Reclaimed Wood Project

I'm very slowly starting everything back up as I get past the shock of actually finishing my degree and cleaning the house after two years of focusing on the degree. I've done a lot but haven't had time to blog about it. I hope to post pictures of the 2nd wedding dress, the amazing storage bench for the kitchen, and the hundred other projects later.

Today I will focus on the beginning of the 

Reclaimed Wood Project.  

I love Pinterest, who doesn't?!  Thanks to Pinterest, the fire pit has been viewed almost 600,000 times.  That blows my mind.  Some of my favorite pins are the pallet wood furniture photos.  What's not to like?  Free wood, kept out of the landfill, turned into rustic and functional home furnishings.    

I have a neighbor who runs a toy business, www.toontoy.com, who let me have all the pallets I wanted. After a few days of constant hammering at pallets earning nothing but a sore arm, I had a friend weld together a pallet pry-bar.  A good pallet could be torn apart in 20 minutes, the bad ones needed a saw.  

Most pallets have four 2X4's and twelve 1X4's.  I took apart at least 25 pallets. 

That should be over 400 pieces of wood. NOT!

I was able to salvage about 100 usable pieces of wood. 

Only 1/4 of the pallets were suitable for projects.
The rest either broke as they were pried apart or the nails wouldn't come out.  The non-painted pieces will end up in the fire pit over the next SEVERAL summers and the painted ones won't.
This pile is much smaller than it was. I only say this so you know what you are getting into if you undertake a similar project.

I took a few days off for spring break with my daughter and put together a few things.  The bench is for a patio area I put in last Fall, the table will go in the back yard with the bench.  The boxes and the shutters will be finished and sold at a craft fair my employer organizes for their employees twice a year.  I LOVE MY JOB!

I decided to finish one of the boxes as naturally as possible.  No stain or finish, just reclaimed fence posts turned into a box, wrapped with jute bailing twine finished with two herring bone braided handles.   It is beautifully rustic.  

I love it and hope others will too.

Witch Costumes

*Note to readers* I started this post 2 years ago.  I am publishing it today to get it out there.  I might come back and finish it or I may just move on....


We were given two tickets to the last Harry Potter movie for opening day.  Of course we HAAAAD to dress up. 

I spent the most time on the vest, maybe 6 hours.  I wanted to keep the cost to nothing so I used fabric I had on hand.  If I had the time and means I would have done the green, crushed velvet hat and robe Professor McGonongall wears.

Bean Cages

Continuing with the re-use of political signs . . .

I needed bean cages.  I took the wire stakes from the political signs and turned them into spider webs!

We have very little means and I've already spent too much making my garden this year.  I told myself that I wan't going to spend another penny on the garden and anything I needed now had to be created by us.  The wire stakes weren't much help as they are so I needed to do some sort of net thing, but it needed to be fancier than just string them together.

I've made a few dream catchers in my day and knew that would make some pretty fancy bean cages.  I took a spool of kite string and went to work. 

The garden should be a lot more mature now but I had a rabbit that kept every tasty plant mowed down until about two weeks ago.  I have had to re-plant most of it.  What happened to the giant french lop bunny?  Well after weeks and weeks of building and re-building his enclosure; feeding him every scrap of vegetable matter in my kitchen; and sacrificing my first garden at my new home to Severus Snape Rabbit . . . It all proved too much for him.  He is now happily destroying God's vegetable garden in the sky.