The second “Taste of Rockaway Beach” is taking place this Sunday, May 4th.  Stroll around “restaurant row” picking up samples from each participating venue, ten bucks, all inclusive.  Newcomers this time around include Rockaway Beach Surf Club, Other End Pizza, Uncle Louie G and The Rock Wine and Beer Bar.  Check out Rockaway Beach Heart for full list of all 11 restaurants.  Passes can be purchased at any of the venues involved.

Oddly enough, last year at this time I was scrambling to finish my Rockaway House renovation and spending extra time in Rockaway was the last thing I wanted to do.  I associated it with Hurricane Sandy, an over budget, months-past-deadline construction job that sucked the life out of me.  Now that the house and Rockaway make me happy again, I WISH I could hang out there this Sunday, but alas, I’m committed to the new project.

But you should go.

There are reclaimed door coat trees and then there are reclaimed door coat trees. Some folks just slap a small table or seat to the front of a door, throw some hooks up and call it a day. We had to choose the complicated method for our first try. A bench made from two doors.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The process is worth it. At least I think so. But then I also thought this would only take one person half a day. Well, maybe not including the learning curve.

It took longer. Firstly, we really did like the chippy paint, so we decided to keep it. Five coats of polyurethane later, that paint was in place! Then the cut door started coming apart, so that had to be fixed. Finally, the bench had to be structurally sound so when someone goes to sit on it, they don’t fall on their arse.

At the end of the day (or two), it came out great! The next one might just have a table or ready-to-go bench attached though.

Click on image or link to BUY, BUY, BUY!

Something so simple and easy to work with. A resource that you find in most old house renovations. And the best part? It’s free! Plaster lath.

For those of you whom haven’t had the pleasure of gutting a room in a historic home, lath is the stuff behind the wall plaster. It’s not used in modern building because these days it’s all sheetrock on studs. Rock on studs sounds sexy, but plaster is way hotter.

Going back to lath being free. People just throw it away! But if you value your time, it ain’t so cheap after all. There’s a fair amount of work that goes into recycled lath projects. Nails have to be taken out, the wood has to be sanded and cut. They may need nailing depending on the project. Each small piece. Backsplashes need to be properly sealed. And that’s just the natural tone. Do you know how time consuming it is to stain each piece?

That being said, we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these sample boards we did! We left one with natural wood color and stained the other multi color. As mentioned, these will be our sample boards for various projects such as headboards, art installations, backsplash, furniture and entire walls.

Want?

When we got our hands on some antique windows, we thought we might do little projects with them such as pot racks, coffee table tops or cabinet doors for resale. We decided to keep a few for ourselves and incorporate them into the shop renovation when we were figuring out how to close off a wall that didn’t go all the way to the ceiling.

They look great! They allow natural light into the back work area and a couple of them are on hinges for those hot days when we need to let some air conditioning back there. Because the windows weren’t the exact measurement across, for the middle, we used a piece of tin ceiling that was lying around the shop (looks better in person). That whatchamacallit triangle thing below is an item displayed for sale. We’ll be a little sad when someone buys it because it looks perfect there.

We have some windows left, y’all! Soooo much better than using those glass blocks.

We picked up the motherload of antique furniture from a closed shop in Beacon, NY last week. It took all day yesterday just to sort through a portion of what we have, clean it up and photograph it. Prior to that, there was no room to move in the shop. Not that there is now, but it’s getting better.

Take some off our hands! These are the items that don’t need much work, so we can let them go as is. There are other items that we’ll have to spruce up before they hit the sales floor. Just trying to get it all uploaded to our shop. Click on images for pricing and info. Cheers!       

After coming across a baby grand piano yesterday, we are so excited that we get to breath new life into it! We knew we wanted to do piano furniture but thought our first project would be an upright, not something this fancy schmancy. Just going over some options. Some awesome, fabulous options.

Here’s a DIY tutorial for those of you who want to try this at home. Holy crap, it does not look easy, although we don’t know why they had to take it apart completely and strip it down to bare wood. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.

We thought of a table but it would look different from this. We do love the utensil drawer looking like keys though!

Dare ya to find a cooler kitchen island than this!

Hard to tell this was even a piano at one point, but love it just the same!

Gypsy Barn has some amazing transformations on her site, but she’s located in Ontario so we’re ok with promoting our competition.

Antique Crib

If there’s one thing that’s easy to make from almost any salvaged material, it’s the pot rack. You can DIY a pot rack out of just about anything. Behold!

Bike Wheel

Ladder 

Iron Gate

Sled

Old Window

One can never have too many pallet ideas. The challenge is actually collecting them, separating the wood and building something. Also, please be aware of safety issues as some pallets are treated with chemicals.