Like most of my readers and followers, I to am a mother.  However, after many years of my baby being a baby, now, she no longer is, and I’ve started finding old furniture, toys and accessories that will probably never get used again, but I can’t throw them away because of the sentimental value… but at the same time, especially in the case of this crib, I couldn’t sell it because it no longer fit the safety standards of today’s cribs.  The delicate spindles were just too beautiful to put in the trash.

My first move was to detach the side of the crib that slid down, and saw off the legs. I wanted to stand the crib up vertically and reattach the legs to what was the end side of the crib. With one long side removed, it was easier to get at the bottom to reattach the legs with 2 1/2″ screws. For stability I made the legs considerably shorter.

In breaking down the crib, I removed hardware – two L-brackets and two flat braces – that I later repurposed to reinforce the legs.

Hardware removed from crib then repurposed to reinforce the legs.

I trimmed the cabinet doors to re purpose them as the shelves. I was able to screw them into the back of the unit and front side bars (what would have been the top edge of the crib).

When it was fully assembled, I could not escape the fact that this Frankenstein unit looked like a chicken coop. Haunted by the chicken coop semblance, I wanted to choose a paint color that walked away from a barn look, but embraced the rustic feel of the piece. So I chose a neutral, accented by an earthy green. This was where a couple cans of spray paint brought it all together, aesthetically.

 

I only had enough cabinet length to make two shelves, so I empowered the top spindles to serve as a magazine hanging rack. As it turned out, the dainty bars were the perfect length for a standard magazine. Could I have been any luckier with my dimensions?

My favorite part about this project is that an existing piece, that couldn’t be used in its existing form was transformed it into a practical, functional and surprisingly unique piece of furniture. Obsolete baby furniture is turning up all over the place, and with a little vision these pieces can be up-cycled and re purposed into interesting commodity furniture.