Beach Cottage Crate {Thrifty Finds}

Here we are a week later and I am just finishing up some projects from my garage sale goodies last weekend.  I had planned on building a cubby style shelf for our master bathroom to go over the jacuzzi tub.  I was going to use this to hold towels and such since we had taken down the chrome towel rack.

I sorta kept putting off the project since I knew it would be a bit of a time investment for me.  I'm not the most experience carpenter and the process usually involves a lot of frustration, learning, and calls to my dad.  So... when I stumbled onto this little gem I had a lightbulb moment. The crate had the look that would work with our beach cottage/boat house feel master bath.

Yep, spider webs and lots of dust!

Once I got it home I realized one corner was damaged.
A little Gorilla Glue, wood putty, and joint compound fixed

it right up.  Sanding and paint.. you'd never know!

I used a sampler of returned paint I picked up from the HD
for .50 cents.

Here she is cleaned up with a coat of gray.

And now for a top coat of white.  The idea is that I will
sand it down so that I can see the gray through the white.

I drew on my letters.  The first night we met hubby and I were at
this lake.  Yes... we were high school sweethearts and this was the
cool place to hang out!

Here's the letters all painted.  Yep, you guessed it 112090 is
the date we my sweets and I met. We're a little sappy... you'll
just have to deal with it!

And here it is after I sanded it down.

You know when you think I project is going to go a certain way and it just doesn't?  Well this was one of those times!  I was so sure that I'd be able to just sand it down and get nice soft hints of gray.  But when I began to sand I would go straight through to the dark brown.  yuck.  No gray to be seen.  There wasn't much I could do at this point though... so I just went with it.  When you are working with found items it's best to be flexible!

And here it is attached under my window by the jacuzzi.   

Amazing what a bit of paint can do!

I love it now and am so happy I found something that not only was cheaper than buying my own supplies to build a shelf... but it saved me loads of time as well!  Total cost for this project: 

Crate- $1.00

gray paint- $.50

white paint- already owned

Total- $1.50

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Perfectly Imperfect