Old wood, new board

I had been wanting one of those beautiful stove cover/dough board things for a few months. It wasn't really in the budget at the time, and my husband pointed out to me that the metal burner covers we had were keeping crumbs from falling into the burner pans anyway. I reminded him that our current burner covers were actually 3 different patterns because they were the only ones left from the previous sets that people kept burning.

I am willing to admit that my memory isn't so perfect now, so I had been removing ALL the burner covers whenever I started to cook in an attempt to keep from cooking the covers. My DH, on the other hand, said his memory was good enough that he didn't need to and insisted on leaving the extras on the stove while cooking. He ran into a little problem the other day when he was making breakfast though. When I came into the kitchen I noticed lots of smoke in the air. My husband turned to me with a look of chagrin on his face, and while holding a singed metal burner cover in a pile of pot holders and towels, explained that perhaps it was time for him to make me one of those wooden stove covers.

Now that I finally had him on board, my only problem was how to fund this project. My answer was, of course, a garage sale. When we stopped at one a few days later, (the same one where I got my large wooden bowl), my husband and I, at about the same time, both noticed a large antique looking board setting in a pile of scrap lumber. My DH grabbed it and quickly asked the man in the garage if the board was for sale. The man answered that he thought so, but couldn't say for sure because his wife was the one in charge. When she came out, my husband asked her the price and it was actually in our nearly nothing budget. I turned to him and said, "Whatever you do, don't set that board down."

When we got home, I got busy doing the fun part, figuring out how to decorate my future stove board while staying on my nearly nothing budget, and my husband got busy on the hard part, actually constructing it. Over the next few days I did a makeover on a set of 3 wooden shaker boxes from a thrift store, painting over the blue on them with black and burgundy and stenciling stars. I also painted a wooden thrift store tray burgundy to match. Then I made my first pantry cake, which my DH almost ate because he thought it smelled so good!

My husband's part of the project was a bit more challenging. My DH has done lots of carpentry through the years, both at home and professionally, and he said he thought the piece of wood itself was probably more then 100 years old! That one piece of wood is actually as wide as the stove and as tall as from the floor to the stove top. The wonderful color is the real thing. We didn't use any stain. That was the actual patina on the wood when we bought it. The age and dryness of the wood presented a few challenges though. It was badly warped, so my DH had to work that into the design to make it sit flat. Eventually he had to add a front edge to get it to even come close to appearing flat on the stove. He also wanted to do as little cutting of the board as possible because we were already thinking that the wood may eventually become an end table, and he can make me another stove cover. Our stove presented its' own set of problems as well. It has double ovens and the back piece between the top and bottom ovens is slanted. That meant the stove board couldn't have a back.

When he got it done and brought it in, I admit it, I was pretty excited. After I put all my decorating doo-dads on it, my DH was even impressed. Our project turned out much better than he thought it was going to. Granted it isn't as nice as the ones in the catalog, but the price was right. Ready for the grand total...........................................................It was around $12.00. The board was our largest single expense at........ $5.00! I still can't believe we actually got a piece of wood that large and that "antique" for so little money. Some days you do actually get lucky.

I hope you are enjoying whatever project you are working on now. Blessings to you.