Many of our customers turn our materials into wonderful creations, and you’d be surprised at the variety of such projects! We’re always looking for photos and stories of reusage projects that use our materials, and we exhort you to send us documentation of your best projects!
Greenhouse and Garden Tool Closet
End Table
Dining Table
Chicken Coop
Kayak
David Schmetterling builds wonderful structures for the facilitation of gardens. In additon to be an avid DIY guy, David is a wildlife biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, in Missoula. Check out his blog, Montana Wildlife Gardener. Thanks David!
End Table, From Todd:
“After spending half an afternoon fussing with a dull-bladed tenon cutter and a hatchet to put tenons on my abundant supply of weathered and oversized reclaimed fenceposts, I swallowed a big gulp of brew and then my pride and decided to start on another project. I had a piece of rough-cut 3×3 laying around and a bunch of small 1x from various projects. Some of them were leftover pieces from a gate I built with Home Resource blued pine, and some came from weathered barn wood that didn’t make it into picture frames. I like to build furniture that you could burn in a crunch if you had to – little to no hardware and a non-toxic finish. This one is wood-stove worthy. The joints are all mortise and tenons that were easily made with a brace and bit and multiple passes on a table saw respectively, cleaned up with a chisel, and then pegged. The top is “butcher block” style made up of fir, pine, and some cedar. After gluing up all the little sticks I had some edges to contend with so I hand planed the top until it was flat enough. The edges were softened with a hand rasp and rubbed down with 220 grit. It was finished with a combo of Montola safflower oil and local beeswax.”
“The pile of dirty fir in the corner of the basement had been staring at me for a while. We exchanged knowing glances, I would give it a new life someday, but until then I could ignore it and hope I would have to nourish it temporarily. The stare of my wife at dinner, only a few inches away on our couch in the house-of-no-table, was harder to ignore. I planed the wood with a planer I borrowed from MUD and it erased years of mold and dirt and brought out the straight lines of the old growth heartwood that had remained masked. I hand planed the edges and glued up the pieces until I had a top wide enough to call a table. The rails were rough-cut 2×4 bought at a different time from Home Resource. I don’t know what they were for originally but they were with a stack of 3×12 rough fir and were tapered on the ends. I tenoned the rails and mortised the legs and glued, clamped, and pegged the joints. A hand rasp worked over all the edges and it was finished with Montola safflower oil and beeswax from the Sweet Bear Apiary in Victor (they actually don’t sell their wax so I had to buy one of their candles). We have a place to eat now, and my honey says it smells like honey.”
“Our chickens had graduated from the horse water trough, into a hay stall, and were ready for a designated home of their own to protect them from the local raccoons and fox that were starting to get curious. I set out to achieve the goal articulated by John Seymour that “a homesteader should try to make his coup from nothing”, but didn’t quite succeed. This was built with traditional stud framing. I built the base big enough so that each bird would have at least 4 sq ft. of floor space (32sqft, 6 birds = 5.3 sqft/bird). The frame in contact with the ground was Trex, as was the interior section that sits below the roosts. The roosts were made of Trex also. The idea was to achieve rot-resistance without any of chromium, copper, arsenic and other preservatives that, when used in treated lumber, would potentially end up in the chickens and their lovely shelled orbs. I built the roof with some plywood off-cuts and tar paper and tin roofing. The outside is faced with off-cuts of barn wood. The chickens are cold hardy but have a harder time regulating temperature in the heat so I decided to simply allow the small end to face South and let the low end of the shed-style roof face the prevailing winds. Some Trex was purchased new, but I went through the local Boyce instead of the nameless/shamless Big Box. The roofing was from a friends’ garage that he was happy to see go. The plywood was given to me free out of Loken Builder’s cache, some barnwood, 2×2 trex, 2×4 studs, and door hinges were from Home Resource. I had to buy sheet metal screws with the gaskets for water-proof attachment of the tin. The whole house was finished inside and out with EcoSeal. The chicks dig it.“
The boat is a skin-on-frame design, meaning it’s a wooden frame with a nylon skin that was sewn on and coated in urethane. I spent many hours perusing Home Resource for just the right pieces of wood. I ended up using a combination of those pieces, scraps scavenged from junk heaps, and green willow shoots. The challenge of using only basic hand tools (many also from Home Resource) and mostly second-hand materials was as fun as the building process itself.
The kayak was a blast to build and is even more fun to paddle. It weighs just 16 pounds, so it’s a breeze to transport and is effortless to propel through the water. Plus, it fits me like a glove since I was able to design it to my own dimensions. It’s a hundred time more enjoyable than paddling a plastic mass-production boat… and it adds a wonderful sense of pride to my adventures on the water. I would highly recommend a project like this to anyone looking for a fun and rewarding way to spend their spare time.
