It's a Knock-Off

We have a room in our house that is referred to as the "Man Cave".  And that's exactly what it is .... a cave.  It's in our basement, in a room with no windows and my man resides there....to watch TV, catch up with his X-Box, you know, "man" stuff.  Although it's mostly just for guys, it is the coolest (uh...coldest) room in our house during the summer -- so I frequent the room for movies or an evening of TV.  Well with summer here I've been in our TV room much more and I could see it was in dire need of an update.

First step -- get some furniture!  I'm currently OBSESSED with Knock-Off Wood -- so why not MAKE my shelf?!?  I saw this cute little shelf on Ana's site.  Perfect!  Unfortunately I don't think the pink would go over too well in our "cave."  But I loved the shelves.  Luckily I could paint them any old color I wanted and fill the shelves with anything we wanted too.  The beauty of furniture building!

So off to the garage I went for some serious bonding with the air nailer and miter saw.

I painted the whole shelf white and it was finished -- well, almost.  Not that I don't love the idea of all white shelves, it just looked funny in our TV room (sorry no pics).  Well the shelf sat for the next month and a half, completely white -- if it's usable and not absolutely hideous, sometimes I push the redo project to the bottom of my list.  I still needed to paint it a different color ...  I was just cringing at the idea of buying a special can of paint for one measly project.


Get ready -- there's a bargain tip coming up!
But as I was looking through the mail the other day I stumbled across a GOLD MINE!  Okay, not really -- but if paint were gold -- then I did.  I was skimming through the County Newsletter where I live and there on the back was the ad to visit their Environmental Center Free Resource Room.  What's so exciting about this???  The Free Resource room is like the Mecca of left over paint.  It's where all the paint, auto supplies, cleaning supplies and other "toxic materials" that aren't supposed to go in the trash end up.

Well I had to take a trip out there (okay, like a 15 minute drive) and see for myself.  And sure enough -- there was plenty of beautiful paint that people didn't want but couldn't throw away.  You definitely have to do some scouring to make sure you're getting an okay can of it -- but most of it was at least half full and pretty nice, normally expensive, paint and wood stains.

I don't know if every County does this -- but it's worth checking into seeing if your county has an Environmental Center where they house all the "toxic" stuff you can't throw away.  And what's better is that now I have a place to bring the paint I have no use for and someone else can use it!

Here's the little can I picked out for the top of our shelf:

Can you see that it's like completely full?!?  This is a can of Sherwin Williams -- free?  YES please!  The nice thing is I didn't have a specific color I wanted to use for the shelf.

(If were going to paint something large or a room I probably would just go order my own paint -- but for this project the Resource Room was perfect!!)





  Okay, well are you ready to see the final product??

There it is, bare and ready for some "boy" details. 

DONE!  I put all my hubby's guy movies and his guy books on the shelf.  No girlie stuff here!  I also made a trip to my Home Goods to buy some baskets for the bottom to hold all of the remotes and XBox goodies.  (I did manage to sneak a picture of us on the new shelf too -- but in a non-girlie frame).  And yes, that is a matchbox car you see -- it's an exact replica of his beloved car -- and what can I say....it must be a guy thing?!?

More updates to the Man Cave are coming soon!

I want to say THANKS!! to Kara at Kara's Creations -- her blog is absolutely wonderful and I was ecstatic today when she featured my little PB chandelier -- too sweet!  Thanks so much Kara -- now go visit her blog -- she's got TONS of adorable ideas and projects!