One of the things about renovating a house is the constant trickle of stuff both arriving and leaving. Earlier this year we had scaffolding at the front of the house for some fairly urgent roof repairs and gutter replacement. It is slightly intrusive to open the bedroom curtains and see workmen just outside (actually I may have kept the curtains closed for most of it) but on one cold and frosty morning I found myself admiring the texture of the battered old scaffold boards outside my window thinking ‘hmmm, that would make a lovely backdrop for a photograph’…
And at some point it dawned on me that we had found one of these scaffold boards at the end of the garden when we moved in, currently consigned to a life of rot behind the shed. Cue a foraging mission, a sawing session and a new backdrop was born.
I had in the back of my mind that it would be a little table for the garden at some point but have to confess that for a long while it has been nothing but two short planks with rough sawn ends I lay next to each other on the floor. Until I saw a tutorial on The Merry Thought and the cogs started turning again.
Cue a little search for hairpin legs in the UK (I found some here) and a little more sawing and bracing with a pallet also hiding in the garden and hey presto! My shortened scaffold boards are now a table and I don’t feel like quite such a loon using them for a photograph…
Yes it’s imperfect, battered and maybe a little bit wonky but (not so) secretly I love it. You see I am very aware of how much waste goes on, another of the perks of renovating being skiploads of lath and plaster, old kitchen units, leaking pipes. Endless waste. So any little thing that can be salvaged and repurposed pleases me even if I am no carpenter.
I know, I know, normal people don’t do this sort of thing. Who wants to be normal anyway…
Julia x
*post updated July 2019 - the table is still going strong (see the photo with seashells above), although its legs are a little rusty now after a time outdoors, and I still love it! Even just for putting my coffee on while sitting on the bench in the garden. Small things hey?
