Saved from the Dump and a Toy Room in Progress

After I found the blog All Things Thrifty, I started looking at things in a whole new way. I've always been one for projects and saving money. Their blog was right up my alley! This was my first big revamp. My father-in-law gave us this old cubby from a closed elementary school years ago. We've just been packing it from house to house. I almost sold it at a garage sale, but then a couple people said if I was getting rid of it then they wanted it. So I decided to keep it and figured it would come in handy one day.
The day finally came. My father-in-law was going to take this old medicine cabinet from a doctor's office to the dump. My dear mother-in-law told him that I might want it. She knows me well. My plan was to set the cabinet part on top of the cubby. My hubby and I sanded them down as best as we could. I'm thinking paint stripper would've been a better choice at this point. They had so many layers of paint! I finally called it good afters hours and hours of sanding.Before I decided on paint color, I had to decide where it was going. Oh the possibilities! I finally decided to put it in the toy room for storage. I chose Krylon Ivy Leaf for the color. After 6 spray cans of paint, I decided to brush the insides of the cubbies and cabinet. I just grabbed a can of white paint at Walmart and went to it. After I was done, I realized I could have had them paint match it so it would all be green. Duh! Oh well. You live and learn by being a diy-selfer. Is that a word? I didn't think so. I also distressed it and stained the corners with some leftover stain I had. Then I used a polyurethane to try and protect it from the kiddos.

After many more hours than I had planned, it's done! I found the blue baskets at a dollar store. They fit perfectly and only cost $10. We used L-brackets to attach the cabinet to the cubby and for added safety, attached more L-brackets to studs in the wall. I left the doors off for now. I was worried about the glass being in a toy room with kids. You just never know! I am trying to decide how to make the doors kid safe because I think they are cute and I would like to put them back on. But for now it works! The yellow paint on the walls was a $5 can of oops paint and the alphabet is from Eeboo. They are 8x10 cards and I love them. The pictures are so cute. I hung them up with squares of sticky Velcro so that I could take them down if I wanted to use them in teaching the kids the alphabet. Plus, I didn't want 26 holes in the wall. I think I'm going to paint stripes on the top and bottom of them. For the tree, I saw this and decided to do the same thing. I bought some embroidery hoops at the D.I. and at Hobby Lobby. I only used the hoops without the little metals things. I painted them colors to match the valances and then stuck them to the wall with glu dots. I can't believe how strong those little things are!

I'm linking up to Frugal Friday at the Shabby Nest!