In a new homestead, it takes some planning to figure out what you're going to plant and where. To optimize the space you have, you'll have to find the most suitable area for each type of plant, and you also have to worry about running out of space. It's not always easy to find a spot with proper amount of sun, drainage, pH, temperature, etc. One thing I was sure I wanted to grow was potatoes. A true Irish girl at heart, I love potatoes. I could eat them every day.
I decided that this would be one of the indoor plants for several reasons. First of all, this way they could produce year-round. Secondly, potatoes do great in containers. Finally, by the time the homestead was ready for planting, it was already late in the season for planting. Any outdoor crop the first year would be scant and possibly under ripe. In my online search for the needs of different potato species, I found a container known as the potato condo. I liked the idea.
The previous owners of the house had left a few pallets behind when they moved out. My first thought was that I could disassemble them in order to build my own potato condo. I put on my work gloves and glasses, and I took a hammer to the first pallet. I should mention that this was my first time attempting to dismantle a pallet, and these were very old. It didn't go as easily as I expected.
After working up a sweat hammering and prying for twenty minutes or so, I didn't have much to show for it.
The wood was rotted in places and the nails were rusty. I wasn't going to be able to hammer and pry it apart with just a hammer. My husband offered to just buy me some new lumber, but at the same time, I want to teach myself how to reclaim wood from a pallet. I would have to discard a large portion of these particular pallets due to the quality. I wasn't going to trust it to hold my food. If you haven't noticed yet, I'm pretty darn stubborn. Even if it became two separate projects, I was going to break down this pallet, and build a potato condo.
We took a trip to the hardware store, where we picked up a chisel set, a handsaw, and a large crowbar. They helped a lot. After a few days putting in an hour or two of work each, I had roughly half of the pieces laid out for the final structure. My back was starting to hurt. I didn't have sawhorses, so I was working on the floor for long stretches of time. I also realized that I was going to have to sand the wood. Some pieces were more splintery than others, but even the smoother pieces would look better after a good sanding. I just didn't have the oomph to do it all by hand. So, we took another trip to the hardware store. This time we came back with a jigsaw and a power sander.
I went right back to work, and within a couple hours, I had finished cutting the rest of the pieces I needed and I was ready to start buffing them out.
As you can see, the wood wasn't very pretty at first. I told myself that was okay, I could always stain or paint it. However, as I began buffing, the natural wood grain really began to pop and show real depth. It looked far better than I expected that it would. You can see the clear difference in the image below.
Because I had used two pallets of different ages, that had been stored separately and expressed different amounts of wear, the color still wasn't uniform. I still had more time to decide if I wanted to stain, or whether I wanted to keep this more rustic look. In the end, I did decide to put a coating on the wood to add some gloss to it, but I'll cover that in a minute. Once I had all my pieces, and the wood was sanded down, I still had to tackle the most important step - the assembly. I'll get to that next time.
The tools I ended up needing were the following:
- Protective Gear - Work Gloves, Safety Goggles, and a Face Mask
- Jigsaw
- Hand Saw
- Hammer
- Oscillating Power Sander
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