DIY on a Dime: $8 Countertop Compost Pail

For everyone who has emailed and Facebook’d to ask for the plans for our tumbler, we didn’t give specific measurements because they’ll be different depending on the size of the bin. Ours is not a standard 55-gallon drum, so our cuts wouldn’t work for it. We also did a lot of things that aren’t really necessary (the removable bin, the routing, the T-brackets, etc). 

If you want to make an awesome-but-not-exactly-like-ours compost tumbler, check out the Boys’ Life plan. Those Boy Scouts know what’s what. Theirs was the base plan for our tumbler, but we figured out our sizes based on our bin and we added features on as we went along. We’ll probably post the exact cuts of our tumbler if there’s a demand for them, but there are so many floating on the interwebs that it seems really unnecessary. Ya know?

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Hey peeps! We’re off to a pretty productive Memorial Day. Bradley’s cleaning the garage and bringing in some new wood we scored. We’ve already picked 2 pieces from the pile to turn into bedside tables for the guest bedroom. So stoked — not that it’s not fun keeping all our stuff of the floor and under the bed, but the room will feel more finished. While Bradley did that, I loaded the composter and ceremoniously gave it the first tumble. I did it with coffee in one hand and I actually said “Wheeeee!” as it spun. I may also have lifted my coffee mug in a toast-slash-salute. Good times.

Now that our compost tumbler (aka R2D2) is in the back yard, we decided to tackle a quickie project to go along with it. We’ve been eying compost crocks and pails that are designed to sit on kitchen counters. Basically, it’s a mini garbage can that sits on the kitchen counter. We fill it up with compostable food scraps, and when it’s full, we take it out to the tumbler. That way we’re not making 3 trips a day. We mentioned in our last post that we want composting to not feel like a chore. The pail would be a huge help in that.

We found some containers we liked. This one on Amazon is adorbs, but not worth $34 to us. This EcoCrock is cute, but not $36 worth of cute. Here’s one that isn’t even cute, but it costs 30 beans.

The more we searched, the more disappointed we were. It’s just a container with a lid and carbon filter inside to keep things from getting stinky. It shouldn’t cost $30 or $40. We decided to stop looking and make our own. And we’re using the word “make” very loosely here. This is a project that a toddler could do in 2 minutes. Seriously. Also, we picked up our materials at a grocery store so we didn’t have to go far.

Here’s what we purchased:

Look familiar? It’s the spitting image of the $30 compost pail we found on Amazon. We’re pretty sure it’s the exact same container. Only ours is a galvanized ice bucket that we found in the seasonal / BBQ aisle of our grocery store. It was $7.50.

Ours came with a little scoop, which we might use to scoop up veggie scraps or whatever into the container. We also picked up a cat litter box air filter from the pet aisle:

Most of the fancy schmancy compost pails (like this $45 beauty) boast about their charcoal filter that helps control odors. This is the same thing.

It lasts just as long (3 months) and it can be found at any pet store and most grocery stores. And it’s hella cheap because it’s not a specialty product. We paid $1.20 for one big filter.

We also needed masking tape and a pair of scissors, which we already had at home.

We removed the filter from the package and cut it in half:

We made 2 rings of masking tape and stuck them to one half of the filter. We sealed up the other half back in its baggie:

We stuck the taped side of the filter to the inside of the lid, pressing firmly to make sure it adhered well:

And, uh, that’s it, folks. We’re done. We popped the lid back on, tossed that sucker on a kitchen counter and started filling it up with food scraps and other compostable stuff.

Our filter is good for 3 months, and then we’ll swap it out with the other half that we sealed up in its baggie. We’re covered for 6 months before this thing will need any maintenance. The container is dishwasher safe in case so it’s easy to clean. It holds about a gallon of scraps, so we won’t have to go to the tumbler every day.

Here’s the materials list and cost breakdown of our quick-and-cheap compost pail:

• Galvanized bucket = $7.50
• Half a cat litter box charcoal filter = 60 cents
• Scissors = already owned, so $0
• Masking tape = already owned, so $0

Total cost = $8.10

We’d been stashing all of our compostable food scraps in a tupperware container in the fridge for 2 days before we made the countertop container. Including that stuff, it took 3 days to fill up the new container. We’re thinking we’ll be outside flipping the tumbler 2 or 3 times a week. Perfect!

We’ll keep you posted on how our new container works out for us. And we’ll be back soon with more updates from the home front. See y’all soon!

Let the dishes wash themselves.

Happy Saturday! Bradley’s busy working on a project today while I’m busy recovering from the flu. It’s been a rough couple of days, but I think all of the chicken soup and couch time has really helped. It seems like all of the ladies in this house are sick right now.

Margot picked up kennel cough at the animal shelter, and she and Jabba were both sick all week. They’ve been good couch companions. And now that Margot’s feeling a little better, she’s starting to come out of her shell.

Life is good! Wait, scratch that. Life is great. You know why?

Because that guy installed our dishwasher! Whee!

Up until recently, our dishwasher was in the garage, piled on top of the old stove we removed when we moved in:

We delayed the installation because we weren’t sure where we would put it. Our plan has always been to refinish the old cabinets in our kitchen. So we thought we’d wait it out until we renovated the kitchen.

After 7 long months of living sans-dishwasher, we’d had enough. We also realized that we don’t want to keep the old cabinets after all. They were cobbled together poorly and they’re basically falling apart. Bradley dismantled the drawer cabinet by hand:

Seriously. He popped them right out with his bare hands. I don’t have a before picture because he was in such a big hurry to get started, but here’s how the cabinet looked with the drawers gone:

Not. Attractive.

We’re not sure we could have kept the old cabinets even if we wanted to. They’re attached right to the plaster. The plaster is just a thin layer right over the brick. So we would have had to remove the cabinets to insulate the walls behind them — and based on how rickety they are, we’re pretty sure they’ll fall apart in the process.

At least the floors look decent:

We’ll have to peel up that hideous linoleum and pry up the plywood underneath. Hopefully the glue didn’t cause too much damage to the kitchen floors.

While removing the cabinets, we noticed that they weren’t as old as we thought they would be:

They’re put together using commercial nails that are newer than the big square nails we’ve found throughout the rest of the house. Either way, removing the drawers has sealed the deal: these cabinets are outta here.

Once Bradley had the drawers removed, he used a hole saw attachment to drill holes for the dishwasher pipes:

The hole saw does exactly what the name implies: it saws a perfect hole.

A hole on the right side for the power cord:

And one on the left for the hoses:

The hoses went into cabinet under the sink where Bradley could plumb them in:

That spot may be my least favorite in the entire house. We’ve cleaned it as much as we can, but it will never stop looking gross. We can’t wait to rip up this cabinet and get rid of everything underneath. Especially the nasty, peeling wallpaper:

Once the wires and pipes were threaded through the holes, Bradley gently pushed the dishwasher into place:

Then he used some spare hunks of wood to make up for the difference between our deep dishwasher and our not-so-deep cabinet:

It’s not the prettiest solution, but it’s very temporary. We’ll rip everything out when we renovate the kitchen anyway.

After that came the plumbing:

And finally, he hooked up the power:

It starts getting dark here at 5:30 now, so Bradley’s been using his camping flashlight headgear to get work done once the sun goes down. One of our neighbors keeps asking him if he’s a coal miner.

The final product:

Ta-da! It’s not pretty, but it’s a temporary fix to our problem. Our problem being that we were both really, really sick of washing dishes by hand. We cook most of our meals at home, so it felt like we were always washing dishes. And standing in front of a sink full of dirty dishes after a long day of renovating or a hard day at work was getting old fast. Now we just load up the dishwasher after dinner and listen to the hum of dishes washing themselves while we watch TV on the couch. Oh, luxury. How we missed you!

We’ll be back soon with another update. Both of us have been crazy-busy with work lately and we’ve gotten a little behind in our posts. Lucky for me, I’ve got a sick day to get all caught up. Stay tuned!

We saved $1400 on kitchen appliances! Squee!

We went to IKEA to check out some shelves we’re thinking about getting. Instead of the stuff we walked in for, we ended up leaving with a pick-up-later receipt for a range and a fridge. Our biggest impulse buy EVER.

We owned a dishwasher already, which, surprisingly enough, we got from IKEA. We love it to pieces. We even named it. Sven. As in, “Lets sit on the couch and watch movies while Sven does the dishes.” Kind of a big deal when you’ve lived without a dishwasher for 7 years.

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We were a little worried that Sven would be chintzy or flimsy like so much of IKEA’s furniture, but it turns out IKEA doesn’t actually make the appliances. They just design appliances to look nice and get Whirlpool to make it for them. They’re not cheaply built. And they’re not exactly cheap in cost, either. Prices are pretty much exactly what we found at Lowe’s, Home Depot and Sears — but for stuff that’s way prettier.

And we needed pretty stuff for our kitchen. Since our house was a foreclosure, so it didn’t come with a fridge or dishwasher. It did come with a super old range. Pardon the yellow pictures. I didn’t take the time to white balance my crusty old point-and-shoot:

It was usable, but it was so old that it didn’t seem very efficient. And it was definitely not easy on the eyes.

We knew it wasn’t something we wanted to keep around forever, so we went ahead and hauled it out to the garage. We’ll eventually donate it or offer it for free on Craigslist. Or hope that it grows legs and walks out on its own so we never have to think about it again.

When we moved the oven, we discovered something lodged in the back.

It’s a brick-sized block of wood with what appears to be a bat carved into the front. And “December 25 1938″ carved into the back. From the look of it, the block might have been a handmade Christmas present that some kid made for his / her parents. An old-school DIYer? A kid after our own heart. We dusted off our 73-year-old find and set it on a bookshelf.

Before we closed on the house, we planned to set aside $1000 for both a range and a fridge. We wanted to score something great on mega-sale. Or just get something that would get us by for a few years, even if it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. Then we realized that it’s totally the wrong thing for us to pinch our pennies on. We love to cook, and we eat home-cooked meals 90% of the time. Since we’d be using our fridge and stove a lot, we figured we should get something we’re totally in love with regardless of cost, and budget tightly for other stuff we don’t use as often.

And then we met the Datid Pro D51:

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Datid is really wide and really industrial looking. Better yet, it FEELS really industrial. The matte black, the cast iron grates, the silver toggles on the knobs. And there’s a wok burner in the center. A wok burner! We swooned! We also loved how it doesn’t have a back panel to it, so we can set this in to our custom-made island and have it be flush with the rest of the surface. But that’s not the best part.

Original price: $1,749.00
What we paid: $799
Saved: $950. That’s 54% off. (That’s the best part!)

We got the range at a super deep discount because IKEA is discontinuing this sucker. Apparently nobody really buys black appliances anymore. We, on the other hand, embraced its hue. We think we can make it work in our kitchen, because we’re not going matchy-matchy with our appliances. It doesn’t really bug us that the dishwasher is white but the stove is black. The stove will be set into some stark white cabinets. We might even do white concrete countertops for added contrast. Why hide the stove? Why not make it stand out?

Besides, the original cabinets in the kitchen — the super old ones from the 1880s — will be stained dark as well, so it’ll fit right in. And our backsplash might be a black, grey & white tile number we rip off off Dexter Morgan’s condo kitchen.

Long story short, we can make this work.

After spending $799 on that stove, we were thinking about cheaping out on the fridge. And then we walked right into Nutid:

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Having lived with craptastic apartment fridges for years, we might have shed a tear or two as we stood there in awe of this boxy beauty. Look at how squared off that baby is. All of the other fridges we saw have curved fronts or curved handles. This one doesn’t have a curve on her. We loved it! Plus she has a digital display, an ice maker, tons of pull-out drawers in the fridge & a side freezer. “A freezer like that,” Bradley said, “was made for Costco shoppers.” And then we reached for our wallets.

Fridges similar to Nutid were in the $2000ish price range when we looked online. Fridges not quite as squared off were cheaper, but still hovering around $1500.

Original price: $1,349.00
What we paid: $899
Saved: $450. That’s 33% off!

We think we walked away with a great deal.

Our pretax total for the fridge and stove came out to $1698. We cut our costs further by picking up the appliances ourselves from the New Jersey warehouse instead of having them delivered to the house for a bajillion dollars. (We’re not sure what IKEA’s delivery charges are, but we’re pretty sure it would be between a jillion and a bajillion to deliver to Pennsylvania.) In the end, we came in $648 above our budget for kitchen appliances, but we think it’s worth it because we smile every time we open the fridge or walk by the stove.

Moving our new appliances into the house wasn’t easy. We rented a hand truck from Home Depot and loaded up the fridge first:

The thing weighs, like, 500 pounds. Luckily for Bradley, I go to the gym and lift heavy weights. And I gave up on the idea of manicures right around the time we started crushing walls and hauling lumber. No prissiness up in our hizzy. So we rolled up our sleeves and somehow got the fridge out of the van (which has no ramp), onto the handtruck, and safely onto our patio (which also has no ramp).

Getting it inside was an even bigger ordeal.

Big ol’ fridge. Teeny tiny door. We removed all the styrofoam and cardboard packaging around the fridge and squeezed it through (barely). And then we had to get it through the living room and into the kitchen, which — surprise! — was an even bigger pain in the butt.

The fridge came with a little plastic protector base that was about 1/2 inch too wide for our door frame. We didn’t have the right socket set to remove it. After a few choice profanities, we ended up laying the fridge on its side and then hacking off the plastic feet with a handsaw.

It finally slid through the door frame and over to its current resting place (not its permanent home). We took a minute to bask in its glow:

It wasn’t easy, what with the hideous linoleum tile and the fruit-themed wall border. But we basked as best we could.

The stove came in with such little drama that I completely forgot to take a picture of it. We haven’t fully assembled it since our gas isn’t turned on yet, but rest assured that it looks fab-u-lous in its new (temporary) home. Especially when compared to what used to reside in its place:

See that thing big silver thing hanging out of the wall? Doesn’t it look like a cartoon robot arm?

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That’s the old venting system for this stove. It’s plugged into the back of the oven and into the chimney. We’re not sure it actually did anything. All we know is that we giggled maniacally when we ripped it out of the wall. And we giggled even harder when we tossed the old Dumpy McGoo stove in our garage and pushed our sleek new Datid in its place.

What we learned:

• Nobody has cleaned behind that stove since at least 1938. Gross.
• Someone lost a dry chunk of Ramen down the burner.
• It’s OK to take the cheap route, but some things are totally worth splurging on.