Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Delightful dowels

My deepest apologies for the super cheesy title.  But I do think that my clothes rods are much more delightful now than they were before!  Our master closet, and three other closets in the house, have these wood dowel clothes rods with lovely plastic sheathing on them:
Try not to be blinded by our disgusting basement floor, okay?  The covers of said dowels were filthy and cheap-looking.  I decided the best way to handle this problem was to remove the silly plastic and just stain the dowels to match the floor.  After all, they ARE wood....and any wood can look nice stained, in my opinion.  So, I gathered my supplies in the basement:
Sandpaper
Floor stain and foam brush
Gloves (no more Zombie Manicures for me, thanks!)
And possibly the most important supply
Anylovemesomecabernet, now I was in business!  I removed the covers and sanded down the dowels with a fine-grit sandpaper.  The first sheet I grabbed out of the sandpaperbox (heh) was 220, so I just went with it.  It doesn't really matter that much anyway, they are only clothes rods after all!
When they were relatively smooth (but isn't everything smooth when you're drinking a fine wine?) I got on my glovies and used that foam brush to apply the stain from the bottom up, holding it up like so:
I let it rest for about a minute, and then wiped it all off with that unfortunate hand towel there.  It used to match my downstairs bath wall paint perfectly, then **men** got their hands on it and somehow it got bleached.  So now it is a stain rag.  Curses!  Once all of the dowels were stained, I laid them on this here cardboard to dry.
Then I took the easy way out and sprayed them several times with this wonderful stuff instead of using regular floor poly and a brush.  Cause I'm lazy.  Sue me.
They were looking mighty glossy in the basement...
But after they dried and I got them up in the closet, I was super happy with the result! 
How's that for a $0 makeover? 

ps - Thank you to all who entered my giveaway!  If you didn't already, you have until midnight on Wednesday, April 14th!

17 comments:

  1. Ooooh! I likee! Its all in the details! Cheers!

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  2. HAHAHA! For some reason, my towels end up beached also! What a mystery. The bars look great! Good way to dress up the closet!

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  3. even little things make a huge difference .... delightful dowels!!!

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  4. Wow, nice work! Isn't it amazing how the littlest changes make the biggest difference? Well, I mean, other than your floors. Which made the hugest difference. But you know what I mean, right??

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  5. I wish they would start selling wine at Lowes/Home Depot. It makes any project more tolerable. Looks great!

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  6. I'm all about taking the easy and free path with projects :) The delightful dowels look great!

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  7. Wow, those looks great! I think you've inspired me to stain mine once I get around to some closet makeovers. Love them! :)

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  8. Ahhh it is the little things, right? Those look lovely. And if anyone can make a fancy wine glass look right at home among all those supplies, it's you. Love that shot.

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  9. Hi Sara,

    Just wanted to say hey and what a great blog. And I love the "most important supply". :)

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  10. I can't wait until my house is so perfect that my closet rods match my floors! I think the home jealousy factor just went up about five notches today!!

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  11. Agreed - wine makes everything better :-) love this, a simple project but makes the space so much more polished. I will remember this!

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  12. Ooh, much bettet and can't beat the price!

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  13. Ooh, much bettet and can't beat the price!

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  14. Those are some super duper classy dowels

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  15. Those look awesome!! That is exactly what I am hoping to do in our master closet too once hubby (ahem, WE) have some time and some other projects finished. Two thumbs up from me!!

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  16. Love how the stain turned out! And I agree, wine is the most important tool for DIYing!

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  17. Ha! Your wine preparation cracks me up - that is EXACTLY what I do when I'm about to start a big project (or a little project, or cook dinner, or watch some tube...). Glad to see I'm not the only one. :)

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Thanks so much for reading....your comments mean a lot to me!
Sara