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Recycled Wood
It really frustrates me to see old usable wood thrown in a tip or burned on a bonfire. Timber is expensive yet with a little imagination and a few simple tools there isn't really much that can't be salvaged and repurposed in some form or another. Our neighbour had cause to reroof a kitchen last year and the contractor threw a vast amount of joists and roofing timbers in the skip. Admittedly it was full of six inch nails and screws (I ended up with over half a bucketful) but a few hours work with a claw hammer and an electric screwdriver left me with enough wood for half a dozen major projects in the garden.
The joists from our neighbours roof together with an old glass shower panel made a cold frame far superior to those in the local shops.
My favourite source of timber though has to be old decking boards. Many people seem to have no idea how long lasting this pre-treated wood is and tear them up in large quantities. You can often find them on Freecycle or your local Facebook sites for free or just a few pounds. Quite often some may have been damaged as they were lifted but you will generally find that you can salvage 80-90% of the entire batch. Even the damaged boards will usually be fine for general use where cosmetic looks don't matter.
Decking tends to come in long lengths which can make collection a problem if you only own a car. I have a very small chop saw which I usually ask the seller if they mind me plugging in to cut the boards into manageable sections. In general 6ft lengths are fine for garden projects and fit easily into my car. It also means that the boards are square and true by the time I get them home. Again they will probably have nails and screws to remove but you might be surprised by how many people carefully unscrew their decking board by board yet still take it to the tip !!
Just to give you an idea of the value here are a couple of photos from my most recent batch
Decking tends to come in long lengths which can make collection a problem if you only own a car. I have a very small chop saw which I usually ask the seller if they mind me plugging in to cut the boards into manageable sections. In general 6ft lengths are fine for garden projects and fit easily into my car. It also means that the boards are square and true by the time I get them home. Again they will probably have nails and screws to remove but you might be surprised by how many people carefully unscrew their decking board by board yet still take it to the tip !!
Just to give you an idea of the value here are a couple of photos from my most recent batch
From there the possibilities are endless. With a box of decking screws and a tub of wood preservative the sky is your limit. I like to try to copy the prohibitively expensive timber troughs from our local garden centre. The ones below cost me about £5 each to make and are much stronger and well made than their retail equivalents which sell at about £130-£150 each. It took me a while to work out the angles on these particular ones but I find a few photographs of the original and a coupe of internet searches solve most problems.
Just to inspire your imagination I've included a few other projects from the same batch of wood (there was a lot of wood!)
Old furniture is another great source of material. I recently needed a few sheets of solid wood to make these egg racks. These were produced from the top and sides of an old telephone table which had been lying around in a friend's garden for months. All I had to do was scrape off the mould and sand down the old varnish to give a better quality product than I could buy in the local DIY store. They stand on four circular feet which are simply the circles cut out by the hole saw. |
And finally even when you're forced into buying new wood it's not necessary to spend a fortune. Wooden gravel boards are one of my favourites. They're pre-treated with wood preservative, long lasting and comparatively cheap (especially if you take a hand saw with you when buying them and cut down the massive three metre lengths). These were new boards which I used fto make bird boxes during the lockdown but even including the aluminium hole protectors they only costs me about £3 each.