One Man’s Trash…
A few weeks ago, my wife and I were on our way home from the grocery store when we saw a pile of fence pickets lying on the sidewalk with a “free” sign on them. I like getting free materials to play around with, but I honestly feel a little weird grabbing up my neighbor’s discards. Heather, on the other hand, has no such hang ups.
We went back with the truck to abscond with the pickets only to find that they were actually Trex fence pickets. Trex is a product made from recycled milk jugs so it is completely rot resistant. Trex is also very expensive. In all there were 16 pickets in the pile and we took them all. I knew right away that they would be perfect for making outdoor planters.
I have recently seen many 3-tier planter projects on various Youtube channels and I like the look of them. All the one’s I saw however, were made with triangular planter boxes and designed to hold flower pots. I wanted to plant herbs so I opted for deep, rectangular boxes.
The boxes are 30in long, 8 in wide, and 10 in deep. Each box used 2.5 of the Trex pickets and about half a 2x4. Almost all of the wood and screws were left over from other projects, in fact, I only had to purchase 3 2x4’s to complete the project. I lined each box with landscaping plastic to keep the dirt in and let the water out.
I filled the boxes with a good quality compost and planted a variety of herbs - Cilantro, Mint, Oregano, Sage, Parsley, thyme, chives, and 2 types of onions. I can’t wait for them to start growing.
From Near Tragedy to Spoons
A motorcycle accident, time with my daughter and a new prouct line
It was 12:15 in the afternoon and I was just breaking for lunch when the phone rang. It was a trauma nurse at Community Hospital calling to tell me that my daughter Sara had been in a motorcycle accident. 48 hours of worry followed that call, but Sara managed to escape the crash with only two broken fingers and a slight concussion.
Sara works the night shift, so I don’t see her much usually. But now she is home on disability and we get to spend every day together. Since Sara is a wiz at 3D modeling, I thought it would give her something to do if she were to design a spoon that could be roughed out on the CNC router and finished by hand. She got right to it, and at the end of day one, she had designed an entire line of wooden kitchen utensils.
So today we are kicking off our new product line. We are currently offering two wood choices, maple and walnut, but will add others as the whim or requests hit us. Each piece is cut out and rough shaped on the CNC and then I finish them by hand - doing the final shaping and smoothing. Every utensil is finished with a mineral oil bath followed by hand rubbed beeswax before receiving a final buffing. If cared for properly, these beautiful kitchen tools will last a lifetime.
Check out our entire line up in our Kitchen Essentials Shop