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Budget Beach Cottage: Make a Nautical Rope Mirror

by H. Camille Smith June 5, 2013 3 Comments

When I say “budget beach cottage,” I ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie. Upcycling is far from the latest trend in my family — if we can find a way to repurpose or reuse something, we will. Check out our beachy kitchen, living room, candles and built-in bookcase transformations to see what I mean.

Enter a plain-Jane, oak-framed mirror my sister and I bought at an estate sale intending it to serve as a vanity mirror for the hall bath. The rounded shape of the frame reminded us of a ship’s port hole and at just $5, the price was right. Sadly, the wood-framed mirror was too small for the bathroom — but it was just the right size for a narrow wall in the master bedroom. We hung it but the stained oak frame just wasn’t doing it for us. Luckily, my 18-year-old nephew found an old boat cleat at a yard sale for just 50 cents (clearly he’s been well instructed in the ways of the bargain-hunting force) and that was the inspiration we needed to wrap the frame in rope and “tie it off” to the cleat.

And … voila! Here’s our once plain-Jane mirror after its nautical makeover: Beachy Rope Mirror Ready to make your own? Get the complete step-by-step instructions>>

Covering the frame is easy; the key is to start on the inside of the frame and really secure the first few rows with a super-strong epoxy (like Gorilla Glue) to prevent the remaining rows from shifting. Once you have a solid start, you can switch over to just tacking the rope with brads every few inches.
Beachy Rope Mirror Step-by-Step

And … inevitably when you’re taking photos in a small beach house with 5 nosy little dogs around (2 are mine and 3 are my sister’s) you end up with quite a few shots featuring a cute pup in the pic. Everyone, meet my sister’s furry little shadow, her 6-lb rescued Yorkie, Gracie: Cute Yorkie Dog and Beachy Rope Mirror

Giving a blah mirror a coastal makeover is easy — but be sure to check out my complete step-by-step instructions for a materials list and lots of helpful tips first>>

*Three years later, the beach house is still a work in progress, keep checking back for more thrifty transformations.

MORE BEACH HOUSE MAKEOVERS:
Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Built-In Bookcase
Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Kitchen
Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Living Room
Adventures in Antiquing: Easy Beachy Candle Update

Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Built-In Bookcase

by H. Camille Smith May 29, 2013 9 Comments

If you’ve read my antique posts then you know that I’m a big fan of finding new uses for old things – but I also believe in reworking a room’s architecture to better suit the way you live.

My sister’s beach house had a tiny closet filled with shelves in the main living room. How tiny you ask? So tiny that getting anything larger than a puzzle box into and out of it was a challenge. Initially, we had plenty of projects to keep us busy but once we had the kitchen and most of the painting covered, it was time to get creative!

Typically, “getting creative” in my family involves my Daddy’s excellent woodworking skills, a hastily sketched plan and lots of paint — and this time was no different. We decided to turn the mini closet into a built-in bookcase that would provide both decorative and hidden storage and fit in with our beach bungalow’s cottage charm. A weekend worth of work, @ $125 in materials and several trips to the hardware store later … voila, we’re all pretty proud of the finished project: Beach House Built-In Before and After Photos First, I should note that a closet is typically wider than its door – go ahead, peek inside a closet and you’ll see what I mean. In addition to the door’s framing, there’s usually a small amount of wall surrounding the framing. So even though the door was only 18 inches wide, the boxed-in recess of the closet was actually 24 inches wide.

We wanted to create as large of a built-in as possible so we first removed the door, molding and paneling above the closet then my dad used a jigsaw to cut away the few inches of paneling on either side of the door opening to fully open up the space. Next, we headed to the hardware store to find a stock kitchen cabinet to fit our opening and lumber to use as shelves and as a top for the base cabinet. You can see in the second image that the cabinet is just a little deeper than the opening but it doesn’t stick out so far that it’s obvious. Once everything had been primed, caulked and painted, it looked like a built-in that had always been part of the house’s architecture: Beach House Built-In Step-by-Step Photos

After the paint had dried, my sister and I set to work filling the shelves with our budget beachy finds. The cabinet’s drawer holds all our pups’ harnesses and leashes while the bottom door conceals a stack of rainy-day puzzles and games: Beach House Built-In After Photos *Three years later, the beach house is still a work in progress, keep checking back for more thrifty transformations.

MORE BEACH HOUSE MAKEOVERS:
Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Kitchen
Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Living Room
Adventures in Antiquing: Easy Beachy Candle Update

Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Kitchen

by H. Camille Smith May 22, 2013 17 Comments

Three years ago, my sister bought a rundown fishing cottage on the NC coast. While any beach house is certainly better than no beach house (I’m not complaining!), this particular cottage was in pretty bad shape. Check out more before-and-after photos here to see what I mean.

Before: Dark, mismatched and cramped, the kitchen was a mish-mash of colors and materials. The yellow cabinets were constructed with the house in the ’70s while the previous owners added a few white pre-fab cabinets (front left) in the ’80s for extra storage. In addition to being just plain ugly, the sheet vinyl flooring had definitely seen better days and was cracked and peeling up. Dark, dated and dingy beach house before makeover

The yellow kitchen cabinets put up quite a fight, it took no less than 2 coats of primer and 4 (yes, 4!!) coats of white semigloss to make them over. Other than A LOT of paint, shelf liner and caulk, the cabinets stayed the same. If you look again at the before photo, you’ll notice we had a board cut at the hardware store to fill in a pointless empty space above the sink. For less than $10 for the brackets and board, we added a cute shelf that gives the cabinets the cottage look we wanted.

After: We briefly considered laying tile in the kitchen but decided to continue the wood flooring from the adjacent living room for better flow. Isn’t it amazing what a few gallons of paint (and A LOT of elbow grease) can do?! Paint works wonders to brighten up this beach house kitchen

Before: The fridge was tucked into an L-shaped wall that concealed it from the dining room on one side and the living room on the other. This also meant that the kitchen felt really cramped and wasn’t fully open to either room. Paint works wonders to brighten up this beach house kitchen

After: Moving the fridge and water line to the opposite wall allowed us to entirely remove the wall between the kitchen and dining room and turn the wall separating the kitchen and living room into a small bar area. Bonus: Moving the water line meant my brother could plumb in the dishwasher so we no longer need to roll it over to the sink to run a load of dirty dishes (which was a serious pain in the butt).
Paint works wonders to brighten up this beach house kitchen

After: Here’s another view showing how open the kitchen is now to the dining and living rooms after we removed the partial walls. The column conceals a necessary steel support so it stayed, my dad boxed it in with leftover paneling and trim to make it a design feature. A thrifted brass bell (just $3) lets everyone know when it’s dinnertime.
Removing walls opens up this sunny beach house kitchen

*Three years later, the beach house is still a work in progress, keep checking back for more thrifty transformations.

MORE BEACH HOUSE MAKEOVERS:
Adventures in Antiquing: Easy Beachy Candle Update
Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Living Room

Budget Beach Cottage Before and After: Living Room

by H. Camille Smith February 27, 2013 26 Comments

My sister bought a fixer-upper beach house almost two years ago which we’ve slowly but surely been hammering back into shape. In addition to a long list of structural changes, we needed to find a house full of beachy furniture and accessories on the cheap. I hail from a family of bargain hunters/diy-ers so the beach house has been a fun challenge for us.

Before: We started in the main living area which was dark, crowded and just plain sad. Sunny yellow trim did nothing to brighten up the driftwood gray paneling. Unfortunately, you can’t see the pitiful greenish-gold shag carpet which, thanks to leaking windows, had mildewed and actually smelled worse than it looked (hard to believe, I know). Dark, dated and dingy beach house living room before makeover