Making something out of nothing

Not only do I love to paint, but I like making things out of discarded material. I'm going to take you on a little tour through our house and show you some of things my wife and I made. I usually build these things and she takes care of the staining. She is a magician when it comes to applying stain.

As you can see in the opening photo, I cut apart a bunch of pallets and after Melissa applied the stain, I applied the boards to the wall. On the other wall we decided to go with corrugated metal that I framed out and added a coat hanger to. The painting on the wall is a painting I did of my Dad sitting on the riverbank on a bucket fishing. I also built the frame that is on this painting out of discarded construction lumber.

We also built this book shelf out of pallet wood. One thing to remember when applying wood as a wall covering is to paint the wall a dark color, either black or dark brown, before attaching your wood. This keeps white from showing through gaps or knot holes in the wood. The shelves and trim are actually common wood that we bought at the store because pallet wood is often warped and hard to use for anything you want to be straight.

This is kind of a simple item that anyone could make. One of our neighbors replaced the decking on his lake dock. I took all of the wood from him and spent a day pulling nails out of it. This little bench is the result from some of that wood. We sanded it but left the red paint on it, then Melissa applied some dark stain. I think we ended up with a very nice result. I used pallet wood for the legs on this one.

This is our coffee table that sits in our living room. I built this entirely from the old deck that my neighbor Bob ripped off his house. Melissa used a really nice golden stain on this. If you like the rustic look, you cant's beat old decking material for tables such as this.

These are some shelves I built with that old red dock that I built the bench with. I built the support brackets out of wood also. As you can see, we like antiques in our cabin style home.

I even built a nice little 10' x 12' shed out of mostly discarded lumber. The window on the bottom is an old wood window I pulled out of a house while installing vinyl replacement windows. The angled windows at the top were given to me by one of our neighbors. The only thing I bought new on this shed was the siding and the shingles. Eventually I'm going to add a deck that wraps around the shed.

This shed is great for storing my fishing poles and other free things I've picked up for projects like this old wood desk and the old panel door leaning against it.

I built a nice work bench on the other wall of the shed. There is also a loft area in this shed for extra storage.

Here is a cool little item that I built from some extra wood I had laying around. I call this the gunfighter throne. I painted the picture of the gunfighter on the back of the chair after I finished it. The seat is the top of a wood filing cabinet that fell apart.

We have a dormer over our living room so I built these barn door shutters and painted a mountain lake scene with a moose on it. More old wood that one of neighbors didn't want. As far as I'm concerned, my neighbors are giving me gold!

Hope you enjoyed these pictures and hopefully you're inspired. Until next time.