Happy Little Storage Box

AKA “How I turned an 85¢ investment into a happy little box to replace the red eyesore in the living room” Yeah, a bit wordy but that’s exactly what this project was.

I had a 25% off coupon for JYSK (anyone else have one of those stores near you? I think they’re only in Canada…think a much smaller version of IKEA) and it was going to expire so I decided to go up and take a look to see if there was anything that caught my eye. There were lots of things I liked, but nothing that I really needed…except some wooden boxes that I came across. I’ve been wanting to replace a red magazine holder we had in the living room and as soon as I saw the wooden boxes I had a plan.

Just to show you how badly the red magazine holder stood out in our otherwise fairly neutral living room, here’s a picture of the corner of the living room that it was residing in.

This is an older picture, we now have a bit of a gallery wall happening on that skinny wall where those picture frames are.

Yeeeeaaaahhhhh……I so was not digging that little burst of bright red there. I have been trying to add more pops of colour here and there but I just wasn’t loving how that looked.

Enter the wooden box. Funny little story about it…when I went to the check out to pay for it, the cashier didn’t know how much it was since there was no price or sticker with a barcode on it. The only thing she could find in the computer for a wooden box was $1! I told her it was definitely more than that, but I guess she didn’t feel like going to the trouble of finding out how much it actually was so she rang it in for $1, subtracted the 25% off and then with tax it came to a whopping 85¢ hahaha I almost felt like I was stealing it.

So on to it’s beautification. It was a plain, unfinished wooden box when I got it.

I gave it 2 coats of Minwax Polyshades in Bombay Mahogany Satin. I’ve used this stain on a couple other projects, and I really like it. It’s a stain and polyurethane in one so that cuts down on your staining time. I only let each coat sit on the wood for about 30 seconds before wiping it off, because it was late at night when I got home from work and decided to start this, so I was trying to get it done quickly and let it dry overnight.

This is what it looked like after it had dried overnight.

Already much better in my opinion. I could have stained the inside as well and just called it a day there, but I had a plan to add a fun pop of colour and pattern to the inside.

I had some cute yellow fabric hanging around so I decided to Mod Podge it onto the inside. I didn’t get any photos of this since I ended up with Mod Podge all over my fingers, but it was pretty easy. I didn’t end up measuring, I just kind of eyeballed the sizing and cut it without measuring or drawing any lines. So is it perfect? Hardly. I wasn’t going for perfect though, and the pattern is small enough that once the pieces overlapped in the corners and edges you really can’t tell. I put a coat of Mod Podge on top of the fabric too to really seal it onto the inside of the box and to make it more durable.

Here’s how my 85¢ investment ended up!

I love the way the yellow looks against the colour of the stain. Very happy and fun!

And here it is in it’s new home in the living room.

Wedding magazines, Martha Stewart Living and hockey magazines and books…that’s how it is in our house :)

We also store some phone chargers and whatnot in here, as well as a Shticky to remove all of the kitty hair from the furniture. Anyone else have one of those? They actually work  really well!!

I’m so much happier with this storage box compared to what was there. It blends in so much better with the other furniture, but it still has a nice little bit of colour and pattern so it isn’t totally boring. It’s amazing how such a simple project can make me so happy :)

Anyone else have any simple projects planned for this weekend? Who else has scored major deals on something thanks to a cashier not knowing how much it was supposed to cost?

Linking up to: Serenity Now

About these ads