Shed Building Plans

Welcome to my quest to turn my Ikea Stranda wardrobe into a cool, vintage looking piece of furniture.

I've painted and repainted and tried all sorts of looks on this piece, but nothing really spoke to my heart until this latest makeover.

I began with this bare basic Ikea Stranda wardrobe, bought many years ago because it was solid wood and unfinished so it wasn't terribly expensive.

It seems every Christmas I get a gift of assorted nuts decoratively arranged in a tray. The trays are inexpensive and wood. Perfect opportunity for a spurt of creativity!

I have wanted a vintage washstand with a towel bar for a long, long time. Unfortunately, this type of cabinet doesn't seem to ever come up for sale in my part of the world so my challenge began! How am I going to recreate this look??

I think I did pretty well!  

My main goal this year is to clear out my workshop of as much of the hoarded materials as I can.  I am tired of clutter!  I began to assemble a pile of components that I could use for this project.

One day last month I was riding along my local rail trail from the north end to the south end as is usually my practice. When on the return leg I noticed one of two old telegraph poles I pass along the way was not sticking up vertical anymore but laying in broken pieces on the ground.  The poles are noteworthy to me because they make up the last few that are still standing along the old B & O spur route that once connected Mansfield and Butler Ohio.

A few years ago I happened to be looking up (Something Im often doing while reclined comfortably on my recumbent bike) and noticed that the two weathered poles still had some old aqua colored glass insulators on the cross arms.  I even took a picture of this particular pole with its cross arms tilting haphazardly.  The ever present tug of gravity and crumbling decay of the wood eventually brought the pole down and this is how I found it.  I noticed right away as I pulled off the trail and looked down at the broken pieces that there was not a single insulator in sight.

Oh well I thought the pieces were already picked and I just wasnt in the right place at the right time.  I was about to head on my way but I decided to get off my bike and take a closer look anyway.  In the grass half hidden under the pole a small patch of blue caught my eye.  I kicked away the debris and found an insulator still screwed onto a rusty pin.  In my excitement I scanned around the surrounding area and found the second one a few feet away just barely visible in the scrub.  At some point after the pole was already on the ground someone had cut down the taller brush in this little section between the road and the bike trail and I think that provided some of the cover for these two insulators to remain hidden until I came along.    

As an antique insulator collector this was a monumental piece of luck for me.  All of the insulators in my collection I have purchased from other collectors, found at garage sales and at insulator shows.  I have spotted many old insulators still stuck on poles some even with telegraph wire but this is the first time in my four or five years as a collector actually picking some pieces from a pole.

Long ago the copper wires these insulators supported carried land line Morse code telegraphy probably B & O railroad business, news and personal messages of citizens living in the area.  These two Hemingray - 42s were probably made in the 1920s or 30s.  They are not worth much maybe a quarter dollar a piece or fifty cents but knowing exactly where they came from and being able to document their provenance here for the future is something valuable to me.

  

Guess what I found on Craig's List?! An antique iron bed - I am in HEAVEN!!!  It is a 3/4 sized bed so it fits beautifully into my somewhat tiny guest room.   Of course, a makeover of my guest bedroom was now in order.

I am thrilled at how inviting this room has become. I no longer have that ugly futon as a guest bed.  I love that this iron bed is from the era of the house and that everything fell into place effortlessly.   I really do think this house whispers design choices to me.  And I have been unusually successful this year at finding antiques at incredibly low prices.  I think the house is behind it.  I've also been hearing murmurings that it wants to be called "Ashcroft Cottage" instead of "Ashtree Cottage".   Sheesh.   Maybe I need more sleep...

Take a look at my antique iron bed: