General Craft & DIY discussion

We have a modular home with no attic or basement, so our storage space is limited. Our laundry/mud room is tiny, basically just a short hall with the washer, dryer, & furnace on one side & a foot on the other side for shoes & such. I have a shop, Marg has the horse barn, but both are 100 yards from the house. The big, storage barn is a few hundred yards away. We really needed some place next to the house for some outdoor storage.

We have a back deck with a 'wasted' corner, so I decided to build a locker about 3'deep by 6'wide & 7' tall. It's on the west side of the house & gets hit hard by the sun & wind, so it had to be weather resistant & heavy. I didn't want to attach a plastic or steel one to the deck as some of the winds we get would probably tear it loose. Besides, we couldn't find one we liked.

I decided to build it out of wood. The frame would be treated 2x4's & I designed it with some shelves on both sides, one across the top & a center door. I thought the siding would be T1-11, but that's pricey & would need to be painted. I hate painting wood, especially when it would get baked by the sun the way this one would. Even the semi-transparent stain used on the deck went in a couple of years.

Just down the road, one of my neighbors has a sawmill. I went to see Dallas & he cut me a bunch of Red Cedar boards 1/2" thick x 6" wide & 7' long. I used them for vertical siding. It wound up being about the same price as the T1-11 would have been, but is far cheaper in the long run because it is maintenance free.

My nails & screws are in coffee cans for the most part. I used to have them stacked behind the front seat of my pickup. Now they're filling a 4'x8' shelf. I can't imagine I'll ever need the 5lbs of 3" roofing nails I have left over from putting a third set of asphalt shingles on 25 years ago or so, but I can't bring myself to toss them, either. Sigh.

I really miss coffee cans. They were so handy & clean. The molded plastic messes that we have now just aren't the same. It's probably a good thing I don't do the grocery shopping or I'd be buying for the container.

I keep my most used screws & nails in a 5 gallon bucket with 5 trays that are divided into quarters. Each holds over a pound & it's perfect for tossing into the truck when I need to make repairs around the farm. It sits under my woodworking bench in the shop, so is really handy there, too.