Outdoor Projects

We moved into our first house on my birthday in 2019, and in 2020, we celebrated with a small group of people both our home and my birthday. We played a few games outside but I quickly noticed we needed small tables to put down our drinks while playing certain games. I found a few wood pallets and thought this was a great opportunity to create something useful at a very low cost.

Nothing says summer like spending a Saturday night around a nice fire with a couple of friends and some cold drinks. To store all that nice wood, I built a nice rack that we’ll keep most likely behind the shed. The fireplace is nearby and the she would hide it from plain view because, let’s face it, it’s not the prettiest look in the world. And if case you were wondering, this project is pretty fast to do; after all, I did do it over my lunch break.

We have a relatively small shed: it’s 8 x 12 feet. Empty, it was quite large, but it became obvious it was smaller than we imagined. Like everyone, we put some time on Pinterest and found someone who stacked their lawn mower and snowblower and so we set out to do something similar.

To me, there’s nothing like spending the summer outside. Granted, I don’t do it nearly enough, especially given the short summers we have, but whatever time I do spend outside, I wanted to make it better. Our backyard has a large terrace and I wanted to spend as much time outside as possible, so I came up with some small objectives for my (ambitious) build:

• Space for a cooler to store drinks and keep any food cold before dinner;
• A counter-top to prepare food;
• Both a trash can and a recycling bin;
• Casters so I could move it around if needed.

Mind you, I’ve never done any of this, so calling this an 8/10 is really underselling how hard I made it, but probably being harder on the project than it really is. But hey, I’ve only been woodworking for about 2 or 3 months, and only on my free time, so I guess it’s all relative.

Disclaimer: The project was done with wood purchased before the Covid-19 pandemic, so wood prices were considerably lower. At the time of writing this, prices have nearly doubled and are expected to rise much more. I hope it doesn’t because this is truly something I enjoy doing and hope to do much more in the upcoming weeks and months!