George and I have been working on a new project that I have to keep my lips zipped on, but I’ll give you a hint: it involves barn wood! We love working with barn wood because it’s cheaper than new wood, it’s recycled and it has a great look. (Side note: the best deals on barn wood are usually on good ol’ Craigslist. That’s where we purchased our wood.)

But barn wood has also been sitting out in the elements for many, many years and it may be dirty or even downright unusable. We can fix dirty, but we can’t fix termite or carpenter ant or bee damage. Always remember to check your wood for bugs! We once built a table in the winter with barn wood, then in the Spring started to hear buzzing. There were dormant carpenter bees in our table! Do’h! Continue reading →