This year's summer-devouring project was supposed to be digging out and replacing the back plywood skirting on the house and building a wood storage rack beside it.
Then the Incident occured.
Treated plywood was no longer in the budget. And the will-to-take-on a-massive-amount-of-work emotional budget was strained also.
However, the need for wood storage remained.
We had planned all along to build a rack using pallets and I found many examples on the internet.
Here is where we pause and take some time to whinge about the internet and unrealistic pallet projects.
Pinterest and the crafty folk out there would have you believe you can build anything from free pallets.
Have you ever actually seen the typical free, wood pallet? Or tried to take one apart?
Maybe pallets in other parts of the world are made of high quality hardwoods that have never spent a minute outside, but in upstate NY they are rough, poorly built creatures that splinter into lethal shards if you even think about pulling the nails out.
But, somehow, we did manage to scavenge over a dozen, more or less solid, pallets to form the base of our rack.
We had a few 2x4's we had accumulated but no where near enough. And finding free lumber is next to impossible.
So, we had to buy 2x4's, osb panels for the roof, roofing paper, and some more screws. Our "frugal" wood rack ended up costing us almost $200.
We could have opted to stack wood on the pallets and just cover with tarps. We've done that before and the result was wet wood and a hassle every time we accessed the wood, especially in midwinter.
So, this rack is, in the great world of building projects, a cost effective and necessary project.
But my tightwad soul can't help but think there should have been a way to do this cheaper and easier...but mostly cheaper.
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