Laundry hamper

zieak ♦ March 29, 2004 ♦ 7 Comments

Last week we paid $5 to salvage stuff from the dump. We left with a sheet of stainless steel, a beat up Cornelius Road street sign, a few pieces of plywood, and a sizable aluminum box. We got the box home and i hammered on the bottom of it because it was sort of bowl-shaped on the bottom. Once it was concave, (Or would that be convex? I can never keep them straight.) Amy cleaned and dried it.

She then spray painted a white primer on the interior and exterior of the box.

Next step was to spray paint the box white.

Then i laid out, traced, and hand painted the stencil.

The addition of some industrial casters makes it easy to roll the whole load into the laundry room. One finishing touch – a wood trim bolted to the top where the perforations are – and this project will be complete.

Overall costs were a bit higher than one of our normal projects. The dump fee, spray primer and paint, stencils, brushes and paint for the lettering, and the casters and hardware brought the total cost to about $56. The wood trim addition will be negligible since i have some trim on hand to use and the hardware will come to only a few dollars.

I suppose $60 is a small price to pay to prevent incidents like the one that happened last week. Amy washed a load of clothes and they came out of the washer stinky. She washed them two more times and then put them in the dryer and they still smelled terrible. I know because soon after that dryer cycle she held a shirt up to my face for me to judge. I said it smelled like something dead. (She had been thinking it was a pair of my gym shorts.) She asked me to stand by as she shook out each piece of clothing. Starting with the shirt i had sniffed she shook it a few times and – plop – a mouse carcass flopped onto the floor. I said – “Yep. Something dead alright.” Then Amy began a strange series of shrieks/yells and arm and leg motions to indicate her displeasure. One of the cats apparently thought that they needed to have their toy washed. I think this bin will prevent future washing and drying of small critters with our laundry.

(See the finished product here.)