Thursday, April 22, 2010

We Built This!

or the past several weeks I've been trying to come up with a solution to a problem in our house.  The problem being this.



Crafting and sewing takes space and we have a lack of that here.  As a result everything ended up on my kitchen table.  When it was time to put it away it would get stacked on the ironing board and our little freezer or the floor and was a complete mess.  The more I acquire the worse it gets.  See that box on the stool?  It's the box that frozen chicken breasts come in from Costco and it's holding all my fabric, nice hey?  There's too much of it so the flap won't stay closed.

I knew I wanted some sort of shelf but shelves are expensive.  Plus everything these days is that crappy laminated furniture and I've decided I'm not buying that stuff anymore.  I'd finally come to the conclusion that I'd have to wait and look at garage sales for something I could make work but then one day this post came across my Google Reader.


She had made these two amazing shelves for $60 and it was exactly what I wanted.  Not only had she made them but she had included plans so that others could make them.  Brad and I talked about it and decided that yes, using his Dad's workroom we could make one of these.


 


We headed up to Calgary and declared we weren't going home until this shelf was built.


It surprisingly turned out even better than we thought it would, ended up being really solid and I didn't even hate painting it as much as I had thought I would.  We made one small mistake that required a quick second trip to Home Depot but it was a cheap mistake.

Somewhere in the process this project became sponsored by Starship's, We Built This City.  On more than one occasion during painting I would exclaim, "We Built This!"  Which was inevitable followed moments later by, "We Built This City, we built this city on rock and roll"



Before we started I priced out all the supplies we would need and she's obviously in the States because it was not going to be as cheap but we were able to use a scraps from my Father-in-law and some of his supplies.  We figure our total cost was about $35 but there were lots of little things we didn't have to buy.  We didn't need to buy nails, wood filler, sand paper, paint brushes or varathane to protect the top and most importantly I have an awesome Father-in-law who bought our sheet of MDF.  You can only buy them in full sheets even though we only needed half so it was going to be a big expense.  We were hoping to use some scraps that were on hand but nothing worked right so he offered to buy the sheet and keep the scraps, that ended up saving us a lot.  We did buy spruce 1x2's for the trim, wood glue and paint.

The baskets for the shelf were a whole other story... no matter how I priced it out I couldn't make it cost less than $60 and that was with them being 50% off at Micheal's.  So most of the cost came in the form of $75 worth of baskets but I love them.  They also didn't have enough of the ones I wanted so for now I have 4 dark brown ones and 2 light ones but I'm going to try to get two more dark ones.

So here is the shelf!  I'm so proud of how it turned out!  Every thing you saw in the last picture is now in one of those baskets, they hold so much!



And here's a before and after together so you can see what a difference it has made.


I feel a little bit like Superwoman and I think I can now do anything.  Do you need a house built?  I'm pretty sure I could do that.
L

5 comments:

Kim Hawryluk said...

I have been wanting a shelf JUST LIKE THAT! I just checked out the website and there are SO MANY AMAZING projects - all of things that I've wanted for a LONG time, but am too cheap to buy. What satisfaction it would be to build them myself (probably with help from the perfectionist engineer husband). Oh wow, I feel inspired to build suddenly! I wonder if I an find someone that would lend me their tools? I'm so excited! hee hee Thanks for sharing that website. I think you should send me an email with all your crafty websites so I can save them in my google reader too! :)

KD said...

Brad and I've gone crazy with her site! We built the Farmhouse toddler bed ($35) and the farmhouse table with Benches ($60)! Next is the Kid's picknic table!!! It really does make you belive you can do anything!! The self look's awsome!!

Sharon@thisthriftyhouse said...

Laura!!! It looks amazing!! And I love the red!! Don't change the baskets at all--cause I love the two different colors--it adds fun contrast! I LOVE, LOVE, LOOOOOVVVVEEEE it!!

Paula said...

I love Ana White and Knock-Off Wood! I came across her site by accident too and have been hooked ever since! We (husband and I) built two of those bookshelves as our first project. I couldn't believe how easy it was! Our second project was the bigger kids picnic table, and thereafter an 82 in. media console! Now, I look at things and think "Hey, I bet we could build that!".

Your shelf looks wonderful! Great job! I painted both of ours plan ol' white as I'm afraid of color (even though I like when other people use bold colors). It is so empowering, isn't it? I never had an interest in woodworking and after visiting KOW, I asked for a sliding compound miter saw and nail gun for my birthday and Mother's Day! My husband thought I was nuts!

I really want to tackle the kids playhouse, but I think I may need some help with that project! LOL!

Steve said...
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