Showing posts with label pallet projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pallet projects. Show all posts

Sunday, 5 June 2016

This Little Garden...

Every year I look in envy on many pretty garden blog posts and now I'm on Instagram that envy has grown.
My garden is in all honesty pretty shot.  I've tried over the years to patch it but between 6 children and 4 chickens it has taken a battering. 

However that could all be about to change...

Take a look at it as it is this evening


The shitty shed is literally falling down,  but it can't just yet as it's holding the even shittier fence behind it up.  

Fencing contractor is booked for the middle of July to replace or repair the old fence. Pots of wood stain are sitting patiently waiting for that job.
I've got a smaller shed on the patio waiting to be put up as soon as the fencing is done and the old one comes down.
If this was a design blog I would be referring to this area as a 'sunken terrace'.  Looking at it as it stands, terrace is just too grand a description so we'll settle with area!
The long term plan here is to create a chill zone for the teens, I'm starting to gather pallets to create a pallette seating area with a fire pit. The floor is pretty uneven with a mix of paving slabs and various concrete hard standings. Too expensive to replace, turf or deck I'm going for a jumbo sack of pebbles to cover it all.

On the floor down the bottom you might have spotted the big blue plastic sheet?  It's covering up the pitted crumbling ground where once the chickens lived. That is to be decked. The decking been ordered and we have a man that can coming in at the end of this month to lay a large deck to cover a multitude of crap. 
 Long term (next summer hopefully) I'll be putting my workshop on this deck.  But I have champagne taste on a lemonade budget and finding the right workshop that ticks all boxes including price will take some research and even more saving.


The patio area is with selective vision not so terrible, put your blinkers on and it's bearable.


These old cable reels were picked from the bins of an electrical shop on the industrial estate I'm now working at.  They'll be handy little garden tables!


However I'm hoping we can afford this year to deck the patio and extend that deck over the crumbling weed ridden bank...


The man that can says it's an easy job to do but I just need to finalise my budget!

And there we have it.  It will take time and no small amount of effort and saving but this is the first year that I have an actual plan not just pie in the sky dreams.
Still without those dreams the plan may never have been made! 




Friday, 17 July 2015

Pallet gardening...

There's a lot on the internet about pallet transformations.
Last year I had grand plans to turn 2 old pallets into veg boxes, I got as far as whacking them with a hammer n nails then they sat at the bottom of the garden.

The bottom of my garden is a no go area, over-run by weeds and a very wobbly/unsafe shed.
There they sat.

Que me finding instagram 
{I know always late to the party}

and no longer did they look like fire pit material
{not that I have a fire pit...yet}

I set my sights low and aimed to get one done

so I made a start,
gave it a good clean and stuck in situ

Popped along to Homebase, 11cm terracotta pots just 59p each {Bargain}

add a few plants and already a huge improvement


unable to paint though till the weather drys out.

I've chosen Cuprinol Urban Slate

Should show the flowers off nicely


This one needs dragging up


a few more pots/plants {begonias next}, a lick of wood stain and I'll be happy with them.

Then it's onto the next pallet project...
The space where the mouldy pallet is a real little sun trap, catching the very last rays of sunshine in my garden...
but it is SO UGLY!



I made a half-hearted start one year by painting the fence, but that was as far as I got.  
If you had seen the state of the whole garden you would know it was the least of my worries.

But it would be nice to be able to sit down there. 
I have high hopes of crochet projects being hooked away whilst I relish those last few drops of sunshine gold.

So as always with a limited budget I plan to make a pallet seat!
Two pallets should do it, a wedge of foam...
I think it can realisticly be done...nothing a bit of brute force, a cuppa tea and a hammer/drill can't sort out...surely?

Hopefully once {if} that is done I can move to the space down by the shed but that will more likely carry onto next years planning/budgeting.