Repurposing a Workbench Into a Gardner's Potting Bench & Chick Brooder House

I'm so very, very pleased with how our latest repurposing project went. We took an old, sturdy work bench from a garage on our property and with Charlotte and Ricky's help we lugged it all the way over to the other side of our house. Then the fun began. I had a vision to repurpose it into a cute piece of garden furniture... I wanted a potting bench AND chick brooder house all in one. When baby chicks weren't using it as a bed and breakfast I figured it would be great garden storage.

So that's what we did this weekend. We painted, cut, drilled, nailed, and stapled our way to success! I couldn't be happier. We only spent about $25 on supplies. We needed to buy: 1 inch chicken wire, hinges, latches, and fence staples. We had and used scrap wood, staple gun, saw, drill, other basic tools (like a hammer/wire cutters), paint, and shower curtains.

A nice workbench. Everett climbing up to get the chicken on top

Measuring wood for a door on each side

Fitting a back on with plywood we had laying around

Chicken wire on the front, Sebastian helping his dad

Daddy often has a curious helper nearby

Side door with latch and hinges finished

                                                                          The back all painted

I added gardening stuff to the top to get the final feel, and I had to make the inside cozy and nice. I am laughing really hard in the above picture because I'm slightly stuck.

I got stuck a little as I made the finishing touches inside and this didn't help lol

Backing out of the chicken brooder house

For the inside walls I cut and stapled a plastic shower curtain that has an awesome farm scene on it. Ricky's mom didn't need the shower curtain anymore and I collect them for reasons like this. I was totally saving this cute one for a special occasion. (Shower curtain collection...I know weird, right? They come in SO handy though!)

I love this farm scene! I added another shower curtain to the floor. It's not stapled down so it can be removed for cleaning. Later we'll add straw or wood shavings. We generally use heating pads covered in pillow cases for heat, but we could drill a hole in the bottom for a cord and hang a light if we want to.

We sure had a lot of fun with this! I love how it turned out!

(Did you see there's a chicken eating out of a bowl on the table top, it's the kids' pet chicken.)

My original plan was to keep this in the garage. After finishing it I agreed with my Aunt Sharon, too cute for our junky garage. So we carried it up onto our porch/sun room. It almost killed us, but we got it in there. Except that when we got it in there we realized we brought it in the wrong way... so we had to carry it back out and start over. We finally got it moved in and it takes up a chunk of an already small-ish room, but it's cute. I can: keep loads of plants on it, the kids can pull stools up to it for coloring or eating on the porch, I can use it as a work space, there is ample space for starting seeds, and underneath I have a garden/garden decor storage area for when chicks aren't staying in it.

Puppet Theatre: Do it yourself repurpose job!

Charlotte (15) had a wonderful idea to turn this small old broken bookshelf into a puppet theatre for Penelope. She painted the chalkboard paint on it and I hung curtains and made a back drop. It's so cute! The kids love it! We can't write on it yet, the chalkboard paint has to cure one more day. I can't wait to write Penelope's Puppet Theatre on it! So fun!

She's Crafty!

We love making things!



Old Suitcase

 

Helping put on travel stickers



I used mod podge over the whole surface so they won't peel off

  It is now a decoration and storage for the circle hallway room I've been working on decorating. I want to paint the floor and put in a new light fixture this winter. The light fixture that is hanging on a chain is this gold thing from the 80's with glass and an etched flower on it. BARF.



Charlotte Painting
I plan on framing a bunch of art work made by my kid's and hanging in the upstairs hallway. I love this piece!

Sooooo we decided we were going to do this dryer lint project I saw online. You mix dryer lint with water, flour and a dab of oil to make a modeling compound. I've been saying for at least 10 years dryer lint had to be good for something. Turns out our dryer lint is DISGUSTING.

It's hairy, dirty, crumby...
We have 4 dogs, a ton of cats, and I shed like a dog so we have lots of hair. I sweep the house EVERY DAY (no kidding) and still somehow we have hair go through the wash and apparently dryer. Our lint was more disgusting than we thought. Charlotte and I mixed this stuff up and wanted to barf. It was not working out and so we added more flour. Then we added even more flour so that we couldn't see the yucky dirt and hair as much.


When we had a nice paste that could easily make very realistic owl pellets (we thought about making some lol) we started sculpting on cardboard canvas. (We used the back of a puzzle board that had lost it's pieces.) Charlotte doubted we could make anything out of this gunk, and really so did I, but we had just made a disgusting soup of matted lint and hair we had to do something with it. We had dirtied a pot and wasted 15 minutes of our life. I wanted something to show for our hard work. "It's art!" I shouted. "One can create anything and make it art!" So we began. I made a bird and a nest, we worked on the tree together and Charlotte's faith was restored in ART!

Gross bird we call an Eagle.

When our masterpiece dries, I estimate in 2 years because of how thick it is, we'll paint it and see how it really turned out. For now we wait. We do look forward to painting you, you gross art project!

Boxes Rule

Cardboard boxes are a blank canvas. No toy can compare to a nice sturdy brown box to crawl into. Since I order almost every Christmas gift for the kids from Amazon we accumulate loads of boxes. Today we put all those boxes to great use!


Airplane ready for take off!




                                                                 I love this airplane! I love their faces!





 We glued lids from various things as controls. I made a strip of buttons from construction paper that say on, off, eject and uh-oh.





 This box was a tunnel for cars and trucks, but Everett and Layla found a second use for it






  Everett popped out and said, "Raaaaw!" He is cute when he tries to hide and then scare or surprise you. I say, "Ahh!" and he laughs and laughs.

Toy kitchen made from cardboard boxes



Penelope LOVES toy food, tea sets and toy kitchens. Doesn't matter how many tea sets or pretend food she owns, she LOVES all of it. She adores this toy kitchen. She has a "real" toy kitchen in her room but she loves this one more. She asked me if she could keep it for "eighty-four-fourty-days." I told her of course she could.