Past Projects

These are the shutters and window box I made to add a little character to the face of our garage. In a lot of ways our garage was a blank slate when we moved in. It's only a few years old, very large, and bare down to the studs inside. I've been slowly modifying the insides to include work space and storage. We can usually fit one of the cars in there, but one of my must do projects for the summer break is to fit both cars. Wait till I post some picture of the mess in there- you'll see that I have my work cut out for me...
As for the shutters, these are a prototype that I plan to replicate for the rest of the house sometime soon (maybe this summer, too.) I saw this design on a house in Duluth that used to be on my drive home. I think they turned out pretty well and they look really good with the paint. The window box is OK, but I'll modify that design significantly for any that I build for the rest of the house. Essentially, I hope to have some version of this look on most of the windows on the house eventually.

This is a look at the lettuce garden I made out of scrap wood and built onto the rain barrels on our deck. The barrels are 30 gallons each and linked in series. There are a few minor leaks, but they hold up well throughout the summer with little maintenance or fussing.
Pictured to the right is one of the upside down planters I made from five gallon buckets. These were moderately successful last summer. I intend to modify the design slightly, to include the amount and type of soil I fill it with, to lead to better water retention. Last season they seemed to dry out very quickly and it was difficult for them to re-hydrate once this happened.

Here is the first rain barrel I made. It once held 60 gallons of industrial car wash detergent. I thoroughly rinsed the barrel out, catching the detergent residue for car washing (still have 2.5 gallons of it...) and redirected the gutter into it.
Notice the bottom is connected to a hose.

This one goes to the home made soaker hose buried in the flower garden bordering our yard. We got the hose from "Freecycle" online and drilled holes in it. The other one (on the 90 gallon tank) I used to fill a watering can for the various planters and hanging baskets.

I especially liked that we planted the flowers on the top of this barrel. This was Lulu's idea and I think it turned out great. Did I mention that most all the good ideas were Lulu's? She's the brains, so I guess that makes me the brawn, or at least the labor. I'm totally cool with that.


This planter I made with the extra stair stringer left over from when we narrowed the width of the steps to our deck. I inverted the stringer and built boxes at each level. It turned out pretty good, but I may have to add to them for this year. Again, the hydration issue was a problem for the stuff planted here. The flowers did pretty well, but the beans never grew and were attacked by some kind of leaf hopper almost immediately. I'm sure that's because they were weakened by the stress of trying to grow in these shallow, hot little boxes. I will probably build the boxes up to help them hold more dirt/moisture and see how it works out.