Pull My Rope

Do you remember the dancing banana/peanut butter jelly time video on YouTube?  Here is a refresher.  That’s what I get stuck in my head every time a Pinterest Challenge rolls around.  Except that it’s more like, “Piiiiin-ter-ist challenge time…piiiiiin-ter-ist challenge time…pin’trst challenge, pin’trst challenge, pin’trst challenge”.  You’re welcome…for getting it stuck in your head too.  So without further ado, I bring you the spring Pinterest Challenge reveal day…drum roll not necessary.

If you want a little more info about the challenge or my inspiration for the spring edition of the Pinterest Challenge, you can check out this post from last week.  It has oodles of info for you along with all the deets.  This time around, I went with a little rope shelf inspiration, and wanted to tackle something like these guys in our bathroom:

1. Industrial Pipe And Rope Shelf from Restoration Hardware (which costs a whopping $299…that’s almost a mortgage payment!!!)
2. Double Roped Shelf (which I couldn’t find the original source for…but found it via the Seaside Style blog…anybody know where it comes from?  Bueller?  Bueller?)
3. Single Roped Shelf from the A Walk Through blog, which they also DIYed for their bathroom

And here is what I made (for a whole lot less than $299):

And a zoomed in shot for the cheap seats in the back:

The total out of pocket cost for us with this project was a whopping $9 ($3 each for the pulleys and $3 for a package of s-hooks).  All the rest of the materials (wood, stain, poly, eye hooks, rope) we already had on hand leftover from other projects.  And can we just take a moment to talk about the pulleys.

I loved the idea of upgrading the shelf from a basic, run of the mill, rope shelf to a pulley rope shelf.  And I dreamed of one that actually works.  So you could have a rope anchored to the wall that you could use to adjust the shelves up and down via a pulley system.  But that turned out WAY too complicated for Colby and I to tackle.  Tears may have been involved…thankfully no blood…for once.  In the end we just decided to find middle ground between the pulley system shelves we envisioned and the basic rope shelf.  So our shelves are attached to a ceiling joist with eye hooks linked to pulleys.  They even magically help the shelf level out.

My second most favorite part of the shelves, with the pulleys pulling in top rank, is that we recycled a sign we DIYed for our wedding to make the shelves.

We tend to be wood hoarders…especially old wood hoarders.  You just never know when you’re going to need good wood…wait…that sounded dirty…statement retracted.  The length of the sign planks was perfect for shelf building.  So we un-assembled the sign and converted it.  I’ll give you a full tutorial for how we made our shelves tomorrow.  So for tonight, let’s just ogle our bathroom a little bit.  Here’s some of the progression from before to installed shelf:

When it came to styling the shelves, I started with a mish mash of bathroom-ie things, hated it, switched to a mish mash of random accessories, also hated it, and then turned to the things-look-good-as-a-collection mindset.  We had a collection of found bottles from our yard, another leftover accessory from our wedding reception, which were perfectly sized for the shelves.  The shelf looked pretty good with just the bottles on it, but I also happened to have a starting-to-die-off-bouquet-of-flowers from Colby.  Snippety snip…we have a winner.

I love how cottage-ie the bathroom feels these days with the addition of the rope shelf, found bottles and the flowers.  I’m sure I won’t keep flowers in the bottles all the time since that could get pricey.  But maybe in the summer I can cut green things from the yard to fill them up.  Here’s a shot of the shelf from the side to give you an idea of its depth.

And the full monty shot of the bathroom, looking into it from the hallway.

Totally loving the direction the bathroom is taking these days, especially with the recent additions of the first aid cabinet and now the rope shelf.  And don’t worry, for those of you who want to see how we made the rope shelf, I’ll be back tomorrow-ish for a full-blown tutorial.  It’s a little convoluted so I’m still sorting it out.

And now for the best part of the Pinterest Challenge…link up time.  Wednesday morning, each of our four gracious hosts will have a link party available to link up your Pinterest Challenge project.  So link up, cruise everyone’s epic projects, pin a few you like, and let the vicious cycle continue.  So let’s meet the hosts…come on down!

That’s Emily from Sparkle Meets Pop, Katie from Bower Power, Sherry from Young House Love, and Renee from Red Bird Blue.  So go link up, pin your favorites, leave some loving if you so choose in the form of comments, and enjoy.

Pssst…What have you conquered that was Pin-spired?  Or did you play along this Pinterest Challenge?  Dish!

Psssssst…Want to check out all of our Pinterest Challenge inspiration/projects of yore?  Check them out here.