I love the challenge of finding something used, vintage, cheap or free and making it into something beautiful for very little (or sometimes zero) money. When we moved into our current house, the previous owners left a giant dirty slab of butchers block in the garage. It looked like it had once been used as some sort of table top. Butchers block, if purchased new, is very expensive, so I knew I couldn’t let it go to waste. We ended up being able to make three projects with the one slab: DIY open shelving in the kitchen, a cutting board, and some picture ledges.

Kitchen Open Shelving

The first thing we made was some open shelving for our kitchen remodel project. Scott cut the wood to the desired width and length and then I cleaned and sanded it. I applied two coats of very light stain just to give the shelves a little more of a finished look, and purchased simple black brackets. I chose to splurge on these from Rejuvenation since the rest of the project was essentially free. Similar, cheaper options available here.

Butchers Block Cutting Board

Since we still had quite a bit of extra wood left over, we decided to make a countertop cutting board. For this, we just measured the desired dimensions and cut it to size on the table saw. We then sanded it down really well, washed it off and then treated it with mineral oil. To maintain it, we wash it daily just like we do the countertops and once a week we treat it with more mineral oil.

Picture Ledge Shelving

Our last project was to create some small “picture ledge” style open shelving in our dining room. We were down to very little wood left so I was only able to create three 5″ deep ledges. One is approximately 25″ wide and the other two are about 17″ wide. I purchased small black brackets from Amazon (technically these are supposed to go inside hollow shelves, but I wanted to make them look similar to the kitchen shelves, so I mounted them under the shelves instead). I sanded these down and treated them with the same neutral stain I used on the kitchen shelves.

Let us know what you think in the comments. What are some projects you have made using stuff you already had or found for free/cheap?