Cat Bed from a Vintage Fruit Crate

Back at the end of August when I did a post on “10 Questions” posed to a blogger, I mentioned the progress on my cat Mylo’s bed.

I FINALLY finished it this week and wanted to share how it was made.

I bought the vintage fruit crate at auction earlier in the year and couldn’t quite decide what to do with it.  Mylo seemed to be encouraging me to make him a cat bed so I decided I wanted to make it from all repurposed or recycled materials.

Mylo was checking it out when I brought it home. I thought this was a sign of approval.

I did a bit of looking on Pinterest and other fun sites to garner some inspiration. There was a lot to look at 🙂 In the end I chose something simple, easy and not really time-consuming, lol, although it seemed to take me long enough to find the time to finish this simple project.

It started out like this and the hubs cut out the half-moon in the front for me.

I “rescued” a broken chair from a neighbor’s garbage and hubs cut sections of them to make the legs.

I had some leftover spray paint from earlier summer projects and decided to use that as the color on the legs.

I was having a bit of trouble getting the label off  the side of the crate and sanding alone wasn’t quite working. I decided to try the same method as I use to remove wallpaper, soak it with water from a spray bottle and scrape it off. That did the trick.

The whole thing got three coats of a custom-made paint color. I combined left over latex paint, white with some black and the result was a really neat gray color. I thought it sort of matched Mylo, so I was pleased.

The final piece and what seemed to take me forever to find, at the price I was willing to pay, was this vintage drawer handle. The bonus was that it was already painted and I found it at an antique mall.

I decided to glue the handle on instead of using screws, since it is only for decoration.

I put his favorite blanket in and I was super excited. I thought he would be too.

I tried bribing him with treats. He was just not interested. I wonder if it was the color??? Maybe he likes black better.

Hmmmm – he sure seems happy to be sleeping beside me on the couch as I write this post.

One last look at what I thought was a pretty awesome idea for a cat bed, too bad my cat didn’t agree……

Oh well, a cat bed from a vintage fruit crate, I still think it is A Wandaful Thing!

Do you?