We love a good deal. We love a garage sale. We love even more when we stumble upon something that is free, something we know we can re-purpose and use in our home.
It’s time for another installment of….
Can you believe this was free?
During a recent garage sale day one house that we stopped at has a small area marked “free”. This wicker hamper was in that area.
We checked it out and it was very sturdy, clean and did not have much damage. The hinges in the back were firmly in place and by all accounts it was in ready-to-go shape.
Sold! We loaded it into our car, along with some items from the garage sale that we purchased (they had really awesome prices!).
After a long day of sales we came home and chilled out. The following day we decided this would make a great storage unit for our blankets in the family room. We have 2 afghans and another 2 lighter blankets that are used frequently at night while we (or the nieces and nephews who spend the night) watch TV. Usually they are folded up in a nice pile in the family room but that doesn’t exactly look the best or the most organized.
So….we got the bucket of hot sudsy water, a scrub brush and some disinfectant cleaner and got to work outside with the hose on a warm summer day. We were not sure what saturating the wicker with water and cleaners would do to it or the wooden bottom, but since it was free we knew we were not out anything if it ended up damaging the piece. We also knew we needed to scrub it down to “make it ours”. We like to garage sale and trash/treasure pick but we always, always make sure we wash those items very well before we use them.
Always.
Once it was scrubbed inside and out, we rinsed it well with the host and flipped it over to dry. It was soaked.
Since it was warm and sunny, drying did not take long.
We decided it was going to be painted red, but before we did that we used a can of inexpensive white spray paint to give it a quick once over coat. We thought this would be smart for two reasons: to help the red paint stick to the wicker and so that if there were areas that the paintbrush did not hit the white would be seen which would be more eye appealing to us than the natural wicker color.
We applied 2 coats of white spray paint.
After letting the white paint dry for about 2 hours, we were ready to paint!
Using an inexpensive paint brush and a can of the free paint from the recent ACE Hardware giveaway, we transformed the wicker box into this:
What do you think?
It is now in our family room, filled with the blankets, and the area looks much more tidy.
Can you believe this was free?
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