A New Repurpose Project

Re-purposing, recycling, and making do mean a lot of things to different people. Some are motivated to save the planet. Others are out to save a dime. Around here, it is a way of life. We simply can not go out and buy new every time a need arises.

Some time ago, on another blog, I shared some of our re-purposed items in Re-purpose Recycle and in More Repurpose Recycle. It is funny to look back at those posts from almost four years ago. Many of the items are still in use in the same way. Some of those items have been re-purposed again. A prime example is the storage shelves Tim salvaged from a previous employer. One of those is now in the chicken house with the bottom fenced in. It is our brooder pen.

Over the years there have been a lot of projects involving re-purposing of items. Sometimes it is a simple matter, like most of the items shared in the posts above. Other projects have involved quite a bit of time and physical labor. The biggest of these that comes to mind is the tearing down of a barn. Those materials were used to build a pig house, a chicken house, and various other building projects.

As you may recall, we have been working on getting our broilers out of the chicken house and onto pasture.  The first step of the project involved re-purposing some unused rabbit hutches to make them more suitable for chickens. Those pens worked wonderfully for the broilers. The problem was we had more broilers in the brooder that would soon need to be moved out. We needed another pen.

And now we have one. Tim built this over the weekend.

Can you see what the frame was in its first life?  Does this help?

It is the frame of a kitchen table. It is upside down and used to have a glass top. Everything in this project is re-purposed, save the wire fencing which we already had on hand. The metal roof may still be from that barn. Is that right Tim? The door is metal scraps from another project. The wood floor frame is scraps too.

We needed a new chicken pen. In the matter of a day, we had one for free. Alright, not free if you want to get technical, but we didn't have to run to the store to buy a single thing for it. That is my kind of project.

The chickens seem to like it too. Not that you can tell from this picture. The chickens were all out running in the grass and chasing bugs when I took this.