forgot to
totally didn't want to show you our rather ugly bookcase wall.Whew, now that I have that off of my chest... At the time, we had pretty much spent all of our pretty pennies on the desk project and couldn't justify spending more for a new bookcase. After seeing how the room all came together, we love how funky it is. I mean who the heck makes a mustardy green-blue-cream-black-brown-modern-animal print color scheme? Guilty. Anyways, we knew we wanted something different. We saw some sweet ideas for re-purposing old lockers like these on Pinterest and knew it was what we wanted to to.
We starting combing through craigslist on a fairly regular basis. In early February, we stumbled upon an ad for a set of twenty-four older lockers in Racine, WI. I e-mailed back n' forth with the seller about dimensions and the like and figured out they would fit in Bill. Kerry asked if we could make a date of it, and of course I obliged. So on a random Thursday evening, Ona hung out with grandma + grandpa and we headed to the cheese state. By the time we found the man's house, it was dark and we were scared. I guess our fears were reasonable, as the first thing the owner said was, "Welcome to my little piece of heaven in the ghetto." Anyways, to make a long story short, we ended up purchasing the lockers and the craigslist man was even kind enough to help us get them into Bill. Well, almost.Kerry gave me this smile, as two feet of the lockers hung out Bill's rear. We had forgotten to take into consideration the media console on Bill's ceiling. What to do, but drive the hour and half home with Bill's behind all hanging out and our windows down so we didn't gas ourselves with exhaust. And it was about fifteen degrees. We made a quick dinner stop, but found ourselves looking like this for the remainder of the evening.Kerry didn't have any sort of hat, so he resorted to going all ninja on me and using my scarf as ear warmers.Even with the back hatch open, it was a tight fit.Our knees were basically making out with the dashboard. We made it home and the lockers sat in our garage for nearly three weeks untouched. This past week I finally had
a moment
two hours to spend taking off all the locks and old stickers. Come to find out these lockers had been GAP employee lockers years back. They were in some pretty sad shape, and needed some tlc. If there is one great thing about working in the manufacturing industry, it is that I have have a lot of resources at my finger tips. After heehawing about color for waaay too long, we decided to powdercoat the lockers white. Here we are arriving back home today post tlc.Ona went to bed at 6:45 tonight, which meant we had a focused evening to work on putting our beauties together and then decide if/what doors we wanted to remove to make open shelving. It was quite the decision. I stood at the opposite end of the room while Kerry opened various doors in different patterns.We ended up with a pattern kind of close to this, and that face was pretty much plastered on Kerry's face all evening. What a good sport.Kerry detached the doors for our open shelving, while I installed random hardware that Ona and I had picked up from Hobby Lobby earlier this week. I was feeling uber random and came home with eight different knobs of all varieties. On the four corners I re-installed the original locks for fun (we have the combos in case you're wondering).When it was all said and done, this is what we were left with.We are pretty nuts about it. It was about a twelve man hour project, but we finally have an inspirational place to organize our bookshelf clutter. Some of the highlights are Kerry's homage to Green Bay locker,history book locker,and art display locker.I loved being able to clean out our living room's magazine basket, as we now each have our own magazine lockers.But perhaps my favorite lockers are Ona's. We gave her two near the ground. I can just picture her pulling up a pillow and snagging a book out of her locker to read.We ended up removing twelve doors. Since they are magnetic, we thought it would be fun to hang up three and use leftover magnets from our save-the-dates to hang little tidbits of life that we love. I, being a total cheeseball, hung lockers 20+2+5, which makes 27, our wedding day. My favorite view is from the door as you walk in.Well, there you have it, a Little Locker Lovin' redo.
I am counting down the days to see your entries for this week's March Blues Buster Challenge!
I love it. It looks so great and to re use the doors and your knobs!!! So cute. :$
ReplyDeleteThanks Laura! It is definitely random, but we love it's quirkiness. ;)
ReplyDeleteHeather, what type of a paint sprayer do you guys use? I have some furniture projects that I would like to use a sprayer for. There are a lot out there but difficult to find which would fit my purposes best.
ReplyDeleteLove the lockers by the way!
We actually do not own a paint sprayer. Kerry tends to like Rustoleum spray paint (doesn't super love Krylon, even though I try to convince him because they have way better colors). Even for Ona's dresser redo we just used a handful of Rustoleum spray paint cans. I did do a quick google search on actual paint sprayers and it seemed like there were some good reviews on some. You may get by with just the spray cans as well. ;) So, is this like March Blues Buster material type activities, eh, eh? ;)
ReplyDeletePotentially! Though the bigger furniture projects may wait until summer break. Thanks for the info!
ReplyDelete