{DIY} Vinegar + Steel Wool Stained Crate

I have always had an affinity for old things. I'm terribly at yoga-style meditation, but find a sort of silence, calm and peace from perusing the aisles of antique and thrift stores in search of secondhand stories. Several years ago, I bought an antique crate from the 1800s. My Dad helped me frame it up and turn it into the most amazing piece of furniture I own.

Alas, with the rise of Pinterest, vintage crates are in high demand these days. (And I can't quite bring myself to budget hundreds of dollars for wooden boxes.) Thankfully, I recently discovered a solution. (Quite literally -- a solution.)

The recipe is simple and uses two items you probably have in your home right now: white vinegar and steel wool. (You can also go further down the exploratory rabbit hole by adding tea bags to the mix.) There are hundreds of posts that share the how/what in great detail (here's a great one), so I'm going to provide the readers digest version.

1. Get something made of wood. In my case, a $10 pine crate from Michael's. You may want to lightly sand to get rid of any sticker goo or waxy coating. 2. Add white vinegar to a sealable jar. 3. Add a puff of steel wool to the vinegar in the jar. 4. Wait 48+ hours. (Longer seems to be better. I forgot about mine, went on vacation and came back two weeks later. Results will vary based on time of "soaking" and type of wood. The photos you're seeing in this post are the product of NO tea and two-week-old stain.) 5. (Optional) Steep some black tea and apply to wood item. The tannins the tea adds to the wood will supposedly alter the color, resulting in a "blacker" look. 6. Tarp off your area. (This stain will stain anything it touches, including concrete!) Apply your stain using a sponge brush.* 7. Marvel at how virgin wood is instantly transformed and takes on the appearance of some marvelous relic that has been hanging out in a barn for the last 80 years.

*I found I achieved the best results when swabbing on semi-haphazardly. You don't want this to look like a perfect paint job. You want it to take on the look of some history. I did a rough swab job, allowed drips to remain, applied additional layers, etc. This is one of those projects that seems to suggest the less strategy, the better the outcome.

Here's where I started... 

Here's where I ended up... 

Meet the Vagabond Barista

With his infectious laugh and signature messy bun, Will Shurtz is hard not to notice -- and impossible to forget. He's the kind of person who walks into a room of 100 strangers and leaves with 100 new friends. As the owner and founder of Vagabond Barista, a traveling brew bar that elevates the coffee experience through a blend of craft, care and human connection, Will regularly does exactly that. [Click here to see him in action.] Will and I first met after he made a visit to Brains on Fire to host a brew bar for our team. Five minutes into our initial chat I was pretty much rendered speechless by the profound wisdom, humanity and business acumen pouring forth from an entrepreneur barely over the legal drinking age. In the months since, I've become a loud and proud Will advocate. And I'm not alone in that sentiment. Whenever Will's name comes up, you quickly discover that everyone has a Will story. This is one such story from a mutual friend...

"With everything and everyone, Will is like a child who is tasting cake for the first time. Fascinated, curious, delighted, excited, and totally unaffected by the jaded, cynical, adult world around him. He bought some espresso cups from me a couple of years ago, and it was like he thought they were the best things he'd ever seen or touched. I've known only one other person like that my whole life. The first time I noticed it in my other friend was when, in high school, he sat down at a science lab table with the dorkiest, dandruff-flaking, acne-faced person in school...and engaged in real conversation with him. He listened and asked questions, and was genuinely interested in what this kid, who most of us didn't even know existed, had to say. I think about that day often. I believe these people are just born with a kind of super love for others, and inherently value human interaction over everything else."

I was recently invited to serve as a mentor to entrepreneurial makers at Greenville's Makers Summit. One of the bright spots of my morning was watching people waiting in the Vagabond Barista line. As they made their way toward the front, you could see a physical and spiritual transformation take place -- like their whole being got lighter and happier. They were simply enjoying be cared for in the moment. I've never seen anything like it, and I left that encounter committed to making a stronger effort to be more open-hearted in the way I live, love and interact with others in my own life. Will inspired me to give other people that gift however I can.

I can't help but wonder what would happen if we all made an effort to be more open-hearted in our personal and professional lives. What would business look like if we stopped looking at our jobs as the work we do and started looking at what we do as the daily gift we give?