This wooden crate’s long sides were put on top of the bottom piece, it is easier to attach the long sides to bottom by placing them next to each other, instead of on top of one another.

Building a box is a foundational practice for many other building skills. Using found, scrap and especially vintage lumber will create a box that is beautiful from it’s natural patina and age; and using older wood can hide many “mistakes” that a new builder will commit. The hardest thing about learning to work with wood is the fact that it will turn out differently from how you thought it would be; and then we think of this difference as a mistake. DON’T! Or, at least, when you do, just pay attention, let it go, and move on.

On the other hand, building with older wood means that the wood has aged, and has determined it’s course in life. It will be less flexible than new wood; it will creak and crack if stressed, and if you don’t pay attention to it’s natural tendencies it will fight you stubbornly to the end. It’s best to cajole and joke with old wood, suggest ideas and work around its nails, knots and blemishes. Look at each piece and notice where it is curved, chipped, knotted, nailed or split. These are the clues that will inform you of how to decide whether each piece will be the bottom, side or kindling. I like to take a rough sandpaper to the wood when I first work with it and sand it down, taking off its edges and smoothing its grain. Then I can see all of its frailties and strengths. It will sooth the wood, so I can work without gloves later on.

Three tips: trust your fingers, not your eyes.

Keep playing with it, placing the wood different ways until it feels right, avoid getting caught up in what you think you should do.

Go slow, sensually and languorously.

1. The bottom of the box: this chunk of wood should be sturdy and crack free, and the two long edges that the side of the box will attach to shouldn’t be wobbly, curved or odd. If they are, then when you screw the sides into it the rest of the box will be wobbly, curved and odd.

2. Cut this piece so that knots are in the center, cut it with a chop saw so your cuts are nice and straight, and place this on your table.You will place other potential sides around this to see how they work together.

Sanding the edges with a simple, hand made sanding block takes out the splinters and creates an aged look.

3. Determine the two short sides. These should be from the shortest pieces that you have. The grain can go either  way on these. You will drill a hole or hole on these to make the handles. I will call them ‘handled sides’.

4. Pick out the unhandled sides, the long pieces of wood that will attach to the short sides that will have the handles or holes in them. Sidle your potential lengths of wood against your bottom. Are they curved? Remember this was a round tree once, and it wants to be round again. If it is curved or cupped, have the curve of the wood face inside, so that the corners of the wood are closest to the other pieces of wood. Don’t worry, you will see what I mean. If you flip it around, you’ll notice that the center of  the wood is touching when the edges don’t. Do your sides like your bottom piece? Do they snuggle up? Then you have found a match!

5. CUTS: Now that you have 5 pieces of wood (bottom, 2 shorts that will have handles, 2 longer blank sides) you will determine the cuts. Knots should stay in the middle of the wood; they don’t like to be messed with by nails or screws. Watch out for brads, staples and nails. They will eat up your saw.

Your short sides are where to start: they will be the length of the width of the bottom of the box. Or, the short side of the bottom piece will be the same dimension as the short side of the box. You can measure or you can snuggle the two together (as they will be soon!) and draw marks on them.

6. THE HARD PART: Your long sides, the sides that won’t have a handle, they will cozy up along the bottom, and the two end pieces. Meaning that you will add the dimension of the long side of the bottom, to the dimension of the two thicknesses of the handle side pieces, and that will be your cut length. When you get confused and BEFORE YOU CUT balance the long sides against the bottom (which is innocently resting on your table, bored until it is screwed into) and put your two shorties on the end and check, double check, triple check before you draw your line, and certainly before you make your cut. Now take a deep breath, and cut.

7. Kerf. The saw will cut away some of the wood, this is called a kerf. You will need to cut on the line but also to one side or the other, or your cut will be too short or too long.

9. Whew. Take a break. You just measured, cut, and everything. Stand back and admire how far you have come.

10. Snuggle everyone up again, paying attention to curves and inconsistencies. Call a friend over to help you hold, or get a block or box that can help you stabilize it, or use clamps. When you are using old wood, ALWAYS pre-drill your holes. Use a drill bit that feels smaller than the screws you are going to use. Use screws that will go all they way through the outer piece of wood and about 1/2 inch into the inner piece of wood. Don’t drill where there are knots, do drill on the edges but at least a screws head away from the edge. Start with your short, handled sides. Attach to bottom board. Work around slowly, attaching each edge to each of it’s new family. Go slow, put some pressure when needed, but remember these are old people that need time to get used to each other.

11. Do screw in your screws part way. Don’t sink them. Then when it comes out crooked, you can disassemble and nudge parts into alignment.

12. Sand edges. Decide how you want to do the handles: drilling two small holes and putting a rope handle through is lovely, and if you have some nice soft cotton rope that works great. Or drill a big ol’ hole and that is that. Or drill three holes in succession and make and oval. Go for it or not, you might like your box without handles.

13. Bring your box inside. Admire it. Be kind to it and yourself; it is old and curmudgeonly, and yet it yielded itself to a new form. And so did you, regardless of your thoughts of what you could or couldn’t do.

Paint. It’s magical, ain’t it? Generally I shy away from paint since it is so full of toxic materials and stuff, but I really couldn’t resist the sale of the Rust Oleum tractor red. Most of the patio furniture has been transformed!

Today I got some more toxic crap to paint my rescued old chair that is repurposed for a composting toilet throne. Guess what color I picked. Purple! It’s a throne, right? I will talk more about composting toilets later. 

But really got me excited was the trick of putting steel wool into a jar of white vinegar, letting it sit in the sun, and then spraying that solution on to wood. The pale wood turns all dark and handsome. Guess it is called ebonizing. Really beautiful, and great for older stained furniture that needs a fix-up. I had stopped by Polly’s Paladar and for her last dinner she redecorated the whole house and used this trick nicely. She had some shelving, let the solution sit out in the sun, and just sprayed it on. 

That is only after a few minutes. Lovely, right?!

THEN guess what happened. Well, my old landlord called up and said he had a bunch of tiles. So for the next mosaic tile/furniture rescue class at the ReStore (yes, this is the pitch folks) we have a ton of tile. Well, actually about 250 pounds of tile. 

Lastly, if you are in the Nevada City area, check out KitKitDizze, a groovy new shop in town. Beautiful hand-made work, repurposed clothing, a t-shirt that says “Nevada Fucking City” (HA!), gorgeous earrings, and when we get our act together, they will carry the Mud and Pearls tool apron, t-shirts and vintage-style produce crates. Yep, Mud and Pearls is gonna start making stuff and selling it! Preview of tool apron below:

That’s it for now! Keep on projecting. Samantha