My parents' neighbors got a new fence so my mom got a new potting stand. How does that work? I'll show you. Here's the new fence the people next door put up:
Pretty nice, I guess. But this is the part I was drooling over...the pile of wood they were discarding.
I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, I just knew I wanted it. So I conned my dad and Doc into helping me drag it over to our yard. We stacked it up behind the shop and called it a day.
That was about 2-3 weeks ago. On Monday, my dad asked what I was planning on doing with that wood. I believe his exact words were "that's not a graveyard for wood back there." So we all (mom, dad, Doc, me) headed around to the back of the shop to have a little look-see.
And then I started giving orders.
I immediately put my dad and Doc to work tearing apart a few pieces.
The gate to the fence was still mostly in tact. I wanted to use it as a table top, but it was a tad too big. The circular saw made its way out of the shop and my dad and Doc cut the gate down for me. We also hammered all the loose nails in.
Doc grabbed a hammer and pulled all the rusty nails out of some of the posts so they could be used as our table legs.
Dad cut the posts down to the correct lengths.
My job? Besides being Project Manager? I held this nail.
This is the rusty nail we used to mark all of our cuts. After dropping it about 48 times, my dad finally grabbed my hand, held it open, put the nail in it, and said, "don't let go of this!"
After the posts were cut, we attached them to the gate as table legs.
Did I mention we had the cutest little puppy cheering us on? (Note that she's also covered in sawdust.)
After the table was built, we decided to use the still-attached hinges from the gate to attach a back to the table. We used another section of fence for this and just drilled the hinges into it.
The last step was to remove the gate handle from the table top and reposition it up on the back so it wouldn't be in the way. We screwed in some hooks for hanging things, too.
And voila! Just like that, my mom had a new potting station.
We spent zero dollars and I love the look of the reclaimed wood. Double win!
Here are some more views.
I have to say, this was some on-the-fly carpentry. We didn't really measure anything or have a plan. We just figured it out as we went. It might have a little wobble to it, but who's gonna complain about a free potting stand? Now, the true test will be if it survives the winter so my mom can use it to re-pot all of her plants in the spring. Only time will tell...
