Dated Canisters are Given a New Life

I picked up a set of dated glass canisters with wood lids that had porcelain knobs quite a while back from Goodwill. I had the best of intentions to paint the lids and add great knobs to them, but there they sat. Knobs removed from the wooden lids, lids sanded and ready to be painted and no inspiration.

I took a trip to Hobby Lobby to pick out new knobs in hopes that I would find some that moved me. There were too many choices. I just couldn't decide, so the canisters sat for another year, unfinished.

Recently, I have tried my hand at transferring images onto wood by using wax paper. You can read more about that process here, if you would like. While I was looking for an image for a different project I found these fantastic number images and it hit me! The canisters. Put the numbers on the canister lids! I purchased the images for number 1, 2 and 3 from this shop on Etsy.

Now I had to climb into the storage loft in my shop and dig out the canisters. I painted the wood lids with a butternut yellow paint first and then white paint. Once they were dry I gave the edges a light distressing so that the yellow would peek out in places. Then using my wax paper I printed the images and tranferred them onto the lids. I darkened the numbers in a little with a black colored pencil.

Lastly, I sprayed a coat of clear matte protective sealer on them before adding new knobs to them.

 I happened to have knobs that matched the number images in color and design, so I used them.

These old canisters now have new look!

They are heading to my Etsy shop, as they just don't work in my little rustic log cabin home.

 I think the next project I work on should be something for me to keep, for my home :)

'til next time,

Adina

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Cabin Chronicles Part 7 - Starting on the Inside!

Yay - we're finally working on the inside of the cabin!

 

We were winging the floor plan as we went, which made for a few misplaced electrical outlets, lighting fixtures and windows, but overall, everything worked out alright. We had a general idea of how we wanted to design the layout of the rooms and we just went with it. As you walk through the front door the stairs will be immediately to your right.

 

 

The stairs consisted of a handmade ladder through most of the construction process.

(sorry for the dark photo)

 

The kitchen area begins under the stairs and continues in an L shape around the back right corner. We insulated between the logs and framed this area out with plywood first. This saved us from having to chink between the logs in that area. It also provided a way to measure and mark where the stove, sink and fridge would go. This was pertinent so that we could run the electric and plumbing to the right places. We went to Lowes and picked out an apartment size stove and a small 15 cubic foot fridge that weekend. We joked about how our Saturday night dates always consisted of a trip to Lowes. It seemed as if they knew us by name there. Anyways, we weren't ready to purchase the appliances yet because we did not have a place to store them, but we needed the dimensions to proceed with construction. Here's the rough layout of the kitchen area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fridge will sit under the stairs, the stove will go next to the fridge with a small counter in between them and the sink will go on the back wall. As you can see, we built temporary counters to help us with the measurements and design. We also left a few logs exposed around the top.

 

To the left of the kitchen area there is a doorway into a small hallway to access the back bedroom and bathroom. This doorway is directly across the cabin from the front door.

 

 

 

Here's a pic standing in this back doorway looking torward the front door.

 

 

Now around to the other side of the cabin. This area is to the left as you walk in the front door and it will be an open living/dining area with a fireplace in the middle of the wall. The fireplace opening is framed out in between the two windows.

 

 

 

 

Through the back doorway, we created a small hallway with two doors. A small door straight ahead will lead into the bedroom and another door on the right leads into the bathroom/laundry room.

 

This is the bathroom.

 

 

Notice the boards on the floor. I used them to design the space. They were representative of the toilet, sink, shower and stackable washer dryer unit. Again, we had another date at Lowes to get the dimensions of everything. We decided on a 48" shower stall. We intended to go with a smaller one, but I have really long legs and didn't want to be cramped while shaving.

I can't tell you how many times I rearranged this space before making a final decision on the placement of everything. The bathroom is roughly 6 feet across by 12 feet deep. We decided to place the 4 foot shower along the back 6 foot wall and create a small closet area with the remaining space. You've got to love closet space, even if it is small. This closet is accessible from the bedroom side. The toilet and sink are directly across from each other in the middle of the room and the stackable washer dryer unit is in the corner opposite of the shower, right in front of the door.

 

Now that we know where everything is going we can begin to run the electric and plumbing. We are blessed with wonderful neighbors and have one who happens to be a retired electrical engineer. He helped a lot with the plumbing and electric. He also helped a lot with passing the inspections too!

 

Here's a few pics of the electric and plumbing phase.

 

 

 

 

Check back next week, the upstairs floor is next and it was a real challenge.

 You can see how we made it from 2x4 lumber.

 

If you've missed any of the construction up to this point, you can start from the beginning HERE.

 

Thanks for following along.

 

'til next time,

Adina

 

Part 8

 

 

Linking to:

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Cabin Chronicles Part 6

Adding a room to the back of the cabin.

 

This part of the construction was more traditional. This room has 2x6 framed walls. It measures 16' across the back of the cabin by 12' deep. It houses a small 9x12 bedroom and a full 6x12 bathroom.

Unfortunately, I must not have taken very many pictures through this process. So I'll try to describe the process. We built the floor joist system, just like we did in the main part of the cabin, by building the rectangle framework first, then attaching board stringers every two feet inside of the frame. Next we cut smaller two foot pieces to run in between the stringers to help add strength and to keep them straight. This is an important step because when you attach your flooring on top of them you will know that the stringer boards are exactly two feet apart and that the boards do not bow or curve. We were able to easily attach the sheets of subflooring over the flooring system.

Here's a pic of the floor in the main part of the cabin to give you a better idea of what I'm trying to explain.

 

 

Once the floor was built and attached to the back of the cabin and level, we were able to start building the walls. The wall framing is similar to the floor. We built a rectangle framework first on the ground and attached 2x6 boards vertically inside of the framework every two feet. Then we would pick up the entire wall frame and attach it to the floor. We made three walls like this because we are using the back log wall as a focal wall in these rooms. Once all three walls were securely attached and square we wrapped them in Tyvek house wrap to help provide a moisture barrier.

 

(outside)

 

(inside)

 

Once the walls were wrapped we covered the outside in sheets of exterior grade T111 and added battons (the skinny vertical boards) to give the walls some depth and character.

 

 

 

Then we proceeded to build the roof.

 

 We used the beams that supported the top floor of the original cabin as exposed rafters in the bedroom portion of this addition and standard 2x6 boards as rafter beams in the bathroom portion. 

 

 

(this is the inside ceiling with the old beams)

 

The interior ceiling has T111 attached on top of the rafter beams, to leave the beams exposed. The roof was built up from there and insulated and covered with roofing tin.

 

 

Here's a pic inside of the room

 

 

The additions exterior structure was almost complete at this point! We installed windows, one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom. We didn't put any windows on the back wall because it faces directly into the woods.

 

 

 

All that was left was to stain the outside with the stain mixture we used on the rest of the cabin. We painted on a couple of coats of this protective stain and going into the early winter of 2009 we have completed the exterior structure of our cabin!!!!

 

We were super anxious at this point to get the stonework on the chimney done so that we could take a step back and admire everything that had been accomplished so far. We were so anxious to get it done, we actually hired a neighbor who specializes in stone work to have his company do it for us. My husband is deathly scared of heights and it seemed worth it to him to have someone else tackle this project. They covered the chimney and the cinderblock foundation pillars in stone. They did a wonderful job and it only took them 2 days!

 

 

Looking back, this took just over 1 1/2 years of laboring on weekends and nights and tackling projects as funds would allow.

 

Sometimes, you have to look back at what you have accomplished to help motivate you to keep moving forward. We were halfway there and soon we were going to be able to start creating and bringing the inside of the cabin to life. To me, that seemed like the fun part!

 

If you would like to look back over how we got to this point and follow along with our progress go HERE.

 

I'll be sharing the beginnings of the inside next, stay tuned....

 

'til next time,

Adina

 

 

 Part 7

 

Cabin Chronicles Part 5

Chinking between the logs on the outside of the cabin was the next step.

After this job is complete, the main part of the cabin will be closed in!

The first part of this job was to cut metal lathe into strips and nail the strips in between the logs. This became my job. We found that I was better at cutting the lathe without tearing up my hands with the sharp metal edges and he was better (a lot faster than me) at spreading the chinking compound over the metal lathe.

My husband did a lot of research beforehand to come up with a recipe for the chinking compound. It is a mixture of red brick sand, lime, cement and water.  The mixture was trial and error at times to get the right consistency for the chinking to stick and stay. It couldn't be too wet or too dry. We learned that it was best to slant the clinking at an angle between the logs so that the top part was indented some and the bottom part came right to the outer edge of the log. This allows the rain water to run down the logs over the chinking and not "puddle" on top of the logs anywhere.

 

 Of course, our faithful helper, Madison, was always there to cheer us on.

This is the back wall of the cabin completed!!!

 

 

Only 3 more walls to finish...

 

 

2 walls done - 2 left

 

Almost done with the 3rd wall. Thankfully, my husband was very good at this and the process moved along rather quickly and smoothly. We did find that if it was really sunny out, it was better to cover the wet chinking with a plastic sheet to allow it to dry slowly, otherwise, it cracks while drying. We actually did this job in the evenings after work and it took 3 or 4 nights to complete, including the time to cut the lathe and nail it in.

YAY!!!! It really looks like a cabin now!

This was around the early summer of 2009. We started with a pile of logs in March of 2008.

If you would like to go back and follow along from that pile of logs click HERE.

 

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you'll come by again next week - we added a back room onto the cabin next!

 

'til next time,

Adina

Part 6

Plain Wood Serving Tray turned Shabby Farmhouse Decor

I'm definitely liking the end results of transferring images onto wood, plus it's quick and easy.

Here's another Goodwill makeover that I worked on this week using wax paper to transfer a Farm Fresh Milk Cow image onto a plain wood serving tray. I purchased the image from an Etsy shop called Graphic Marketplace. You can check them out HERE.

 Before

After

As you can see, the tray got a new coat of paint, after a thorough cleaning and sanding. I lightly distressed the edges of the tray to give it a shabby look and then transferred the image onto it. Lastly, I sprayed the tray with a clear matte sealer to help protect it.

If you want to see another transformation that I did using one of their graphics go HERE.

If you would like to find out how I easily transferred the image onto the wood tray using wax paper, click HERE. This will take you to another post that links to the steps to do it, along with numerous other methods that you can use.

Here's a closer picture of the image on the tray.

I did lightly color it in with a black colored pencil just to darken it a bit.

I already have another project started using this method, again, that I'll be posting about soon. If you'd like to see a cheese box that I madeover similar to this tray click HERE.

Thanks for stopping by to take a peek at my makeover.

'til next time,

Adina

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Cheese Box Turned Shabby Farmhouse Storage

Here's another image transfer project.

It's totally making me wish I had an adorable farmhouse to use it in.

This started out as a plain old wood Wisconsin cheese box from Goodwill.

The box itself was in good shape. I grabbed it as soon as I saw it, but then I wasn't sure, so I put it back. I grabbed it again a few minutes later and still wasn't completely sure what I could do with it. I bought it, brought it home and began looking online for a graphic image that I could transfer onto it. It wasn't long before I spotted this cow image HERE and purchased it. I wanted a dairy/cow/farm image to coincide with the fact that this was a cheese box.

This is the second project that I have used wax paper to transfer an image onto painted wood.

 You can see the other project and read more about how this is done HERE.

The Etsy shop I purchased the image from even provided a reversed image, which saves a step.

I painted the box white and lightly distressed the edges before I transferred the image onto the top.

The image wasn't quite as dark as I would've liked for it to be so I used a black colored pencil and lightly colored it in a little.

You can kindof see a difference in the two pictures after I colored it in.

I also sprayed a clear matte sealer on the box to help protect it. 

That's it. I love how it turned out!

'til next time,

Adina

 Linking to:

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