Reuse Is Such An Ugly Word

I reuse, and reuse is good.

Man, English is hard.

Same spelling, different pronunciations.

And don't you want to say royce? You know, like the pitcher, Jerry "Rolls" Reuss?

An umlaut here would help: reüse. And the verb could be spelled reüze. There, fixed it.

I reüze, and reüse is good.

Today was all about it.

I finished the front deck planter, constructed from 1x8 cedar boards I salvaged when replacing a fence for a client a few months ago. The 6 legs are pressure treated lumber of various dimensions gleaned from here and there. I built two six foot long U-shaped sections separately and connected them in place at the large center posts. Eleven plus feet long, two feet tall, and 16 inches front to back. The legs sit atop the ground and the box has no bottom, with inch gap at lower edge for drainage. Plus you don't want your cedar in direct contact with the ground--that's how a lot of these boards rotted in the first place. Cedar weathers well, but it does rot.


I used scrap untreated 2x4 to make box braces to prevent midspan bulging. I cut eight 16" inch lengths and liberally applied Red Gard, especially to the cut cross sections. This made two rectangles 17.5" high, just tall enough to span as much of the horizontal members as needed. Before installing them, I lined the box with plastic sheeting saved from a palletized delivery months ago. (Definitely want to minimize soil contact with the cedar.) To fasten the braces, I screwed exterior screws through the face of the box, three to a board (except the top plank, which got only two). Solid. But will the painted braces withstand perpetual soil immersion? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, Sarah moved a bunch of the cabin's original plywood cabinets back into the kitchen to start experimenting with a floor plan. The cabinets were removed when the pipes burst two owners ago and the cabin got wrecked because no one was there to stop the flood. But, despite some of them having been painted purple, they're in pretty good shape overall. Some drawers and doors are missing, but we'll probably just go with them rather than fuss too much about it. I'll make new drawers and doors and we might strip the paint and gussy them up at some future date, but since still functional, why bother replacing?

Reüse is good.





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