When it comes to decorating your home, nothing will give it quite the same personal touch as a DIY home project. While you could go out and spend a fortune on rustic furniture for your living room, you can quickly and easily DIY instead and save a fortune. There are a number of rustic projects you can create with reclaimed materials in a very short amount of time.
Old fences, French doors, barn doors, dressers and even plain planks of wood can become spectacular creations with a little ingenuity and elbow grease. Whether you have great carpentry skills or are simply just the master of a glue gun, here are 5 great rustic DIY projects you can create for your living room.
1.Rustic TV Stand
A super easy way to make a DIY TV stand that blends perfectly with your rustic decor is to find an old, beaten up, worn out the dresser. For a truly simple DIY stand, you can remove the drawers, cut plywood planks to create a base across each drawer level and fill the spaces with baskets. If you want to get a little more creative, you can cut doors to cover the larger holes where the larger drawers used to be, refinish the dresser and new doors in the same style and add rustic hardware to mount the doors on the dresser.
2. Wood Crate Bookshelves
Old wooden crates can become a stunning set of bookshelves or organizer for CDs, DVDs or Blu-Ray discs. One very simple way to use wooden crates to create a simple but stunning bookshelf is by using shelf brackets. Stain the crates the color of your choosing, then use shelf brackets to mount them to the wall. For a truly ornate look, you can choose heavy iron scrolled brackets or for a mix of rustic and modern, you can use more modern stainless brackets. Mount the shelf brackets on the wall and then mount the crates on the shelf brackets for a beautiful rustic wall accessory.
If you don’t have great carpentry skills and don’t want to mount a bookshelf on the wall, here is another useful tutorial that is even great for apartment dwellers.
3. Wall Art
You can create great rustic wall art with a variety of different materials. Use old reclaimed wood to create rustic picture frames or a large ornamental piece. You can also use a variety of different materials ranging from rope to pebbles to create smaller accent pieces. Perhaps one of the simplest but most stunning projects is to use an old French door to create a large picture frame. One of the additional perks of creating a French door picture frame is that it can also do double duty as a coat rack. If you have a small entryway into your living room, you can also use it to hang umbrellas, keys or other items you might want near the door, without having to use a console table or other bulky furniture items.
4. Coffee Table
There are a number of great ways to create a rustic DIY coffee table that range from the simple to the highly ornate. With just a few basic carpentry skills and tools, you can create a simple plank coffee table in just a few hours. Another great idea is to simply cover the top of a more modern coffee table with stained, rustic wood planks. All you need for that is a saw, some stain, and some wood glue. You can also use a full-size table and simply cut the legs down.
5. Mason Jar Crafts
There is probably nothing more versatile or rustic than a standard mason jar. Traditionally used for holding fruits, jams, and jellies for decades, they also make a great base material for a wide variety of rustic DIY home projects. From a mason jar chandelier to an indoor mason jar herb garden, the sky is almost literally the limit for the wide variety of uses for the modest and humble mason jar. From rustic vases to heartwarming art pieces, here are some more great ideas on how to use mason jars for some fabulous rustic DIY creations.
Creating a great rustic look in your home has never been easier, thanks to the wide variety of helpful hints and tutorials available online. Best of all, you can recycle and upcycle a wide variety of used materials, which means you are also doing a great thing for the planet. While you can supplement used materials with new, modern or rustic hardware, using reclaimed and recycled materials are also better for your budget. If you have some decent carpentry skills, you can create your own rustic pieces from scratch, but even without carpentry skills, there are a number of great pieces you can create in as little as just a few hours.
Author: Olivia Gillmore
