DIY Trough-thingy

Hey there all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend! We were away last week on a lovely family vacation – I hope to tell you more about it this week. :)

Today I wanted to share another how-to for a project from the family room redo. I’m almost done, I swear. :)

When we moved the TV over the long dresser, it meant my accessory options dwindled quite a bit. Whatever I put on there had to be long and low…and I didn’t have anything that would work.

I lived with it for a few days and then an idea came to me. I love the look of the old wood troughs I’ve seen here and there online and in antique shops. I guess they’re called troughs – I have no idea.

I just love them. :)

I knew I could make my own, so that I did. I wanted it to be longer than the TV, so I needed something 48 inches long. I went out the garage and found a scrap of thick molding used as a chair rail in our powder room:

That room has been torn apart for months now. That is how I roll.

I used that as the base, or bottom of the container, because I knew it wouldn’t be seen. For the sides, I wanted a rustic, dark wood. So I dug around the garage some more. And I found some leftover cedar from our shutter fix out front.

This is why I’m OK with the fact that we can’t walk through half of our garage. I keep all my scraps for just this. :)

The cedar has a rough side:

But that was a little too rough for me, so I went with the smooth side:

But it needed a little distressing. :) 

I grabbed some tools:

And my assistant got to work:

For once Mommy said take the hammer and GO FOR IT.

We had a blast. :)

After we were done, this is what we got:

And after using a foam brush to apply a quick coat of this:

(I tell you what – stain lasts forever. I’ve had this little can for YEARS.)

We ended up with a beautiful, rustic piece of wood:

I put it together like I did the DIY window boxes I showed you here. Basically I glued and nailed the sides onto the sides of the bottom piece of wood, then capped each end off like so: 

The rough end of the wood shows at each end, but that’s what I wanted. LOVE.

By the way, this is so not perfect. There’s some gaps at the ends where wood meets wood -- I just put the not-perfect side on the back. :)

I envisioned big puffy hydrangeas spilling out of it when I made this thing, and they sure don’t disappoint:

It’s deep enough so I could just put little cups of water in there, then place the flowers in. :)

I LOVE IT!:

I’m quite giddy about it’s possibilities too – piled high with acorns and leaves for fall, greenery and ornaments at Christmas, grass and Easter eggs…I could go on and on!

It’s the project that keeps on giving. :)

I did cheat on my no-spend July on this one though – kinda. Not really. I didn’t have enough cedar wood, so I returned some items to Lowes and used my credit to buy one more piece of wood. So really…it didn’t cost my anything. Technically.

I’m tricky.  ;)

I love how it turned out, and I promise you can do one of these too. This one took about 40 minutes start to finish, but I used a compound saw and a nail gun, which definitely speeds up the process.

It could be done without either though – a hand saw and regular nails would work just fine (the nails would add to the rustic look!).

One more look at my DIY trough-thingamabob:

I love how well it fills in that awkward spot! If you decide to try it, I think the cedar was about $4 for an eight foot piece. You could use just about any kind of wood though – you’ll get the same effect with some distressing and stain.

There. you. go. Another family room project down! I’m working on a couple more little things this week, and I hope to show you those soon. Maybe I’ll show you another room in the meantime.  :)