Toy Chest Makeover - DIY

Hi friends! It seems we have found ourselves in an endless cycle of snow days here in Iowa, but I’m using this time to complete all those small projects I never seem to have time for. Today I’m going to share with you my most recent project, a quick and easy makeover of a children’s toy chest.

My husband found this toy chest on Facebook marketplace a few months back, and it had been sitting in our garage as a kind of ‘rainy day’ project. Well recently I found myself with some free time due to terrible weather, and decided to give it a quick makeover.

Here are a couple before photos of the top and sides of the piece.

I removed the hardware that attached the top to the rest of the box and ran a sander over the entire piece to smooth out any rough edges, since a one year old would soon be climbing all over it.

Next, I painted the entire toy chest with some furniture paint and allowed it to dry. The original hardware was a dull brass color, but some black spray paint fixed that!

I decided to add a little DIY stencil to the top piece of the toy chest, and if interested you can see my complete stencil tutorial here.

My ‘stencil’, which is just large font printed on regular paper.

Below is an up-close photo of how the stencil turned out, ignore the mess!

After everything was dry my husband was nice enough to put it all back together, and he added a couple rubber stoppers to the inside of the lid to prevent little fingers from being pinched. Overall, it was a quick no-cost makeover and now matches the decor in my daughters room.

Rubber stopper to prevent pinched fingers

That’s it! This project was a little time consuming due to the stencil, but with several days in a row of negative windchill, it seemed I finally had the time to take this on so I went for it!

As always, feel free to follow us on Instagram (@aps_design) for all of our up to the minute projects and behind the scenes antics! :)

The Epic Barn Beam Bed Frame!

Hi all! We are in the home stretch leading up to Christmas and many of you are probably already on break for the holidays (this season seemed like it flew by faster than previous years). I have one final post for you before we transition into full Christmas mode at my house, which will consist of a few days computer-free to enjoy this time with family. So if you are sitting in an airport waiting to travel to your holiday gathering, or maybe need a 5 minute ‘break’ from all things Christmas, I have just the post for you!

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Recently, we finished up a client project that turned out to be the biggest piece of furniture we have ever created, thus the title of this post. This bed frame required long hours of prep, assembly, take down, haul to its final location, and reassembly, but as you will see it was well worth it and turned out stunning!

The materials for this project included authentic reclaimed barn beams and these were SOLID 8x8 beams, which made them very heavy.

Prior to use, the beams had to be cut, sanded and assembled at our shop to ensure they all fit together properly and weren’t warped by the last 100 years of extreme temperatures of Midwest weather. a simple frame was assembled to keep the beams up off the floor in the client’s room.

Next, each beam was secured in place. To eliminate some of the weight of this piece, an alternate framing technique was used to comply with floor joist specifications and it was completely covered by the mattress and otherwise not visible once assembled.

Here the frame is being finished up and mattress added.

To show you just how big this bed frame is, the mattress pictured is king size!

Pictured below are some up close photos of the wood details on the headboard and beams, each of which are unique. There is just something about the look of authentic barn wood that cannot be recreated with other materials.

The finished project photos!

This bed frame turned out truly stunning!

I absolutely love how it all came together. A sincere thank you to the client who chose us to make this item for her!