DIY

Old Window Rage!!!

You can create a cozy home with some simple DIY projects.  DIY for those of you who aren’t sure what that means, is Do-It-Yourself.  I love a simple DIY project that can take a beat up piece and make it look new and beautiful again.

This is a project I did years ago in our old house, but it was such a sweet memory that we got to bring with us to our new home, a little of the old with the new!

In the basement of our first home we had many old windows from throughout the years.  Old windows are all the rage right now, but I feel like so many people fall short once they get their hands on some.  I totally fall into this bubble myself, as I write this our shed has probably eight windows that I don’t currently have plans for.  The truth is that you can use old windows for so many things and they add a great touch of something simple and old in your home.

With the old windows in our house, I used them in two different ways.

For the first set of two, I wanted to take the windows and turn them into some decor for my childrens rooms.  Adding decor to walls in a bedroom is not only limited to pictures, adding a touch of something that adds depth and architecture to your walls can really set your space apart from others.  

All of the windows were painted in either white or brown.  I took off the hardware and cleaned them up. Then I lightly sanded them to give them a little distressed look and wahla, they were ready to go!  To add a little personal touch, I went to Hobby Lobby, and picked up some letters that spelt out my kiddos names. For my son, I just painted the tops of the letters to go with his room.  At the time his room was navy blue, with a bright red and green accents…yes I let him pick the colors of his room, but it turned out so cute! When we moved, he really wanted a hockey room.  If you don’t know, Minnesota is the state of hockey, and while I never grew up watching hockey, my son is obsessed with it. So, all I had to do was change the navy blue letters to black and the window was ready for his new room! 

I added a little something extra to my daughters letters.  Instead of painting the front portion of the letters, I painted the sides and added some printed paper on the front.  All I had to do was trace the letters on the paper of my choice and then I used modge podge glue to adhere the paper to the wood letter.  A few minutes later I had a sweet decor piece for our little angels room.

There you have it, our first two windows from our old house are now placed in our new house and they each tell a story that is personal to our kids and personal to our story as a family.

The second set of windows needed a little more elbow grease on my end.  I wanted more of a raw look for these windows and because they were all painted a few times, I hand to sand off all of the paint.  I could have used paint thinner and a scraping tool, but I was afraid the scraping would damage the windows. After sanding the windows, I had a beautiful raw wood that I just stained with a natural finish.  I used these windows as a frame, but not for pictures, for flowers!

I love the cheer that flowers can bring to a space, so I purchased milk vases from Hobby Lobby (yes, I love this place and I spend way too much time there!), added some fake flowers and hung them from the windows.  This is just a different and unique way to use a vase of flowers from the original vase on a table top…and once again, we now have a sweet story to tell about the decor in our new home.