It Started With A Chicken Coop

It started with a chicken coop. Actually it may have started with a pile of bricks and a full dumpster sitting next to my house. My mom would say that it started long before that. Some guys were building a new house next door. As they tore the old one down I saw so much useful material just getting thrown into the dumpster to be hauled away and forgotten. I shivered at the thought. Not possessed by any kind of environmental outrage at what was going to end up in a landfill, but possessed by the excitement as to what cool stuff was sitting in that huge metal box. You could say that I have been a junk collector all my life. My mom would simply roll her eyes as I stepped through the door after an afternoon of neighborhood trash diving. Some kind of twisted piece of metal, tangle of string, chipped mug soon to become my favorite. My prized discovery was a life size plaster statue of a mother fox sitting watch over her pups playing around a tree trunk. An amazing piece of Midwest blue haired art. Both beautiful and functional. A prerequisite of midwestern sensibility. The tree trunk was hollow as to fit a potted plant or perhaps your half read newspaper. I was in love with the cheese of it and it held a place of honor in my room up to my sophomore year in college when the inconsiderate actions of my too cool roommates left the mama fox forever shattered and violently ripped from her babies. (As you can see I still have not fully recovered.) So knowing what treasures could be hiding in a mere thrash can, you can now imagine that the shiver that hit me by the sight of a 20 yard dumpster sitting right next to my house was unavoidable. The first haul was 286 bricks in various state of honeycombed crumble. A beautiful fire and chocolate orange breaking through a layer of black soot. Next was various 6 to 8 foot sections of an aged cedar fence that yielded well over 100 useful fence boards and 2x4's. Aged to a variety of dark brown, forest green and mellow silver-grey. Some just rotted to a state of interesting character and all in great shape for a second life. I stuffed everything under our deck to my wife's questioning looks. "Don't worry honey." I told her. "I have a plan... I have a plan." My first project was our chicken coop. Much to the humors of friends and neighbors I prided myself on how little money I spent on this structure. Scavenging what I could from the guys building the house. A few 2x4 scraps here, some roofing material there and "Voila!" I built me a chicken coop for all of $19. I did have to buy the wire. That ran me $54. So 73 bucks is still not bad. My next endeavor was a fence, of course. We had new neighbors move into the new house next door. (The guy building the house gave me a nice teak patio set he want to throw out, by the way) The new neighbors wanted to build a new fence between our yards. Not able to help out financially, I offered to tear down the fence to save them a few bucks in labor and dump fees. Instead of hauling it to the dump it ended up under the deck. Another 86 boards that my daughter Jaimie got to learn how to use a nail puller on. Quality father / daughter time pulling nails and talking over the days events. (I hope Jaimie has the same nostalgic memories of the event.) The fence on the other side of my yard was looking pretty worn out. As I tore it down, I discovered that it was not only a fence, but a retaining wall as well. holding up as much as 8" of my neighbors yard. Lucky I had those bricks under the deck and the number of half used bags of cement I stopped from being tossed at work. Roughly 56 feet of brick retaining wall with a cedar fence above it a gate and trellis for a total cost of $212 Jaimie had a friend over one rare sunny day this past summer. She was peeking under the deck and said, "Jeez Chris, you sure have a lot of junk under that deck. What do you do with all that junk?" I looked down from the ladder I was on as I fixed my gutters. I pointed out how I made that chicken coop with the junk under my deck. I pointed out the fence, the gate, the compost bin and the gutters I was replacing on the house all came from under that deck. Material that was not junk but pieces of structures that had run their time and now lay in wait for a chance to be reborn in something new. "Wow!" she said. "Everyone should have junk under their deck!"