My Faux Spool Table With Hidden Storage - Gardener Version

Stacy Davis
by Stacy Davis
10 Materials
$30
2 Hours
Medium

Do you ever have one of those projects that you think is going to be so easy that you will knock it out of the park in no time at all only to have it take twists and turns that you never saw coming? This was one of those projects. It all began simply with a tip I saw about keeping your gardening tools in a pail of oiled sand. I thought, "What a great idea!" Because I never feel like cleaning them off when I finish gardening. The problem that I have is that my gardens are closer to my porch than to my garage. So, when I go out to garden and come in, I usually go off the front porch. I either have gardening tools scattered across the porch or I bring them inside the house. They rarely make it back to the garage. My goal was to create a project that would hide the bucket of sand and garden tools on my front porch. Hidden in plain sight... And so it began...

I used this 3 in 1 Oil. It cleans and protects tools and penetrates rust and is readily available near me.

I just squeezed it all over the sand. I used play sand.

I added my tools and felt like I was winning. This would be done in no time.

I spray painted my bucket several colors but realization struck that it didn't matter what color the bucket was, this was not what I wanted.

So, I went and bought 3 fence boards and cut them a few inches taller than the five gallon bucket. 7 pieces are cut from the fence boards and then I had one small board cut to make up the space.

I set to staining the boards. I was wearing disposable nitrile gloves and they had a bit of stain on them... well, slippery when wet. I picked up the can of stain and it went right out of my hands like a banana out of a banana peel in the cartoons. I had dark brown stain down the side of my house and all over the gray Trex deck. Coconut oil saved the day. It removed all the stain pretty much and I do have a bit of an oily look to my deck but I think a couple of warm days and a scrubbing with some soap and it will slowly dissolve. Better than dark brown stain everywhere.

I decided to connect my boards with jute twine so I began drilling holes in the fence boards.

My plan was to thread the twine through connecting all the boards together.

My twine wasn't strong enough and snapped right away so I took some strips of burlap and stapled them on top of the twine.

Both sides of the boards have two strips of burlap... inside and outside. I could have stopped at this point but I had an idea. I had an unused lazy susan in the garage.

I put the lazy susan underneath and added some hooks to hang some garden tools. I have some pictures on how I made this lazy susan posted here on Hometalk As you spin the table there are hanging trowels...

So I can take the small bucket out if I like and I can also take the large bucket out as well. The boards stay standing even without the big bucket inside.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and it makes a nice addition to the front porch.

How the table works as hidden storage...

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  1 question
  • Penny-Marie Penny-Marie on May 31, 2019

    you've got stuff just on one side of the top - how do you keep it from falling off?

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  • Carey Carey on Aug 14, 2021

    I love having things that provide more than one function. This is excellent! I have a mail box for both the front and the back in which I can put my trowels, gloves, garbage bags, & etc. it keeps them clean, handy & available for use. My husband used old motor oil in a bucket of sand to preserve the tools It worked well for years. We also used a coarser which helped to remove any rust that had appeared before the winter put away time!

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