DIY RECYCLED FURNITURE: Recycled Pallet Furniture Ideas - Parts 1 & 2

 DIY RECYCLED FURNITURE IDEAS

Recycled Pallet Furniture Ideas - Part 1

"From storing items, beds or coffee tables to window boxes, shoe cabinets or comfortable rockers, a wooden pallet is anything but waste timber."

Wooden pallets can be combined, remodeled and REPURPOSED as tables and chairs, desks, beds, etc. and will extend your living space onto the balcony, deck or garden, such is its versatility!

You don't need expensive, fancy tools. A basic set of tools is all you need to begin with and in the next video (recycling pallets into a coffee table) you will see that no power tools have been used.

Recycled Pallet Furniture Ideas - Part 2

Furniture & Woodcraft Plans from Dressers to Small Craft & More

DIY GARDEN TIPS: How to Make Cheap or Free, Vegetable Beds Fast

A Rich & Glorious, Kitchen, Vegetable-Tower Garden

With the growing awareness for better health and the benefits of organic food (not least is reduced health and health insurance costs), the main stumbling block to eating organically has been for the average family, the higher cost of purchasing organic food in general. 

Organic food is admittedly, more expensive than non-organic produce. However if there is growing demand and sales of organic food, the cost of organic products will, by the NATURAL, economic forces of supply and demand, ultimately be driven lower.

In the meantime have you considered growing your own organic food as a viable alternative? This will definitely make organic vegetables and fruit more affordable to the average family. Contrary to popular belief, organic gardening does not have to be expensive or diffcult. Here are some great tips to get started on organic gardening in your own backyard, patio, plot, balcony - anywhere at all - faster, cheaper and importantly, easier! (What family would not want convenience when time and energy in today's modern, hectic lifestyle is at a premium?)

Once you get the hang of growing your own food well and your garden is establised, no matter how small, you will have made savings that you can plough back into your garden ventures as you expand and/or improve, or use the money to buy other organic food that you don't grow, instead.

The video below shows you how to make cheap or free vegetable beds by recycling unwanted plastic cartons that are readily available in most cities, FAST.

TIP: Don't throw away spare cartons, wood, containers or plastic bottles!

Recyling Free or Cheap Plastic Crates as Vegetable Garden Beds.

Bottle and Pot Tower Vegetable Gardens

Now your vegetable garden does not have to be horizontal.  If space is at a premium go vertical instead.

How about starting a pot or bottle-tower garden? It may not look so pretty at first - but if you use some attractive, trailing vegetables or herbs to drape over your framework, or erect a screen in front of your bottle towers and then plant a pretty climbing shrub like the lovely, blue plumbago, then it's possible to get added satisfaction, both aesthetically and food-wise from your bottle garden.  The video below shows how it is done. The field-trial of over two years has taken the guesswork out of such issues as what works, what grows, irrigation issues, etc..

Be prepared to be surprised when you find peppers, lettuces, celery, spinach, chives, coriander, basil, sage, bak choy & other similar Brassica members (smaller to grow than your typical cabbage but just as potent because of their sulphur content), garlic, etc. sprouting happily in the pot or bottle above or below each other of your vertical, tower garden.

This tried and tested concept offers so many exciting and creative possibilities for tapping your home spaces to grow great (and pretty) food - fresh vegetables, fruit such as strawberries and tasty herbs - all with little effort once established (and without having to change the small amount of soil for at least two years)!

Bottle Tower Gardens: A Viable Alternative for Those with NO Space!

There is a renaissance in organic gardening as people opt for a better quality of life, so join in the movement, and seek out your community or local groups for extra support, friendship and good old, fun and comaraderie even as you improve and invest in your family's health, wellbeing and greater vitality.

Don't forget to share your organic and golden harvest with friends and family as you reap your bumper crop in more than one way. You might even end up with converts within your micro-community and that will be hugely positive for the drive to eat healthily as a family, community and ultimately as a nation!

Making Your Garden Bee-Friendly

TIP: Last but not least, grow some edible flowers (they're also very pretty!) that bees also like - in between your veggie plants or as a border or backdrop - because our bees are dying on a global scale, due to intense herbicide pollution. If more people planted bee-friendly plants in their herbicide-free garden it will be possible to reverse this trend and that would have a huge impact on our food production. Bees not only produce honey, they pollinate a vast variety of vegetable and fruit plants in the process of gathering pollen from flowers and this is crucial for food production on any scale.

Here's a list of flowers that bees love which also include those that are edible.

Some of the Flowers that Bees Love to Visit

Nb: When bees visit your garden you will also find bonus visitors viz., butterflies, lady birds, birds, etc., and that's a good sign that your garden is healthy (with Nature's pest-control system underway even if it does not look obvious to the untrained eye) - and that is something to be proud of!

Furniture & Woodcraft Plans: Easy Build Your Own Furniture & Wood Crafts - Over 9000 Plans!

TIPs for DIY-Related Businesses: Tap the DIY Traffic like the Big DIY Stores

In the DIY industry? Selling carpets, flooring, home decor, etc.? Too many flooring businesses remain shut in the weekends!

Do what the big boys do, follow the example of the big DIY stores, open in the weekends. So many of these stores, even larger ones, are shut when they could be picking up weekend sales.

The 9-5pm, weekday opening times just does not cut the mustard - see how busy these DIY stores are in the weekends? They are buzzing! And the car-parks are full!

If you know that DIY programmes on TV are running or have run, then ride on the coat-tails of these programmes because they have generated much interest in home DIY and that translates into increased traffic to DIY stores, stemming from increased motivation and inspiration to improve their homes by home-owners.

These programmes are quite open about the amount of viewership they have garnered (which is valuable information), and if the trend has been an increasing one over consecutive years because the housing cycle is in the upturn phase, take a risk and open your stores in the weekend, if you haven't already or trial it for a few weeks. You might pick up the sales that your competition will miss by being shut in the weekends, especially in the spring right through to the autumn season.

And if you have information that a prime location/city is too hot and house prices are too high, it is very likely that home-owners will renovate and stay put because they can't afford to upgrade to a more expensive house, so that is another indicator that DIY activity is going to increase.

Also there are other indicators eg. legal / financial - if there are legal changes eg. requirement for a greater deposit to buy a house it can lead to more creative ways to house other members (grown-up kids) of the family (who would otherwise be getting their own place but are not able to afford the deposit required by say, a higher LVR (20%?) than in the past), such as, extending the existing home, or adding a self-contained wing to the original house, either attached or stand-alone. All this would mean more DIY activity from home owners.

It's logical to open in the weekends because most DIY folks are doing renovations and repairs when they are off work, in the weekends usually. Those large DIY stores know a thing or two about their markets when they keep themselves open 7 days a week. If your resources are smaller, financially or labour-wise, juggle your down-time and take some leave during the week so you can remain open in the weekend, at least partially.

Test the water and then tweak your data-driven strategy to optimise your results for the best outcome!

You never know just how long the Season of Plenty will last (post GFC) so why not Go with the (DIY money) Flow, when the Trend is your Friend and DIY Fever is in the Air? When business is brisk, every hour you are open is Happy Hour. You can always 'take it easy' when business winds down as it will at some stage later on down the track.

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