How pleased IS punch, anyway? I guess if it's anywhere as pleased as the animated Kool-Aid pitcher from the commercials I saw when I was a kid, I have aptly described my feelings and can move on.
So I got this old shutter at a yard sale for a couple bucks.
I wanted to do SOMEthing with it, but what?
It finally came to me in a vision.
Maybe I had had too much Kool-Aid, I don't know.
Anyway, I thought, why not just paint it and put some brackets on it and cut some boards and decoupage the boards and get some flush-mount hardware and a couple of crates and find some old shoe-boxes and decoupage them, too?
Easy.
Easy-peezy.
Easy-peezy-lemon-squeezy.
Easy-peezy-lemonade-flavored-Kool-Aid-squeezy.
Now that we've come full circle with the whole Kool-Aid thing, I can move on to the project itself.
First I cleaned the shutter.
Obvi.
Bugs and grime on indoor furniture are overrated.
Then I painted it. I used chalk paint. Annie Sloan's (of course). The "stockist" I use is Consign-it Furniture in Kennett Square, PA.
I did a base coat of Louis Blue, a top coat or two of Pure White, and then sanded heavily to get a good bit of "peek-a-boo" color showing through. Then I clear waxed the whole shebang.
Next I attached three sets of brackets. Pretty sure I got them at Lowe's. I measured up from the floor for my first shelf, which is the "business shelf" for my lap, alarm clock, glass of water, etc. Going up from there I just eyeballed where I wanted the other two shelves.
Also at Lowe's I got a 16" x 6' edge-glued pine board. I used my compound miter saw to cut it into four even 18" pieces (though I only needed three of them).
However, I held one of the upper shelves in place just to have a look-see, and decided it was too deep (front to back). It looked too clunky. So I "ripped" the upper two boards in half down to 8" each. And it was much better.
I decoupaged the shelves with some pretty paper I already had, and then attached the shelves to the brackets.
I bought a thing of those cute little fairy lights with the copper cord. This particular set, which I got from Amazon, has a convenient thumb switch on the cord, so I can turn them on or off from my bed. Anyway, I strung those up and down the back of the shutter so the light just softly shines out between the shutter slats.
I bought a flush-mount hardware thing-y and followed the directions, which means just hanging one part on the wall, one part on the back of the shutter, and then.....hanging it.
And that was it!
The shutter slats have just enough flexibility to shove a cord through, so you can feed power cords through to plug in behind.
This was a pretty easy project and I'm quite pleased with it. It gave my exactly what I was looking for in terms of function and style. The "nightlight" is just enough light to turn on in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or whatever.
Love it!
("Oh yeaahh!")
PS: Pay no attention to all the links. Just threw them in fyi. No affiliations. This blog is not monetized.
PPS: Linking up with Tuesday link party in "A Stroll Through Life"
