Treasure Hunting in Miami

Where I grew up, trash, recycling, and yard waste pick up all happened on the same day. Not only that, we had separate cans for each. Regular trash was a black can, recycling was a blue can and yard waste was a green can. It was a simple thing, really. All you had to remember was, once a week, pull out all the cans to the sidewalk.

Then I moved to Miami…

Trash day is twice a week, and they are both different days than recycle day, which is once every two weeks. Doesn’t make much sense to me because we always fill our recycling way faster than we fill our trash. Not only that, but there is no yard waste can, instead people dig these pits and throw all their yard waste and random waste into them. Yes, the yard waste truck makes it’s round on a different day than the trash and recycle trucks.

So, now that you’re up to speed on the irrational Miami-Dade garbage cycle, I will let you know that it really doesn’t have much to do with how we made someone’s trash into our cute antique treasure. Except for the fact that the weird pit is where the Hubby found the “trash”.

On our walks with Luna we are often Antique-ing (sometimes I think I watch a little too much HGTV), unfortunately good finds are slim to none. However we did get lucky when Jordan found this awesome door in one of the trash pits. We decided to cut the door (super heavy door by-the-way) and use the window part to make a picture frame for Jordan’s parents and I’m still deciding what to do with the other part. Any ideas?!

Our awesome find!

What you’ll need:

Old door with windowpanes

Paint

Sandpaper (60-80 grit)

Mill File 

Painters Tape

Small Paintbrush

Mini Glue Dots

This was a fairly easy project and I think it turned out great! I would say the “hardest part” was taping the edges of the window prior to painting. I HATE taping edges, so thankfully the Hubby handled that part. Once the taping was done we painted a few coats of blue paint over the old white paint that was already on the door. Then we let it dry completely before we started distressing for that old antique look.

We put a few dings and scrapes in using the Mill file and sanded edges so the white paint underneath showed through. Have fun with this part; this is what’s going to make your project unique. But don’t go too crazy, sometimes less is more and if you do want more its always easier to add dings and sand than it is to take them away. Well, you really can’t take them away unless you repaint…. So, take your time. Ding, step back and look, sand a little, step back and look, you get the idea.

Once you’re done with that find some pictures you like! One of my favorite parts of this whole thing was going through old pictures with Jordan. Since we knew we were giving it to Jordan’s parents, we looked at old pictures of him and his brother growing up in Orient, NY. I loved hearing Jordan tell stories of the “good ol’ days” while he was living young, wild, and free. Let’s just say they weren’t lacking adventure.

I first thought of transferring the pictures to the glass using Omni-Gel Image transfer but I tested the method using a different picture and a glass jar and it didn’t turn out that great. And if I did that we wouldn’t be able to change the pictures. So, instead I used Mini Glue Dots, one in each corner of the picture and voila!

Now a few more practice projects before we send in our application for Flea Market Flip!