I've seen these called oyster baskets and clam baskets but I grew up knowing these as egg baskets. My grandparents lived on a farm in Iowa and we'd visit them a few times a year and this is what we used to collect eggs from their large flock of chickens.
I've had one of these baskets for years, the rusty one. The house we moved into when I was 11 in New Jersey had an old time junk yard in the back of the house in the woods where I found it and many other 'treasures' that I still have today. The basket has moved around from place to place with me and was in the basement for years until I recently decided I could use it for storage in my bathroom. It seems that utilizing different things to maximize space in my home is an ongoing theme. We recently found a second basket at an antique store for a good price and snatched it up to compliment the old one.
I hung the baskets with a couple screws, nothing fancy, and we'll be using them for towel storage and whatever else will fit in their odd shape. I'm hoping to find a rectangular wire milk crate to hang next to the baskets eventually.
I live in a Philadelphia row home that was build around the 1890's. Closets are pretty much non existent in these homes unless they were added later which was not the case in my home. Not only is storage hard to come by, the rooms can have odd pop outs like the one I have in my bedroom. This wall used to house the fireplace that was unfortunately covered up at some point in the past and converted into the ductwork for heating and air conditioning. After 7 years of having this spot basically wasted space I decided to build a tasteful built in.
I spent a lot of time looking for inspiration for this closet and finally took measurements and went off to the hardware store. I decided on Iron pipe for the hanging racks which wasn't sold in the length I wanted so ended up making some design alterations on the fly and decided I would be building some small shelves up the left side of the wall and would utilize the high ceilings and put in two poles for hanging clothes.
Construction took about a day, and the biggest expense was the iron pipe and adapters. I used a cheap pine for the shelving and stained it with a dark walnut stain to give it a more high end look. Then it was off to ikea to buy nice wood hangers to hang all the clothes.
I've done tons of work on my house and you begin to amass a lot of different things when you're renovating and tearing things out. I've dealt with this in several ways, I've thrown it in the trash slowly, I've burned it in my backyard fire pit, and I've hoarded it in my basement. My Dad always seemed to hoard wood from different projects and picked it up various places because it was a 'good deal' with no sort of real plan in mind so I blame him.
The wall before.
At some point during the deconstruction of my house I started hoarding the lath from the plaster walls I would tear down. I didn't really have any plan in mind, I was mostly just overwhelmed with it, meticulously removed all the nails from it and stuck it in a corner of my basement and forgot about it. Years past by... The other week I decided the wall in my living room wasn't utilizing the space in the most useful way so set out to improve it. Why? I was just honestly bored and needed something to do. After I started spackling it (one of my least favorite things to do) I sighed and then an idea came to mind... The lath that has been sitting in my basement for years, I could make an accent wall and I wouldn't need to do the spackling that I despise.
I went to the basement and assessed the situation, the pile of lath was huge, I was sure I had enough but I didn't have any nails that were the correct length to go into a plaster wall with brick underneath. I set out to Lowes to pick out the only supplies I used: short roof nails, I wanted the nails to be visible on the wall.
After an hour of construction.
I was making great headway and I was sure that I would complete my project the same day, then I ran out of lath. Blasted! Luckily a friendly human being who also had saved lath in their basement offered me some of hers to complete my project but could not meet up until a week later.
The lath wall at a standstill
I finished the wall the next week after more lath arrived, lightly sanded and put on two coats of matt lacquer. I re-hung the bike rack much higher and finally I am able to put things below it. The lath wall makes the room much warmer feeling and we really love it and the fact we were able to reuse materials from the home.