I'm Not a Hoarder

For quite some time now the King and I have been accumulating things like pack rats... Ooh shiny! Let's put that in the basement for... I don't know... something!

Sometimes we have a specific project in mind, oftentimes it just seems useful.

In the meantime, some things have been sitting around waiting for a home.

For instance, this rain barrel. It's been sitting on our back deck ever since we got it... almost two years ago. We finally moved it and the King hooked it up to our gutter with a flexible extender we'd purchased to route rainwater away from the foundation.

Today's cost $0, we had the rain barrel and we reused the extender.

The bag of potting soil sitting on top is waiting for me to plant mint. We love mint, but I don't want it growing everywhere so this is a perfect spot.

Once the pallet wall was officially underway, we realized we need more pallet wood. So we got permission to scrounge around in town and picked up a few pallets, some loose boards and a couple that were chopped up that I thought could be steps to the chicken coop.

Cost $0

This is the hugelkultur mound during the day, and the flowerbed. We need a little more topsoil. Then it will be finished and I can put weed fabric down (we have had some sitting in the closet for a few months), put plants in the ground, and cover it with mulch.

The wood was free, we bartered for the tiller, I'd already purchased the landscaping fabric, so the only cost was mulch and topsoil, under $50.

When we picked our friend's trailer up, our neighbors said they had wood we could scavenge, so we dug through the pile and think we have enough for the structure of the chicken coop, and possibly some pieces for the exterior as well.

Another freebie! The Queen rejoices!

This is my temporary garden. I've had the plants sitting on the porch, waiting on mounds or a garden bed. I actually had a garden bed I'd forgotten about, it was just overgrown with weeds. 

We'll see if I get any tomatoes or peppers out of it. If nothing else, it's a nice bed for the thyme and rosemary. And hopefully winter doesn't kill them this year...

This spigot has been broken since winter. 

Not last winter... the winter before. Turns out the pipe was cracked. So the King was able to replace it and now we have one functional spigot!!!He's going to see if he can fix the one on the side of the house next.

$15 instead of calling a plumber.

And what do you think this is going to be?

Here's a hint.

Yep, a cabinet for me to put laundry supplies in. As you can see from the pic above, it's rather cluttered right now.

The cabinet doors are from the kitchen, I took them off when I painted the cabinets and they fit perfectly. The wood is from the wall we took down in the kitchen, and some leftover from another project.

But they aren't done. The top needs to be stained.

And the rest needs to be painted. Happened to have extra paint handy too. This is the color I almost painted the kitchen, but it was too grey and I needed a blue-green. At least it didn't go to waste.

This stain is called driftwood, we used it on some of the pallet boards for the wall. It adds very little color, just some ashy tones that are especially apparent in the knotty areas of the board.

hahaha, knotty areas...

And now the top of the washer and dryer are clutter free! Thank you King!

It's nice to be able to accomplish things without money and free up a little basement real estate to boot.

Slowly but surely we are making this house our home.