Antique Phone / Thermostat Box

Here is a simple project that didn’t require much more than a drill and a screwdriver.  I was given this old telephone that belonged to my great grandmother and decided to hang it on the wall like it would have been decades ago.  We don’t have a landline installed in our house so I wasn’t able to make it functional like I wanted, just kidding, so instead I used it as a way to hide the ugly thermostat which luckily fit perfectly inside.

All I had to do was drill a hole in the back of the phone, remove the thermostat, fish the thermostat wires through the phone, and then reinstall the thermostat inside the phone.

Wooden World Map

This project is really my Wife’s project, but I tend to get drawn into most of her projects because they involve the use of MY tools. 

We built the wooden structure using pine scraps that I had left-over from previous projects.  I laid out the boards, making cuts where needed to create the planned randomness until it received the necessary approval from Liz.

I glued and finish nailed perpendicular boards from the backside to avoid nail holes on the front.  The perpendicular boards hold the horizontal boards together, but they also space the picture off the wall to give it more depth.

 

We stained the entire picture with the light brown color you see in the land masses.  Next, we applied a world decal purchased off etsy.  Then, we applied a few coats of dark brown stain over the entire picture until we achieved the desired amount of contrast.  Finally, the last and hardest step (joking but really the whole project was extremely easy) we removed the decal and threw it in the trash leaving the result you see on our wall.