Once upon a time, when we lived in
Vermont, we frequented a
tiny little thrift shop located in the back of a restaurant in South Royalton ("Chelsea Station" - a typical old school diner that has your typical American fare: burgers, fries, and the like).
This little gem of a bargain shop also has a basement, but not just
any basement - this basement is
filled with all kinds of second-hand goods and donated items that just
barely didn't make the cut to be placed among the more quality items for sale upstairs. The basement also boasts a motivational factor, which makes it all the more worthy for hours-on-end treasure hunting: each bag you fill is only $1.00, and if you fill three bags, it'll only cost you $2.00!
You'll find anything and everything you could
ever wish for in that glorious basement, from candles to crock-pots, toys to tents, puzzles to picture frames...and of course clothing: jeans, sweatshirts, vintage blouses, even name brand three-piece suits. It all depends on how often you go, how long you look, and hitting it at just the right time (usually when the college students, from the nearby VT Law School, are leaving for the summer).
This post is meant to be about a toolbox I made out of a wooden shelf that I had I found in that very basement, but, I figured I'd share the magical little store that spawned the following creation with you first. :)
And now,
the toolbox:
Here's the completed project. It was by no means difficult, and anyone with even the
slightest of carpentry skills and a power drill could build something like this with just a wooden box and some extra pieces of scrap wood. The one here just happened to have dividers already.
There are no "during" or "before" images because it was such an easy task and is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll explain how I did it anyway just in case.
I had an old bed frame that had seen better days...I used the wood pieces from taking it apart a few months ago, measured and sawed off the right lengths for the long top part of the handle and the two shorter side pieces that would attach to the box sides and the longer piece.
Here's a close up of the one of the shorter two pieces attached to the box. I first had to drill holes through the pieces and the box sides that lined up perfectly, then I just attached the Phillips screwdriver head to my beloved power tool, and sunk them noisily into the drilled holes.
And this is a close up of the top end of one of the shorter pieces, screwed into holes that I had to drill as well, which lined up to drilled holes in the long top part of the handle.
Side view: you can see here how it all comes together, and of course I just repeated the process on the other side with the second short piece, attaching it in the same way (drilling holes first, and then power-twisting in the screws to attach to the box side and other end of the long handle.
If you have any questions about anything in this project, I welcome any of them in the comments section, and will happily answer as soon as I can. It would have been easier if I didn't have to pre-drill holes, and I think that if I used the proper wood screws, I might've been able to skip that step (which was the longest one and still only totaled about 15-20 minutes). All in all, the project was about an hour long for me. For someone with more experience, this could be a 1/2 hour quickie. For someone just beginning, maybe an hour and a half? Either way, it's something you can do within an afternoon, for sure!
And it beats the heck out of my old "toolbox" - which was literally a beaten-up cardboard box with everything thrown in. Searching for one particular tool or a small sized nail or a certain Allen wrench would usually throw me into an anxiety attack, add onto that a cut from some random hacksaw blade or tack...ugh! I am WAY happy with this new one, and WAY happy that I can tote all of my fix-em-up paraphernalia together at the same time! YAY!
Just make sure you remember the
Golden Rule of Carpentry: measure twice (if you're REALLY a beginner, three times), and drill/saw only once. Trust me, this might sound tedious, but it'll save you time in the long run, plus materials, should you make an *oopsie*.
Hope I've inspired you to up-cycle something you have no use for into something UBER-useful! That's always better than creating more trash, right? Right!
Ta-ta for now :)
