Destructo's "Garage" Bedroom Pt 2: The Garage Door

Before I reveal the entire room, I thought I would give the garage door in Destructo's room its own little post in order to explain the process of how we built it a little better, so here we go:

When I finally figured out that I wanted to make Destructo's garage room look like an actual garage, I knew that in order to make it look like a garage, we would need the one essential thing that all garages have...a garage door.

So, off I went down the aisles of Lowe's again in search of the material I was going to use. As I passed through the back aisle, I took a long look at the service garage and realized that I had just passed the perfect "garage door" material. It was the corrugated metal sheets that were in the roofing section:

Of course, I thought I was pretty much a genius for coming up with this totally unique idea all on my own, until I found a few google images and realized I wasn't the only one.

{Why does this always seem to happen to our best ideas?}

Anyway, aside from the corrugated metal, we also purchased the metal tracks alongside it, in order to keep the sharp edges from sticking out on the sides and then wood "spacers" so it didn't sit directly on the wall, leaving huge gaps and not fitting in the tracks correctly.

We needed 3 sheets in order to make the door work on the wall and each sheet needed to be cut down in order to fit on the wall. For this, we used tin snips...and there was only a little blood shed (corrugated metal can slice like a razor blade.)

Assembling the door was pretty easy. First, we drilled the wood spacers onto the wall:

Then it was time to fit the metal sheets over the spacers and drill them into the spacers:

After we finished with that, we attached the tracks onto the walls, which I had spray painted the same color as Destructo's dresser, and crammed fit the edges of the metal into the tracks.

You can get a better idea of how we assembled it at the bottom of the picture:

It was coming together quite nicely. 

But, there was one last thing we needed to do to finish it off, and that was to create the "roller" at the top of the door. We ended up using a 5 inch heating duct, which was already the length that we needed, and 6 inch caps for the ends. I wanted to spray paint that red, too but apparently, that would be too unrealistic (said the guy that has worked in a warehouse for almost 20 years...) 

 ...and here's the car, parked safely in its garage!

Destructo's "Garage" Bedroom Pt. 1: The Dresser

(This is part one, of my three part post on Destructo's bedroom re-do.)

As some of you know, we have been working on Destructo's bedroom for several a few months now and I am pleased to report that it's finally done! We decided on a car themed bedroom, but not just any car, it needed to be a Mustang car bedroom.

Why would we "customize" his room to be solely Mustang territory, instead of just cars in general? Well, If you don't already know, Studly not only loves cars, but he eats, sleeps and dreams them. He especially loves Ford Mustangs. Fortunately for him, Destructo has inherited some of that same love for cars. Thus, this is the 3rd of three car themed bedrooms, and the 2nd of Mustang themed bedrooms. However, I have to say I love this one the most, which is good because it definitely took the most work!

I'd have to say that one of my favorite pieces in the room is his dresser.

Originally, I wanted to get an actual Craftsman Tool chest, like the one that Studly has in the garage:

However, that was definitely NOT in our budget, so I had to get him this dresser, instead:

Sure, I had already removed a knob, but at least I remembered to get a "before" pic, right?

 It was an Ikea "Tarva" Dresser for about $80 and didn't exactly say, "Hey, I totally go with a car themed bedroom!", so I had to fix that.

First, I took off the knobs and puttied the holes then sanded, puttied, and sanded some more.

I

After I got done with that, it sat for a week I got right to work and spray painted it with some primer and then Rustoleum "Apple Red" in a gloss finish.

The next thing I had to tackle was the "handles". At first I was going to use these handles from Lowes:

However, they were pretty expensive and didn't give the dresser a very authentic look, so I had to look for something else that I could use and I finally found it after walking up and down almost every aisle in search for anything that resembled the "handles" you see on the tool chests. I found it in the flooring section. It was a simple aluminum flooring threshold that fit the profile I needed perfectly. It was also just over $1, which made it even better! I picked up three of them and went on my merry way.

The "thresholds" were about 3 feet in length, so we just cut them to the length of the drawers with some wire cutters and then I spray painted them black. We also wrapped a little duct tape around the ends of them being that they were aluminum and the edges were still sharp enough that I was worried about someone cutting themselves on them. Then, we just screwed them on. It was pretty simple and it gave the "look" that I wanted.

I take such great pictures of shadows.

 The dresser was starting to come together, but we still had to do a couple more things to make it look as much like a tool chest as possible. Mainly, we needed that "Craftsman" badge that you see on all of their tool chests, which I found one on eBay for about $8.

After we got the badge on, we only had one final thing to do, and that was to saw off the legs of the dresser and replace them with casters, just like we had done on the ottoman.

...and that was it!

It was probably one of the easiest and cheapest projects I have ever done!

"Move your butt, Harley!" (She likes to photo bomb)

Here are a couple more pictures sans dog butt:

 I can't wait to show you the rest of the room, including the coolest wall treatment that I have ever done!

From Desk to Vanity

Hi, remember me?...

Now, why would anyone give me away??

...that ugly desk that Jen bought from the thrift store for $25 when there was still snow on the ground and said she was going to turn it into something beautiful? Well, she finally did and here is the long awaited blog post all about the excitement, the heart ache, the near mental breakdowns and the sweet, sweet joy of finally getting a project finished after several months.

 Originally, I planned to still use it as a desk and refinish it for our office, but then I realized that I had a major problem:

...and that wasn't even half of it. 

My makeup, skincare, and hair products had taken over my bathroom, and quite frankly it was getting to be a pain in the ass to move everything constantly to clean the sink. Not only that, but I could never find what I needed. I was constantly looking for primer, or foundation, or anything else related to girly primping.

...and I had always wanted a vanity...

I got to work right away (okay, it was a few months after we unloaded it into the garage.)

One of the first things I had to fix was the veneer that had chipped on the top.

I took a stiff putty knife and shoved it under the veneer and started prying pieces off:

 It was actually a great stress reliever, but after a few dozen pieces flew up at me, I remembered that I liked seeing out of my eyes and so I got my safety glass and continued to rip up the veneer:

 At this point, I realized that I hadn't really thought ahead about what I would replace the top with, but I decided to worry about that another day and began working on the drawers and the fabulous hardware they came with:

After, I had taken off the hardware and puttied the holes, I primed the entire desk with Kilz Oil-based Primer. Then, I used a homemade chalk paint recipe that I had found online and mixed some gray paint left over from Destructo's room and a pink shade of paint that Lowe's had samples of. I ended up deciding to paint the drawers pink and the rest of the body the light gray. After I did that, I took black acrylic paint and swiped it wherever I felt like:

After that was done, I put another coat of the chalk paint over the drawers and desk and then sanded them down a bit. The drawers didn't look quite how I wanted them to, so I put a coat of the gray paint on them, and then painted them again with the pink paint before sanding them down. I also applied just a little of Valspar antiquing glaze in a few spots on the desk. I was going for a shabby chic look, but I didn't want to be too obvious.

I found some adorable knobs at Hobby Lobby that fit my shabby chic theme and had Studly attach them (He is a little more precise then I am at measuring.). I also replaced the feet because the other ones just didn't do it justice...and they were also ugly.

It was definitely starting to look damn good, if I do say so myself (and I do.)

 However, with every project there is a snag and mine was the top of the vanity as I still hadn't figured out what to do with it. I didn't want to put new veneer on it, because the online tutorials looked like there would be too many steps to follow and since I couldn't even finish the YouTube video explanations without falling asleep, I passed. I thought about mod podging scrapbook paper onto the top like I had seen on Pinterest, but I couldn't find a pattern that I liked. Then, I thought about fabric instead, but when I cut the fabric, I kind of destroyed it and so that was out, too. For about a week, I stared at the ugly particle board top, out of ideas (that wouldn't be too much work.)

Then, one day Diva started talking about how she learned how to make stuff out of duct tape in one of her classes at school and asked if she could duct tape a nightstand that we had handed down to her. After seeing the results, a light bulb went off in my brain.

"Duct tape!", I told Studly as I opened the shopping bag that night.
"What the hell for?"
"My vanity top, silly! We are going to duct tape it!"

He looked at me like I lost my mind, but he listened to my idea anyway and helped me duct tape away.

 

It took a roll and a half of white duct tape to finish it off:

My favorite part is that it kind of looks like wood planks, which is an idea that I had earlier, but had scratched thinking about the work required to seal it and how sucky it would be to clean between the planks

(Remember people, I'm all about convenience.)

A mirror was the next step. 

Luckily, I already had one that I had recycled twice before: 

The first "recycle" was when I painted my very first piece of furniture, which is what started this whole thing.

The second time, was as part of the Christmas display over my mantel last Christmas, when I took the side mirrors off, removed the glass out of each of them and replaced it with chicken wire, Santa, and a Merry Christmas!

 Luckily, I had kept the glass...Just in case I needed it again.

This happened to be the "just in case" project. So, after finding all of the parts to the mirror, I put the glass back in the side mirrors and repainted them to match the dresser. However, there was just one minor setback that happened when I was stapling the backs back on:

 Whoopsie!

Not to worry, like most of my other projects, disaster seemed to spur creativity in me and I soon came up with an alternate idea for that side mirror.

Instead of a mirror, it became a necklace rack. All I had to do was put some fabric over the cardboard that was supposed to cushion the glass from breaking (a job it obviously did not do) and then I just used spray adhesive (which smells quite flammable) to attach it before placing those handy little command hooks in random spots all over it:

Well, isn't he funny after midnight?

 After everything else was done, I took my trusty hot glue gun and added a little something to the edges of my new vanity.

I think I almost passed out when I saw the finished project. Mostly because I couldn't believe it was finally finished!

Anyway, let's get to the before and afters, shall we?

 ...and a few more pictures, just for fun and giggles:

The vanity stool is from Target. I had wanted it for several months, but didn't want to spend the original price which I believe was around $100 and even the reduced the price to around $60 was too high. So, when I saw it for under $18, I was like, "SOLD!" I think it's perfect, don't you?

This is the only time that you will be able to see this much surface.

.

(It doesn't exactly say Shabby Chic, but 5 Daytime light bulbs definitely helps you see that zit you need to pop.)

(...and when that zit needs special attention, we have a back up.)

Diet Coke: The Decor that goes with anything.

One more before and after shot?
Well, okay...

Well, that's it for now. I've got to go use this thing to make some magic happen for this face, run some errands, and then do my statistics homework (jealous?).

(Oh, and I also have to finish up taking pictures of my other project that I've been working on....Stay tuned.)