From Aquarium to Terrarium

As I've mentioned before, I am fairly new to the world of apartments.  I'm honestly not a huge fan of living in such close quarters to people however I have found a hidden gem in my apartment complex - THE DUMPSTER! 

The other day my man friend and I were heading out for a walk - dropping of the garbage on the way.  Little did I know I would find a handful of goodies waiting for me.  All for FREE - Amazing! We came back to our apartment with a basic stool, a large mirror, a really ugly chandelier, a hutch and a fish tank. Each piece is ready and waiting for me to transform it into something amazing. 

I've started working on a few of the pieces but my first finished product is my fish tank.  We started out with just a regular rectangular fish tank... nothing special, a little dirty even.  As soon as I saw it I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.  I'd seen so many fancy terrariums on Pinterest and I knew it wouldn't be a problem for us to make our own. So after a couple of good spray downs, a rinse or two and a trip to Home Depot I left the tank in my man friends hands.

He was able to hide all of the seams using thin pieces of wood, creating a wooden frame and making it look amazing. Then we had to pick the plants for our terrarium - and I really wanted to use only succulents. I've been madly in love with succulents since my second year of university when one of my friends told me that if I took a piece of her Jade Tree and put it in water that it would grow.  I do not have a green thumb so I didn't fully believe her - I had to see it for myself.  In true university fashion, I grew my Jade clipping in a shot glass for quite some time.  Over the years it grew to be giant - with my mother bringing it back to life several times after I left it on the brink of death. Sadly, it grew to be a little too heavy for its own good, tipped over and snapped off its main branch and it never recovered. So I thought I might try again.

We ended up going to a nearby greenhouse which specializes in succulents called 'Jade Gardens' and pulled together a lovely group of plants. To the bottom of the tank we added a layer small river rocks which we purchased from a garden centre and then a layer of activated charcoal from the pet store in the fish tank section. This allows the plants to drain properly and helps improve air quality.  From what I have read the charcoal is especially important if your terrarium is going to have a lid - allowing the terrarium to act as its own ecosystem.  On top of that we added cactus soil rather than top soil - it is more conducive to growing succulents and cacti - and then of course the plants. Our original plan was to make this an enclosed terrarium but some of the plants that we picked were rather tall so instead we chose to leave the top open.

Here is the finished product - What do you think?

Let There Be Light

My next upcycling project for my apartment was our lamps. Since I met him my boyfriend had always had these terrible looking lamps in his bedroom. The stand was tarnished gold and for some reason the shade always made me think of the inside of a genies lamp. Worst of all they were covered in dust that never seemed to disappear. 

Needless to say, there was no way I was going to have these lamps in my new appt looking like that. So I decided to transform them. 

We bought a can of black spray paint and sprayed the bases and I went out and bought new lamp shades. The bases turned out to be amazing - the black really brought out all of the intricate detail (a feature that I hated before, but is now one of my favourite things about the lamps). 

Ideally I would have loved to cover the old metal frame of the lamp shade with some sort of inexpensive material like burlap however the existing frames were in pretty rough shape so I decided against it. 

Here is the finished product! 

In the end I think we spent approximately $35 to complete both lamps (would have been much less if I could have salvaged the shade frames) and they look great! Who could ask for anything more. 

Upcycling My Apartment

For some time now I have been obsessed with the idea of upcycling - Taking something used or something that could be considered waste and turning it into something fantastic!  For me the most fascinating type of upcycling is anything involving skids - possibly due to my past in retail. Skids are just so versatile - tables, deck chairs, planters, you name it… you can do it.  I must admit Pinterest has only fed the fire, giving me more and more ideas for projects that I have no time to complete or no where to put. 

Luckily I recently moved out of my parents house and into my own apartment! I am now a grown up. Even more fortunate… I have a man friend who is handy with tools.  When we moved in we had very little furniture for our living room - we spent a few weeks with out a couch… repainted a terribly ugly bookshelf… inherited a TV stand and we are currently using another TV stand as a side table. The one piece I knew that I wanted my man friend to make was a coffee table out of… you guessed it… skids. So he worked his butt off and pulled together this amazing table!  

I love it! From what I am told our coffee table cost about $25 - essentially the cost of the stain and varnish.  Way better than the majority of coffee tables we saw while we were couch shopping with a similar style costing over $150. 

Not only was the table cheap … it is also something that is unique to our apartment - something that no one else has (those of you that know me know that that is probably my favourite part). 

Next, I'm hoping that eventually we can find time to pull together some side tables to match.