DIY: Pallet Credenza

My latest spare-time-project was this credenza for our dining room. I wanted to build it for as cheap as possible, so I picked up three pallets for free behind a local business that throws them away. Interesting, each pallet had a different IPPC stamp on them and they represented Germany, Spain and Italy. These pallets turned credenza have literally been around the world. 🙂 I couldn’t help but build the stamps into the credenza as proof of my lucky find! The top is made of reclaimed Java wood, which I had left over from the dining table that I built with my Dad. I tried a few new things including tapered legs, dowel joinery and doors, which proved more time consuming than I thought.

My original design ended up evolving as the project went on due to the finicky nature of pallet wood and my lack of know how.

All in all, the entire project cost $32, took two days to complete and I used 90% of the three pallets for this piece (the last 10% ended up in our firewood pile, which will hopefully be used soon!).

DIY: Reclaimed Wood Dining Table

Our new dining table is nearly complete! My amazingly handy pops and I worked tirelessly for two consecutive days – the only part left is probably another day of sanding, planing and varnishing the table top. The table top and frame is reclaimed wood taken from shipping crates out of Indonesia. The guys at the yard called it “java mix.” The 4 X 4 legs are reclaimed Douglas Fir…I would have preferred some 5 X 5 oak beams, but they were $150 more. 😦 I’ll make sure to post some more pictures after it’s completely finished because a few coats of polyurethane will really make the colors on the top stand out.

All in all, I’m just happy my design worked and the table didn’t collapse when we put the two thousand pound table top onto the legs.

My business partner will be out here in a few weeks. Orders can be placed in September. 🙂

DIY: Homasote Bulletin Board

I have been wanting a giant bulletin board for as long as I can remember and especially lately, since my collection of Baseball stadium postcards is sitting in a drawer waiting to be hung. My Grandpa built one for me growing up and I filled it with as much MJ and Desmond Howard as I could. (There was also a season where I tacked my multitude of reeses pieces wrappers to the board, for no other reason except that I liked the colors and I thought it would be interesting to see how many packs I consumed in a summer. I’m realizing now that I still do that kind of ridiculous crap.) Anyway…if you’ve ever thought about buying a big bulletin board outright, you know how expensive it is. So I did some research and found this wonderful stuff called Homasote that works perfectly as a bulletin board. I added a little fabric with a staple gun and poof, a nice bulletin board it became. Since there only sold in 4X8 foot sheets, I had the guy cut three pieces, which means we have two smaller pieces for Stella’s room (I imagine them filled with her drawings in the coming years).

There are many postcards and business related items to add, but it’s time for lunch…here is the beginning…

If you’re interested in making this yourself, I would buy it from a lumber yard to get the best deal (my 4X8 sheet was $34). You can see where homasote is sold by going here. The fabric I used costs $11 from JoAnne’s and the screws were .86 cents. Make sure you find the studs behind your wall because this material is fairly heavy.

For a few links with others who have done a far better job with this than I, go here and here.

DIY: Pallet End Table

I finished this end table this morning. All of the wood is from pallets I picked up a while back and the whole job cost me $3.99 since the wood was free and I had a few screws laying around my toolbox and some leftover polyurethane as well (and some sandpaper, etc). While the design is mine, I got my inspiration from my friend Mel Barlow’s end table in Brooklyn.

DIY: Backyard

I WISH, WISH, I would have taken some before shots of our mess of a backyard. First off, there was no backyard. It was a pile of dirt, a broken sidewalk and a dead orange tree, enclosed by a tall wooden fence. It was dusty and dirty and where we kept our four gigantic trash and recycle bins. We tiptoed around back there, as if the trash had spilled out over the edges of the bins and onto the 200 square foot patch of space.

When the Bills moved in upstairs, we vowed to turn the dump into something, even if we didn’t know exactly what that something looked like. So we put together our ideas, money and muscles and turned our dusty mess into a little oasis. We’ve already enjoyed countless fires, a few meals and the kids explore it on a daily basis. The work took the better part of two days and cost a total of $115 per family (pavers, diamond blade, sod, chiminea, shovel, gypsum, sand, lights, compost).

Here is the finished product…

Garden Update: One Month Later

Since it’s been one month since my first post about our home garden, I figured an update was in store. Mostly because I can’t believe the little miracle that is our garden, which has been remarkably growing and multiplying and producing little vegetable wonders.

Tomatoes: Watching this plant multiply is astounding. It seems every few days it climbs another ring and shoots off in another direction. Six weeks ago it was barely two inches tall…

Peppers: It’s interesting how the plants themselves haven’t grown all that much, even though there are large vegetables now hanging from them.

Jalapenos:

Tomatoes:

DIY: Kids Pallet Picnic Table

With our new oasis in the backyard, where we can now have meals and enjoy fires and play with the little tikes, I thought it would be nice add a kid’s picnic table to the mix. Plus I needed SOMETHING to build with the free pallets and newly acquired power tools. 🙂

Special thanks goes to this website, for making the project a step-by-step-you-can’t-possibly-mess-this-up job (I still managed to mess it up).

Materials:

Support Wood: FREE pallets
Table top and bench top: $8.30 (Five 1X3’s)
Screws/Carriage Bolts: $26.35
Sandpaper: $6.40
Stain: $6.03
Weatherproofing: $7.42

TOTAL: $54.50

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DIY: Bathroom Pallet Stool

Since Stella now plays in the dirt every single day, the need to wash her hands has increased considerably. And since our backs cannot handle the simultaneous action of holding her over the sink and washing her hands, a stool was called for. I found some free pallets on Craigslist a while ago and used a few pieces from one of them to build the stool.

Thanks to Sam for the idea and to my Dad for reminding me how to use a circular saw!

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Materials:

Wood: FREE pallets
Screws: $1.21
Sandpaper: $2.29

$3.50 total

Tools:

Power drill
Circular saw
Measuring tape
Level
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DIY: Home Garden

We finally live in a place where we can have (attempt) our very own garden! So far, all is well and the plants have been miraculously growing. Our first crop won’t come until June, but we have already plucked many lettuce leaves, which we use every few days with avocados and salads (who knew lettuce reproduced so quickly).

I went with all organic for the plants, compost and vegetable food and also purchased everything from Armstrong’s Garden Center in Pasadena.

Materials:

$27: 3 bell peppers, 2 tomatoes, 3 onions, 1 jalapeno
FREE: Lettuce from neighbors across the street
$8: Bamboo from 99cent store: I cut the bamboo and drilled holes to build a little (unsturdy) fence to hopefully keep predators out (Moses and Stella)
$5: Organic fertilizer
$5: Organic plant food
$10: 2 tomato cages

$55 total…

Here’s to hoping I can keep them alive long enough to bear us some produce…

DIY Infant Kitchen

We hope to build her a more authentic wooden kitchen when she is bit older, but for now, this $5 cardboard box kitchen will suffice. 🙂

Materials:

– Cardboard box (free)
– Black matte board (free…we had leftovers)
– Tackle paper ($2)
– Coathanger turned into nobs ($1)
– Showerhead turned into faucet ($1)
– Bowl turned into sink ($1)