This post contains links to products that when purchased, will cost the same for you but will throw a teeny tiny bit to me. I’m not sure how some people make a living this way…
After an especially violent storm blew through, we noticed that one of our neighbors was replacing a panel of fence that had blown over. The discarded fence was at the curb waiting for trash pickup and being the good sport that he is, he agreed to go back for it. Inspired by all of the pallet wood projects on Pinterest, I figured I could try some downed fence reclaimed wood projects.
First, we sawed the bottom of the fence panel off because it was covered in dirt and rotting away. Then we cut the top off because I didn’t want to fight all of the nails. Both cuts were made right at the edge of the support board running perpendicular to the boards I was trying to “harvest”.
Then the pieces sat around on our back porch for a few months; something that happens to many of my projects.
Projects 1 & 2 – String Art Crosses
A friend was working on a craft-sale fundraiser to raise money for a mission trip to Burundi. This spurred me on to come up with my first downed fence, reclaimed wood project.
I was digging the cool string art projects on Pinterest. I made two string art crosses. One where I left the wood natural and used silver floral wire to make the cross. Another, I covered with a blue acrylic paint wash. I used a paint wash (watered down paint) because I wanted to still be able to see the wood grain. Then I used Sugar ‘n Cream cotton yarn cone to make the cross.
Draw your cross onto a piece of paper. Put evenly spaced dots on the outer lines of your cross. Place the paper on your surface of choice. Put a nail in each of the dots, tear away the paper and wind wire or yarn around your nails. If you’d like a more solid cross, which might have made the silver floral wire show up better, you can add additional nails, evenly spaced on the dotted lines of the template and increase the amount of wire used.
Lessons learned:
I really liked the look of the floral wire on the natural wood; but, it didn’t photograph well and from a distance is a bit hard to see. Next time, I’ll use a thicker and/or shinier wire or add more nails and wire to make the cross stand out more. The blue one with yarn was pretty, but my color choice only appealed to a narrow audience.
Project 3 – Coffee Table
I purchased a $50 clearance coffee table at World Market many years back. The coffee table had its day and B even refinished it once to extend its life. But, because the base and the top together were really heavy, we took the tabletop off, bought some light-weight legs from Ikea and converted it into a desk. In my usual craft hoarding fashion, there was no way I’d let B toss the base. I added it to my collection of things that I know I’ll use for a project someday. Well, the day of the coffee table base finally arrived.
We used construction adhesive and glued the boards to the frame at a bit of an angle (there was no math involved here). We used adhesive because I wanted the tabletop to be hardware free. And it was until it went through one Texas summer and then we had to get out the screws and the cordless drill.
I think that someday soon, I’ll remove the base and paint it. Purple perhaps?!
Project 4 – Side Table
When we started preparing our house in Texas for sale, B grabbed some more of the wood and an old table base I’ve had for ages and put together this little table which looked great between the rockers on our front porch.
Even with four completed projects, before we moved, I had to throw out some of the wood. At least some of it was kept from the landfill. Now that we’re settled again, I wish I had the leftovers so that I could create something else.
