Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Upcycling: wine rack to doll bed



We found this little wine rack in the local thrift store (savers). Lin thought it'd be cool to turn it into a bed for the kids baby dolls. We bought an American Girl doll crib ages ago at a garage sale that was made of plastic and it inevitably fell to pieces... So the idea of the girls playing with a more sturdy one that I'd made was appealing, especially since they had a lot of make believe fun with the old one.

The idea was very simple: Take the rack apart, stick it back together again with some wood-glue for added strength, cut out a base, screw this on and then paint.

I was going to make a crib by adding doweling bars between the cross beams, but the way the rack was put together made this a bit too fiddly so I decided to just replace the bottom beams and make a baby bed instead.

I sanded the pieces to get rid of some of the murky dirt. Then I painted on some wood-glue to the ends of the beams, reattached them and left it all to dry overnight (with a toolbox weighing it all down from above so that it'd set straight).



I used one of our "new" purchases (a very old scroll saw) to cut out a base. Very straightforward really, just measure the distances on the wine rack, mark those out on some wood and then cut.



Ooo look, a rectangular bit of wood ;)

I drilled out holes at the points where the new base board met the cross beams and then fixed the base to the frame using some wood screws.



Then I let the kids paint on a layer of primer. I think they quite enjoyed it.




After the primer had dried I painted on a coat of gloss. Hopefully that'll keep it in good condition for a while.

I wasn't sure if the kids were taken with it or not until the next morning when a couple of their friends came over for a play date. "Dylan! Dylan! Come and see! I've got something AMAZING to show you!" cried Carys. To be honest I wasn't sure what she was going to show off, but was very touched to find out that it was the baby bed we'd made. Poor Dylan was a little bemused as to why she was so excited ;)

9 comments:

Shari said...

This is incredibly creative! I would love to share it on my blog about dolls and daughters if that's okay with you.

PaulBo said...

Thanks for the nice comment! Feel free to post about it. It turned out better than I expected :)

Shari said...

Thank you. Here's the link to my post. http://centralnjemilyroseathome.blogspot.com/2010/06/creative-idea-for-doll-bed.html

Sheltie Times said...

These are the kinds of gifts kids never forget. What an incredible job.

Gina said...

I love this! You should post a link in the comments section on my Ohdeedoh post. I bed they'd love to see this.

Sewjoe said...

Such a great way to re-purpose! Incredible creativity!

Anonymous said...

Cool I personally would recycle the opposite way and have a wine rack! But the kids would not be as happy.

iron wine racks said...

Intelligently done! Actually flat design of your wine rack helped you in conversion. Full marks to your creativity.

Wooden Wine Racks said...

This is really great idea. I have extra wooden wine rack. I can give that to m son too lol. Thanks.