Creative Storage

So, as you probably know, I dragged all the junk out of the shed and made it into a pretty room.  Now I'm wading around in all the junk that's lounging in the yard.  I have a deadline of Friday to get it sorted out because it's supposed to RAIN on Friday.  EEEK!  Rain is not a friend of me and my projects!

Just plain horrific!

I have a pile that's going to the flea market, a pile to donate, a pile of trash, a pile that's going to the garage, a pile that's going to the attic, and a pile of stuff that's just plain homeless. 

Yesterday, I was looking through my photos of the shed and I noticed something:  the inside of the big front doors were BLANK!  And ugly.  Just raw plywood and desperately in need of beautification.  Hmmm...

Blank Door

Later, I was contemplating the four large shutters that used to hange between my kitchen and living room.  (WHY did I never get around to painting them?  Ugh.)

Homeless Shutters

And then the doors came to mind.  And the sizes were compatible.  So I measured and did a little happy dance and then hung the shutters on the doors -- two on each side.

MUCH BETTER!

Then I kicked into resourceful mode and decided that maybe I could take the old peddler's cart approach to the shed and incorpate in as much homeless stuff as possible.  A pair of pale green iron hanging garden planters, that I adore but have never found the right place for, were unearthed from the garage and went up in front of the shutters.  The same phenomenon happened with an old green window frame with the chicken wire.  It, too, went up in front of the shutters.  It's mate will join it soon after I dislodge it from where Emily used it as part of the temporary chicken coop!  Then some stray books found a home in one of the planters.  Now I have managed to find homes for SIX things (plus books) just by hanging them on the doors.




Then my mother's little butcher's block kitchen island (freed of it's legs) slid neatly under the green storage bench.  The legs followed.

Next, I noticed the space above the doors (on the inside) -- perfect spot for a shelf!  And there was that board that I had thrown out into the yard...

Note the skinny board in front of the wider ones leaning against the house.

Guess what? It was within an inch of being the perfect size.  And there were shelf brackets in the garage.  So I built a shelf. 

Now, what to put on the shelf?  I remembered a box of bottles in the garage and lined them up on the shelf in honor of Mark's love of bottles (visible in photo of the doors above).

Then I found a spot for some smaller shutters:

They blend in well with the stairs and block the side view of the storage bins stored underneath the stairs.

I have three extra large plastic bins full of clothes that fit under the day bed.  They've been homeless and taking up most of my dressing area since the day bed left the master bedroom.  Now they will relocate to the shed and go back under the bed. 

I still have the inside of the storage bench, some space in the metal cabinet, and the two empty suitcases on top of the cabinet that can provide housing for more homeless junk.  There's also space under the little side table where I could stash stuff in attractive containers -- baskets or more suitcases, perhaps!  And there's the upstairs and also that corner over in front of the stairs that I haven't even mentioned or shown you yet -- plus all the other places I haven't thought of yet!  I love the possibilities!

I keep saying this but it really IS like a big puzzle.  I am so thrilled by the way the pieces fall into place in ways that I had never even imagined.  And I love ending up with a look that I wouldn't have dreamed up without Invention's mother, Necessity, to help me along in the process!

Details

Sometimes I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make a space beautiful instantaneously.  But then, there is such beauty in the details and in the way things come about and the places things come from and find their way to, that I wouldn't want to miss out on the laborious part where all that happens.  There is God in the details!  I believe that more and more as I do more and more projects and I'd like to share some of that with you.

THE DOOR

In this photo, you can see part of a very old door leaning against the stairs. 

My ex-husband is the sort of man who doesn't relate to photographs or objects, who keeps all his memories in his head, and who can move in or out of a place with four boxes or less.  Clearly, I was a shock and a challenge for him!  Because his family's heirlooms are my daughter's heirlooms, and because he is not the type, I have become the keeper of his family's things. 

This door came off of his grandmother's farmhouse in Wolf, Oklahoma.  Really, Wolf, Oklahoma is an abandoned box car in a field with "Wolf, Oklahoma" painted on it and a few scattered houses.  "Grandma Jude" (who's real name was Ida Burgess Harjo) lived out her years in one of the houses down the road from the box car.  The house was built in the 1910's.  She raised 9 children in a two bedroom house.  My ex-husband's father, A.B. Harjo, was born in the house in 1919.  He returned there during his retirement years and lived there until his death in 1999.  I salvaged the door from the shed behind Grandma Jude's house years ago.  Then, I am ashamed to admit, it sat in my side yard for several years until I began to fall apart.  So I shoved it into MY shed.  I've been trying to think of something to do with it for ages.  Blessedly, I was able to put it back together and, finally, I found a place for it:



It makes a great, rustic backdrop for the crisp, white bed.  And now I don't have to paint the walls like I'd planned!

Don't miss the wonderful chrystal door knob and the great rusty old latch! 

To the right of the door, are two mirrors. 

The top mirror was given to me by my dear friend, Sarah, who said it just "looked like me"  and because she couldn't find the right place for it in her house.  I didn't let that stop me from letting it linger in my garage for a couple of years when I couldn't find the right place for it in mine either!  Finally, the right place came!

The lower mirror is a part one of my very favorite freesourcefull projects.  I salvaged a vintage twin bed (headboard and footboard) from the curb in front of my friend Vickie's house.  It had been her daughter's bed but it was worn out and broken.  I cut the spindle sections out of each end, screwed some supports in between them, put an old enamel table top (also Grandma Jude's) on top, and made a coffee table out of it.  Alas, no photo at the moment. 



The scrap pieces that remained after this process were just too great to throw out.  I took one of the bottom pieces with the legs on it, turned it upside down, screwed it together with the ornamental top portion from the headboard, and it became a frame.  It used to have a print of a "yard long" painting of vintage roses in it.  I'm not sure where that went.  Hmmm...  Anyway, I found an old door mirror in the upstairs of the shed that was missing it's cheap plastic frame and cut it down to fit into my freesourcefull frame. 

I love getting to use BOTH of these mirrors and I love that they're even better TOGETHER!  As an added bonus, they reflect, and therefore extend, the rustic, chippy texture of the door to really tie that whole corner together.  That makes one more wall that doesn't need paint right away!

THE SIDE TABLE



The little white wrough iron side table started out as a rusted patio side table.  I found it in a curb-side junk pile in Enid.  A quick coat of white spray paint brought it back to life.  I cut a piece of plywood for the top but had never decided what to do with it after that -- fabric? mosaic? a vintage tray?  So it waited.  Because I knew something would come along -- something ALWAYS comes along.  Eventually.  I put the table in the shed because it was just the right size for the spot between the bed and the chair.  But it needed a top.  For some reason, I wandered into the side yard on the other side of the house and came across the bottom of an old guinea pig cage.  It was green.  And it works perfectly -- until I find something else I like better!

STORAGE

There are lots of plastic bins stored in the shed -- under the stairs and on shelves behind the stairs. I have a bin for each departed (and some not departed) relative whose stuff I ended up with and want to keep. These bins are wonderful time capsules. Instead of mixing these items in with my stuff and then forgetting where they came from or the girls' never knowing where they came from, I can open a bin and VOILA! It's like a box full of the essence of that person. I recommend this method -- especially for the stuff that is SO that person but not SO you/me!  The bin-storage space, once curtained off, also became the perfect spot to stash the blue kitchen farm table (with legs removed).

It kinda drives me nuts that there are a couple of cardboard boxes mixed in there with the matching bins but, alas, I am too cheap to go buy more bins.  I am hoping that some will become available as I clear out other stuff elsewhere (because I have LOTS of these matching bins).  The photo of the under-the-stairs storage didn't take so you'll just have to imagine matching stacked bin bliss!

And here is a shot of how all the junk magically disappears behind the pretty white curtain:

And here is a shot of the stairs.  Because I LOVE the stairs!  And also because you can see the storage under them and the storage bench in front of them.

The bench used to be in my bathroom for towel storage for years and years until I found the white dresser that replaced it.  It's been an orphan ever since.  I think it likes this new home I've found for it.  My little tiny shed room can now seat six!  Gonna have to plan a tea party!

THE METAL CABINET

I have wrested in my mind extensively over the metal storage cabinet (and the other two of the trio that are in the garage) -- to get rid of them (because they're ugly and don't seem to function well for my purposes) or keep them (because they could be painted, because they're storage, and because I would have to be crazy to throw out three matching cabinets?). There were office storage cabinets that my mother and step-father ordered through his office supply business for the garage in our house in Enid when I was in high school.  So, they've been in the family for 30+ years.  There is literally 25 year old paint stored in them.  I know this because I didn't buy it so Mother must have.  She's been gone for 22 years -- thus dating the paint.  I will clean it out later.  It will become my out-of-use-housewares storage cabinet.  I was SO blessed that the clothing rack slipcover I have fit over the metal cabinet!  It fit almost TOO perfectly!  Sara-Grace, as she was helping me button it, said, "It's like buttoning a shirt on a fat man!"  She is SO RIGHT!  Ha!  Maybe I should cut a hole for the handle (which would help a little around the middle there)?

On top are three extra pillows (that I needed to store anyway) and two EMPTY vintage suitcases (this photo only shows one).  Now I'll have to find something to store in the suitcases.  I suspect that won't be a problem.

THE DISPLAY SHELF

I love shelves.  Shelves mean you get to have more fun junk!  AND you get to SEE IT all well-displayed and beautiful!  One of my favorite display devices is to run a shelf up near the ceiling.  It adds storage AND visual interest.  Here are several photos of the shelf in the shed.

 

I love the old enamel pot lids, the white bathroom heater grill, and the old, black stove burner cover thingy!  All were free.  The bowls and planters were $2 or less.  I can never have enough white ceramics.  I use them EVERYWHERE and I never get tired of them!

THE CANDLE-LIER!

I have always loved the old glass insulator caps from electrical lines of the past.  My mother had one that sat on the kitchen window sill for years because we just liked looking at it, I think.  But I never knew what to do with them (and I guess Mother didn't either!) until I saw the original of this candle-lier -- probably made by the Junk Market Style ladies.

So, of course, I copied!  I love it but have never figured out where to hang it -- until now.  You've heard a lot of that theme from me lately, haven't you?  My Runaway Room has become such a wonderful place for so many of my homeless treasures to put down roots!  It's like they were all waiting for me to figure it out.  LOVE THAT! 

Time for me to go paint some stuff and put away some of the junk that I threw out of the shed!  Bye!

The Runaway Room

Among the myriad of things I fret about in the middle of the night is the shed in my backyard.  It's silly, I know, but it drives me crazy that this wonderful space sits back there as a sacrifice to my hoarder tendencies and goes completely to waste.  It bothers me even more when I see and envy a beautiful garden cottage spread in a magazine.

I had this shed built the spring I was pregnant with Sara-Grace.  That would be 2001.  The upstairs (which I will show you later after it's been "prettified" too) has hosted a few sleep-overs and been the setting for several sisterly battles for possession.  The original plan for the downstairs was to use the back third for storage (from the flowered curtain back) and the front portion for play.  It wasn't long before junk got thrown in to protect if from rain and then the whole mess just snowballed from there.

When I took the daybed out of the master bedroom a couple of weeks ago, it landed in the upstairs hall.  Which wasn't fun because you had to crawl around it to get to the bedroom.  So I started racking my brain for a place to use it.  My mother bought it in an antique store in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in the late 1980's.  It was on the porch at the lake house for about a decade and then spent 16 years in my bedroom for wandering kids or pets to use when necessary.  Getting rid of it wasn't an option.  It's family.

Then a vision came to me (again) of the shed transformed into a thing of beauty instead of a rat's nest.  I probably should have been doing something else last weekend (like maybe take the kids on a day trip for Spring Break?) but I have learned to follow my muse -- that's the only way anything big ever gets done and, in the end, any mess cleaned up is better quality of life for the girls, right?  Blessedly, the girls' dad took them fishing (twice) so they didn't just sit around the house and rot for the WHOLE Spring Break.  Whew!

Here is the horrific up-close "before" shot of what the shed looked like at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning:

Ugh.

By 10 a.m., it looked like this:

That seemed easy enough!  We won't talk about what the YARD looks like now.  But it will get sorted out -- hopefully before the next rain!

This was my first stab at a decor:

I always have a leaning toward the 1940's era and have tons of vintage florals.  This would have been a great place to exercise that passion.  But it just didn't work.  Back to the drawing board!

My first priority was "pretty".  My second priority was to work in as many pieces of furniture that I needed to store as possible.  That meant: the day bed, the green velvet chair, the green storage bench, the kitchen farm table, the little garden side table, and the little bookcase. 

Keep in mind that this project was done exclusively with stuff I already have and totally FREE (except for the cost of a $1.39 2 liter of Cherry Dr. Pepper to keep my happy while I worked!).  So, I dug around in my belongings for inspiration and direction. 

The color scheme finally revealed itself:  white with touches of green.  It all spun off of the green floral pillow sham that I've had for YEARS but never used (I'm SO glad I didn't make myself get rid of it on the logic that I'd never used it!)  I LOVE the evolution of such projects.  Really, I have very little control. These things have a life of their own.  It's like a big puzzle and things have to find their rightful places.  In the end, it's never what I planned in the beginning but, usually, it's BETTER!

Of course, I haven't taken the "perfect" photo yet.  But here is a pretty representative photo of it mostly done:

Please mentally remove the vacuum cleaner in the lower left corner and the junk in the bookcase and replace it (in your mental image) with the below shot of the future magazine-storage use of the bookcase.  I'm thinking this bookcase will hold about 300 magazines in blissful, orderly beauty.

And here's a better but less-inclusive view:

So now my poor neglected shed, that was once a place to run away FROM, is now a place I want to run away TO!  I'm sure the kids and the cats will discover it soon and then I may have to fight for it again -- but at least I won't be fighting junk just to get in the door!

I have a more detailed tour planned for you but I think enough is enough for today.  Tune in tomorrow for more details!