Patio Set

And we're back!!

We are in the UK after completing the move back from Cyprus. The guaranteed weather, the guaranteed BBQs, the guaranteed tan, the beach at the bottom of the hill, the amazing restaurants (Syno Grill esp) to name but a few had come to an end. We had a brilliant time in Cyprus and it was a fantastic place for the children (and the adults) to spend a couple of their early years. But the UK is our home and we were glad to be back.

We moved back with the Battalion but I was only hitching a lift as I was due to go on a posting. I was only posted down the road so we were still close to our friends within the Battalion which was nice. As the posting started I moved to Woodhouse, a very small village in the county of Leicestershire. This meant we were even closer to all the family which the kids absolutely loved. Grandparents just around the corner is ideal for both parents and kids!!

We moved back with no patio furniture so this became my first project. My wife had been sending pictures of patio furniture for weeks now. All of them made out of reclaimed wood, mainly pallets. This was all going on around 6 months after moving back and we were at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic! Not ideal when all I have is a rusty hand saw from Wilko in my shed from the previous occupant, a hammer and a screwdriver that came back from Cyprus with us. Fortunately ScrewFix were doing click and collect so I downloaded the app, broke out the bank card and went shopping. I soon became a regular and luckily for me, ScrewFix is on the same road as my office! Perfect. I ordered 25 pallets to be delivered from a garden centre down the road and I was all set.

I have the tools, I have the pictures and I have the enthusiasm (not to be mistaken for skill). It's time to start the first UK build. We had decided on a quite large set that would seat 4 and had stools around a high square table top. We had some amazing unexpected weather which meant I could get it cracked quickly and had no breaks for the rain. As I was building, I completed what I thought was a big enough table top, clearly my wife disagreed as comments like, "is that the finished size" and "its smaller than I expected" (she was talking about the table top not anything else) kept flying around. I took the bait and put what I had done to the side to be used for something else in the future. I got the biggest pallet I had and created a top out of that. As much as it pains me to say it, the wife was right, it needed to be bigger and it was going to look a lot better now. I finished the table and moved onto the stools. These took longer than expected but turned out to look really good. It was now complete and it was time to put a finish onto it. The wife said all stained brown, I said brown tops painted legs. There was only one thing to do now, go to the family for the final vote, I won and it looked fantastic (if I may say so myself). It is now finished and sitting proudly in the middle of our small patio.

This build was really the catalyst for 'Reclaimed by Jonny'. I was proud of what I had made and people liked it. Social media proved to be a very useful platform to show off what I had done and people wanted more. The 'wrong sized' table top turned out to be another hit as I put some hairpin legs on it and turned it into a coffee table and I now had an unexpected gift for my mum. Orders are now starting to come in for all kinds of things made out of reclaimed wood.

The future of Reclaimed by Jonny has just begun.