Box Transformation or Re-recycling

Remember this?

The Nectarine Box Shelf has been used and loved for years but is no longer used. Time to change it up.  To see the post about the box shelves and how we made them, click the link here.

First we disassembled it back to its components, then I sanded each surface. 

Note, if one uses something like this and leaves it raw, the timber will get very dry and dusty. We were originally going to paint or stain the boxes, but liked the raw look. Over time and use they got quite dusty and the dust got into the surface of the timber. Sanding was the only way to clean them up again. 

We gave it two coats of undercoat and three top coats with white gloss paint. The timber was so dry that it completely soaked up the paint.
We painted the uprights the same colour as the wall so they wouldn't stand out too much.
Hubster constructed it into its new form. The construction was the quickest part, taking him less than an hour from beginning to hanging on the wall.

TA-DA

The white of the boxes really stands out against the blue walls. 

The hardest part of the project was the matter of how to attach the boxes to the wall with the least impact on the wall itself. Two reasons for this:
1. We rent and this means that we have to be very careful about what and how we attach items to the walls.
2. The walls are made of fibro board which contains asbestos. The less one tampers with this stuff, the better.

We solved this dilemma by making frames which hubster screwed to the boxes and then using hooks and eyes attached the boxes to the top cover strip. Only six small holes are in the cover strip. These can very easily be patched when we eventually remove the boxes from the wall.  Happy solution. I must add that it took quite a bit of thinking and discussing to work it out.  Once that was decided, the rest was smooth sailing (so to speak). And the cost... only a few dollars for the screws, hooks and eyes. We had every thing else already

All that was left was for our girl to arrange her bears on the new box shelves above her bed.

And the comment of the night... Ra said that since there is still a little space, she can acquire a few more bears.

Linking to some parties.