A couple of weekends ago Sean and I were driving past a yard sale.
“Is that a crib?!?” I asked excitedly.
“Looks like it…” said Sean, rather confused by my question.
“Awesome! I’ve been thinking of using one in the yard,” I responded as I pulled to the side of the road.
See, here’s the thing. I’ve been wanting to add a trellis to our (ugly) cinder block fence in the backyard. Short of building a new fence in front of it, the only way I can figure to improve it’s appearance is to, well, hide it with a wall garden.
So I asked the lady having the yard sale about how much she wanted for the crib. “Five bucks,” she said.
I didn’t show my excitement, but instead asked, “Does it still work?” As if perhaps I was going to use it for a baby or a child or something.
“I think so, it belongs to my cousin,” she told me. I could see at a glance that it was a no-longer favored “drop side crib,” which were deemed a hazard for babies only about five years ago. Frankly, I’d be doing babies everywhere a favor by taking this thing out of the furniture pool.
So I just said, “I’ll take it.” and we put that thing in the trunk of our Civic and I drove home cheering. Here’s the crib leaning against the fence after I’d removed the hardware. On the left is one of the ends, and the right is one of the sides of the crib.
I painted it a light brown color using outdoor paint we found in the shed. Then we went to Home Depot to buy something to attach the trellis to the cinder block. We considered attaching each trellis by drilling in to the fence, but I wasn’t sure how well the cinder block would hold up. So, I opted for buying some 14 gauge wire and wire clippers so I could hang each trellis from the latticed top section of the fence.
Here’s how I attached one of the trellises (this was the bottom of the crib) to the top of the fence. This trellis has a false jasmine growing on it:
And here’s how another one of them looks (either the back or front of the crib), this one has a purple clematis on it:
I’m really excited how this has turned out. We have three more trellises to paint and hang, and I have a clematis for each. It’s great to take a $5 item and use it to turn the backyard into a pretty oasis.
These clematis seem to be loving their new home!