Earlier in the week were considering our DIY projects in the garage and trying to find a set of legs for our IKEA worktop. We didn’t want to put cabinets under it and it turns out all of the other legs sold in IKEA and other places are all designed for coffee tables. So instead we turned our thoughts to whether we could make a frame to go under the worktop instead.
The design isn’t particularly difficult but would require a reasonable amount of sturdy wood as the worktop is quite heavy and would need to be well supported. We were also looking at getting some wood to build raised beds in the back garden so we can continue our foray into vegetable growing.
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| Hopefully our raised beds will look as nicely constructed as these (I wish we could fit that many in…) |
We looked at buying the supplies from places like Wickes and B&Q, but the prices were really high for the planed wood and scaffold boards (for the beds). Then we thought that we didn’t really need brand new wood, just something that wasn’t going to break on us.
Cue searching the internet for hampshire wood recycling/reclamation… and to our amazement we came across this wonderful place – Southampton Wood Recycling which is just down in the middle of town nestled just behind the high street. We couldn’t believe that we hadn’t discovered this place before…
They take wood in from a number of sources, separate it up into different sizes and remove the nails/screws from the wood and then it can be sold on from their warehouse. The stock they have changes quite regularly but we decided to go and have a look and see if we could find wood for the table frame.
Well what was it like?
I can definitely say it was an amazing place! They had a section which sold items made from reclaimed wood, such as planters, scaffolding shelves and even an archway. It really is amazing what some sanding and a coat of paint/varnish can do to wood.
The rest of the sales area was given over to stacks and stack of wood of all sorts of sizes and lengths. If you were looking for short lengths of wood it was easy to find what you were looking for. Even looking for longer bits of wood we found enough wood with a little bit of searching. We also found some scaffolding boards for the raised beds, although they didn’t have lots so we bought enough for the first layer and we will go back later to see if we can get some more. Although we decided to stop there before we bought the whole warehouse of wood…
The wood is priced up by the meter (except for a few offcuts which are just a complete bargain) and you can even borrow a saw to cut it up after if you need to fit it into your car. Since one of the pieces was 3m long to start with we definitely needed to cut it. Luckily most of it was shorter than that and fitted (fairly comfortably) into my car.
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| All the wood we got in my car (even some scaffolding boards at the bottom there) |
The entire of our shop of wood came to £38, which is probably a fraction of the cost that we would have paid buying it new, plus it reused wood so avoided creating more waste and the money raised at Southampton Wood Recycling goes towards training people and providing jobs in the local community. A win, win, win situation.
When we got home we found that one of the pieces had some great colouring on it, which when we sanded/ oiled up it looked so amazing! Unfortunately since our table frame is going in our garage under a worktop there isn’t really anywhere to showcase this. So we decided not to use it for the frame and we would find something to make with it instead. Such a shame, this means we’ll have to make another trip to the warehouse again to get more wood to go with it…
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| Such beautiful colouring on the wood – we definitely didn’t want to hide this away. |
We’ve decided that from now on, if we need wood we will try to go to the warehouse first to see if they have suitable pieces, and then only if they don’t will we go to buy it new. If you are careful with the pieces you select, the wood is just great, and more than suitable for most projects.
We will post soon about what we make with the wood. First to get out all the tools and get the wood sanded up and looking beautiful!
