More Uses For The Christmas Layflat Timber

After building myself a fairly substantial bookcase (ok, not particularly deep but 30" wide and taller than me!) I still had a fair stash of decent plank left.

Hobbit is still hankering after a dog, and we recently had an 'inspection visit' from a dog rescue place. We got the seal of approval subject to possibly putting another layer on the side fence in the garden.

"That's great," she tells the inspector, "as His faRTiness has some wood sculling about..."

An hour of sawing, drilling and screwing and we now have an additional foot on the garden fence.

Enough long 6" stuff to make a new top rail, and a couple of the 3" pieces were pressed into service as verticals to extend the existing posts which were a little short.

I had a large bag of drywall screws salvaged from the floor of the firing range in Portishead, so the materials and construction just cost me an hour of my time. 

A shame that the cloud came over a bit dark, but you get the general idea. A quick run down to Lampeter in search of Cuprinol Shades 'Barleywood' proved unrewarding. I did pick up a tin of what I thought was the right colour (Forget-Me-Not) in B&Q a while ago but turns out I had the wrong one. DL Williams in Lampeter usually stock it in the 1 litre can, but they didn't have any. B&Q don't do that colour in store, but another chap in Lampeter managed to get me a tin on order and it should be in on Tuesday. More photos to follow once I've got it painted.

And....there is still wood left!

2016 Up and Running

I'm not hanging about this year. Two days in and the first project of the year is underway. Back in October, we built the 'Chrismas Grotto' in the store. Head office sent us a kit of parts to build a Christmas 'layflat'. Part of the kit was a set of timber frameworks which I had to assemble, fill with fake snow and then set out all the Christmas trees, LED deer and other electronic goodies.

Anyway, I had my eye on the wood. Just some rough-hewn whitewood, but I figured it might come in handy for firewood if I got the chance to cadge it from work after Christmas.

You can just make out the wooden frameworks in the picture above. With a word in the right ear, post-festivities, all the wood made its way home in the back of Pudgy.

Looking at it, it was actually reasonably decent wood. The planks were about 20mm thick, 160mm wide and in lengths between 1.2m and 2m. Rather than chop it up for firewood, I spent a couple of hours in the garage this evening with the circular saw and cordless drill. I had a quarter of a box of decking screws my Dad gave me back in the summer, so my total expenditure on materials was...nothing.

Hey presto...a much-needed bookcase for the bedroom.