Closet shelving becomes...

I was replacing old wooden closet shelves with the coated wire ones in order to get better ventilation in the closet. With a house built in 1954, when insulation in ciderblock homes was not required, this old Florida block house has moisture issues. Although I use a dehumidifier most of the year, the closets are better with a little more air flow than wooden shelves allowed. Once I took the wood out, it looks to be in pretty good condition aside from some flaking paint. You know what that means, don't you? Of course you know! I had to reuse it somehow.

Having recently built lots of cubbies for my desk (an earlier blog has photos and info.) and having a few cubbies left over my mind was spinning! First, I thought I would just make a vertical shelf. However, knowing I had fabric and foam waiting to be used up - bam!- a bench.
I used a putty knife to get a lot of the flaking paint off the shelves (it was flaking because latex was used over an oil based paint = guaranteed to flake!). And being as lazy, and opposed to extensive sanding, as I am I opted for a shellac based primer. That stuff sticks to almost anything unlike the water based primers. After priming the shelves, I popped in a few cubbies, equally spaced, and screwed it all together with wood screws (The wood you see behind it in the photo isn't a back to the bench. It's just propped up behind it to hide the 50+ projects in various stages of undone). Then I primed the whole thing with a based primer and painted it. Next, I cut a piece of foam to fit, used batting over the foam to soften the front edge and stapled it in place. Finally, I put the fabric on top and stapled it down. Tada a bench!



Peeling closet shelves



Assembled pre-primer and paint



Here it is all done. It's 52" long and fairly narrow at 14" deep. It's the perfect size of little bottomed visitors, putting on shoes and leashing the dog. I thought it would be nice to put all the Disney and child friendly videos in it for easy selection if we get little visitors . I have the option of adding some velcro and a piece of fabric if I want to put a curtain on it at a later date.

That's my latest - okay one of them - conversion of recycled materials. I hope you've enjoy today's project.

I'm off to create... somthing!