before and after: another one bites the rust

It's been sleepy here in little adelaide, with Kym having a couple of days off work to look after me while I fought against a virus. It won a couple of battles (including some of my dignity. We'll talk about that another time). I won the war.

Meanwhile, here's a little project I whipped up prior to the whole icky-virus thing.

Remember when I showed you the loveliest meat safe ever? Turns out it wasn't big enough on it's lonesome to hold all our spices (did I mention that we hoard?). I decided rather than cull our spice collection (which is one of the few collections we actually make use of), I'd add to the storage. Here's a photo of the victim, a mini nail/screw storage whatsit from my grandfather, and sitting with it, an ikea toothbrush holder that was starting to rust from exposure to water(!), both completely unaware of what was to come...

I loooooooooved the mustardy-sunflowery-yellow of the whatsit, but as I'm sure my long term readers know by now... I hate to spend money. Seeing as I didn't already have the paint colour on hand, I went with an apple-green paint from a previous project (used up all the red on the meat safe!), which matches a few other tones in the room (tupperware and succulent wall stickers)... I'll need to watch my game, as I risk having a constantly festive kitchen!

I went through the same process as I did with the meat safe, and VOILA!

I made the labels with recycled card and a trusty permanent marker. I didn't want to make "permanent" labels because I need the option of changing them as we go through our different spice phases with the change of seasons.

To be honest, the toothbrush holder does NOT match the bathroom at all, but it has solved a rust problem which means not buying more products unnecessarily and making the most out of what we've got. Next time I have a larger project and find myself with spare paint I might repaint it, but in the mean time, it's doing the job of holding our toothbrushes without rusting!

I'm loving the industrial touches to our kitchen, it adds masculinity and strength, while the fun colours still pop and meet my girly need for prettiness! Can I hear a Woot! for gender neutral rooms?