Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Ecolovies ~ Broken Stuff

The Ecolovies day today is going to be centered around the move and my to-do list this week, just like everything else around here. ;)

One of my big declutter things this time was to get rid of all broken stuff. All the broken stuff has left my house one way or the other. The can opener that doesn't work right... yep, replaced. The favorite skirt of my daughters that had a big hole in it... gone. The plastic sippy cups that leaked and we didn't use... all gone.

What about the stuff you can't replace or be rid of? Oh yeah... that stuff. Well, with in the deal I made with myself, I have to fix it. Before we move. Or it doesn't come with us. It has been freeing and a great plan... but it also added a lot of work to my already overfull to-do list.

Yesterday my items to fix were the tables outside. About 4 months ago Alex tossed them off the patio and broke the sides of both tables off. Other than that they were workable... but the boards on both sides of these cute little tables was cracked in half... making them pretty unusable. It usually isn't hard to fix this type of stuff. It just takes knowing something about wood. I, being pretty amature in wood working, took my board that needed to be replaced to Lowe's and asked what kind of wood it was and where I could find that same size. The guy that helped me had no idea and so it took some doing, but eventually we found a piece of cedar that was the same size as the sides of the table. (Cedar is a good guess for untreated wood that is outside in WA. It holds up to moisture the best of the inexpensive woods.) He cut it to size for me and I placed it on the tables where the broken bits were.

Then Alex sanded the tables down... and vowed never to throw them ever again.

This is the least used part of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore"... Restore. It does take a bit more work to put something back together than to buy a new one. It does. It was a whole afternoon of figuring out what wood to get, how long to cut it, where to drill the screw holes and how to put them back on the table with out cracking the wood. It took some doing. But these tables were $100 a piece when my mom bought them for me. That $25 in cedar board saved me $175 to replace the tables and a trip to the landfill. And hopefully Alex will work off the $25 in board by painting them... so they won't look so funny after a while. At least now, I feel good about taking them to the new house with me usable again.

SHARE:

2 comments

Dina said...

I love those tables - good job on restoring them!! :)

Nessa said...

They look great! Those tables have so many uses. Great that you are keeping them and using them. :o)

Blogger Template Created by pipdig