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 st