Bhive Home: Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose

I woke up early last Saturday morning restless and wanting to organize; so ended up completely rearranging our office/art room.  During the process I kept thinking... “I wish I had a window seat for storage”.  Since I had rearranged some of the shelving and removed a table, I had excess craft supplies sitting in a pile without a home.  It took several hours of pacing and rearranging before it dawned on me, “ We do have a bench”! This bench was another ingenious fabrication of the former owner. It was kept on the sun porch as a cat house. Inside the bench he placed the litter box on one side and then a fan and supplies on the other side. The fan ventilated the cat smell to the outside via a vent in the floor! The little hole in the front of the bench made the bench accessible for the cats!  We do not have cats (well, we do have feral cats, but that’s another post), so I moved the bench to our back porch for removing shoes and storage for our home improvement tools.

I brought the bench in, cleaned it up and painted the base white. I had some extra fabric I was using as a table runner that I added along with a piece of foam to the top.  Viola!  My new window seat and storage bench! I kept the cat opening because I just think it’s neat and we may have a use for it someday for a small pet.

Since I already had the paint out I decided to finish up a project I started a while back. I found this inspiration picture on Anthropologie.com (2005). 

The table in the picture is used as a kitchen island and was priced at a mere $450 (ouch!). It looked so much like a sewing table I had of my grandparents; I decided to recreate it. The sewing table had a machine inside that no longer worked and I removed it.  I believe it was originally my Great Grandmother's however, I really only ever saw my Grandfather using it. He could sew quite well and was always making new covers for his boat seats and even a sail for a sailboat he built me!

I didn’t want to take away from the table too much in function in hopes it could be used for sewing again one day, so I just made some cosmetic changes to the outside. I gave it a new paint job since the paint was looking more "beat up” rather than “distressed”. I also had my neighbor make me a shelf for the bottom and towel rack for the side. We drilled holes in the legs and added casters. Lastly I put a butcher-block cutting board on top and done! Pretty close if I do say so myself!

Stay tuned as I tackle my driftwood-to-coat rack project next! What will you give new life to this weekend?
Buzz!