Herb Garden Part 2

It seems that you guys cant get enough of pallets!  I have to say its nice being able to do some projects without having to spend a lot of money and if you have access to pallets then you dont have to spend a lot of money because they are free!

Last week I shared with you the first phase of building my herb garden (you can see that post here).  To refresh, here is where we ended that post, with a nice big box ready for step 2.

You could just leave it like this and move on to step 3 but then you risk the wood rotting...because step 2 is applying a waterproof coat of paint to the wood to protect again water/mold/rot.  I could have gotten the paint that also protects from the sun/snow/other crazy elements but since my only main concern is the water thats what we went with.  We went with a Behr waterproofing stain in cedar to give the box color as well as a waterproof coat.  Now the stain does say to use 2 coats, but ok, I didnt really want to do 2 coats and the pallet wood has already been exposed to the elements so 1 coat was enough in my opinion.  For those of you who are paranoid about that kind of stuff then get the weatherproofing stain and do the 2 recommended coats but for me the waterproof stain 1 coat was fine.

The stain went on really easily.  I used a larger brush but not top quality since I knew the wood would tear it apart.  I think we spent $2 on the brush and threw it away after.  It took about 30 minutes to cover the whole thing with the stain.  Be aware that the stain is thinner than regular latex paint so it will be messier...and me being a messy painter trust me when I say that :)  I probably should have put a drop cloth down but I was painting in the garage and was ok with making a little bit of a mess.

We let this sit overnight...although the stain says 48-72hrs I  have no patience so we waited 24 hours to move on to step 3...but more to come on that later.  Until then, here is the box with the stain applied, doesnt it look much nicer than without the stain?!  Remember that we went with a colored stain to try and make the box more even in color but there are clear stains as well if you like the look of your wood.  Oreo wanted to help :)

I'll have the 3rd and final step on Monday...until then you'll just have to wait in suspense!!

Project Housewife Out!

Herb Garden Part 1

Last week I mentioned that I was thinking about building a herb garden and I had some pins for inspiration (check it out here).  I loved all the ideas but none of them were really perfect for my space so I decided we needed to make our own.  My husband brought 3 more big pallets home and we went to town.

 Prep station...we have a circular saw, a mitor saw, a jig saw, hammer and nails.  In the background is a band saw but I think thats the one tool we didnt use lol.

 My husband hard at work, taking apart the pallets was the most time consuming because you have to be careful not to break the wood but at the same time use enough force to get the nails out of the boards its attached to.  Good thing I married a strong man otherwise we would have had to do a different project!

 What you see above is the base for the herb box.  On the inside is the brackets that held the pallets together.  What we did was leave the bottom board on the pallet and leave a little extra bracket to attach another board to so that they were supported.  The with all four sides made in the same way we nailed them all together to form a box.

 Since soil is going into the box it needed a bottom, we cut a bunch of the boards to the length we needed and nailed them to the bottom of the box.  They are 100% flush but thats ok we are lining the box with a plastic so that the water wont corrode the wood.

 Now its time to make the rest of the box...lets call this part the stand.  As you know we have a beautiful border collie Oreo.  We love our dog, but Im pretty sure he doesnt need to be eating herbs so we decided to make a stand that was tall enough so that he cant easily eat the plants but not too tall that it looks silly.  The top picture is the beginning of building the stand.  Same as before we left the bottom board on the pallett  so that we had support brackets to use and attach the other boards too.  For the front we put boards on the entire length of the side but for the back we only used 2 boards for structure (top and bottom) since you wouldnt see it we decided to save the wood which was good because we had literally just enough.

 Here are the two sides of the stand, we attached two boards to the top of each so that there was a little support there for the box.

 Here is the box ontop of the stand.  We did the two long sides of the stand first so that we could line them up with the box before closing out the stand.  So to make sure they were aligned we put each leg on the two sides and matched them up.  Once that was done we attached a top board to the two sides of the stand then took the box off the top and went to adding the rest of the boards all the way down the stand.

 Almost done, we added the box back to the stand and nailed it all in place.  Let me tell you this project took a really long time and Im sure we did a really complicated version of it but its what I had in my head (well its a little shorter than the version in my head that version was as long as a section of the fence).

So thats step 1...which by the way was only $0...all the pallets were free yay!  Oh and my silly husband put an ugly board on the bottom of the front of the stand so we will be burying this box so you cant really see it.

Step 2 is this weekend...check back for updates on that!

Project Housewife Out!

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Have you Herb?

I have been wanting to plant a herb garden for a while.  #1 fresh herbs get expensive, #2 if you dont use them they go bad and you wasted the money #3 they look and smell nice in the backyard.  When I was growing up we used to have a vegetable garden and I really liked having it there.  Of course my mom did most of the work but I liked going in there seeing everything growing and smelling all the fresh veggies.  My backyard now isnt big enough for all that but I would love to do a herb garden of sorts.  Enter Pinterest.  If you arent hooked on pinterest already WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!  Im just kidding, but seriously I do find some great inspiration there...and a lot of recipes...mostly recipes to be honest but I have found some great crafts and home improvement ideas from there.  Today Im going to show you some of the pinterest herb garden ideas I have pinned because Im trying to figure out what I for sure want to do back there...suggestions are totally appreciated!

This first one I thought was an easy project, you can see the site here

I thought the use of pots here was really cute and seperated the herbs well.  See the site here

I liked this one because it was in the ground, but the pots keeps them from spreading out.  No source here.

This one I loved because of the wine barrel, a really unique look that you dont see everywhere...now if only I could find a wine barrel.  You can see the site here.

So what do you think?  Which one would you do?  They are all such great ideas I am having a hard time making up mind!

Project Housewife Out!

Blooming Box

Today's project is a continuation of the pallet art I did last week.  I actually had 2 pallets and only used one for the project so I had a great idea to make a flower box.  I never really loved what I had for under the TV

And for a long time I have been thinking of doing flowers under the TV, I was just having a hard time finding the perfect container for the flowes.  I though of using a make travel trunk but they werent long enough, then I thought of using glass but that really wasnt the look I was going for and then the pallet art.  You can see the full article here.  Once the art was done I asked Joe my handy man husband to make me a flower box.  I wasnt thinking anything fancy, just four sides and a bottom but he decided to make it cute and give it an angle.  Now you have the back story, below is the finished project.  Ok to be honest, I have done MUCH more primping to this since I took this picture because lets be honest the green things are a little CRAZY but i was just so excited I had to share it with you!

Here is what you are going to need for this project:

• Wood (cut to your specifications, mine was 4" tall by 20" long)
• nails/hammer
• saw that can cut angles if you want the fancy box, otherwise just a regular saw
• paint, if you want
• flowers $30
• flower foam $5

Total cost for this project was $35 and that was just flowers and the flower foam, all the other items I had at the house!  How awesome, since this would cost over $100 at the store!!

First step is to cut the wood to your measurements.  Make sure you also cut a piece to fit into the bottom so you dont have the foam fall out if you pick up the box.  You can kinda see the angles here, but Joe actually had to redo this because the angles werent quite right, so not to preach to the choir or anything but measure twice, cut once.  Luckly we had plenty of wood to work with so no harm no foul.

Then nail all the pieces together.  I would nail the long pieces to the bottom piece first then close it off with the two smaller side pieces, but whatever you feel more comfortable with do that.  If you like the look of the wood and dont want to paint then skip this step, but if you want to whitewash your wood follow me to the next step :)

For this step you need your box, paint, water and a paint brush.  This is probably not the correct way to white wash but I like the way it turns out so this is the right way for us.  I had a gallon of white paint with about 1/4 left.  To get it the thin, whitw wash consistancy, we filled up the gallon with water about 3/4 full and then mixed the paint with the water. 

Now all you have to do is apply the paint to your project.  Easy peasy!  Let that sit overnight to make sure you dont get paint on anything then you can move on to the next step...adding the flowes!  Before you get started on the flowers, add the foam

Joe cut mine down a little so it fit perfectly in the box, if you did just a square box then you probably wont have to do this but with the angled box it does help to cut it do you have a perfect fit and it doesnt move around in the box. Once the foam is in start adding the flowers.  I bought bunches of blowers so I actually had to cut mine apart first into individual stems so if you bought bunches great, you probably saved money you just have to add one extra step.

 I added all my big flowers first then filled in the spaces with my smaller yellow fillers.

So what do you think, pretty easy right?!  Oh and I added a butterfly, because they are cute and I can so there!

I think it looks so much better than what I had before and it was pretty cheap too!  What do you think, is there somewhere you could put a cute little flower box?


**Update** I decided that I needed to show you the primped version of the box since the longer I look at the above picture the more I realize it doesnt do the box justice**

Much better right!
Project Housewife Out! 

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Pallet of Colors

I have a confession...I may be slightly addicted to pinterest.  Im sure most of you are too, its a sickness that makes me want to spend all my money on cute ideas.  While I was trolling pinterest, I saw this really cool looking headboard

Source

So cool right!  Well I already have an awesome headboard (which you can see here) but I need some cool wall art for on either side of my TV and I thought this was simple enough to do the trick without overpowering the TV.  Now let me should you my before shot

No bad, but not good enough for me.  So now I can show you the project!!  I got the inspiration to use pallets from here.  But I wasnt crazy about the flowers I thought that might be too busy for the TV area so it was a blend of ideas to creat my final project, which see below for the after!!

Yes I am about to watch Once Upon a Time, and why arent you its an awesome show!

I think it brings a lot more color to the roon and is just a little cooler to look at...what do you think?

Ok on to how to make this baby...first you need a pallet.  My husband works for a plumbing supplier and they have loads of pallets so that was totally free yay!  So before I get down to the nitty gritty...here is what you are going to need

• 1 pallett---all of the pieces (free)
• paint of your choice, varying shades (free)
• crobar (free)
• saw (free)
• nail/hammer (free)
• painters tape/paint brush ($5)
• pencil/ruler (free)
• screw/wire (for hanging) (free)

Total cost for this project...$5!!!  What, thats amazing!!

Looks kinda ugly right?  Well dont worry we are painting it so no worries.  Now you have to get the boards off, and if you have a cro-bar that would be best. Joe had to use a hammer and that was pretty hard so if you have a crobar make it easy on yourself.  Below are the boards cut down to the measurements I gave Joe.  I wanted the project to be 15wide by 30 long, so I plank from the pallet was long enough for 2 strips.  You can also see from the picture here that we used the pallet support beams as cross beams for the art. 

Here it is all put together ready for paint.

I first thought to whitewash it (I hadnt decided if I wanted to do the color blocks or the flowers yet) and that turned out pretty well, and I think also helped with the paint.  It was kinda like primer but didnt bring up all the pulp that comes out of the wood when you use regular primer (more to come on whitewashing later)

I let these sit overnight to make sure the paint had set.  The next day I started taping out the lines for the stripes.  I wanted each pallett art to be different so I measured the stripes at different heights.

I used a paint stirrer as my guide and a pencil to do the initial lines then went back and put painters tape over the lines.  Remember that where you put the tape you cant paint otherwise you will have gaps between the stripes so be mindful of that when you put the tape down.  You can see below what I did to make sure I kept that straight.

Now you have your painters tape down get to painting.  I had plenty of leftover paint from the walls and color samples so that was free too!

Let that sit overnight so that when you put the second layer of painters tape down it doesnt pull off you paint you just did.  Once it has dried and you get your second tape down, paint again.

Wait for the paint to dry and remove the tape.  Now if you are like me you will have to do some touch ups, but if you have one of those sponge paint brushed that has a stright edge this is pretty easy.  Once its dry, you can screw your screws and wire into the back of the boards and hang them up!  Make sure you use an anchor when hanging these babies are pretty heavy!

Pretty easy, pretty cheap and pretty fun too!  I feel like an artist enough though I cant draw to save my life!  DO you have a space that this art would be perfect for?  Let me know, and what do you think of this art?  Should I leave it or do the flowers pallet art?  I think I need a second opinion

Project Housewife Out!



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