Impromptu project

I bought a new grill recently, and really want to use it this summer since I have such a nice backyard. So I thought it'd be nice to set up kind of an outdoor kitchen.

Late last year, I, um *salvaged* a tabletop from a broken food court table at the mall. I had no idea what I would do with it, but thought it might come in useful. Last week, I was contemplating putting it out with some trash for our city-wide cleanup, but kept it. Glad I did.

I was cleaning up my dining table to set up and another piece I've got plans for earlier this evening. I looked at my old microwave cart and wondered what I could do with that. It's been just kind of a catch-all to put stuff on in the garage, but I like reusing things so I cleaned it up, too.



The top of it was pretty nasty, however, and not really suitable for the outdoor kitchen idea. And then I remembered the salvaged tabletop.



I turned the cart upside down so I could remove the top and threw that away.





Then I put the old tabletop on it and more or less centered it.


I marked where the screws should go, and predrilled the holes, then put the tabletop back on, lining up the holes, and attached it with the same screws from the cart's original top.

And here's the outdoor kitchen setup. It's got everything but a kitchen sink (I wonder if I can find a wine barrel?) and a fridge. And that table in the foreground of the picture? That's my next project. But you'll have to wait for that.

Fun project

With the all the garage cleaning, you probably think I'm not having much fun on my vacation. Well, if you think the only way to have fun on vacation is to be on a beach or something, then I guess you'd be right.

But I am getting to some things that I've been wanting to do for awhile that will make life a little easier if not enjoyable, and that's fun for me. Yes, I'm kind of a geek.

Anyway, here's one of the things I'm doing.

I've had this metal bistro table for about 10-12 years. It's a little well worn, as you can see.




I scrubbed it clean Tuesday morning and let it dry, then brought it into the garage for a couple coats of primer.

Then came the color. I wanted it to be red with black legs, because I think that's a pretty cool color combination, but it didn't feel like I had enough red spray paint. So I went with yellow for the top.


I was still going to go ahead and do black for the legs, but realized I had a LOT of green spray paint, so went with that.



Maybe I'll get some brown craft paint and make the top look like a sunflower. That'd be kinda cool. I'll need to seal it, too, to help protect the paint, but that's not real important at this point.

I put it on my front porch, so I've got something to set a cool drink on while I sit on the bench on nice evenings.



Anyway, I've got one more big, fun project to do, but I don't know if I'll be able to finish it before I go back to work. I still need to do a couple things inside the house, too (replacing the bathroom faucet, for one). But I think I could at least get a good start to where it will be usuable. More on that later.