Hello, friends!! So, remember this guy??
He’s our Goodwill breadbox turned toilet paper holder from our bathroom makeover. I’ve been meaning to write a post about how he came to be for a while now, but for whatever reason, I’m just now getting to it (and also, I sort of forgot. Sorry.) 🙂
It all started when I found this breadbox at Goodwill about six months ago for eight bucks…
I had no idea what I was gonna do with it at the time that I purchased it. And once I got it home, I still had no idea, so the cheapo in me berated my inner-self for wasting the money (I know… this is how cheap I really am).
Anyhoo, as I was working on styling our guest bathroom, I searched the house for pops of red and came across this badboy, shoved way into the back of No Mans Land (aka: our spare room). And I realized that it would be perfect storage for above the toilet. Retro, bright red, unique. Oh, yes. I was all in.
The actual mounting of the breadbox was pretty straight forward. Joey did most of it. We simply located the studs with a stud-finder.
Then, I held the breadbox up to the wall while he marked the stud locations on the inside of the breadbox to determine where the holes needed to be drilled…
Next, he removed the breadbox’s door to keep it from becoming damaged, and drilled four holes into the back of the breadbox. Good drill bits were key here as the metal was pretty challenging to drill through. We stacked the box on top of a piece of scrap wood covered by a rag to avoid damaging our floors and/or the finish on the breadbox. He started by drilling through the inside…
Then, went back through the holes on the outside with a slightly larger drill bit to make the hole clean…
Once the holes were drilled, he held the box up along the wall again, and I marked the hole locations on the wall with a sharpie…
Yep. I totally just showed you a dot on the wall. You are welcome. 😉 At this point, Joey reattached the top…
Then, used heavy duty anchors, and screwed the box to the wall using screws and washers…
The inside of the box looked like this…
And we were left with this…
Which is when I realized that we should’ve removed the rubber feet. They made the box scream “Hey you! I’m a random breadbox screwed to the wall!”. So, I set about removing them. They were glued on pretty securely, so Joey suggested that I heat the glue up with a hairdryer…
Which I did. I heated up the feet and carefully pried them off with a razor. It was pretty slow going, but I got them all off eventually. And was left with this residue…
I gently scraped the areas smooth with my razor, but little black smudges were still left behind. So, I busted out the red craft paint and touched up the black…
The paint is still wet here, but once it dried it blended right in. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a detail-person. It drives me bananas when a project of mine looks haphazard. So, when I say that I can’t tell that these spots ever existed, I mean it. It was totally serendipitous that the red craft paint that I had on hand matched the breadbox to a T.
And here he is today (after some post-reveal styling)…
Not bad for eight bucks and a bit of elbow grease. And, BONUS, one less thing is now littering No Man’s Land. Good deal!
For more of our bathroom makeover check out this post and this post (the latter contains links to all the rest of our bathroom makeover).
Linking it up at Tator Tots and Jello: Link Party Palooza!
Yes, this was my first attempt at a before and after “collage” of sorts. What do ya think? I may go back and add one to my other posts now that I’ve got the bug. Anyways, I love that the room is starting to take on kind of a funky gallery vibe. Plus, that adorable little face deserves the spotlight in every room if you ask me. I heart that face. 🙂
Operation Home 