Heidi, Monica and Mary Jean of HammerLikeAGirl.com are three Seattle girls with backgrounds in graphic design, architecture, construction, and real estate – with a preference for rusty, worn, and modern. Once a week they get together at one of their houses and tackle a project together. They brainstorm, research, design, create, build – and they “always have lunch”, Mary Jean likes to add. They submitted a couple of their recent projects created out of material from The RE Store:
In the words of Heidi:
I needed a small bookshelf for a narrow space. I found wire school/swim baskets at The RE Store and a window frame that had been a door side lite, so it was tall and narrow. I attached the baskets to the wood sidelite frame with wood screws and large washers. A note: verify that your sidelite or alternate frame is the same width or narrower as the baskets you will be attaching.
My previous RE Store purchase of a 5′ bookcase came with an unfinished end panel. The bookcase is a pretty aged and worn piece so it needed something a little different. Also, thinking that it would either a.) be a really long time before we would make a nice paneled trim piece for it, or b.) it didn’t deserve a nice paneled trim piece, I decided to clad it in an old sign I found what at first glance was one old funky black and white blocky sign for all of $1. I made a rectangular template to isolate different views of the sign, and cut it into 3 pieces.
I wanted to mock up the design so we measured the panel and made a cropping template with paper. We marked and cut the sign with a circular saw, with straight edge, clamped to a table. We then sanded the edges with fine sandpaper to finish off the edges. We pre-drilled the nail holes in the plywood sign, because it was thin and we were nailing so close to the edge. We could have used screws, but liked the look of the nails better. And it is good for now – maybe someday I’ll get around to putting something more refined on there, but then again, probably not!
HammerLikeAGirl.com was created to share our experiences in hopes of encouraging others to team up with friends on their projects. We’d love to hear what projects you are tackling. Just remember, when girls band together, anything is possible. Ok, boys can join the band, too. But they have to get a permission slip from their moms! Making progress is kind of addicting so if you and friends dive in, remember to come up for air!
We love seeing this type of collective happening! Thanks so much to Heidi, Monica and Mary Jean for being such avid customers of The RE Store, and for their creativity.
Do you have a RE Store-inspired project to be proud of? Please, show off & share your story!