Our house in Solomons came with a two-storey shed on the property. When we first bought the place, upstairs in the shed was divided into three tiny rooms, all full of old broken furniture and piles of moldy old mattresses and inhabited by several people of non-human species, at least one of whom was, shall we say, aromatically identifiable. We went up there and it was kind of dark and gloomy, and at one point my wife looked over to see, about two feet from her left shoulder, a pair of beady eyes and a large mouth full of little teeth, so she shrieked, "EEEEK! THE SKUNK!" So I said, "No dear, that's the opossum. The skunk is over here in this other corner." So she high-tailed it out of there and has never been back.

Well, I persuaded the various non-human residents to seek lodging elsewhere, got rid of the old furniture and mattresses, took out the walls to make it into one large room, enlisted an electrician to put in wiring, and set up my woodworking shop up there.

A few years ago I built a small dressing table as a Christmas present for my wife. About midnight on Christmas Eve a couple of friendly neighbors helped me quietly spirit it into the house and in front of the tree. In the morning, my wife came downstairs and discovered that one of the cats had found himself a home, and she just happened to have the Polaroid camera handy to get the picture at the top of this page.

I consider any woodworking project a success if I use up more little scraps of old wood than what I make, and thus achieve a net reduction in the vast stash of scrap lumber I've got lying around. Here's a sample of what can be made entirely of scrap wood:

These things are called Push Me Pull You's. If you've ever burnt your fingers on a hot oven rack, you don't need to ask what they're good for. The guy who invented them made the one on the right. Then I made the one in the middle out of a piece of an old broken chair. Then, since some oven rack arrangements are a bit hard to deal with, I made the one on the left with the pushing end and the pulling end on opposite ends.

When folks go to church, they've gotta have someplace to stash their overcoats, their hats, their purses, their umbrellas, their galoshes, their diaper bags, their kids' toys, their brief cases, and whatever else. Then the old people need grab bars and the kids need chin-up bars. So what do we use for all this?

That's right, folks! The hymnal holders! What else? So anyhow, with this sort of abuse, they break pretty often. So somebody in every congregation has gotta make a few new ones from time to time. So I'm the designated hymnal holder maker in our congregation. Fortunately, these things are pretty easy to make out of mostly scrap wood.

Rockler - The Woodworkers Store
Harbor Freight Tools
Woodworkers Journal