpteenth bib (me? short tempered? I know - never!).
My favourite part, other than the colour (which took me two Bunnings visits, a refurbishing class, and a gazzillion colour swatches to choose) are the teddy bear door handles. How cute are they! Itsie bitsie little bears with bows around their necks! Teeheehee! Having a baby is the greatest :-)
So...want to know the grand total for this project? I paid $7 for a 500ml test pot of Brittish Paints in Cool Store, and $5 for each of the door handles. I used Dulux Off-White Wall Paint that Chris had left over from a job for the inside. The new shelf was recycled timber from the shelves I had smashed out. The clothes hanging rails were from a wardrobe that a friend was dumping. So a grand total of $22 for a beautiful 'new' Babydrobe! Not bad, I reckon.
Random Top Tip of the Day. If you want to fix up a small project and .5L of paint would be enough, Brittish Paints do a large test pot for $7. AND if you find a colour that you like in the Dulux or Taubman paint swatches you can have it made up in Brittish Paints and it will still only cost you $7. HA! And the Bunnings man was trying to sell me a $54.00 pot of paint!
