The scrap wood pile(s)

My husband has a scrap wood pile. Correction: my husband has about three scrap wood piles that I’m aware of. He could be squirreling away another scrap wood pile that he’s been hiding from me. But essentially, I believe there are only three and since they are relatively neatly stacked, I’m sorta, kinda okay with them. But, candidly, they’ve saved me money so I’m slowly coming around to the idea of a singular scrap wood pile.

Let me explain… and there’s a lot to unpack here. First, my husband hates to throw anything away with any useful life in it. That’s what accounts for the scrap wood pile(s). Secondly, he’s actually becoming quite the wood worker and therein lies the benefit to the scrap wood pile.

Currently, he found the scrap wood to make the new shelf in my laundry room/butler’s pantry. It was one of those times when we were making the list for Home Depot and he went down to check what he had in the basement. Lo and behold, we only needed to buy one board. Since he knows I’m notoriously cheap, he made sure he pointed it out to me. At the risk of encouraging his scrap wood hoarding, I acknowledged his good find.

But there’s been a scrap wood pile that we’ve both established sitting outside of my sliding glass doors for about three years now. Its from when we tore down the old wood shed. We salvaged all of the rafters and framing lumber with the idea that we could make something out of them. They were nice, study boards – and real 2X4s to boot (and I mean two inches wide, not that “nominal” crap.) I believe that’s also when we first bought our planer. The idea was that we could join the boards together and make a cool reclaimed headboard for our master bedroom.

And then the project lingered. Now, projects have a tendency to linger at our house. Not, as you may think, because we just don’t get around to doing stuff. Instead, it’s part of this crazy homesteading-lite life that we live. If we’re not doing one project, we’re doing another and if we’re not doing that one, we’re just keeping up with the yard, the gardens, the inside work and, of course, both of our jobs.

But in this case, the lingering wasn’t such a bad thing. Because this project has lingered, that wood is still available. As luck would have it, I now have a new use for that wood. Instead of a headboard – which I still don’t know what I really want there anyway, this scrap wood can be repurposed into not one but two countertops. One can go on the leftover cabinets that are going to make my new butler’s pantry. The other can serve as a folding countertop on top of my new washer and dryer. Just like that, I’m literally going to kill two birds with one stone. First, I’ll clean up one of the three scrap wood piles around my house and second, I’ll get two free countertops. There’s even a third benefit: I’m not sure we’ve used that wood planer we bought a couple of years ago. Turning these pieces of leftover lumber into countertops is going to take some planning of the wood. Seems like a mighty fine time to blow the dust off that baby.

Candidly, I’m pretty excited about the opportunity to make countertops out of this leftover wood. First, I think they’ll look absolutely spectacular. Once the wood is planed and joined together and sanded, you’ll never know that their first life was as framing beams to an old wood shed. Let me break out some stain and sealer, and I’ll make those babies look absolutely fabulous. And finally, the contrast of the white cabinets, the gray/blue walls and the dark wood countertops is going to look and feel absolutely fabulous.

So, as I look out at the green tarp that has been carefully shielding these pieces of wood for the past three years, I’m anxious to see what’s really under that tarp. It’s been so long that I’ve mostly forgotten. And I’m super excited to give those boards a new life. Finally, because it just wouldn’t be me without me noticing it, I’m especially stoked that we currently have everything in-house right now to turn those boards into a countertop, right down to the wood glue and biscuit joints. There would be no supplies or tools needed that we don’t already own. So essentially, these will be free countertops.

And that’s where my husband gets me every time. Just as he had me acknowledge that he had the scrap wood in the basement to build the laundry shelf, he’s going to get me to acknowledge that had we not saved this wood, these countertops would be a whole lot more expensive. And the next time around, he’s going to point to another pile of mismatched wood and say, “Remember when…” I’ll have no defense and I’ll end up giving in. The good news is that for awhile, I’ll be down one wood pile and up two sets of countertops.