rubbish rescue

my husband truly believes that there is no such thing as scrap wood. he honestly can. not. throw. it. away. if you saw our garage you would know what i mean...but i am definitely not inserting a photo of that here! our neighbor is getting a new deck built. this means jackpot for kevin. so this past weekend he went "pile diving"...not to be confused with "dumpster diving" which is his usual folly. one of the perks of living in a new development is having dumpsters full of wood everywhere. he and the kids are often seen riding through the neighborhood carrying wood!

here is the pile (thank you to my model ethan)

and, no joke, about 2 hours later....look what appeared on the deck!

isnt it pretty? he used some old brackets he had laying around. i love the mix of the natural wood and the metal. here it is with more modeling  (thank you ethan AND ava)

and thats not all.  we have a fire pit on our deck (that didnt make it in the last deck photos b/c it wasnt pretty). this is what it looked like before the the "pile diving"

it was all yucky and rusty. and there was no where to put your feet up on (or your beer:)). now look at it...

ahhh much better! doesnt it look good? we are deciding what color it will be. i think the bench will stay natural, but we might go a little darker with this. it just adds a whole new element to our comfort...

who knew? this man i married didnt even own a tool set when i met him...now he is unstoppable:) i love having a partner in crime. it is amazing what you can do with things people are discarding...especially wood!

jodie