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Show an Old Item Some Love {Michaels RE-Love Challenge}

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April is Earth Month, and it’s a great time for all of us to look around our homes and see if there are things we could be using differently or for a better purpose than we are currently.

In my house, it’s this microwave cart. microwave cart

I stole it from my parents’ house when I moved out (more than 15 years ago!) and I’ve been trying to get rid of it ever since. It served as my sewing table for years, and in our current house it’s just floated from room to room. It was a piece of storage in my daughter’s playroom most recently, but lately had been shuttled into the hall where it became a gathering place for things she wasn’t really playing with and I didn’t know where to put. michaels re-love challenge

I’m sure it deserves better, even though it is just a decades-old piece of pressboard. So I’m going to try to clean it up, pretty it up and make it useful for my daughter’s art area as a place for storage, a work space when she’s a bit bigger (or that I can use when we’re creating together) and a display area.

I’m doing this with a lot of help from Michaels, which supplied a $200 gift card to help me buy supplies. cart redo supplies

Here’s some of what I got:

  • two cans of primer spraypaint in white
  • two cans of light green spraypaint
  • Martha Stewart chalkboard paint in blue
  • matching regular paint (to paint some molding I got to glue around the edges of the top, which I’ll show you if I actually do it)
  • set of four 12×12 cork pieces
  • a magnetic dry erase board
  • mounting tape for attaching these things to the sides

I also got the pieces of edging I mentioned earlier, some scrapbook paper to decoupage the inside of the drawer, possibly the back of the unit, and maybe some storage boxes, a few plastic storage pieces and some fresh chalk for the chalkboard.

Getting Started

The first thing I did was to take off some tape that was holding down one edge of the laminate on the side of the top and glued it down with wood glue. It’s being held in place with more tape while it dries. cart step one

I also pulled out the little cardboard door that covered the bottom shelf. I’d rather have stuff accessible, and it was ugly and falling apart anyway.

I wiped the whole thing down with a damp washcloth, and while the wood glue dried I went ahead and primed the drawer. This was super easy but made me regret letting my husband put all the giant boxes we had in the house out for the recyclers this morning!

Next up will be priming and then painting the rest of the cart, and then the fun begins.

Looking for some inspiration for your own Earth Month projects? Check out the Michaels LookBook for plenty of fun ideas to reuse items in your home.

 

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Comments

  1. It is interesting how you have observed the impact a old item can have. This is very beneficial information. Congratulations again on a good job Sarah.

Have you read?

Stitch Your Favorite Fruit on a Sweater

The other day I saw a post from Pinterest about trends for summer and it said one of them was “cultivating whimsy.” 

Well, I don’t know where Pinterest has been all this time, but we’ve been cultivating whimsy here at Craft Gossip for a long time. I love sharing projects that are a little different, things that make you smile when you see them, and will make you smile when you knit them and wear them or use them. 

Such it is with the Tutti Frutti tee knitting pattern from Bea Creative Knits. 

This cute little baby tee is worked top down in the round with contiguous shoulder construction to shape the sleeve caps. There are short rows for the neckline and folded hems with picot edging at the hemline, neckline and edges of the sleeves. 

All of this would be great on its own, but then there’s the addition of a super cute fruit icon, which is added with duplicate stitch. There are a lot of options, including strawberry, banana, orange, cherries, watermelon, lemon, blueberries, kiwi, peach, dragon fruit, apple and pear, so it’s likely you can add on your favorite fruit. 

It is offered in eight sizes, to fit a bust measurement ranging from 28-30 inches (71-76 cm) to 56-58 inches (142-147 cm). The design is meant to be worn with around 6.3 inches/16 cm of negative ease, but you can choose the fit you prefer. There’s also optional bust and waist shaping included in the pattern if you want to make it even curvier.

This is considered an advanced beginner or intermediate project because of all the skills involved, but it’s sure to be a lot of fun even if some of these techniques are new to you.

Grab a copy of the pattern for yourself form Bea Creative Knits on Etsy. 

[Photo: Bea Creative Knits]