firewood holder

Today I'm going to show how I repurposed a clearance sale drink tub into a rusticky (rusticy?) firewood holder. It's not an extravagant redo, but I like it.

Tutorial after the jump!


Firstly, acquire one clearance-price beverage tub. This one was one of three that I bought years ago at Target. I use them for the holding of sodas for backyard parties (the others are cuter; a hot pink one and a pumpkin orange). Thing is, I don't really need all of them.

So I picked the mustard yellow to work with since it's ugly.
See? Uggo. Anyhoozie, I sprayed it with my Krylon Indoor/Outdoor paint in Saddle Tan. I wasn't terribly careful about drips and super-good coverage since I knew it wouldn't show in the final stages:

Just one haphazard coat, and I was ready for stage 2. I opened up good ol' Microsoft Word 2007 and printed out No. 7 using Elephant font. Then I traced the back of the numbers in pencil, like so:

And then I pressed them on the tub and scribbled over them to transfer onto the paint, thusly:

Et voila!

If you've got super eagle vision, you can see the blurry number seven up there. If you have regular old crappy vision like me, you'll just have to trust. Next, I painted the pencil transfer and filled it in using a white acrylic paint marker.

We're totally getting there, right? Looking a little better. Lastly, I got out my trusty Minwax Wood Sheen (you may remember it from the angel wings project. I love this stuff) and thinned it with a little water. I applied it to the tub using a sponge brush (I buy these in bulk from the Dollar Tree) and let it dry.

I'm going to leave it as is for a day or two and see how I like it. I may put another coat of the wood sheen on to make the colors a little more subdued, but that remains to be seen. For now:

It's the free (to me) No. 7 firewood holder. What's that? Oh, yeah. The Christmas swag... I meant to take it down, but uh... there were so many things I had to do right after New Year's that it slipped my mind. Like um, I've been reading to the animals at the shelter and uh... other noble volunteer work.

MAYBE IT'S TRUE YOU, YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE.

Me likey. The wood stain creates an almost crackle finish that looks really cool and which did not require any extra steps on my part to render. This was made exclusively with stuff I had on hand, but one could make it for less than $15 if you get a good deal on your tub.

By the way, pine cones make great kindling.