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Guns and Grit
Aka “sander selfie”. I started a new project this week, which was spurred on by moving around furniture. I’m really hoping gray spray paint will stick to this lightly sanded white paint, because I don’t have the guns or grit to fully strip this cabinet that we picked up from the flea market several years ago. It seems the cabinet has been rehabbed at least once before. The current (dirty, chipping and smelly) white is just too punchy for the rest of the room. I took off the doors Monday, sanded Tuesday, and left it sitting in the driveway Wednesday. When it comes to house projects, I don’t have the…
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Upcycled String Trellis
Even after I’ve planted my veggies beds to full capacity, there’s always one more packet of seeds I’m drying to make room for. Yesterday it was the handful of French Climbing Beans I saved from my vines last year. They didn’t grow well because the Purple Hyacinth Beans and Turkey Craw Beans choked them out. So instead of eating the few beans that grew, I let them dry on the vines to save for this season. Because these can be trained up a trellis, I decided to plant them at the fence behind the potatoes and corn, where the beds are too deep to reach. I mounted a rooster weather…
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Upcyled Tomato Stakes to Folding Shade Trellis
I’m a roll creating vertical growing space in the garden. Here we have 12 55″ tomato stakes converted into a folding shade trellis. The stakes from Logan’s were inexpensive, and I already had wood screws on hand. The two end verticals are spaced 45″ apart. The laterals are spaced 10″ apart. The concept is that vining plants will grow up the ladder side, which faces south, providing shade for lettuces that like cooler temperatures. I’m hoping this will give me a head start on my greens. I used just one wood screw at the joint between the verticals and support legs to allow rotation of the support legs so I…
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Upcyled Tomato Stakes to Fan Trellis
Earlier in the summer I purchased several packs of 5′ wood tomato stakes from a home improvement store. There were four stakes leftover, which were set aside in the garage. I have a bean/squash/cucumber tunnel that is rapidly outgrowing itself, so I decided to convert the stakes into a fan trellis. This took no more than 10 minutes. I used a handsaw to cut one stake into 3 segments approximately 2.5′, 1.5′ and 0.5′ in length. I then arranged my fan on the garage floor spacing the segments to leave several inches free at the bottom and nailed them down. With a hammer, I drove the fan into the garden…
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Upcycled Sink to Garden Water Bowl
Every time go to garden stores, I can’t help but stop by the water plants and wish I had a place to plant some. Water features are almost always my favorite spots in gardens, and for awhile now the Man and I have been thinking about putting in a fountain. Well, we still haven’t installed a fountain, but we do have a water bowl! Thanks to a trip to the Habitat ReUse Store, we acquired a free sink, sans plug. Like any red-blooded American male would do, the Man found a bunch of plastic to light on fire to clog up the drain with. First we tried a small lid…
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Upcycling: Hot Box to Garden Bench
Last week I broke the old hot box. Not being one to waste wood (the wood was already on its third use), I put the Man-child to work. old hot box The Man-child has a slight obsession with real tools. By real, they have batteries and absolutely may not be used around the Baby. He held the screws as I disassembled the hot box, sat on the boards when I needed some assistance in holding them in place, helped finish off some screws for me once I got them started, and took a few screws out once the bench was finished. the Man-child using the drill Initially I thought of…
