Re-purposing

 My son and I have been busy at work re-purposing more wood palates.  This time we took an entire palate and cut some fence boards I picked up at Home Depot and screwed them in from the bottom to fill in the gaps.  My wife is going to add some concrete with colored glass or something into the gaps.

 We took a four by four post and created some legs and bought some expensive feet that screwed into the four by four legs.  The final wood portion of this project was to create an edge around the table to hide the opening of the palate and also keep the concrete in place when it is poured later this week once staining is complete.

My wife used some old stain we had laying around the house to "country chick" the look and you get a real nice outdoor palate coffee table to match our outdoor palate bench.  These projects have been lots of fun because my wife has been scouring craigslist for free palates and I just buy a bucket of screws, nails, a few knotty two by fours, and some one by four by six foot fencing.  Total cost so far is just under twenty five bucks.  The feet were four dollars each so take out that sixteen dollars and we have a real deal but, the feet set it off nicely.  I always say the first one is our base model and we can make the following models better once we build the first and find out what works and what does not.  Our bench needs a little extra support for the back rest and I have to finish sanding (you can just imagine the splinters from sitting on palate wood) the legs and then it is just stain and call it done. 

What my son and I have learned so far is that whenever you buy any saw may it be circular, jig, or mitre saw you should always just buy a new blade to put on.  The blades saws come with these days are junk and replacing the blades makes a world of difference.  Then we also learned we do need to get a table saw and a router would finish off the wood working tools real nicely.  I can't wait till we move to welding.  These backyard projects are very good father and son bonding and learning times.