Some quick, temporary, zero cost shelves.

Welcome Back, brilliant Builders, to another brief glimpse into life here on ArborVilla Homestead. For today's installment, I have a very short post about using some old buckets and reclaimed deck boards I used to make some temporary shelving for a HUGE haul of hasp-close jars that I acquired (free of charge) a couple years ago.

Before even beginning this project, I had quite a bit of mess to clean up. All the 'junk' you see here is something that is being saved for future use. A couple things got used on the new chicken coop, but most of it just got moved to a new mess pile, out of the way.

As you can see in the picture below, there was still more mess behind that other mess, and that's what this project is really about. The pile of jars you see is about half of what I was lucky enough to get my hands on, but this pile is in such disarray that every season I'm losing a few more jars to breakage.

The construction is pretty self-explanatory from the pictures: I just laid some old deck boards on top of some empty 5 gallon buckets. The bottom course had to be leveled, but the ground here is mostly loose small stones, so that was pretty easy. Two deck boards laid side by side fit pretty perfectly on top of the buckets, and I was able to stack the jars two deep on a shelf.

By getting the jars all up against the house, they're inside the drip edge from the roof, which should help keep water out of them. Water getting into the jars and then freezing has been my main cause of breakage. The buckets were used upside-down to prevent water from collecting in them over time.

I used no fasteners at all on this project. Once I have shelves built indoors for these jars, this entire setup will quickly disassemble to be used elsewhere. The newer lumber that you see near the bottom of the pile in the photo below is for those indoor shelves. The older lumber on the top of the pile was part of the mess that used to be leaning against this side of the house.

This photo of things after a snowfall illustrates where the drip line is, just a few inches away from the shelves. I was worried that having my lumber pile so close to the shelves might cause a problem with water splashing onto the jars, but so far no water has collected inside them. It may seem impossible for water to get in the jars with the lids on them, but it was happening when they were just sitting out in the rain.

If you're a jar aficionado, oohing and aahing over this collections of antiques, you should have seen the stuff they kept. This collection came from an old family farmhouse, and when I say old, I mean that most of these jars were purchased before there were any grocery stores in this area. These jars are mostly from the early 1900's, the ones they held on to were mostly from the mid 1800's. There were also several dozen blue-tinted jars, which they kept most of.

If you're wondering why anybody would be interested in old jars, do an eBay search for 'Atlas Whole Fruit', 'Ball Ideal', or 'Ball Perfect Mason' jars. You'll probably be surprised!

Well friends, as promised, that post was short! Honestly, it's going to feel a little strange hitting the 'Publish' button on this, instead of something that says 'Buzz', 'Thread', or 'Tweet' 😀

To see more of what's going on at ArborVilla and other homesteads, check out the Homesteading Community. We're full of information about farming, livestock, building, and repair projects!

If all those things sound interesting to you, and you don't mind waiting for MONTHS between posts, give me (or my alt, for some comedy) a follow, and add me to your favorites. Despite my seasons-long breaks from posting, I will always return to Hive with more to share about this interesting life!

Until then...