Pirate Room Crates

When we were planning the Pirate Room beds we knew we wanted storage under them.

  First we planned on building drawers under them. 

 But that would take a lot more time and brain power for us. 

 So we decided to look for boxes or baskets.  

We needed a total of 8, 

4 per bed.  

And we wanted them the be pretty good sized.  

We started looking, 

and found what we wanted was going to cost $15 to $20 each!! 

 That's $120-160 that we did not have in our budget!! 

 (Yes, we have extremely low budgets!!) 

 So, we took a trip to Home Depot to see what it would take to make them.  

As fate would have it,

 we found a whole bunch of cut up wood fence pickets 

and a bunch of cut up 1x2's piled in the junk bin. 

 (You know the bin of wood that's damaged, sprayed florescent green, and sold really cheap?)  

We did some quick drawing and figuring in our heads, 

then piled our cart full of this misfit wood, 

found a manager and said, 

"We want all this for $25, deal?"  

He said "yes!!' 

 (Even at their discounted price it would have been more like $50) 

(But it never hurts to ask! 

 The worst they can say is no!  

But this time they said yes!!)

You may not find the screaming deal like we did but the fence pickets are only $1.48 for a 6 foot plank.

Ours were already cut into 2 foot sections.  

We just had to cut some of them in half for the ends and cut up the 1x2's. 

 Les made a "U" shape with the 1x2's and attached the fence pickets to them.  

We used scraps of quarter inch thick wood we had left over 

from various other projects to make the bottoms.

After all the boxes were built, it was time for the handles. 

 (It's a Pirate room so of coarse we used rope.)  

We bought a package of rope at Walmart for less than five bucks.

 Les is an Eagle scout and used those skills to fix all the rope handles so they wouldn't unravel!     

Here's his tutorial in his own words:  

Because of the type of rope I used, 

I had to ‘whip’ the ends to prevent them from becoming unraveled.

This is a technique I learned when I was a Cub Scout many moons ago.

            Note: Do not cut your rope to the length you think you need at this time.

1.    The material used for whipping should be less than 1/8 the diameter of the rope to be whipped.

I chose to use yarn because we already had it.

2.    Cut off approximately 12 inches of yarn.

Lay one end of your piece of yarn along the end of your rope.

About two inches of both yarn and rope should now be lying parallel to each other.

3.    Form a loop in your yarn so that the ends of the yarn are lying parallel to each other, but point in opposite directions.

Lay the loop on the end of the rope so that the ends of the yarn and the rope are all parallel.

Be sure that about one inch of yarn extends beyond the end of your rope.

4.    While holding the yarn in place between the thumb and forefinger, tightly wrap the loop of yarn around the end of the rope.

Be sure that the wraps are side-by-side and do not overlap each other.

Do this until you have about ½ inch of wrapping around the rope.

5.    At this point you should have two short pieces of yarn coming out of each end of the wrap.

You should also have a small loop of yarn left over in the middle.

6.    Pull the end of the yarn that is extending beyond the end of the rope.

This will pull the left over yarn loop to the inside of the wrap.

7.    To finish the wrapping, pull the two short pieces of yarn away from each other until all is tight.

Trim off the excess yarn so than there are no loose pieces.

Now you have one end of your rope whipped and do not have to worry about it becoming unraveled as you work with it.

In order to create our handles we needed a full 18 inches of rope for each one.

8.    With one end of your rope whipped, cut it to length, about 18 inches.

Repeat steps one through seven on your un-whipped end of your first 18 inch piece of rope.

Repeat steps one through seven on your next piece of rope before you cut it to length.

Repeat all steps until you have the desired number of 18 inch ropes.

Tie a knot as close as you can to one end of each piece of rope.

9.    Slide the untied ends through the holes created in your crate.

Tie that side of the rope as closely as you can to the end.

Wow that was my first guest post! 

He's so great!  

                                                             

Crates done,

 next step stain!!

We used two coats of Minwax in Golden Oak  

which costs about $5.  

 I wanted the rope to be darker so we stained it as well as the wood.

Last step was to put something on the bottom to keep it from scratching the cubby floor. 

 Our first thought was felt glued to the bottom, 

but I thought it would soon peel off. 

 (These were to be used every day by two young boys.) 

After lots of thinking and checking our pocket book, 

(which was empty!)

We opted to use what we had.  

We had a bundle of small flat sticks we had picked up at a garage sale long ago.  

(I don't know what they are used for but I saw the same bundle the other day in the roofing department at Lowe's.) 

 We cut each stick about 1/2 inch shorter than the length of the boxes.  

Then I took some fuzzy fabric I already had and wrapped the sticks.

 Using a staple gun to hold the fabric in place.

With short nails and a nail gun we attached them to the bottom of the boxes.

 (OK, you caught me, not all of our scraps of wood we used for the bottoms were pretty.)

So what did they end up costing us? 

 About $4.50 each!! 

 That is for a 1'x2' crate! 

 We saved $80-125 dollars on all eight crates. 

What do the boys use them for?  

They each have a junk crate, 

(cause let's face it kids love junk!)  

The middle two are shorts and jeans.  

And the last one is use for their dirty clothes.  

 Les and I love them so much we want to make some more. 

 If you want some Les said he would love to make them and sell them!  

So let me know!!  

They would give that hip rustic look to almost any room!

Thanks for stopping by!