Thanks for stopping by again. I hope you have had a great week.

I haven’t been as busy this week, but have been seeing a lot more of my friends lately which is always nice. We are 11 days away from the New Year. It has been a wonderful year for me, God has been so faithful. I haven’t set any resolutions for next year, but have a list goals that I will achieve. I have 16 so far, and I’m sure there will be more added along the way. For some insight into my goals, one of them is staying up all night and watching the sunrise.

Enough about my goals. I took a pallet crate, dismantled it with a hammer; and recycled the wood for a breakfast bar. As you can image thousands of pallet crates go to waste, ending up in skips and landfills.  The Waste & Resources Action Programme reported in 2010 4.3 million tonnes of timber were wasted. Can you imagine how much wood that is and the number of things that could have been made? Its saddening how much we waste.

The story of how I got this palette crate is bit shameful, but I got what I was looking for the end. On my drive to work, I always take the route down Northumberland road, if you’ve ever been down Northumberland road it is beautiful; think big grand houses. So one of the houses are having work done and I had spotted a palette crate for a few days but was rather embarrassed to pull up and take it. One morning courage struck me and I parked trying to fit the crate into my baby sized car, but the crate was too large. I then spotted builders working at the house next door and they had crates scattered all over the drive. I started walking over but was hesitant, looked in and then walked back. I then turned around, peering into the drive and when I was spotted I asked for one of the crates. I’m sure they must have thought I was crazy. They said ‘yeah, but it’s heavy.’ That was fine by me. I hobbled back to my car with the crate hoisted against my waist. As you can imagine they watched me go all the way back to my car to try and fit this life-size crate of nearly my height back into my baby car. Thank God it fit otherwise I would have been too embarrassed to take it back.

I thought it was going to be an easy process to work with this crate and that I could just dismantle it simply. When I went on Youtube people were recommending all these fancy tools to dismantle the crate. 1.  I didn’t want to buy a tool that I would never use again and 2. We’re working on a budget here. In the end, I took my strength, my foot, a hammer and dismantle the crate by force. 

I then chose 3 planks of wood with the most detailed veneering, sanded them by hand to take away the splinters and rounded the corners.  Cut shorter planks to the three main slates together. I reused the nails that I took out hen dismantling the crate. I stained the wood with balsamic vinegar. For the first coat, I mixed the vinegar with water, but then decided against it for future coats; and just applied it directly to the wood. I couldn’t tell you how many coats I did, but when I got to a good shade of brown I sponged red watercolour paint onto the wood. I left it to dry for a day or two then oiled the wood down. 

I haven’t assembled the wood onto the wall as yet but thought I would give you a visual of what it would look like. I’m nearly done with my kitchen now. I just have to change the taps and the lighting. It won’t be ready by the end of December like I had planned, but some progress is better than none.

Join me next time when I’ll reveal the Surprise DIY artwork. Have a great weekend!

Nik-Cre – ‘Making life-less rooms into living rooms.’