DIY Upcycle – DIY + HANDMADE + VINTAGE

Upcycled Barn Door Desk

Published on November 1, 2020November 2, 2020 by Kelly WhitmanLeave a comment

I know many of you have a new way of doing school this year. For us, we were grateful that this was our 5th year in doing online school at home. I devote a large part of my days during the school year to guiding my kids in their schooling. It is time consuming, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Doing school at home and working with them each one on one calls for a large work space where we can sit together, with room for two laptops, notebooks, snacks and of course my cup of coffee!

Over the summer, I was lucky enough to come across an awesome old door for sale at Schultz’s Wedding & Event Barn. It was old, chippy, and at the time I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with it yet, but I knew it had to come home with me.

Door Before!
This old door is definitely needed some TLC and was extremely ‘thirsty!’

Preparing to strip off the top layer of brown chippy paint, using ‘CitriStrip’ stripping gel:

Look what striping a few layers of old paint with CitriStrip + several layers of Beyond Paint Multi Purpose Sealer did for this door! It is alive once again!

I made sure to wear my RZ air filtration Mask, and once I stripped down as much of the top layer of brown paint that I could using a flat edge scraper and CitriStrip, I then washed it all down with a wet rag. This part can get messy, but the end result is so worth it. I lightly sanded down the top, until it had just the look that I wanted, revealing enough of that beautiful green paint. My next step was to give it several coats of Beyond Paint’s Multi Purpose Sealer. I’m pretty sure I over did this part, not because I had to, but because I just wanted over assurance that none of the old paint was going to flake off no matter how rough we were on the desk.

Once the top of the desk was dry, I flipped it over. and measured the width of the desk. I grabbed two boards that I had laying in my wood pile and cut them down to size with my miter saw. I layered on the wood glue, then using wood screws, I attached one board near each end of the bottom of the door. These serve as the supports, so when I attached the hairpin legs, the screws from those don’t come through onto the top of the desk. The boards also help give the desk more stability.

The final step was to attach the hairpin legs into each of the boards, flip the desk over, and get back to school!

I just love taking something that might have otherwise been tossed and turning it into something both unique and useful! My kids and I spend a large part of our days at this desk now and it serves its purpose perfectly and isn’t too bad to look at either!

The two wood chairs are from the 1920’s and I was able to score both of them on Facebook Marketplace for $10 each! Bonus > they rock, swivel and spin!

I plan to give this desk a better photo shoot someday soon, until then, I hope you enjoyed reading about my latest project! Next up, an old kitchen table and chairs that will be given new life and used as a game table at a lake house! Stay tuned, you’re going to love that one!

As always, you can follow along with my DIY Projects and Adventures over on Facebook & Instagram! See you there!

Tipsy Planter Fairy Garden

Published on October 16, 2020October 31, 2020 by Kelly WhitmanLeave a comment

It’s been quite a while since I paired creativity with the use of my green thumb. Several years ago, I created a Primitive Tipsy Pot Planter and I felt like it was time to do something similar, but this time, I wanted to give it a little bit of a twist. Although we are now moving into the colder time of year here in Wisconsin, I thought it would be a good time to share a fun project that you can complete indoors or out, regardless of weather!

I have had a 2 tiered stand laying around for quite a while. Unsure what to do with it, I just let it lay in my workshop, knowing that one day I’d come up with some use for it. About a month ago, my daughter saw it while we were cleaning the garage and told me that we should turn it into a fairy garden. I absolutely loved her idea, so we ran with the thought, changing up a few things as we went, and created our very own mini Tipsy Planter Fairy Garden! This could be a great project for anyone, and especially for kiddos to help an adult with! You may not have exactly what we used, but look around your home, garage, sheds, thrift stores and see what you can find! Be creative! Most importantly, have fun!

Read below to see how we accomplished our latest little indoor garden of fun.

Starting with a disassembled tray, we discarded the top portion, but kept the larger bottom portion, as well as the center support and handle. I chose a drill bit that was slightly larger than the support piece, and drilled one hole into the center each of the three buckets. I also drilled several smaller hole into the bottom tray for drainage.

We added potting soil into the bottom tray + the three buckets, then put each bucket onto the ‘handle’ through the hole that we drilled. At this point, you can tip the pots whichever way you feel looks best. Next C. got to planting! All of the plants were purchased locally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We worked a while on getting plants put into the spots where we felt that they fit best, and then went around the garage, house and C’s bedroom and gathered found items to place into the fairy garden! This is the fun part! Use what you have and don’t be afraid to give something else a new purpose, like turning an old jar lid into a fairy pond! As time goes on, you can change things up, put in different plants as well as different accessories. Don’t be afraid to be a little weird and little whimsy with your design, it’s a fairy garden after all!

Below you can see more photos as well as steps that we took to complete our Tipsy Planter Fairy Garden!

The two tiered tray before we disassembled it.

The tray disassembled. + The Small buckets we purchase online at Wal Mart.

The small metal bucket before drilling. For this part, I used Dewalt Titanium Pilot Point Drill Bits.

Assembled, getting ready for adding potting soil and plants! (Plants shown on the left side were used in a different project!)

After:

Click images above to enlarge or view a slideshow.

This was such a fun project and I am so thankful that my daughter wanted to join me and use her creativity as well. I hope this gives you some inspiration to get out in your garage or your workshop and create something beautiful out of something ordinary!

View this project over on Hometalk!

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Yardstick side table.

Published on November 6, 2016March 30, 2019 by Kelly WhitmanLeave a comment

Have you ever head of the saying, ‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are?’ That quote applies to many different areas of my life. Particularly to how I decorate my home, and how I create.

I live 15 miles out of the city, on an old hobby farm, so trips to town do not happen every day, and I usually find myself digging around our sheds and my workshop when I am trying to build or create something, and try to make do with whatever I can find. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m creating until I’m 50% done with a project!

This little table was a thrift store find several months ago, and I finally got around to giving it a bit of a makeover recently.

Table Before

I sanded down the top of the table, and lightly sanded down the legs. Then I gave the legs & table edges a fresh new coat of Rustoleum hammered metallic spray paint in a bronze tone.

I topped off the table and the sides of the table with old yardsticks that I cut down to size using my chop saw. After applying the yardsticks to the table top and sides with small tack nails I rescued from my Grandfathers garage, I finished off the table top with a nice coat of Minwax Polyshades (stain + poly top coat)

Table After:

Another fun project, and another piece of thrift store furniture rescued!

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Mini truck-garden tutorial.

Published on June 11, 2015March 30, 2019 by Kelly Whitman2 Comments

I remember it like it was yesterday. Dad would park the van in their driveway in Minnesota, us 3 kids would jump out as fast as we could, and run down the sidewalk on the hill that was graced with beautiful flower and rock gardens all the way to Grandma and Grandpas door.

Grandma and Grandpa always kept a neat and tidy yard. It always made me so happy as a child to run around their yard and to follow the gorgeous garden paths, which at a young age felt like secret paths winding around the back of their house. Whenever we would go to visit their house on the lake, we spent lots of time fishing in the boat, jumping off the end of the dock, and always always helping Grandma with some sort of chore. She made sure her gardens were always kept up, and on occasion she would have me and maybe a few others, take all of the small rocks that lined the border of one garden alongside of the deck, remove them from their place, and hand wash them one by one and put them back in place. I loved it.

Grandma and Grandpas gardens have inspired me in life in so many ways. I have taken my own kids to pick out flat rocks from Lake Superior, so they can paint on them, to put in our flower gardens- just like Grandma used to let me pick out a rock from her garden to paint on.

After owning our little hobby farm for 2 years now, I am finally putting in the time, and effort to create that sort of a space that I know Grandma would have loved. That space that you can walk through and feel peace, sit and watch the birds in, look at and feel inspired. I however, will not be taking my rocks out and washing them on occasion.

This time around, I decided to make several small gardens, inside of rusty trucks that I have had laying around for a long time. This was a fun project that was perfect for my 2 kids to help me with! Read below to see how I turned rusty old trucks into art in the garden!

Mini truck-garden tutorial

What you need;
-Rusty toy trucks (if you can’t find trucks- that’s okay! Other items will work too, like rusty buckets, wheelbarrows, etc)
-Potting soil
-Small gravel or rocks
-Window screening -if desired
– Plants of choice (Succulents make perfect contenders for truck gardens)
-Fairy garden supplies -available at most local garden centers & stores

What to do;
1.) Gather all of your supplies. If your truck has small holes, or rusted out areas in the part of the truck that you will be placing the plants, that is perfect! If they have too big of holes, you can choose to cut window screening and lay it across the hole, but if the truck has no holes in it, you will have to get out the drill and drill a few small drainage holes in the area you will be planting.

2.) Take the gravel you scooped from your driveway , like I did. Or small rocks and place them in the bottom area of the truck in a thin layer.

3.) Take a few handfuls of potting soil and place it in the truck and mix it together well with the gravel.

4.) Carefully place your plants where you would like them. You may have to shake off some of the dirt that came with the plant in order to get it to fit right. Feel free to mix some of that in with the potting soil already in the truck too. Succulents work great for mini truck gardens and are very low maintenance.

5.) If you found some net fairy garden items, place one or two in each truck for added charm. (P.S. No trucks were harmed in the making of these gardens. They all returned to their normal truck state after summer)

6.) Enjoy your new mini truck garden!

Potato Bin End Tables.

Published on February 6, 2014March 30, 2019 by Kelly Whitman6 Comments

Have you ever had an ah-ha moment?! As an artist and entrepreneur, I find myself getting several… every single day. How do I know which ones to take seriously and which ones to let go?! That is the hard part. This can sometimes be overwhelming for many artists and entrepreneurs, but that is where focus and vision come into play. If I gave in to every single idea I had, I would either be A.) completely broke B.) completely tired or C.) go completely insane. I don’t want to be any 3 of those! I want to continue to love what I do. So, if I get an idea and I can’t make it happen right away, I will write it down in a notebook and sometimes, the idea never travels further than between the lines on a white piece of paper, but for me, that is enough, and I have come to be okay with that, for most ideas. Sometimes I will come back to an idea 1 year later and make it happen as well. Then sometimes, there is an idea , or an ah-ha moment like I mentioned above, that I see so clearly in my head, that I have to jump up at that exact moment and make it happen. These potato bin end tables, are one of those ideas.

I have had these old wood potato bins for about a year, they have traveled to two different homes with me as I’ve moved, and have been used in about 6 different rooms for different purposes, like shoe boxes in the porch, stacked 2 high for shelving in my daughters room, set next to each other to make a bench, put together for a coffee table in the basement, or filled with toys. None of those ideas, although neat, felt like they were how the bins were to be given a new life. They were meant for something more.

I took the bins and jumped into a project the day after the idea was visualized in my head.

I stripped the old paint off of the back side of the bins, which would now be the top part of the end tables.

Once most of the paint was stripped, I sanded down the tops so they were smooth.

I painted the bins in a beautiful green, called ‘Preppy Green’ (the same green I also recently used on a desk makeover ) ,

Next, I used a brown stain + polyurethane from Minwax , called Minwax Polyshades in Espresso brown to lightly go over every side of the bins. This worked great as the stain stuck in all of the imperfections of the bin, showing off their age and history and giving them a more antique look. I stained the new tops of the bins with 2 coats of the same stain to give them a unified look and make them be viewable as actual end tables, not just potato bins, and for a bit of sophistication.

I am completely happy with how they turned out, and even more ecstatic that the vision I saw so clearly in my head, is now in my living room and I can look at them every day, knowing I DID IT and I brought my vision to life!

Below are the after photos, I hope you like them as much as I do!

Thanks for reading, for more inspiration from Anchored Way, visit me over on Facebook!

~Kelly

Tire planters.

Published on November 9, 2013March 30, 2019 by Kelly WhitmanLeave a comment

Project Cost; (My cost = $0.00 with re=use of old tires and Menards Rebate $ for the flowers) Average cost = Under $20.00 or cost of plants.

Project Level; Medium

Project Supplies; Old tires, dirt/soil, flowers, drill/ drill bit.

Steps:

1.) Choose you tires and clean them if desired. If you do not have any old tires laying around, check Craigslist or Freecycle , there are always people wanting to throw out old tires without having to pay fees.

2.) Decide which way you want the tire to be facing and stand it upright. Placing the tire slightly between your legs to hold it in place, drill several holes into the sunken parts of the tire tread. I placed about 15 smaller holes into the bottom of each tire, using a 9/16 size drill bit.

3.) Place a small layer of gravel topped with dirt or potting soil into the tire.

4.) Carefully add in flowers of choice into the tire.

5.) Hang in desired location using L shaped mounting brackets or hooks that can hold the weight of the tire planter.

6.) Look back on a project well done and enjoy what you just created!

A Tire Planter is a great way to up-cycle while adding unique beauty and character to your garden and yard!

Thanks for reading,

~Kelly

* Sign by The Busted Knuckle Garage. Purchase sign or others like it here.

*Flowers used in Tire Planters; Snap dragons, Marguerite Sweet Potato Vinem Verbena, & Petunias.

Primitive planters.

Published on November 7, 2013March 29, 2019 by Kelly WhitmanLeave a comment

Today I have the honor of having my blog post featured over at Pretty Handy Girl’s talent parade!

If you head on over to her site, you will find my post all about how with a little bit of creativity and some dirt on your hands-you can take antique and primitive pieces like these….;

…and turn them into beautiful, unique & one of a kind planters that are rich with history, like this one…;

Read my full blog post about primitive planters, HERE , complete with step by step instructions and great photos!

Now get out there and play in the dirt!

Thanks for reading,
~Kelly

Primitive tipsy pot planter.

Published on October 16, 2013March 29, 2019 by Kelly Whitman6 Comments

“In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful. ” ~Abram L. Urban

Oh, sweet Summer time. The sounds of bees buzzing around the yard and the laughter of children fill the air, the grass is warm on your toes and you are ready to plant some flowers, but aren’t sure what to plant to be different from every other garden on your block.

The tipsy pot planter is a great Do It Yourself project anyone can do, with just a few supplies and a bit of a green thumb.

Using these simple steps below, you can create your own primitive tipsy pot planter!

Primitive Tipsy Pot Planter

Project Cost: Under $60.00
Project Level: Medium
Project Supplies: Flowers, Potting soil, Primitive pots, 1/2″ steel conduit |Project Tools: Drill, 1″ hole saw.

1.) Pick the location where you want your tipsy pot planter. I chose to place mine in a place where the grass has never really grown well, right near my main entrance, which makes a great way to greet guests as they come for a visit.

2.) Drill holes into the bottom of each pot. If you are using the 1/2″ conduit, you will need to drill a 1″ hole in each pot. This is what allows the pots to tip from side to side.

I used a drill with a 1″ hole saw attached.

3.) Place your first, larger pot in the location you desire.

4.) Push your conduit into the ground, through the hole you drilled in the larger pot & fill your pot with potting soil.

5.) Continue stacking your pots, tipping them as you go, along the way. Fill them with dirt and whatever flowers your little heart desires. I mainly use flowers that will grow and eventually drape over the edge of the buckets (ivy, vinca vine, petunias, Calibrachoa etc).

Finished Project:

Your guests (and you) will LOVE walking up to your door and being greeted by such beauty and character, and don’t forget to add a sweet little sign to personalize your new tipsy pot planter :

Tips:

Your steel conduit should be even or below the top tipsy pot, if needed, give it a few good pounds to push it down into the ground farther.

Pack your soil nice and tight into the first pot, as the rest of your pots will be resting right in the larger of all the pots.

The more rust your bucket has, the easier it will be to drill through.

A primitive tipsy pot planter is a great way to up-cycle ,(be creative and design your own with whatever you have laying around or find for a good deal at an antique store) and will add beauty and character to your garden and yard, and leave your guests asking ‘How did you do that!?’

You can follow Anchored Way Trading Co. on Facebook as well to see more great ideas like this one!

Thanks for reading,

~Kelly

(Please note this was originally posted when I had ‘The Pink Hammer blog’ on June 1st of 2012, this is the new and only location of this DIY Tutorial by Kelly Whitman /Endless Acres Farmtiques – previously The Pink Hammer blog )