Wicker Laundry Basket Makeover

We seem to have reached a point in our parenting where the amount of equipment we need is rapidly diminishing; we haven't used the pushchair in over a month, my son is too heavy to carry in our Ergo carrier and we don't need to take 101 nappies out with us every time we leave the house.

All of these things were stored in a large wicker laundry basket in my dining room, but as its no longer needed I thought I would give it a bit of a makeover and turn it into some storage for my daughter's new bedroom.

The dark stain looked great in the very grown-up dining room, but it needed to be brighter for my daughter's room, so we've painted it blue to match her curtains. 

First I gave it a good dust (really getting into all the crevices) then sprayed on several coats of Plasikote primer. Then several more coats of Plastikote Gloss spray. To get good coverage I found I needed to spray from several angles, when I turned it upside down to do the bottom there were lots of bits on the sides that I'd missed.

Finally I made a liner for it. To do this I measured each side and the bottom adding 1.5cm seam allowance on all sides of the base and both long and one short side of the sides. I added 13cm to the top of each of the sides to allow a turn over  and a hem at the top of the basket.

I had to come up with a way of working around the lid hinges. I wasn't sure of the best way to do this, so I popped to my local hardware shop to see how commercially available ones dealt with the problem. It seems no one has a genius idea, and many edges were just left raw. I decided to make a T-shaped cut level with each hinge, hem the fabric on the sides of the T and reinforce the top of the T (which lies across the hinge) with some buttonhole stitching. Finally I added some ties to join the sections at the back.

I'm really pleased with the end result, now we've just got to decide what to put in it.