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Booze Box

On a recent visit to the annual Design Harvest we sipped hot cider, perused hand-made and custom furniture and made a quick pass through Urban Remains, where a small sidewalk sale happening.

This little bright blue toolbox caught our eye immediately. While the original $75 price tag was staggering, the sidewalk sale price of $30 was much easier to swallow. We had a few bucks burning a hole in our pocket, so home with us it came. We weren’t initially sure of the purpose it would serve, but we knew we’d come up with something. We seem to have developed a strange attraction to rusty industrial boxes lately, huh?

We toyed with a few ideas on the drive home, and at one point, Kim suggested a catch all on our console table, but we quickly realized it was much too big for that. But when we returned home, we easily discovered the perfect use for the box. Our old lazy susan booze storage system was getting a bit tired (you can see it tucked in the countertop right here, although we must have been low on, um, drink supplies at the time!), and the idea for the Booze Box was born! There was just one slight problem – the lid lacked any sort of mechanism to keep it from flopping all the way backwards when open.

Off to Home Depot we went, to scoop up a couple feet of #16 Jack Chain and a small bag of coarse threaded machine screws and nuts; we chose #6-32 1/2″, as it was the largest size that would fit through the loop of the chain. Total cost for additional supplies was around $3.

Home Depot will happily cut the chain to length for free, but since we weren’t sure of the exact length, we brought the whole thing home and used some snips to cut it to fit the project.

I then marked the spot where we wanted to drill the holes, and used a small drill bit on the highest speed setting to poke a few holes in the box.

After holes were drilled in each side of the box and lid, we looped the chain over the screws and hand tightened the nuts.

Only one chain was probably necessary, but we decided to utilize both sides of the box for symmetry’s sake. Here it is in all it’s industrial, paint chipped glory. As you can see, this is simple enough to work out as a cost-effective solution to any box whose lid won’t stay put.

We’re really happy with how it turned out, and it really adds a bit of cheerful color to an otherwise dark corner of the kitchen. The old, pine lazy susan has since been donated to our local non-profit thrift shop.

We love the contrast of the smooth perfect glass bottles against the hard-edged, imperfect box. Has anyone else repurposed an industrial tool box to hold something unexpected? Spill the goods!

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  • Jacki10.15.12 - 8:39 AM

    Absolutely love this project! Now I need to go find an industrial toolbox to shamelessly borrow your idea :)ReplyCancel

  • Kat B.10.15.12 - 9:01 AM

    Liquor, cooking oils, unrefrigerated sauces/syrups . . . this box project has infinite possibilities! Pinned to my “When I Feel Like Martha Stewart” board. ~ KatReplyCancel

  • Heather10.15.12 - 10:34 AM

    This is really cute, although we could never fit all of our liquor into it. Embarrassingly, we’d probably need something the size of a suitcase. :)ReplyCancel

  • Jimmy10.16.12 - 11:19 PM

    I’ll be honest, when I saw the first picture I thought “booze box – oh, perfect it has a place for a little lock on there.”

    My kids are way too young for me to be worrying about them swiping booze out of the liquor cabinet, but I know it’s going to happen one day. I’ve concluded that I’ll do what I can to try to stop them, but at the end of the day I will just beg them not to re-fill with water the share they’ve taken, lest they ruin the whole bottle (as I now understand I did more times than I care to admit). Teenagers. Ugh.

    Anyway, definitely like what you did there. I also like how you can look at that box and think “is it time to work? or time to drink?”ReplyCancel

    • Kim10.17.12 - 8:42 AM

      Jimmy, great points! (And too funny.)ReplyCancel

  • […] bright sidewalk-sale find inspired Kim and Scott Vargo of Yellow Brick Home to create a fun and functional piece. Because of their fondness of the rustic-industrial look, […]ReplyCancel

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We’re Kim + Scott, Chicago based content creators behind the Home + Lifestyle brand Yellow Brick Home.

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