This week for Elizabeth's challenge, Julia and Joanna challenged her to make something out of wood that she had found on the side of the road or at a thrift store. Here's what she came up with.
Now, let me preface this by saying I AM NOT A CARPENTER! I have excellent carpenters in my family that you would want to listen to and copy, but please do not consider me an expert. I simply make what I need to and am trying to get better at working with wood!
So, the challenge! I'm not positive this is the best thing to admit, but I routinely look for old things on the side of the road to use as materials or as projects to go in my house. That's actually where a lot of my things come from! I built my sewing table out of leftover wood from behind an apartment building, and I built my fabric-cutting table from a workshop table base I found, and an added padded top.
So, the challenge! I'm not positive this is the best thing to admit, but I routinely look for old things on the side of the road to use as materials or as projects to go in my house. That's actually where a lot of my things come from! I built my sewing table out of leftover wood from behind an apartment building, and I built my fabric-cutting table from a workshop table base I found, and an added padded top.
The challenge to finding things on the side of the road though is you can't ever think: "Hmmm, I need a dresser right now, I'm going to drive around and find one." You just have to keep your eyes peeled for everything and maintain a limit to how much junk you are allowed to store on your back porch.
Right now, I have a stack of old beautiful wood with cracked and distressed paint on them, an old wooden wire spool I'm going to eventually make into a table (don't have the space in my house right now), a chair base, and a couple old wood shutters.
I decided that for my project I would make something I actually kinda need in my house (brilliant, eh?): a little shelf to put in my shoe closet. There's just a big empty space right now in the bottom of my storage closet and I wanted to split it in half to utilize the space better.
Right now, I have a stack of old beautiful wood with cracked and distressed paint on them, an old wooden wire spool I'm going to eventually make into a table (don't have the space in my house right now), a chair base, and a couple old wood shutters.
I decided that for my project I would make something I actually kinda need in my house (brilliant, eh?): a little shelf to put in my shoe closet. There's just a big empty space right now in the bottom of my storage closet and I wanted to split it in half to utilize the space better.
I started with some scrap wood from an old headboard. I decided I needed the shelf to be 17'' wide, so I lined up the wood and yay! They happened to be exactly the right width!
Next, for the length of the table I needed it to be 19'', so I measured it out and drew a line across all the boards where I need to cut. I grabbed my brother-in-law's DeWalt rotary saw and went to town. I love that machine.
Next, I flipped the boards over so their wrong side is up (most boards don't have wrong sides, but these were definitely prettier on one side) and I nailed two boards that were 13'' long to each side across the boards. I used nails but screws probably would have been even better, I just have really cool old recycled nails I like to use for things.
Next I looked for some legs. I happened to have four old legs from a project my Dad made from me once in my wood pile. If I didn't I would have just used any 2''x2'' boards I could have found. Mine happened to already have floor protector pads attached so win win! I measured the height I wanted them to be and marked it carefully.
See?
I screwed these into the four corners of the shelf top, being careful to push the wood up against the crossboard underneath for some support.
Now at this point, I should have left well enough alone. It works, it's not too ugly, and it would definitely hold up shoes, but I kept thinking that it could be sturdier. So I added a bunch more boards till it was uglier and actually, not a whole lot sturdier. I'm not going to tell you how I did that, because I think I should have stopped while I was ahead! Here is the finished product.
It works just fine and definitely gives more room to our shoe closet!