License Plate Wall

A few years back Mr. TSL and I were at an auction, a boy auction I should mention.  No girl house stuff, just car parts. He knows I love all things old, rusty, and junky and he saw a crate of old license plates and bid on them for me!  I think he paid $3 for the whole lot.  It ended up being 69 license plates from the late 60's early 70's.  

When people drove cars that looked like this:

  And gas was under 50 cents

No, not him silly!  Actual $0.50!

I carried them around for WAY too long and I finally googled what to do with them.

Here are some cute ideas:

via The Inside Source

 

via Apartement Therapy

The last one is more what I was going for.  Mr. TSL restores old Mopars (Dodge, Plymouth, Chrysler...don't worry after dating for a month I finally broke down and asked what a Mopar was too :) ) I wanted some car stuff incorporated into our home decor without it being too overboard.  So, I have his car stuff in our office area.  Some of his signs and memorabilia have gone to live in his shop outside.  With that being said, I had a blank wall above the desk and wanted it to look similar to the above picture.  So, Hayley and I got to work cleaning them.  40+ years of dirt had to come off of them.

A few hours later and a lot of nail holes and they look like this:

I would show you the whole office area, but it is a freaking nightmarish mess needing the new desk from the garage brought in, it currently has a God awful rounded corner huge desk with blue tulips stenciled on. Gag!  I have to glue the side part on the table/desk and spray paint the file cabinets that will be tucked under neath for storage.  Just another in a long line of random things to do!

One more thing before I go....I tore the carpet out of the dining room and kitchen!!!!!  Hauling carpet out by yourself is a pain in the bum!  I got about half out of the dining room and pooped out.  Mr. TSL was very helpful when he got home and helped me remove the rest.  Apparently, if you roll it neatly it's a whole lot less of a pain to remove out. (I just dragged mine out in a jumbled mess.)  Then we removed the kitchen carpet.....

GIANT.

FREAKING.

MESS.

It was that carpet that is really thin with the squishy yellow backing.  

before we moved in before pic

They glued it down. So sad.  I think I will be sanding for like the next 10 freakin' years now!  Oh well, the nasty is gone....well on the trailer headed for the dump!

You can read about what I plan on doing here and here.

-Make your life beautiful!