How Upcycling and DIY Blend in Chas Greener’s Creative World

Today, we’re excited to chat with Chas Greener, the creative mind behind “Chas’ Crazy Creations.” Renowned for her innovative DIY projects and practical home improvement solutions, Chas has garnered a large following through her website and YouTube channel.

In this interview, she’ll share essential DIY skills for homeowners, tips for beginners, and insights into repurposing and upcycling for home decor. We’ll also explore her approach to budget-friendly projects, common DIY pitfalls, and balancing creativity with practicality. Join us for an inspiring session filled with valuable advice for anyone interested in DIY and home improvement.

Basic DIY Skills for Homeowners

Trendey – What are the basic DIY skills that every homeowner should learn?

Chas – You should have some basic tools. You don’t need all the heavy-duty equipment in your home, but get some essential tools, screwdrivers, hot glue guns, and things like that so you have them on hand when you need to create or repair something.

Access to the internet is huge when you’re a DIYer, too. It helps you build inspiration for designing your space or creating something for your home. AI can also help you design your space. For example, I’m a visual person, so being able to take a tool that can create an image for me might help me build a room before I go out and buy a bunch of stuff, bring it home, and set it up, only not to be sure if it looks good. This way, I can put pieces into a room, shape the room, or create a look and then know what I like and what I don’t. Embracing AI is a scary thing, but it’s very helpful for a DIYer, especially if you’re a visual learner.

Top Tips for First-Time DIYers

Trendey – What are your top tips for homeowners who are looking to undertake their first DIY project? 

Chas – Having a clean slate is nice to start with. Sometimes, if you already have items in that space, it can cause you to stumble over them, and you may not know exactly how to move things because the space has looked like that for so long. I don’t care if you’re going through your clothes in your closet. If you gut the space and then start with a clean slate, it gives you endless possibilities so you can begin to feel the space and envision the look you’re going for.

Again, you might need to look online to see if you like modern or traditional stuff. Sometimes, I suggest opening ChatGPT and telling it something like, “I have a room. It’s a living room space. I want a contemporary look. What are some key things I might want to consider putting in this space?” It brainstorms for you about what you could put in that room.

Let’s say you have a very old home, and back in the day, a lot of houses had a family room and a living room. Now, I hear a lot of people asking what to do with that living room. The living room used to be a very neat and tidy room that, when somebody came over to visit, sat in. This wasn’t your entertainment space. But there are so many possibilities. Think of it. Instead of just being confined to a living room, that could be your home office, a playroom for the kids, a music room, a craft room, or a dining room if you didn’t have one in your home. It can be anything you want it to be. Sometimes, that living room is the first room that pops in when you walk into a home. You may want that to be the family room, and then the other family room space becomes the additional space that you can create into something else, too. Just think outside the box.

Again, a clean slate is one of the biggest things. Sometimes, we get stuck in our heads, but if you could start with a clean slate, that opens your eyes to all the possibilities. We’ve gotten a little better at that because we were confined to our homes for some time, so it’s helped open our eyes in terms of other possibilities that our home space can be.

Repurposing and Upcycling in Home Decor

Trendey – How do you approach the challenge of repurposing or upcycling items for home decor? 

Chas – That’s one of my favorite things. Let’s say you inherited something. You’ve got your grandma’s coffee table, and it doesn’t fit into your house because it’s the wrong color, wood, not your style, or something like that. But you can fix a lot of things with just some paint. There are so many paints out there, like chalk and acrylic paint. You can also use resin to create a design on the top of the table to make it fit in your space better. Or you can add photos to it and then place a top coat of Mod Podge over it. There are a lot of possibilities; just understand what it is you’re trying to fit it into. Look at the space, the color choices, etc.

If you have furniture, you can take all the fabric off and reupholster it. I did that with my grandma’s dining room set. It had a color that didn’t fit into my space, so I pulled off the upholstery and reupholstered it on a budget, and now it fits into my home nicely. One of my grandmas had given me a bunch of utensils and stuff that may not be great for use in the kitchen anymore because they’re made of a material that we shouldn’t be using. I turned that into a wind chime, and now it’s hanging on my front porch. I think of my grandma every time it’s clanging around out there. Sometimes, a piece was inside, but it’s okay to put it outside like that wind chime. Or you take your grandma’s dishes, glue them together, and make a dish flower that goes in your garden so you can again repurpose or upcycle those items to make them fit your home, yet honor the memory.

If you’re on a budget, it’s your first home, your first apartment, and you’re trying to figure out how to furnish it. There are so many great ways to do it. You can go to thrift stores or garage sales to pick up items. We are in a unique stage of design right now where there’s a lot of mix and matching going on. Back in the day, your couches and your end tables had to match. Now, they can be different shapes and sizes, but you can tie them together through color or concept. You can also use contact paper to change a wall or a bookshelf in your house, and if you don’t like it or you need to move, you peel it off, and it doesn’t do any damage.

Memorable DIY Projects on a Minimal Budget

Trendey – Can you share some memorable DIY projects that transformed the space or item at a minimal or no cost?

Chas – Pottery Barn sells this Eagan mirror for more than $600. It’s one of their bestsellers, and it’s like a window with a bunch of panels in it. I went to the dollar store and bought nine mirrors, glued them all together, and reinforced them with some poster board on the back. I spent a total of $13 to get that same look and hung it up on my wall. To hang it on the wall, I used velcro command strips so I wouldn’t have to put holes in the wall. I could use the command strips to hang it because it’s probably lighter than Pottery Barn’s, too. After all, it was made of these lighter mirrors. I loved the look, and I didn’t have to spend a ton of money on it, so that was one of my favorite pieces that I ever did.

We sometimes feel like we’re supposed to make our entire house flow with one type of design, and that might be true for some, but not for me. There was a living room in my house that wasn’t as useful, so I wondered what to do with it. I had a vintage rocking chair that was my family’s. There was also my piano and an old vintage suitcase in the room. We created this music room. I paid tribute to the oldness and the vintage in that room. Even though the rest of my house might be more modern and contemporary, I envisioned this particular room as a place where everybody is sitting around singing songs and playing music together, and my husband could leave his saxophone out.

I took that rocking chair and redid the cushions so that they fit a little more into our color style. It also made it way more comfortable. I took the suitcase and turned it upright and sideways (so the handle is on the side, and one of the ends is on top), and I made it the coffee table for that rocking chair. So, I embraced the suitcase and turned it into a piece of furniture. Then, I went to a thrift store and found this unique heart-shaped table. I painted its legs white and kept the top of the wood so it tied in with the piano. There are a bunch of little eclectic pieces in this room, but you don’t walk in the room and say it’s old. It’s got some old pieces in it, but it’s a quirky music room, and it’s creative. Most of that stuff in that room was free except for one chair or one table, and I think I flipped that table for under $10.

Common DIY Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Trendey – What are the most common mistakes that most DIY enthusiasts make? Do you know some ways how they can be avoided? 

Chas – The biggest thing I see people do (and I’ve made this mistake myself) is making mistakes with paint. You start painting a piece of furniture to fit into your house, and then something goes wrong. The paint drips, or it has lines from your paintbrush. One of my big painting mistakes was when I did my first chalk painting project. The paint went on, and I enjoyed the look of it, but I misunderstood the waxing end of it. It said to paint the wax on, let it set, and then buff the excess wax off. What they meant was to let it soak in and then buff it off, but I left it for 24 hours and was left with a hot mess.

When something like that happens, the first thing you think is, “I did all that work for nothing,” and you look at the negative side and decide to get rid of the piece. The best thing about paint is it can be done again and again and again and again. All I did was take a sanding block, and I lightly sanded off all that wax, and I started again.

If you don’t like the color, you can repaint it, too. Paint is one of the most forgiving things that we can use and work with. So if you make a mistake, there’s usually always a way to fix it. Sometimes, it doesn’t turn out the way you hope, and that’s okay. Take a breath, take a moment, put a pause on it, whether it’s 24 hours a week, and then try again. I encourage everybody to give it another try because not everything turns out right away, and sometimes it is a hot mess. The great thing about DIY is that it can usually be fixed in some way, shape, or form. 

Environmentally Friendly DIY Projects

Trendey – How do you keep your DIY projects environmentally friendly?

Chas – It only goes in the trash if it’s beyond fixable. But even then, when something falls apart, if I can find a use for it, whether it’s inside or outside, I will try. I’m a big garage sale thrifter because I have been to the dump, and I’ve seen people throw away perfectly good pieces of furniture or items that my brain can creatively think of different ways to use. Before you throw something away, I encourage you to consider donating it if it’s not useful for you. Consider putting it on one of those platforms or Facebook groups. Somebody’s going to come for it. You’ll be surprised at the crazy things people can make or do out of an item.

Here’s another example. I went to an outdoor flea market, and I saw a hanging candle holder that was supposed to have about six little glass pieces that the candles went in on, but the glass pieces were all gone. Most people would think you should throw that away because it doesn’t have all the parts anymore, but I saw the vision, so I brought it home. I spent only a dollar or two on it because they thought it was broken. To me, it was a framework. I added solar lights to all of those holes where the glass pieces were and hung the piece outside. Now I have this beautiful chandelier that’s hanging outside and makes this awesome ambiance for our porch or patio in the evenings when we’re hanging out there. We just need to remember that one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.

Balancing Creativity and Practicality

Trendey – What advice do you have on balancing creativity and practicality in home improvement projects? 

Chas – Over the years, you collect things, and I developed a “use it or lose it” mentality. Losing it doesn’t mean throwing it away. It means finding a new home for it. I believe in finding a use for anything. Still, I am a practical girl, so when I look at something like that piece, I get the idea to spend more time with my family, so I decide to turn that into a chandelier, and I’m going to use it outside, so we are encouraged to sit outside. That maybe isn’t necessarily a necessity, but I did save it from going to the dump, and I did make something that I love.

When it comes to furniture, it is useful. Some things are decorative, too. If it sparks joy for you, that’s an important piece of it. Let’s say it’s summertime, and you have these dishes that you’ve found. You can make these thrift store flowers out of them. You glue them together, set them on something, and stick them in the ground. It’s practical to me because now I don’t necessarily have to waste a bunch of water on real flowers. I can create a different, unique look out there. To me, they brought as much joy as real flowers.

There are some other ways you can think outside the box. You can use things in a different way. If something got shipped to you, and it had a nice container or a box, you can add contact paper, Mod-Podge napkins to it, or spray paint it. You can turn those into beautiful closet or pantry organizers. You can take things like that and use them in other ways in your home just by changing the appearance of it. Yeah, each container is a little different looking, but if you decorate it, you can create a similar look across all of them to give you that kind of designer look on a budget while making it very useful in your home again.

Simple Outdoor DIY Projects

Trendey – Can you suggest some simple but effective DIY projects for outdoor spaces? 

Chas – I love decorating my outside space. Again, you can take any candle holder or a chandelier and add solar lights to it and create a beautiful indoor living space outside.

If you have furniture, it gets weathered over time, and simple light sanding of that chipping paint or giving it a fresh coat of paint (maybe brightly colored) can fix things and help create a beautiful space.

Here’s one crazy idea that can work if you have a power washer. You can create different images or writing on your patio or concrete. Because cement is porous, dirt gets into it over time, and if you lay stencils down and spray over the top of the stencil with a power washer, it will wash the dirt off. When you lift that stencil, you’ll have this fun design on your patio. You can create beautiful tile floors or fun things (I’ve used it for a Happy Birthday on the tile). The design stays for a long time because it takes a while for it to get dirty again. It can create that look of a rug or a stamped space on a budget, and all you used was a power washer and some stencils.

Adding some pillows is another simple thing. I’ve made outdoor pillows out of dollar-store tablecloths, the kind that you’d use for picnicking. You just hot glue that together and insert a pillow. Now you’ve got outdoor pillows that give it that extra touch and make it look fancy. It was all on a budget, too.

The dish flowers are also great. I’ve taken old vintage dishes that grandma gave me, or I found at a thrift store and made bird feeders out of them. They look prettier than your typical non-pretty birdfeeder that you could pick up at the store. I’ve taken something and created a beautiful space by just gluing some things together.

Generating Ideas for Seasonal DIY Projects and Decor

Trendey – How do you come up with new ideas for seasonal DIY projects and decor?

Chas – Thrift stores are amazing for this because, over the course of the year, people get tired of certain seasonal decor, so you can get seasonal decor on a budget there sometimes. Just think outside the box. Spring is coming, for example, and maybe you find this super ugly ceramic bunny, but a coat of white spray paint will make it look like something you grabbed from Pottery Barn.

I’m also a big fan of the dollar store. I tend to decorate seasonally more than for a specific holiday. Instead of Halloween, I might decorate for fall because I can put something up in my home, and it’s going to stay up for three months, so I get more enjoyment out of it. One of the best things about fall, honestly, is pumpkins. You can also use pine cones, acorns, branches, and things you find outside for free and create a garland by gluing them to some twine. You can add some cinnamon essential oil to create that cinnamon smell with the pine cones in your home. Just make little bowls or vases and put those things in them to create this fall decor on a budget.

The same can be said for almost every holiday. You can go in your backyard or a park and look for leaves and things to create some great decor for free. I love taking leaves in the fall. If you Mod-Podge them, they hold the color, and you can hang them with a fish line, and they look like they’re falling. You can do that in different places in your home. If you have a dining room, you hang the leaves from the light, and then it looks like they’re falling over your table. Those are all almost practically free pieces of decor.

Organizing and Storing DIY Tools and Materials

Trendey – What are some effective ways to organize and store DIY tools and materials? 

Chas – I’ll give you another example because everybody’s got space-saving issues. If you don’t think it’s something you’re going to use again, post it on Facebook groups or donate it to schools. I love to donate to schools or day camps and things like that because they often are on a budget and don’t have a lot of room for supplies.

I also take advantage of vertical space. I have a space that’s underneath my stairs. A lot of people who have stairways in their homes end up with this weird pocket closet. I bought a couple of rolling drawer crates, and I organized my tools into the drawer crates. When I need them, I wheel them out, and when I don’t need them anymore, I wheel them back in and store them inside that closet.

In the bottom half, I have a couple of those drawers for the tools. Above that, I’ve built vertical shelves to store my paints. Above those, I’ve used tension rods to hang different things, like paintbrushes. A lot of times, we think about putting furniture pieces in, but there are so many ways to create vertical space. I’ve used magnetic strips you can get at Ikea or Amazon, and your paintbrushes can stick to those, too, if you start running out of drawer space. I’ve even taken magnet hooks and stuck them to the magnet strip and hung stencils, stickers, or different things from that.

Think vertical, and you can hook baskets on with command hooks. I have a whole space that’s not necessarily for my craft supplies. We don’t have an entryway closet, so I put the command hooks above coat racks, and I grabbed four small bathroom-size dollar-store trash cans and hung them on the command hooks above everybody’s coats. Now we throw the hats and the gloves inside that. Before that, that wall was just an empty space.

Another great tip, especially if you’re crammed for space, is a shoe organizer. You can hang it on the back of the door. You don’t have to put shoes on it. You can put paintbrushes, markers, pens, and glue guns in it. Those pockets can be used to hold anything. I’ve used shoe organizers as a pantry. I’ve used shoe organizers in a bathroom. I’ve used them for my craft supplies. I’ve used them for so many things. They’re underutilized, for sure.

If you’re inspired by Chas Greener’s innovative approach to DIY and home improvement, be sure to connect with her on social media for more creative ideas and tips. Follow her journey and engage with her community through these platforms:

• Facebook: Stay updated with her latest projects and interact with a community of DIY enthusiasts on Chas’ Crazy Creations Facebook page.
• Instagram: Get a visual feast of Chas’ most recent DIY ventures and inspirations on Instagram.
• TikTok: For quick, fun, and engaging DIY videos, join Chas on TikTok.
• Pinterest: Explore her boards for a plethora of creative ideas and DIY projects on Pinterest.
• Site Consulting Services: If you’re seeking personalized coaching or advice, visit her Coaching Website for professional consulting services.