Chicken Crate: Guest

Suzanne at Meridian Road  has a great reuse project I waned to feature. It's an old chicken crate used as a coffee table.  

 I finally moved my chicken crate into the house.

This is where it sits.

I didn't paint it.

Or put a glass top on it.

I thought that might be a little like 

"gilding the lily".

Or trying to "make a silk purse from a sow's ear."

Pick your metaphor.

But~

I'm not implying that I don't love my chicken crate.

I do love my chicken crate.

It's just that it is what it is.

 A crate once used to haul poultry.

(And that has been left out in the weather for a little too long.)

I did put casters on it.

Doesn't it look old?

You'll laugh when I show you where I got them.

I took them off this old travel bag.

The zipper was broken, and there was paint on the handle. 

(That could have been my fault. I have been known for a few incidences of indiscriminate paint spreading.)

They were fastened to the suitcase with these little brads. I bent their tops and pulled them out.
(OK, I bent the top on one and pulled it out. The rest proved to be, well, really HARD. My husband did the other 3)

Then I painted them all with this.

I think it does a pretty convincing job.

Then I just used some small screws and fastened them in place. 
(I did do that part myself.)

They make it easier to move the crate when we sweep the floor.

Which we do, on occasion.

I think it makes a fine coffee table.

And you can't beat the fact that it was 

FREE!

That old chicken crate looks very nice there, doesn't it?