Whiskey Barrel Sifter

When we moved into our new place, the mailbox was perched precariously on a rotten board bolted to a cock-eyed 4" steel pipe protruding from a not-level whiskey barrel planter.  Evidently, at some point during the last winter, the snow plow had blasted the mailbox, knocking it out of square in all three dimensions.  But the front was still *kind of* facing the road and so, strictly speaking, it was still functional.  But, failure seemed imminent, and wanting to make a good impression on our new neighbors, we thought we'd make fixing the mailbox one of our first priorities.

We rapidly discovered that this was a project that would involve much more than just pushing the pipe back to square and re-bolting the mailbox to it's support board.  Upon emptying out the whiskey barrel planter, we discovered three things.  First, the bottom half of the barrel was filled with the same gravel that was used in the driveway.  Second, there was no wooden bottom in the planter, either because the boards had completely rotted away, or because they had been removed to accommodate the steel pipe, which went into the ground.  Either way, it meant that moving the planter was the same as pressing its self-destruct button.  Third, the steel pipe had partially fractured underground, right at the point where the pipe went from vertical (the part in the ground) to angled (to get the mailbox close to the road).  It was very rusty, and the pipe could be bent further off-kilter, but not back toward it's original position.  That's likely because the impact from the snow plow had introduced a large number of dislocations in the steel's grain structure, which drastically reduced it's ductility along the negative of the snow plow's initial force vector.  But, that's not important right now.  What is important is that we now had a completely broken off mailbox pipe, an imploded whiskey barrel planter, a pile of gravelly dirt, and most importantly, no mailbox.

This is what the mailbox was supposed to look like. 

This is what the mailbox actually looked like (approximately): pipe broken off from the previous winter's snowplow, board securing mailbox to pipe rotted away, single dead cockle burr adorning the planter.  Could have been post-apocalyptic if one didn't know any better.

We managed to get the mailbox back to functional by cobbling together a mailbox stand out of some nearby sticks and the section of pipe that was still in the ground. (The picture above is the finished product, after all the hard work described below.) Since we had demolished the former planter around the mailbox, we felt a little guilty about not replacing it with at least some sort of flower-growing device.  After all, we had the dirt...but it was full of rocks, which don't get along with flower roots very well.  What we needed was a soil sifter.  However, a further complication is that since we were just moving into the place, we hadn't had a chance to accumulate a pile of wood scraps from which such sifters are customarily manufactured.  Head scratching and cursing ensued.  Fortunately, the realization eventually came to us that what we did have was a sizable pile of whiskey barrel planks.  Maybe, just maybe, those would work for the sides of a makeshift soil sifter.

So we trimmed the ends of the whiskey barrel planks, screwed them together with some corner brace scraps, and stapled 0.25" hardware cloth to the bottom.  (Ok, we did have a few scraps, just not the right ones.)  Ooh, it looks very vintage-ey.

Here's a closeup of the corner.  The cut end smells like white oak.  It must have fewer tannins to leach into the whiskey than the red oak.  Anyway, definitely drill out the holes before screwing it together.  These are some old boards, after all!

Our first attempt used just 0.25" staples, but these proved insufficient.  (Not all that surprising, really, but we were in a hurry.)  So, we added longer staples (the one in the middle of the corner brace board).  Most of them folded over before we could pound them all the way in, but on average, they probably went about an inch deep.

We didn't think to take pictures of the mailbox planter when we were sifting it, but our place is full of opportunities to use the sifter.  Here's another one along the driveway.  Lots of rocks from the driveway have migrated into the flower bed.  We checked the lease agreement--it didn't say anything about flowers being included in the flower beds.  That's why it just looks like dirt.  On the other hand, a dandelion has also migrated from the flower bed to the driveway, so nobody is staying where they belong.

Pop quiz!  What's the next step in this process?  If you guessed 'scoop up the dirt with rocks and put it in the sifter, you're right!  Congratulations.

And this is what it looks like after being sifted.  Large rocks and clumps of dirt captured by sifter, nice dirt passed through and stays in flower bed.  In hindsight, the 0.25" hardware cloth is a little large.  0.125" (1/8") would have been better to catch some of the smaller rocks.  Alternatively, we could add another layer of the 0.25" stuff, but offset by 0.125".  For now, we'll just hang the sifter in the garage and claim it's an antique.  If anyone asks, we'll tell them it's so old, it was made before 0.125" hardware cloth was invented.

What size hardware cloth do you prefer for your soil sifting tasks?  Do you know of convenient ways to separate gravel from soil without a sifter?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Look what Katie made!

Sometimes Katie likes to organize stuff.  The other day she made an organizer thingy for the wall.  It looks pretty neat.

She started out with a picture frame and took away everything but the frame.  Then she cut a piece of hardware cloth (0.25"), a piece of cork board, and a ribbon to fit in the frame.  She uses it like a big fly swatter--see all the big shiny bugs she caught?  Just kidding--those are tiny reflectors that she uses to attract crows and raccoons.

She fit the ribbon and the corkboard in where it was supposed to go, then she stapled the hardware cloth into place.

Then she took the cardboard backing that came with the frame and cut it to be the same size as the hardware cloth.  She didn't like the look of the cardboard, so she glued fancy paper on one side and poked two little holes on one end.

The holes are for little wires that fix the cardboard piece to the hardware cloth.  She made the wires longer at first so it would be easy to get through the holes, then trimmed them off so it looks better.  In case you couldn't tell, the cardboard from the previous picture is black on the back side.

Once everything was in place, she folded down the little tabs on the frame to hold everything in place.

Then she hung it on the wall!  She uses it to organize her fishing lures and other stuff.  She says the hardware cloth part is good for ones with long hooks, and the cork part is good for pokey ones without long hooks.

What do you use to organize stuff on your walls? How else have you combined hardware cloth and picture frames?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!

Chalkboard Labeling

Today's post starts with a question: what's the best way to combine the fourth-best part of elementary school, rustic interior decorating, and reusable storage containers?  That's right--labeling with chalkboard paint!  We like this method more than labeling with the commercial label makers because it's easier to "edit" the label if you change what's in the container and doesn't require a fancy tool or adhesive paper that would have to be thrown away.  We've had good luck with chalkboard labels on the two-gallon glass containers that store our staple foodstuffs like flour and sugar, and also on a scuffed-up dry-erase board that now displays our grocery and to-do lists next to the kitchen so we can easily remember them.  We decided to add chalkboard labels to some of our other containers (like wine bottles) using chalkboard paint, so we thought we'd document the process and show you how we did it!

Here's our starting point: formerly a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck that we "emptied," washed, and filled with our own blend of homemade elderberry-grape wine.  We defaced the label to reflect the bottle's current contents, vintage, and brewery location, but it doesn't look very classy.  Time to start fresh!

First step: remove the label(s).  A little hot water and the brown hard plastic scraper on the right worked pretty well.  Don't forget to write down any information you need from the label because the process takes several days.

Next, mark the points you want to be the corners of your label.  At this point, we realized that it would be hard to see dark marks on a bottle filled with dark liquid, so we decided to do another (empty) bottle, too.

If you have a lot of bottles to do that you want to do all uniformly, it might save a little time to make a series of templates so you don't have to measure each one.

Add tape around the dots you made, or affix your template to the bottle.  Make sure there are no gaps in the tape or template, or the paint will run through.  For example, the left side of the template in the picture above has a gap, so after the photo was taken, we put tape slightly inside the opening to close it up.

Now get out your chalkboard paint and pretty much follow the directions on the label.  If you want colors other than black, there are ways to do it.  Also, if you know of a more sustainable paint option, let us know!

It will probably take more than one coat.  There's a fine line between too thin and too thick (enough to drip), so you'll have to practice a little to get a feel for it--keep an eye on it to check for drips.  The one on the left is just about right, the one on the right is a little too thin.  It's really apparent here because the one on the left has a dark liquid in the bottle and is a little drier than the one on the right, but you get the idea.  Our can of paint said it needed three days before we could write on it.  So we waited...

Finally!  It's totally dry.  We took the tape off after one day.  Doesn't look to bad!  But, you can see that in a couple places where we weren't careful with the tape, the paint ran underneath a little bit.

It's not too hard to scrape the rogue paint off with something sharp.

That looks a little better!

Our paint's instructions said to coat the whole thing in a layer of chalk before writing on it for the first time.  You can see now that the one on the right isn't quite as even as the one on the left because we made the second coat of paint a little too thick.  But it should work OK for our purposes.

Remove the majority of the chalk layer with an eraser or a dry rag, and your labels are ready to go!  You can write whatever you'd like on them

You could paint the whole house if you want!  (But ask Katie first.)

Have you found another way to make good looking labels on label-needing things around your house?  Do you have an easier way to do chalkboard labels?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!