Old picture frames became my gorgeous apothecary storage

I needed a way to organize my art supplies, but do it in style. I also wanted to get rid of a bunch of scrap wood I've been hoarding way too long, just in case it was useful. So I thought, that's it, that's the solution. I need to use all this scrap wood to build and organize my furniture. Yet, this was not going to be easy. For instance, what can you build from a box of frame corner samples? I got these frame samples from a closing down neighborhood old timey art store. It closed and by the end they were just giving things away, including these frame samples, and that was more than 10 years ago, and now they're sitting here, and I've barely done anything with them. This is where it changes, because I'm challenging myself to do something with them, or get rid of them. One of the challenges is that there are all kinds of thicknesses and sizes. Obviously they could not be used structurally, and since they were all different, I couldn't even combine the two corners to form a normal frame. The more I looked at them, the more I realized, I just had to do abnormal frames. The structure would sort itself out through the process, but it will depend a lot on what I have at hand, and what I can scrounge around, because the goal is to not buy one single thing. I'm going to use everything that I already have in here, and hopefully get the stash of old wood down to a minimum, if not zero. So I headed into my theatrical tool shed with the shape of this furniture piece, as a riddle in my mind. And much like the mythical gates of Thebes guarded by the deadly Sphinx, the door was guarded by paper wasps. I reverently opened the door, as not to disturb them, as the riddle occupied my mind. I grabbed the chop saw, and carelessly headed out, without a clear solution in mind. And that is when it happened. The zealous guardian had acted in haste. For some reason, the wasps were more aggressive and territorial than usual. I dropped the chop saw, and I got some ice to soothe the burning of my ear, and used this downtime as the opportunity to come up with a solution. And through the pain, seeking a solution, a remedy, medicine, a prescription, and that's it, I needed an apothecary. The riddle was solved. I just had to cut the corners so they would form squares of equal size, but varied texture and color. Then form a grid of all of them. Now that I have all the frames cut into little squares, it's time to order them in the right position. I'll take a tip from the Italian architecture of the Renaissance, where they had in the bottom stories more chunky and less ornate ornamentation, and as you progressed towards the top stories, you would see finer detail and more intricate work. The apothecary concept sounded nice and all, but there was a big problem. Practicality. That's because the small drawers would be great to store small art supplies, but what about larger items? How would I store those? The way I'm thinking is that in the bottom here, I'm going to have one layer that's just a fake drawer, sort of open cabinet. So I had to cut out spacers to glue in between two rows of the squares to give the illusion of a continuous facade of drawers. And then on the other ones will be real drawers, and then the top two will also be fake to open because it's hard to see what's on top of drawers if they're above your eye line. I would glue the pieces onto thin boards so they would function as hinged cabinet doors. For the small drawers in the middle, I would also glue the frame corners onto small squares to form drawer faces. I finally finished cutting all the pieces. Now I just need to sand them in, clean them up, and glue them so that they're ready for the next time I build the drawers. With the concept resolved, I could just bask a bit and enjoy a sunny late summer afternoon as I crafted Serenaded by the Song of Cicadas and of Passing Trains. But wait, I still had to come up with a structure. What on earth would I use that was big enough to build a cabinet body? The solution wasn't hanging far from my art studio. Yes, I used a door. Let me explain it to you. This modern door had been installed by previous owners and eventually I planned on discarding it. So I just rushed the process while recycling the panel. I spread the drawer faces over the door to size up exactly how big this cabinet would be and then mark the point where I would cut it. I knew I had to make the cabinet into two pieces to make it lighter and easier to transport. Furniture bashed together from scraps has a tendency of being heavy. I knew that from past experience. These door panels would make for easy and structurally sound sites. Um, about that. Well, it's cut, but because these doors are really made of spit, as we say in Portuguese, we gotta account for the gap here. There is no actual wood in the center, but that won't be a problem. I think I have a solution for that. Custom cut spacers glued and nailed in strategic spots would provide just enough support to attach the inside shelves. But what exactly would I use for that? The challenge is to use all these scraps of wood or most that I can so that I can finally zero out this pile. So I grabbed all kinds of wood rejects to further reinforce the cabinet and form the shelves. In some ways, the more beat up and textured pieces would play into the beat up aesthetics of this piece. That being said, my life would have been so much easier if I had lots of wide planks to work with, requiring less mental gymnastics. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I'm using all kinds of wood. The leftover siding that was recycled from the old shed that was the leftover for the new shed. It's nice to have a piece of furniture that you can see the traces of different lives that lived. And then out of chaos, order emanated. And yes, I just get into the flow and measure things on the spot without really planning anything on paper. It's worked so far. All right, let's see what's happened here. This is sort of the idea. I do think that it has a bit of a 90s loft vibe. With the bottom figured out, I moved on to the more complicated part. I'm having a bit of trouble with how I can make the drawer system work easily. So I am measuring things and now I think I have a solution. I need to create sort of a lattice work. The issue was that I had to make the drawer rail structure as light as possible, and I only had thin boards to work with. So a lattice made a lot of sense. And since my challenge was to not buy anything to build a cabinet, that included even the screws. But with some ingenuity, lots of thrift and plenty of patience, the drawer system grid was done. I attached it to the top part of the cabinet and finished the top shelf space with whatever pieces of wood I could scrounge. And to give the cabinet some stately presence, I installed an old piece of window casing as a pediment. Because it was wider than the cabinet, I trimmed the sides and wrapped them around the corner so it would function as a crown. And just like that, I had the skeleton of my cabinet ready. Then came the slightly tedious step of fashioning the small drawers out of random board off cuts using finish nails. With the drawer finally done, now it's time to put it in action. It's the most satisfying part. Nice. So when I said I would not buy anything, I lied. I had to buy hinges. But I bought one big piano hinge and cut it into 12 pieces because it was less expensive than buying 12 small ones. To install them, I made sure to drill pilot holes first to then screw them in place. With the rest of the drawers placed in their respective spots, I could finally picture the apothecary in all its glory. Finally have the full structure of the piece done. Now I just gotta put some finishing touches, a few moldings here and there, and I should be good to then install hardware, probably different poles, and finally paint everything because it does need a bit more cohesion. At this point, it's looking very much Frankenstein-ish. And speaking of monsters, I noticed an unusual movement around the paper wasp's nest. Into my horror, I saw a murder hornet decimating the wasp larva. Now I understood their previous aggression towards me. Poor things. I want something special here in the pediment, so I'm gonna resort to my basket of antique furniture pieces, and I think this is gonna be a good candidate to go right over here. But also, these spindles here, I think they can go fancy corner there. Building the structure had been exhausting, and just as another muggy August day came to close, I relished the last minutes of brightness to indulge in putting up the decorative moldings. It is my favorite part of a build, a bit like the olives you save on a plate to eat last, savoring the moment. By the next sun-kissed afternoon, I resumed detailing, including trying out a technique I was itching to experiment with, collage. I want the interior side to have some kind of texture. I collected these letters from the flea market years ago, and I always felt that they were beautiful. Even though I like the texture, I feel like it might be too light and too high contrast, so I diluted some dark red paint and painted the envelopes and postcards in various shades. I liked how the collage was developing, so I moved on to paint the body of the apothecary, and for that I scrounged around some old paint and mixed together a weird tone of magenta. I suppose some would call it mauve. Diluted it with water and brushed a wash all over the piece, sometimes removing the excess with an old rag. My goal was to unify the disparate pieces while celebrating the diverse texture. Was that the right call? Was it a mistake? One thing it was, for sure, not ordinary. In case the early 90s aesthetic wasn't strong enough on this piece, well, this mauve color just cemented it, for sure. I mean, I don't even like this color, but it's not gonna stay this way. This is only the first wash. My intent is to play around with it and try to get to a very rich and deep tone that varies a lot, almost like watercolor wash. So to bring a bit of method to my madness, I employed a color theory concept to save this piece. I mixed some thin, light mossy green paint, which serves as a bit of a complementary color to magenta, and brushed it over the pink using an old chip brush. One color would fight against the other, neutralizing it. At least, that's the theory. It quickly went from Barbie dream house to 1980s teenage girl bedroom. What this is doing, at least, is toning down the purple, which was a bit excessive, and then hopefully, by the next washes, I can darken things and just make it a little bit more moody and old. I think Punky Brewster would have been a proud owner of this piece. If anything, I was having fun. I then mixed a stronger and deeper green tone and dry brushed the cabinet here and there. The key to do a wild painted effect is to control your brush stroke directions. It needs to feel chaotic, but ordered, if that makes sense. Keeping a parallel direction to the wood grain does wonders. It differentiates a thrift store bad craft project from a cool, funky piece. I'm liking this result. Actually, the attenuation of the green dust to the purple is closer to what I envisioned, and it kind of picks up some of the teal and greenish silver tones. Feeling a bit more confident with the color, I scuffed up the edges of the cabinet with sandpaper and got the piece ready for the next crucial step, staining. For the stain, I'm going to try to use all of these extra stains that were laying around. This was the perfect way of using up leftovers from years of little projects. I tested the color on an inconspicuous spot first, and then wiped it with a rag. I then decided to see how it reacted in one of the detailed sections. It did give it good color depth, but I decided to add some of the dark stain to deepen the color. By immediately wiping off the excess, I could control the overall effect. It was looking iffy for a second there, but I'm very, very happy with how the color tone is turning out. Exactly what I imagined. It has a bit of that old French post office feeling, even though I don't remember seeing an old French post office. Finally, I stained the unmatched corners in the cut frames to make the seams less noticeable and give the piece an antique feel. With this stage complete, now comes the part that I'm looking forward to the most, which is adding the little poles. That's because I also have a collection of old poles I'm trying to source from. So back into the mythical shed I went to retrieve my collection of vintage cabinet poles. This time, the entrance lay unguarded by wasps after that unspeakable event. I had either saved these over the years or got them at flea markets for mere cents with a project in mind for them. Well, the day had finally come to use them all, but would I have enough? I'm thinking of not using the white one because I think it would be a bit jarring with the rest. So I'll keep only the metal, either golden or silver look, and maybe even the crystal should be okay because it wouldn't be as distracting as the white one. This underscores how bringing unifying elements into any composition is essential to create cohesion. Theme and variation is a common way to describe any artistic composition. If something is too similar, it becomes boring. If it is too diverse, it is not read as a unit and feels chaotic. In this case, I kept all the squares equal in a grid to corral the varied frame profiles into a unit. Similar coloring is the other element that brought everything together. To finish off the drawers, I glued old sheet music all over their interior and then sealed it with polyurethane. And with everything in place, my apothecary was ready to house all my art supplies in my studio. It was not a timid furniture, that is for sure, but I loved how well it fit the space. What do you think? Did some part of this surprise you the most? Would you have done anything differently? And for those wondering, as for the door, I did install an antique door in the vacant frame that matched my other doors perfectly. I just had to trim it a bit, but then it fit like a glove. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I loved reading your comments in the last Christmas episode. If you want to see more interior design videos like this one, just write it down in the comments and that will give me a clear message of what to bring in the future. If you want to support the channel, you can purchase art from my Etsy shop or support me through Patreon. Thank you so much and see you next time.