Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose

So having recently re-built our deck, we found ourselves in possession of a lot (LOT) of old boards.  We carried them 2 at a time (20+ trips) out back by the dumpster to be claimed by the neighborhood pickers or to await their fate on large item pick-up day, along with a rogue TV and a neighbor's chest of drawers sans drawers.  The next morning, however, when I went out to feed the chickens, I noticed that our "work table" in the garage (an amalgamation of two plastic sawhorses and a sheet of plywood) was beginning to sway and buckle under the weight of a few bales of hay, a 50 lb. bag of chicken feed, a random assortment of tools, stacks of newspapers (for rabbit litter boxes), and loads of other miscellany (picture the show "Hoarders," but confined to 3 feet by 6 feet of table space).  I got to wondering what it would take to buy a new table that would be able to bear the brunt of the weight of our little homestead on its shoulders.  The answer... more than we were willing to spend.  Then I remembered all of the wood that we had at our disposal.  Sure, it was old, weather-beaten, stained by years of walnuts hurled by guerrilla squirrels, moss growth, and foot traffic; but to build a table that would inevitably get beaten up in the garage, did we really need shiny new lumber???  You guessed it.  Time to put our "less waste" talk into practice.  Enter the old deck lumber.

We hauled some of the old 8 foot 2x6's BACK into the backyard and laid them out in the grass.  We cut them to sizes that we needed for the table we had in mind and with a little Palmolive and elbow grease, washed away years of abuse.  Although they weren't what I would call "good-as-new," they definitely got a little bit of a face lift.  Then, using some of the leftover screws we had from our deck project, we began assembly.  For good measure, we also re-purposed an old pallet we had leftover from a different project, and VOILA!!!

Not too shabby {chic} for a couple of weekend carpenters looking to save a few bucks here at the Hartford Homestead.