For my mom's birthday, we were going to buy her a tin ceiling tile from West End Architectural Salvage, an awesome little shop under the 9th street bridge downtown. It's full of all kinds of old treasures from homes and businesses gone by and crafty little art pieces created out of the refuse. Which reminds me that we NEED to take our friends their next time they are in town because I know that Beth will LOVE it! Anyway, they wanted $40 for 1 tile that was 1'x1'. I wanted to buy a set, however, those prices added up fast. Ben and I then wandered up to the 4th floor where they have remnants of wood, old doors, light fixtures, etc from buildings that you can buy and use to refurbish a place to it's "original" style. We found a 2'x4' section of tin ceiling tile in GREAT condition. This whole section was $80, quite a good chunk of change but could easily be made into 8 great pieces of art. We could make four for ourselves and 4 for my mom's birthday for the cost of 2 already crafted. We decided to buy it, despite the fact that we didn't really have any tools to cut the tin, anything to make a frame or any means of adhering the tin to the frames to complete the project. We set out for the local home store and picked up the wood we'd need. Then proceeded to use a hack saw, yes, no fancy table saw here, and cut the pieces into the lengths needed.
Next, we made yet another trip to the store to find a way to a) make the frames square and b) screw them together. Mission accomplished after several days, a little arguing, and some good tunes, we filed and sanded our wood and made real, mostly square frames! We made a final trip to the store to buy some tin snips to trip the tin as we devised a way to wrap the tiles around the frames without using any fasteners or adhesive to hold them tight! Who knew!
Now it was time to paint. We scrutinized over colors, where to hang them and other important dilemmas then settled on the colors. After painting them twice and repainting a final time. Here is our final project: 4 tin tile art pieces, in the spare room, soon to be a baby's room. In the time it took and all the extra tools we bought, we probably spent $120 total, the cost of buying only 3 pre-made. So it was worth the time and effort, however, we plan on buying a table saw if ever we make more...
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| Jungle Modern |
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Shelves my grandparents made for us at Xmas.
FINALLY hung them up! |
Here are a few more photos of the room in progress as we've decorated and redecorated and will likely redecorate again before December.
For my mom's birthday, we were going to buy her a tin ceiling tile from West End Architectural Salvage, an awesome little shop under the 9th street bridge downtown. It's full of all kinds of old treasures from homes and businesses gone by and crafty little art pieces created out of the refuse. Which reminds me that we NEED to take our friends their next time they are in town because I know that Beth will LOVE it! Anyway, they wanted $40 for 1 tile that was 1'x1'. I wanted to buy a set, however, those prices added up fast. Ben and I then wandered up to the 4th floor where they have remnants of wood, old doors, light fixtures, etc from buildings that you can buy and use to refurbish a place to it's "original" style. We found a 2'x4' section of tin ceiling tile in GREAT condition. This whole section was $80, quite a good chunk of change but could easily be made into 8 great pieces of art. We could make four for ourselves and 4 for my mom's birthday for the cost of 2 already crafted. We decided to buy it, despite the fact that we didn't really have any tools to cut the tin, anything to make a frame or any means of adhering the tin to the frames to complete the project. We set out for the local home store and picked up the wood we'd need. Then proceeded to use a hack saw, yes, no fancy table saw here, and cut the pieces into the lengths needed.
Next, we made yet another trip to the store to find a way to a) make the frames square and b) screw them together. Mission accomplished after several days, a little arguing, and some good tunes, we filed and sanded our wood and made real, mostly square frames! We made a final trip to the store to buy some tin snips to trip the tin as we devised a way to wrap the tiles around the frames without using any fasteners or adhesive to hold them tight! Who knew! 
Now it was time to paint. We scrutinized over colors, where to hang them and other important dilemmas then settled on the colors. After painting them twice and repainting a final time. Here is our final project: 4 tin tile art pieces, in the spare room, soon to be a baby's room. In the time it took and all the extra tools we bought, we probably spent $120 total, the cost of buying only 3 pre-made. So it was worth the time and effort, however, we plan on buying a table saw if ever we make more...
2 comments:
i love it!! it's so fun crafting together, isn't it?! and i TOTALLY want to go to the architectural salvage next time we're in DM. i think about it every time we're there. :)
We did enjoy it but I think Ben would prefer that I keep my "ambitions" in check. He gets roped into a lot more than he bargains for most times! :) We will TOTALLY go next time, hopefully there will be time!
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