HOW TO MAKE A WOOD STORE

Since moving to our new house over a year ago, the garage has been a continual dumping ground for all and sundry much to the despair of the other half who has been desperate to create his ‘man cave’ workshop, a sanctuary from what he refers to as constant ‘nagging’ and what I see as ‘reminding’. 

Bearing in mind that entry to this ‘man cave’ is subject to special entry permission for girls, I just couldn’t resist offering to come up with a few design ideas to help him achieve order from the chaos.

 

Yeah, right.

Now in the same way as women collect shoes, men seem to accumulate offcuts of timber.  “You never know when you might need a bit of wood.” says the other half.  We have enough to build an ark which I guess might not be such a bad thing in these times of climate change but having it scattered about here and there offends my tidy nature.  Hmmm – me thinks a wood store is needed. 

Inspiration often comes from the most random sources and my light bulb moment happened as I was walking past some local allotments where a compost bin had been fashioned from an eclectic selection of pallets and planks. 

So here’s how to make your very own wood store using a couple of old wooden pallets and some offcuts of timber/MDF. 

Firstly acquire 2 x identical wooden pallets.  Always ask the owner of the pallets beforehand as no-one likes their stuff being pinched, least of all me.  If you can get them for free then so much the better as this wood store will cost you next to nothing to make. 

Stand both pallets up on their side facing each other with their planks facing outwards.  Gradually move them apart until you decide on the perfect width for your wood store.

 

Determine your width by moving pallets apart

Next make a base to screw onto the top of your two pallets.  We used a thick piece of MDF that we had left over from a previous project but a piece of strong ply or OSB will do just the trick.  Cut a shape that will fit the length of your pallet and to your desired width.

 

Attach base to the top of pallets

Using long wood screws, attach the base to the top of the pallets then turn upside down so that the base is now at the bottom of your structure.

 

Turn upside down once base attached

To hold the pallet sides in place, cut some timber into identical lengths.  These should be the width of your structure.  We used 3 pieces of leftover wood so that we could align the side pieces close to the horizontal planks on the pallet.

 

Cut identical sized timber pieces for the side supports

Screw the wood pieces to either side of your vertical structure remembering to keep the bottom one level with the base and the top piece level with your top edge.

 

Attach side pieces to join both pallets together

You should now have a fairly solid wooden structure that is ready to decorate.

 

Pallets with side pieces in place

As pallets are made of quite rough timber, give it all a good sanding with a rough grit paper to get the worst splintery bits off then re-sand using a finer grit so that the wood is silky smooth to the touch.

 

Give it a good sanding to get rid of the rough bits

Nice and smooth, ready for decorating

This being an upcycling project, time to rummage through my collection of leftover paint to find a suitable colour to brighten up a ‘man cave’.  Couple of coats of a nice vibrant blue have completely transformed these pallets into something else.  However, if you like the look of natural wood then you could just leave it all unfinished or give it a coat of clear varnish.

 

Decorate with stickers

Finish off your wood store with some decorative stickers, decals or whatever takes your fancy and hey presto, all those timber offcuts can be neatly stored away ready for your next DIY project.

A perfect way to store your timber offcuts

KITCHEN DEMOLITION

Today, Arthur, I am a one-woman kitchen demolition squad!  

Who’s Arthur?   Oh him.  That’s my imaginary friend Arthur Job.  He always turns up when you least expect him to derail any good intentions you have to get stuff done.  I’m sure you probably know him too. There’s always that one bit on a project you never quite finish ie ‘arf a job’.  Enough said.

January always seems much longer than its thirty-one days so to kill a bit of time and get a head start on this year’s extension/kitchen refurb project, I’ve dug out my DIY garb and gotten stuck into some good old fashioned kitchen gutting.  I'm loving it!

 

It's all got to go

to make way for better things

I’ve been itching to take a chisel to those awful 70’s style tiles.  Today’s the day they finally got hacked off the wall.

 

Bye, bye hideous tiles

Take care when removing tiles

A word of advice for anyone thinking of doing the same, please don’t do like me – wear proper safety glasses and gloves.  Tile shards are very sharp and at a flick of the chisel, can easily end up in your eyes.

 

Living dangerously with no PPE

Those dreadful dirty white wall units are also being given the heave ho. 

Getting rid of the wall hung units

I love demolition work!

I’ve had to literally rip some of these cabinets off the wall, the screws were in that tight.  Whoever put them up obviously didn’t mean for them to come down again.  Definitely earthquake proof! 

But down they are, temporarily stacked in the lounge and on the work tops until such time as a new kitchen is fitted.

 

Wall units removed

Stacked on the worktop for temporary use

Just when I thought my steamy love affair was over, it’s back on for another bout of paper stripping.

 

Darling, you're back in my life!

It was my bad luck to find that the bodgers had been at it again, applying a second layer of anaglypta type wallpaper on top of the original woodchip instead of steaming off the first lot and starting afresh.  Argh!

 

Pulling off the top layer of wallpaper from the ceiling

That’s where Arthur comes in as it’s going to take a whole day of sloshing Zinsser solution onto the ceiling in order to strip this lot off.  Yippee!  I’ll think we’ll leave that bit for another time, don’t you?

 

Cat turd or cocktail sausage?  What you find behind freezers

There was enough hammering, steaming, kettle boiling and cursing loud enough to wake the dead or provoke a polite knock on the wall from next door but despite the noise, Blackie, the neighbourhood timeshare cat, slept through everything. 

 

Can you hear anything?

The kitchen, like our lounge/diner is now sporting the very latest in that just demolished, condemned factory décor but is ready for the next phase of the refurb.  Well, almost!

Stripped and ready for phase II

Today's interior design trend - the condemned factory look

Only the ceiling left to strip

Out with the old kitchen

SPILLAGE AISLE 15

Sometimes it rains and sometimes it pours but the time to worry is when it’s raining in your lounge. 

Over the festive period we discovered spillage and I’m not talking about the mess left behind after a raucous rendition of Auld Lang Syne whilst holding a wine glass full of the red stuff.  But not at a party.  Parties are definitely on the naughty list, ask Boris.  In our case, its spillage that’s came from the skies or rather from a damp looking patch on the lounge ceiling.

 

Looks rather wet up there

We would have been oblivious to said spillage if it hadn’t been for Blackie’s reluctance to have a kip in his usual fleecy spot because even cats object to sleeping in a damp patch.  An incontinent cat can’t be overlooked but it certainly didn’t smell of cat pee.  This odd kitty behaviour led us to discover a sopping wet fleecy blanket then look up to see a steady drip plopping down from the cracked ceiling.

 

Water stain also on the kitchen ceiling

Further investigation into the loft crawl space revealed a leaking joint on a copper pipe that we could only surmise belonged to the water system.  Gaffer tape to the rescue with a bodged bandage applied to the joint to tide us over into the new year.  Daily bowl emptying was top of the daily ‘to do’ list for a couple of weeks.

 

This is not how leaky pipes should be repaired

Finally, a Covid free plumber was found to fix this unexpected surprise Christmas ‘gift’ which set me back £80 for what I can only describe as a ‘cut and shut’ job.  The offending bit of leaky pipe was removed and a nice dry section welded in. 

Leaking pipe or entrance to Narnia?

Sadly this soggy drama rather scuppered all the super scrimping done before the festive season and is yet another unplanned financial drain on the limited budget for the new extension.

No leaks in my house

FETAVERSE

Happy New Covid once again! 

I've read that Mark Zuckerberg is branching out into the dairy business by creating a cheesy-verse called ‘Feta’ that we can all live in.  And why not?  It’s a genius idea because even if you don’t like social media, everyone loves cheese. Even vegans.

 

A universe made of cheese - fabulous!

I’ve already begun to mentally design my new avatar.  In the ‘Fetaverse’ I’ll no longer be a fat, frumpy, fifty something but a tall, athletic brunette with perky boobs that’ll stick out like an IKEA shelf and the smallest most perfectly toned butt that would take gold in the arse Olympics.  There’ll be no getting old, no Covid, no paying taxes or worries about finding NHS dentists – the ‘Fetaverse’ will be a perfect virtual utopia where we can all live forever or at least until electricity finally runs out.

 

Age will be a thing of the past in the Fetaverse

On the flip side of this, the REAL world will suddenly seem like the depressingly shit place it is, full of imperfect, hateful people, contagion and re-runs of The Italian Job so mass global depression and suicides are likely to increase when you leave ‘Feta’ and are back in the room.  Everyone will want the cheese but no-one will want the stale, dry crackers. 

 

Fetaverse?  Are you crackers?

Like a vampire’s curse, we’ll watch all our loved ones die in real life but we’ll continue to interact with their immortal ‘Feta’ selves until we too pop our clogs or Zuckerberg comes up with a way for us all to live forever electronically like Johnny Depp did in Transcendence.  I foresee a generation of screwed up individuals who’ll spend so much time in the fake world that they won’t be able to accept the reality of life or who will spend a small fortune on cosmetic surgery so that they can look as perfect as their avatars. 

But even as God created perfect angels, He also created the devil to balance things out.  Maybe someone will create a Dark Feta where we can all act out our sick fantasies and get away with it because in that universe there’ll be no police, prisons or punishments.  Oh, hang on, I think that’s the real world.  Bugger!

 

MZ's notepad?

As dairy generally gives me a touch of the farts, not to mention those weird cheese dreams that generally follow a Wensleydale binge then I’ll be giving the ‘Fetaverse’ a miss.  

Thanks for the offer, Mark, but I’m happy to bimble along as a fat, frumpy, fifty-something in real life rather than exist virtually as ‘Miss Perfect’ in the cheesy-verse.  Enjoy Zuckers!