From Old Army Locker To Kitchen Console Bar!

As many of you know, we've been working hard to give new life to this old army locker and today we're excited to share the final pics of it in its new kitchen console form!

To make a long story short, we repurposed an old army locker we'd found at an alley sale into a console bar for our kitchen by cleaning it up, turning it on it's side and building out a basic console structure with pine wood panels, plumbing pipes and industrial casters to complete the look.

Find all the juicy details for how we went about it in the following posts:

• Finding and bringing home an old dirty army locker from a local alley sale.
• Stripping the layers of exterior paint from the locker to reveal it's industrial goodness.
• Sealing and protecting the exterior of the locker for use as furniture.
• Measuring, selecting, staining and sealing the wood panels for the console structure.
• Choosing the hardware and building out the console base for the locker.

We'd used the following console from Restoration Hardware as inspiration for how we'd want the overall structure and base to look/feel:

Image source: Restoration Hardware

We also loved the idea of using plumbing pipes and fixtures to build out the console and add that industrial vibe we love so much. There seem to be so many DIY furniture projects cropping up that creatively use these plumbing pipes — here are a few project images we used as inspiration:

Image credits: entry rack | garment rack | wall shelving | kitchen shelving

We like how well the mixing of these two concepts unfolded in the final form of our own console:

Here's a more panned out view of the locker in the bigger kitchen space to give you an idea of how it's fitting in:

Once we actually got the console in place, I probably had the most fun decorating it with a mix of useful and meaningful objects:

We brought our coffee/espresso maker over from the other counter and coupled it with a little corner of indoor plants. I've actually had this little measuring cup succulent planter from back when I lived in Brooklyn and ordered it from Monkeys Always Look on Esty. It's resting on the base of a vintage butter slicer we picked up along the way at some point. The Sunflower came from Allistar and Rebecca of Origins Farm and the money tree is a recent transplant from Tim's office.

The other side of the console houses a handmade wine rack from Frick and Frack Scraps we'd gotten as a wedding gift from our Etsy registry

We like to use it for bottles and other little things like this mirror sprayed mason jar full of fresh Thyme:

It was also fun leaning some art up against the wall. Tim's had this illustrated map of Richmond since before we began dating and we had fun printing out and framing one of our favorite photos from our engagement session:

One of our favorite parts of the console is the new storage it brings to the space. We've mentioned having a lot of overflow pots and pans we'd previously had to keep down in the cellar that now stow perfectly along the inside of the locker along with a few other odds and ends. We love being able to just flip open the door and grab what we need:

We've even got room for the bigger items that wouldn't fit in the drawer on the shelf underneath:

We did make a little personal mark on the console in the form of this year's date. We used this set of vintage number punch stamps we'd found at a roadside sale to stamp "2013" into the wood:

Here's how it turned out:

It's a subtle mark, but there if you're looking for it. From this view, you can also see how we've got a little hidden storage on the side of the locker that isn't seen — this would have been the bottom of the locker if it were standing up. We're keeping some liquor bottles in there and a spray bottle for the plants in the window nearby for now.

All in all, we feel like this little space has made quite the transformation. We went from a primarily empty wall in our kitchen:

To something that's super functional, custom built and unique:

And for fun, here are the before and after shots:

We're so glad to have this project complete and a new piece of furniture to make the space feel more functional and finished. We had so much fun tackling it ourselves and feel like we not only got a really unique piece of furniture, but were able to work on it together and save a good amount of money at the same time.

What projects have you got up your sleeves for the weekend ahead? Are you repurposing anything around the house lately? We'd love to know in the comments section below.