JumbleTown Ireland

Bought this bookcase for €25 at a sales and auction room. It is solid oak and very strong and sturdy. Wish I'd taken a before shot but am sure you can imagine a plain brown, grubby, wooden bookcase. Its finish was lacklustre, dull old polish and in need of a makeover.

First I vacuumed it with a soft brush attachment.

The case was sanded down to give the wood some tooth and wiped with a damp cloth a few times to get rid of the dust. I mixed up a wash with satin finish paint thinned with a little white spirit. The wash was painted on and worked, ie, brushed until it was tacky and to give a nice weathered or distressed coating. It was left to dry then touched up here and there.

Finally, I have a cutting machine, a Black Cat Cougar, and used it to cut a stencil for the words 'Read Me' in Brock Script font. Because I didn't want to merge the letters I had to use thin masking tape in stripes across the stencil to stop the middles of letters like the 'e', etc, from dropping out.

The stencil was sprayed with repo glue and fixed in place. I used a black (fine) Sharpie to outline the letterform then painted inside the lines to fill it in. All that was left to do was fill the shelves with books and take the pictures.

The whole process only took a couple of days and that was mainly because it had to dry thoroughly.

So, €25 at the auction. The paint and white spirit used was minimal and we had it in the house already. A spritz of repositionable spray adhesive... I'd say €26 tops. And to think I was going to buy one for €120 somewhere else - smaller, MDF with veneer.

Blogged another shot of it here: www.thesingingtree.biz if you're interested