Trumpet Lamp

Here is another of my what to do with all the junk makeovers.

Way back when Music Girl first started band she played the trumpet. We found a good sounding trumpet at a thrift store while traveling during summer vacation. What a deal we figured.

Then Music Girl went back to school and came home from the first day of band all excited about switching to the French Horn.

So the trumpet sat on top of a wardrobe in her room.
Unused.
Unloved.
Unplayed.

Until the 9.0 Great Tohoku Earthquake of March 2011.

It crashed to the floor and really hasn't been the same since.

But you don't just throw a musical instrument in the recycle bin do you?

One of the many challenges with our new house is lacking of lighting.
Only the kitchen and family room have overhead lighting.  So we needed lamps.

I checked Pinterest and found lots of pictures but no actual plans.  So that trumpet just sat around waiting.

Until I was sorting through boxes of junk that had been in storage and found a fully functional light socket on a brass pole that had apparently been part of a lamp at some point back in the midst of time.  I don't know what happened to that lamp but the Professor saved this bit and occasionally used it as a trouble light.

Since it was the same color as a trumpet, a light bulb went off in my head.*

I used highly technical and complicated skills to zip tie the light to the top of the trumpet and I tied the cord around the bottom.  Then I  stuck on a lamp shade I had been planning to toss.

Viola, a trumpet lamp.

The lamp shade was pretty hideous so I got out some of my scrapbooking paper, cut it to size, folded it in pleats and hot glued it on.  Someday I might remove the paper and modge podge it with hymnal pages like I did for Music Girl's trash can, but for now I'm pretty happy with my lamp.

For now it is sitting on top of the piano.  You know, the one no one ever plays.  The one that was last played on this occasion.


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*Do you like the pun?  I am my father's daughter.

Maps of the World Shoe Shelf

Here another example of creation I think my Dad would be proud of.

There were 2 problems to solve.

Number One:  Among the oodles of stuff to be dealt with were a huge pile of maps: maps in storage from before we went overseas, maps from our travels around Europe before we had a GPS, and maps of Japan, way too many maps.

But who uses paper maps anymore.  Not a family where everyone carries a smart phone and we have a GPS system for each car.

But the Professor was horrified by the thought of recycling or donating the maps.  Given my certainty that we would never ever use them I was horrified by the thought of keeping them.

Problem number two:  After six years in Japan the absolute necessity of taking off our shoes at the door is ingrained in all of us.  Life any other way is unimaginable.  But unlike our house in Japan which like all good houses should had a separate entryway with space specifically for the removal and storage of shoes upon entry, this house has no such luxury.  There is very little space by the front door.

What to do, what to do.

Here is my solution:

It started with a couple of shoe shelves that we harvested from the neighbors trash.*  There were in rough shape and paint alone wasn't going to cut it.  Plus there were only two of them.  I could buy two more that were almost but not quite the right size.  

"You could just buy two more new ones and put these back out in the trash," one of the children suggested.

"Don't be silly," I responded.  "I just need to cover them with something."

And thus the Maps of the World Shoe Shelf was born.

Here is a work in progress shot

A little Mod Podge, a pair of scissors and an hour or so of work and two birds with one stone.

We get to enjoy our maps everyday and have a place to put our shoes.  

Win win.

Now all I have to do is get the entire family to actually put their shoes on the shelf every time. 

Suggestions anyone?

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*Oldest Girl is horrified by what her parents drag home when walking the dog.  The Professor is horrified by what people throw away.

My Latest Creation

Maybe I can't show my dad, but I can show you.

This is my latest creation.

We call it the antique corner.

Lots of challenges faced us when we moved into this house, the fact that it rained in the basement if we used the upstairs showers, chipped and broken asbestos tile in the family room, windows only the Professor could open, just to name a few.*  But even greater than those challenges was the challenge of what to do with all the stuff.

Because home repairs can be accomplished with enough money and/or blood, sweat, and tears. Dealing with stuff can threaten to end 25 year marriages.

A decade ago when we first prepared to move overseas the option of putting stuff into storage until our return saved our marriage.  I wanted to toss everything.  The professor wanted to keep everything.  As time ticked down and the arrival of the packers loomed large, storage was an attractive option.  We stopped debating and just shifted items into the destined for storage pile.

Unfortunately, what goes into storage must come out.  So in the midst of dealing with showers that rained into the basement and crumbling asbestos tile, we also had to deal with boxes and boxes of stuff we hadn't seen for years, much of which I would have been happy to never see again.

The Professor and I are clearly opposites when it comes to what stuff should and should not be kept. They say opposites attract but I've never heard anyone say that opposites make for a strong, stable, conflict free marriage.

Let's just skip ahead in the story and say that the large crawl space in our house has become the new storage and with God's grace and constant help our marriage is good for another 25 years or more.

But some items don't belong in the crawl space.  What to do with the antique typewriter, adding machine, and old rotary telephone?

And thus the antiques corner shelf was born.

The first plan was to buy a couple of shelves at Home Depot and put them up in this convenient corner space.  The only problem was that the exact sizes we needed weren't available.

No problem I thought, this is the land of things delivered right to my door.  I'll order something.  But I couldn't find anything that was both the right size and not expensive.

So I decided to do it myself.

I checked out what random scraps of wood were present in the shed and found two beat up shelves that the Professor had gleaned from the neighbors trash back in the early days when he was gathering any wood he could find to put on the floor of the crawl space to protect stuff from potential water damage.

I very scientifically made my quarter circle shapes with the marker tied to a piece of twine method then cut them out using a jigsaw.  I filled in the old screw holes with spackle and sanded everything down.

I found more wood scraps to serve as brackets and screwed them into the wall.  I primed, attached everything and painted.

I'm pretty pleased with the result.

After looking at the final product, the Professor added the antique I-Pod.  I'm trying to decide if I like it or not.  Should I add a small shelf above the phone to hold the I-Pod, leave the I-Pod on the shelf with the phone or get rid of the I-Pod altogether (and by get rid of I mean put in the crawl space of course). What do you think?

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* I could get the windows open if I used a hammer but for some reason that made the Professor nervous.