Thursday, March 8, 2012

Trash to treasure...

We moved a while back into the house we're at now, and until recently, I hadn't really ventured into our attic. No need to really, the garage was my storage place of choice. :)

Rewind to about a month ago, and the need/ability to house nearly 2,0000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies popped up. Hmmmm... where to store them? Our house is not a good option, because we have a 190# dog that has figured out how to open doors and he would happily consume all of said cookies. The only reasonable place was the garage.

There goes my storage area... we underestimated how many cookies *and* the amount of real estate needed to sort them out (good for the troop- bad for my lack of space). What to do, what to do? Oh wait! We have an attic!!

I grew up in a house that we didn't have an attic for storage. We used the basement/garage/shop/outbuildings for that. What didn't fit in those ended up at Goodwill or other local donation charities. So, I grabbed the cord to pull down my ladder to the attic to store all of my seasonal and misc. stuff- e.g. Christmas tree and decorations, Halloween decorations and all of the empty reusable bins we use for moving. Pretty sweet deal, out of sight *and* I get a cleaner looking garage in the process.

Well, apparently for some, out of sight truly is out of mind, because when I climbed up the ladder, there was stuff already there!! W-w-what?!? Books, posters in frames (you know the kind you had on your dorm walls), Christmas stuff, misc. stuff... Um, this is *not* what I wanted to find. Oh well. A quick call to the last resident proved that she didn't know about that stuff either, so it was at least 3 years old up there, and she didn't know how to contact the previous resident before her. So, I guess it is time to donate. In the last box of stuff- which happened to be a box that I have no idea *how* they managed to get it up there. It is bigger than the opening, unless they flattened it, popped it back open and then filled it...? Anyhoo... It had a *ton* of Christmas stuff in it. Not my style at all, but among the garland, wreathes, lights and ornaments was this little beauty.



Not too pretty, but she definitely had potential to be cool again.

I sanded the frame, pulled out the glass and removed all of the cracked and chipped paint.

Decided on how I wanted to paint it again and give her new life.

First attempt- epic fail. :( I was so disappointed in how it looked, I didn't even take a picture of it. It took almost 4 hours to paint and about 10 minutes to remove all of the evidence of my efforts. :( *note to self* must get a silhouette vinyl cutter for my birthday.

Second attempt- much easier- took about 10 minutes, but not what I really want. It will work for now, until I get said vinyl cutter. At which point, I will update this post.



So, there you have it. Huge long novel about repainting a window hanging- turning some trash into something that is cool... for now anyway. ;)

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