Wonderfully cheap and free: our score this week

This week's post is about some wonderfully free or cheap things we have achieved this week.

For some time I have been looking for a longer coffee table. My lounge room is a long and rectangular space, and the coffee table I had (from the op shop and painted up by DH) had been good but it was square and was really not long enough. I didn't want to squish the seating up around this table when I had such a lovely long room to expand into.

We looked and looked: new ones were not the right size and were expensive.Second hand shops didn't have anything we wanted. We looked at one we found online -second hand- but DH was not sure about it. He offered to make me a new coffee table, just the right size, but when he costed the purchase of new wood supplies, it was hundreds of dollars. I wondered if he could find a table at the tip shop which would provide the wood he needed. It would be a new use for something which otherwise would end up in the tip.We hitched the trailer on the back of the car and went along.

Our tip shop is a social enterprise. It is nicely run, well organised and friendly. We looked at a number of tables, but none of them were exactly what we thought we needed. There was one, though, hiding under 4 chairs stacked on top. It was a dark wooden extension table, and DH thought he might like to have a go at it. We paid $25 for it.

When we got  it home, DH started to get excited. He is pretty sure it was made here in WA of our lovely hardwood called Jarrah- this is the wood used for expensive furniture here in Western Australia. It has a wonderful red colour and plenty of pretty grain. He spent a while taking the extension rails off the table and removing the table top. Then he cut down the extension leaf and fitted it back as one entire table top. The legs were shortened to coffee table height and he used the bits cut off to add to the thickness of the legs.

LOTS and LOTS of sanding, then finishing with danish oil and wax.

This was a good project for DH in his retirement. It took quite a few hours, but his time is his own now! He had to spend some time thinking about how he could solve the various technical challenges along the way, and he has had a huge sense of achievement in finishing it.

We splurged on a couple of sets of stone coasters from Kmart in honour of our new table. We love it!

We hitched up the trailer again later in the week to pick up three half olive barrels which someone was giving away. Now, these olive barrels are great for big plants in the garden - and in the past I have paid $50 for a whole one to cut in half to make two pots. I have used them to pot up a goji berry plant I was given, which is getting one last chance to produce fruit. It has a new, sunnier spot along side the driveway. We have removed a number of suckers which were in the same pot. As they are deciduous  we aren't sure which ones want to grow, but we potted them up too. The other two olive pots are ready for the tomato glut I want to grow this spring/summer.

I have been spreading the free mulch we got a couple of weeks ago, and fertilising and weeding as I go. This is also a FREE WORKOUT, as was the lovely walk we had down at the beach yesterday.

I have a table runner which I have nearly finished. It is another free thing because it is made of left-overs from another project, including the wadding, the backing and the binding which I hope to finish this week.

We have had a lovely productive week.

Thanks for reading my blog all the way to the end of this post!