Up-cycled Bedside Tables from an old Desk

This old desk sat in my driveway for a solid month before I finally got around to tearing it apart for this project.  We have no bedside tables, so usually things like a cup of water or remote controls hang out on the headboard of our bed.  Not the greatest spot, especially when a clumsy little boy reaches for the cup of water and dumps it all over your bed.  :(

I bought the desk for $3 at a thrift store at a retirement community.  The drawers were in fairly good shape, built with nice dovetails.  The sides weren't too beat up, but the top was a little rough.  It had been painted with a glossy black paint to cover up some wood veneer that had been chipping.  If you wanted to do the same project, be sure to find a desk like this one where there are 8 little legs.  A lot of desk just have the four outer legs, and if you were to cut out the middle, you'll end up with two small tables that just fall over.

I've seen this project done where they used a saw to cut out the middle section, and then used a router to smooth the edges.  But the op of this one is not in great shape so I didn't really want to keep the top.  Plus the trim of the top would be hard to duplicate with my router.  So I opted to take the whole top off and replace it for each side table.

A lot of tops will be secured with screws that hold it down onto the desk frame, so you can see here these recessed screws just need to be removed.  You'll also find something similar in the frame along the front of the desk, hidden when the drawers are closed.

With all the screws removed you'll need to pry up on the top.  Often it will be held in place with some glue too.  If your desk is old enough, then the glue is pretty old and it should be pretty easy to pop the top off.

With the top off, I had to remove the vertical piece in the front and back still holding the two sides together.

Mine had a nice little rabbet joint, but was also nailed to hold it in place.  With the nails removed a gently tap with the hammer should allow this joint to come apart.

With the two sides separated, they need to be sanded or scraped down.  If you're planning to repaint, then you just need to remove any loose paint, and rough up the rest of it so the paint can adhere to it.  I had no interest in stripping all the paint in an effort to stain this, because I would have been another month working on getting all the paint out of the tiny grooves of this desk.

After sanding everything in preparation for paint, I put my top back on with some wood glue and nails.

 

For the top, I used chalkboard paint, because I thought it would be cute to be able to leave sweet messages on each other's bedside tables in the morning.  For the hardware I grabbed some hefty water spigot knobs.  Gives it a little more color and isn't something you'd find on my cabinets and drawers, which I kind of liked for this project.  For the paint I used an off-white Sherwin Williams oil-based Proclassic paint.  I love that stuff for anything that could get beaten on or might need solid scrubbing later on (so pretty much anything that exists in my house with 3 boys and a dog).

Finally, I put the tables in place and left a sweet note for my husband.  :)

...well, actually... this is more like it.

Turn a closet door into easy storage

I'm always on the hunt for ways to make things around the house more organized.  In fact it makes me a little nuts when all of our belongings don't seem to have a place to be put away.  The front entry of our home as been an issue for me, because of this.  Coming home from school, the school bags and shoes get dropped a foot inside the front door, and then we spend the rest of the day hurdling over them to get in and out.  We have this nice closet right next to the front door, but for some reason opening the door to put these things away just doesn't happen.\

So I decided I wanted a shelf for shoes, book bags, hats, car keys, etc.  But I didn't want to lose the closet storage and I didn't want the shelf sticking out into the entry way (taking up space) so I created a hinged shelf.

 

I started with just an ordinary closet.  The door in place right now is just a crappy, hollow core door.  First I removed the door.  If you just wanted to take out the door and swap it for another one, you could lift out the hinge pins.  But we need the hole apparatus gone, so pull out your screw driver and remove the screws holding the hinge to the door frame.

Next you need to remove the door stop.  This is the thin piece of wood (approximately 1.5 inches wide and 1/2 inch deep that is nailed into the middle of the door frame.  It keeps the door from over closing.  But for this project it's going to get in the way, so it needs to go.

A cat's paw, or pry bar removes this quickly.  For mine it left behind some of the nails that must have been nailed into it from the other side of the door frame.  I don't want these scratching me or my kids when they get into the closet, so best to use a hammer and pound those back into the frame.

Finally, remove the trim around the door.  Our house was nicely equipped with the cheapest, crappiest trim so it certainly doesn't hurt my feelings when I have a chance to remove more of this.  First run your utility knife around the edge where this meets the rest of the frame to make it easier to remove it, and then use your pry bar to get under it and remove it with little-to-no damage to the wall and door frame.

The door frame is now ready for the shelf to go in,  I have, in the past, used solid wood shelves that I found an unfinished furniture stores.  But we don't have one of those near us now.  And I also really wanted the shelf to be a close fit to the door opening, so I built the shelf to fit this particular spot.  When measuring the shelf you want to use, first measure the width of the door opening.  You then need to be sure that the distance (on your shelf) between the front right corner and the back left corner is no bigger than this... allowing extra room for a hinge (so add about 1/2 inch) to the diagonal measurement of your shelf.  The reason to check this measurement, is when the shelf is installed and you wish to swing the shelf/door open to access the closet, the back corner farthest away from the hinge side is going to have to be able to clear the door frame.  Measure wrong, and you'll be stuck with a shelf that won't swing open, it will just be stuck in the door frame.

I built this shelf using some stock pine (it's a little naughty... hahaha, knotty) which is about 3/4" thick.  I used rabet joints to hold the shelves in place because it's super sturdy.  For the back I grabbed some beadboard wall panels.  You don't have to build the shelf yourself, but I do recommend solid wood as particle board shelves just don't seem to hold up as well over time.

The next step was to attach the hinges and install the shelf.  The door I removed only had 2 hinges.  For this I like the security of 3 hinges just because this thing is a lot heavier than that crappy "builder's special" hollow core door.  If you grab a set of hinges from Home Depot, make sure you grab some longer screws.  The "included" screws will work great for attaching the hinge to the shelf, but you really need something longer for the side of the hinge that attaches to the door frame because you want to send the screws past the door frame and into the wall studs for added stability/strength.

Once the shelf is in place, be sure to test it to make sure it closes all the way and when open the door doesn't move.  A door that keeps trying to close or keeps trying to open is a sign of a door that is not well hung.  As long as the shelf moves freely you can move to the next step of trim.

You can see in this picture that I have added some 1/4" thick plywood as the initial trim around the door.  This replaces the old crappy trim and has a flat surface so that nothing will get in the way of the shelf opening.  The low profile trim is also put into place to balance the trim on the left side of the door, aesthetically speaking.  You can also see in this picture that the trim around the shelf on the hinge side has a 45-degree angle.  This is done so that the door can swing open wider than if the edge was squared.  

Trim was added to the bottom and sides of the shelf piece, in addition to the angled piece shown above.  The trim pieces were quite wide because there were large gaps between the shelf and the wall on the top and the left side, that needed to be covered.  While trim could normally be nailed in place, these large pieces seemed to need a little more strength, but I didn't want them looking gaudy with big screws hanging out.  For this trim, I chose to use a counter-sink drill bit, and wood plugs to conceal the screws.

The countersink drill bit not only drills a pilot hole for the screw (to prevent splitting wood), but then removes more wood so that the screw head can be recessed deeper into the wood.  Premade plugs are available that fit right into this hole, or you can buy a plug cutter which is great if you want to make your own plugs out of the wood you are using.

So drill your hole, screw the trim in place, insert the plug and then sand the area until smooth.  Then paint away, or stain, whatever you wish.

The final steps with the shelf may vary depending upon how well your shelf is working and how much weight you intend to place on your shelf.

I fear my two boys will take turns climbing on the shelf at some point.  So I chose to install an anti-sag gate thingie.  This has 2 brackets, that you install at the upper corner closest to the hinges and the lower corner farthest from the hinges.  Then they are attached with a length of wire rope and a turnbuckle.  The turnbuckle allows you to twist it and tighten up the wire rope as needed to keep that lower corner from sagging over time.

I also installed a coat rack on the back of the shelf so the boys would have a spot for their jackets.  Make sure you do this after installing that anti-sag thing.

 

I also needed to create a mechanism to help the shelf close flush against the frame.  There was a slight twist in the top of the shelf that made it so that when the shelf closed, there was a 1/2" gap between the shelf and the frame at the top.  For this I used a gate latch, and then I created a cleat with a slight dip in it.  This allows the gate latch to run up this cleat and rest in the depression - thus keeping the top tighter against the frame - while still allowing the shelf to open easily.  Genius!

A few accessories later, and the shelf was done and ready for action.  Now I just have to convince my boys that they want to put their things on it... instead of dropping their gear in front of it.

 

Keurig K-Cups Life Hack

We recently picked up the new Keurig 2.0, which was a huge step up from Mr. Coffee.  Love love love the convenience of the machine, but was disappointed to find it was super picky when it came to K-cups.

I knew that this particular model was more advanced and we wouldn't be able to fool it with some of those re-usable k-cup things that look like a tiny coffee filter.  So I was always very careful to make sure we only picked up the k-cups that had the Keurig logo on them, as directed.  Well, unfortunately we came across some that didn't work.  You can see in the picture below that we had 2 types of Green Mountain Coffee, both in Keurig approved k-cups, but the green one is solid green across the top, whereas the brown one has a white-ish/lavender ring around the brown.

We popped the green one in the coffee machine and got this message.

"...try one of the hundreds of packs with the Keurig logo"????  But we did?  So I called the number on the screen and was informed that some k-cups are produced without the white or off-white band around the cover and those do not work with the 2.0 machines.  The customer service rep I reached indicated that you could somehow tell by some marking on the outside of the boxes whether they would work or not, but I can honestly say that I've scoured boxes looking for something that says they are compatible, and haven't seen anything so far on any box I picked up at the grocery store.

Since this was our first issue, the rep nicely sent us replacement coffee for what we had purchased.  But for the future I developed this little hack so that even if I pick up the wrong kind of k-cup in the future, I won't have to make another trip back to the store (with screaming children) to return them.

Note - this only works if you have a used k-cup that had that special perimeter band on it.

For this project I just needed the dud k-cup, a used k-cup with necessary band, glue dots, and a utility knife.

Using a very sharp utility knife, cut around the hard plastic rim of the k-cup.  Don't bother trying to remove just the foil lid as those things are so flimsy that I imagine it would tear pretty quickly.  Instead make you incision just under the lip of the lid.

It gets a little messy when you get the whole lid cut off as some of the coffee will spill out on the counter.

Toss out the used k-cup.  Rinse and dry the chopped off lid.  Next you want to apply one of the glue dots to the backside of the lid.  You can get glue dots at a craft store, or I guess you could use something like double-sided foam tape.  It's really just for sticking the old lid to the top of the green k-cup, otherwise the lid will slide off before you can close the hatch.

Finally, stick the dummy k-cup lid on your non-functioning k-cup and close the hatch to brew your coffee.  Yeah!  No error messages this time.

 

As a side note, I suppose the reasoning for the white perimeter band is so the machine knows how to make whatever hot beverage you are wanting.  So if you were wanting tea, you would need a stick on top that was from another tea k-cup.  This system has served us very well as we primarily use the Keurig for coffee, so a replacement top from another type of coffee seems to brew the green-top coffee with no issues.

Fixing the Windshield

So my husband and I decided that as part of our journey to become debt-free (I <3 Dave Ramsey) we would sell our crossover SUV.  We really like the car, and thanks to the new job I took back in June, the payment is do-able.  But I just don't want to DO it anymore.  I'd much rather just drive around a piece of garbage car, with mismatched doors and an 8-track radio than shell out this car payment every month... just to ride in luxury... and look like we're winning when in fact we've only just now stopped drowning!

Anyway, I digress.  So to get the car ready for the market, we want it to look its best.  And as luck would have it, I was driving the other day and the truck ahead of me threw a rock at the windshield and gave me a tiny little spider-like ding.  CRAP!  No matter how good the car looks, anyone who gets behind the wheel is going to see that chip and instantly the car will be worth less in their minds.

I picked up a RainX Windhsield Repair Kit.  It looks like it will fix those little spider marks, and bullet marks, you name it... as long as it's not too massive or longer than 12-inches.

First I cleaned up the chip with some Windex.  If there are any little fragments of glass still in it, they suggest that you clean those out with a razor blade.  The kit didn't come with a razor blade, so be sure you have one handy before starting the process, because you'll need one at the end.

Chip clean and ready for repair.

Next step is to fasten this little suction cup device to the windshield with that middle hole centered over the problem spot.

Then you'll screw in this little bolt-like thing.

Go until the end is flush against the windshield.

Squirt a few drops of epoxy stuff into the tube.  They said 3-6 drops depending on the size of the problem.  Mine wasn't all that big, but I went for the 6 drops just because it seemed a little deep and hollow.

Then follow that up with this smaller bolt that screws into the threads within the bold that is already in place.  This one is driving the epoxy down into the crack.  One you have it cranked pretty much all the way on, check from inside the car.  You may still see some little air bubbles.  Back out this screw to release the air, and then screw it back on again.  If you still see air bubbles, add some more of the epoxy and then I used a heat gun on low heat from inside the car to help draw the epoxy into the crevices.

Let it sit for a few minutes.  Then turn the bolt (and inner bolt) about 1/2 turn counter-clockwise to release them from the windshield.  Then remove the whole apparatus.  I then placed another drop of epoxy on the top of the ding and put down the plastic sheet that came in the kit.

After a few more minutes of letting the resin set, while the car was positioned in the sun, I removed the plastic piece and used the razor blade to scrape off the excess epoxy.

I honestly had a really hard time taking the final picture, but I cannot see where the spot had been.  So I'd say that was a pretty successful project, done in 15 minutes, for a whopping $15 or so.