Making a Mud Kitchen

In our latest installment of "Stuff Made Out of Other Stuff", the Miser Maker Conglomerate is pleased to present . . . the Mud Kitchen.

The main materials that went into the Mud Kitchen consist of

• a paint-spattered, plastic dishpan left in a dusty corner of the basement, by the previous owner of my daughter's home;
• four trash-picked garden(?) posts, rescued during a morning run from the fate of landfill burial a few years back, and
• a black wooden desk, put out at the curb by some of my neighbors, and disassembled by me and Prewash with help from my handy cordless drill.   (Actually, Prewash didn't really help very much in the disassembly, but she was very happy to keep me company).  

Oh, and apparently I also used a pair of 2x4's I'd gotten from somewhere.  Why the heck did I have those lying around?  No idea anymore.  

The two aspects that are the most fun of any project like this, as far as I'm concerned, are (1) making everything up as I go along, and (2) power tools.  

The making-everything-up part is an interesting puzzle.  Once I've got everything together, it's kind of obvious how it should work, but when I start, I've just got a pile of odd-sized pieces of wood and a vague idea of what the final product might look like.   I ended up using 12 different scraps of wood, most of which I had to trim down in some way.  

But the power tools, that is just playing -- so much fun.  I got to use my circular saw a bunch for the above-described trimming.   The jigsaw, for making a hole for the dishpan to sit in.  My heat gun, for removing the black paint (also works for frying bedbugs!)  A brand new orbital sander, used here for the first time.   (Where have you been all my life, orbital sander?   I own an inherited belt sander, gifted me by my dad, but as much as I love my dad I'm now a convert to the new tool).  And of course, extensive use of my cordless drill and its many fabulous attachments.  

It took me a month or so to figure out which pieces of scrap wood to use and how to bring them together, but I did successfully solve those puzzles and came up with a configuration I liked.  Last weekend I trundled down into the basement, disassembled the Mud Kitchen, loaded the pieces into the car, drove over to my granddaughter's home, and had her help me reassemble them for use in her back yard.   

Then I got to have fabulous meals:  mud soup, mulch waffles, chocolate cake . . . 

We've got another little maker in the making!