thrifty Archives - Flip This Rental

My bathroom is pretty small, and seriously lacking in the storage department along with the rest of my house. I’m a total storage and organization nerd, and I would spend SO much money on storage if I could. But since I can’t, I’m always looking for thrifty ways to get the same effect. The other day Chris and I were at Goodwill, and he spotted this 3 piece bathroom organizer for only $10!! Thrifty bathroom storage for the win!

I found the exact same thing in the $30 range online!! For some reason I couldn’t find this exact thing on Wal-Mart’s website. Maybe they don’t sell it anymore? In that case this piece is a collector’s item 😉 I was a little nervous to buy it at first because I thought maybe some of the pieces were missing. The box was taped really well, but I was able to peek inside and see that the pieces were still in the plastic bags. So, we decided to take a chance on it.

When I got all the pieces out I found half of the directions and got scared until I found the other half. Nothing a little tape can’t fix!

After I fixed the directions I pulled all the pieces and was making sure they were all there. And then I came across this…

You can’t really see it on the paper, but this is supposed to be one piece. I don’t know what happened but there are two of these parts, and both of them were broken. I put the rest of the shelf together while I figured out how to fix these pieces. They went on top so they weren’t necessary, but it would be better if they could be used.

Finally I remembered some sort of welding stuff that came in a tube. I had seen it on Pinterest before but couldn’t remember exactly what it was. When Chris came home from work he told me it was called JB Weld and he already had some! 😀

It comes in two tubes. One labeled hardener and one labeled steel. He just mixed a fair amount together (equal amounts of both) on a piece of cardboard and applied it to each broken piece. We let it sit over night and it was all fixed!

Not the prettiest repair job, but it’s fixed and it’s not very noticeable when the shelf is all put together.

I’ll have to figure out what all I want to store on here, and how to style it but for now I’m just happy to at least have a place to set things 🙂 I want to store towels on it, but most of the ones we have are stained and ugly. That’s another thing I need to invest in.

Have you ever ran into a thrift store disaster, or had a close call? What was your favorite thrift store find?

See You Around!

Lauren <3

A while back the boyfriend picked up a dresser he saw on the side of the road. It was in good shape structurally but boy oh boy whoever painted this thing did NOT know how to paint. Or they were just extremely lazy. I can’t tell. Please ignore the ugly paneling and the fact that one picture is not in the same orientation as the others. Oops. #SorryNotSorry

First of all that contact paper is dreadfully ugly and it was really dirty. In the second picture you can see that they painted the dresser but obviously didn’t prime or do a second coat. It’s like they got sick of it and never came back. Also it looks like towards the bottom they didn’t want to get paint on whatever surface the dresser was on so they just avoided that part. Third picture. Apparently they didn’t own a screw driver either so they just slopped some paint on the drawer pull and also didn’t look behind the front of the knob to make sure they got it all. COME ON PEOPLE. Now I almost won’t dump on the top of the dresser because I actually like the look of the wood top BUT they very sloppily painted the sides of the dresser.

Now that I’m done being angry, I’ll show you the process of making the awfulness go away.

First I propped the drawers up on random objects, took the drawer pulls off, and sanded the drawers slightly. The front right drawer had a little bubble so of course I peeled it and it ended up being a lot bigger than I expected. But it wasn’t anything a little primer and paint couldn’t fix.

What a huge difference one coat of paint can do!

I also spray painted the knobs, and as you can see I made sure to get every angle. Eventually I plan on replacing these because the one on the very right is chipped in weird ways. Yet another baffling thing about this dresser.

The dresser is being used in my boyfriend’s son’s room and my main motivation for fixing it up was all the hand-me-down clothes piled up in our living room. All the clothes in the dresser are hand-me-downs plus a bunch more hung up in his closet. Holy cow!

First off, if you are wondering what the heck is behind the dresser. It’s a door. I think at one time our “duplex” was a single family home and this was a doorway that led to the basement. In order to make it a duplex they just took the rest of the stairs out and added a door. It’s really strange and there’s not really a way to make it any less strange. *sigh*

Anyway, I couldn’t really get all of the paint off the wood so I got as much as I could. I also used some leftover Restor-A-Finish to hide the scratches and brighten up the wood a little bit.

In the future I would love to paint the drawer fronts and sides red to give it a little pop. I might even change the drawer pulls to Captain America shields to go along with the Avengers theme we’ve got going on. I’m just relieved to have this checked off my to-do list!

If you liked this post don’t forget to share it! 🙂

And if you want to see the next phase in this dresser makeover click here.

See You Around!

Lauren <3

Tag: thrifty

Thrifty Bathroom Storage

Curbside Dresser Makeover