LHB misc.

I don't know if you remember that the base unit (I painted it green and turned the top drawer into a charging station (oops I need to post that) had a top.  I had four large drawers to work with. (The top draw took a nose dive on the highway, strangest dang thing.  This thing was on its back drawers down/closed when the top one jumped from the trunk.  The unit was sitting on a trunk but below cab height.  (We stopped and bungee-ed all of them after that) I digress...  I am a pinterest junkie.. I saw drawers turned into shadow box shelves.  Love it.. Simple and functional.

Here is the base I am going to turn this into a doll house.  (well, with a lot of man help)  Gary does all the heavy lifting. I will need help removing every other shelf.  So each level will be tall enough for Barbies. (sorry that post will take a while it is sitting in the garage in the "to do" pile.)

I thought I took photos -but I can't find them.  Step one.  You need to remove all the bottom track hardware from all the drawers.  So they will lay more smoothly on the wall, and honestly the tracks would beat the walls up pretty badly as well.  That is simple they are just attached with a few screws.

I painted the entire inside of these two with the kitchen chair blue.  These two drawers (or shelf unit now) are going down in one of the basement bedrooms.  I wanted them to be colorful. (and they match my rope lamps) Also I have an entire gallon of this wonderful bright blue.  It screams lake/beach house blue to me.  I am going to use this color as my "splash" of color through out the basement.  I messed around until I got an off set I liked. (there is no wrong way, do what you like) Then I drilled holes, if you don't you risk splitting out the wood when you screw them together.

Then I just screwed in three screws, two from the top and one from the bottom.. I think that may have been overkill.  I didn't want to glue them, because I may want to do something different with them at a later date.

Here they are attached and waiting to go to the basement.  Below is the remaining two drawers.  I painted just the back of those two with the "light" custom mixed green ;-) (I just added off white trim paint to the quart to stretch the green)  I like to go minimalistic (Ha new word!) on decor, easier to keep dusted.  (and I am the one dusting)  I found the red lantern at my local antique store, which I think is really more of a junk store.  But I did find two great old lanterns for just under $10 total. (the other one I am turning into a lamp I'll post)  The other stuff came from Hobby Lobby.  They were having a sale and I got all the items 1/2 price.  I wish I would have gotten a couple more of those fish.  They were only 5 bucks.  Oh, well.

Here is how I attached them to the wall.  With the drawer fronts the unit will not be "flush".  To fix this problem I mounted two scrap 1 x 2 chunks to the wall on studs.  Then I just set the bottom drawer (top edge on the wood edge) I then screwed the draw from the front to the 1 x 2.  I painted the screw head to hide them.  If you closely you can see one of the screw heads just above the small trio of bottles.  (wrapping bottles in twine is a cheap and cute lake/beach house decor) The little bottles are just strarbucks bottles.

I cut the 1 x 2 in half so I could use one scrap piece far enough apart to cover the entire drawer.  I put both chunks in place so that they were both on studs.  I used a level to make sure the chunks were level.  One screw each the top of the drawer will not let them turn when you set it on top of the wood.  (hope that makes sense)



The free dresser.  Thanks Elizabeth.

 I painted the base the original green color (I only bought one quart). Then the bottom drawer is the "purple", then each of the other drawers are the same color with some trim paint added to lighten it up, I just added more trim color each level until I got to the top. I added cheap "screen door handles" (Home depot $.99 each) for a fun lake house feel. When mixing paint for furniture pieces remember to make sure all the paint is enamel. The lamps are the thrift store lamps. I am leaving the plastic on until we are totally done with construction. (dust protection) But you can see with shades they turned out great. 

Happy Re-purposing.