Outdoor furniture and garden crafts are great projects to hone DIY skills. Slight imperfections are at ease with a rustic aesthetic; weathering can add character. Over the years I have discovered that adapting design to suit your skill level usually improves the outcome. If you get ambitious, then you need to stretch those skills – and acquire more power tools (which makes you happy, happy, happy, if you are a tool geek).

Search the CPL catalogue with subject keywords “outdoor furniture” for a fine list. The three books below come from different areas of the collection and offer different perspectives on the topic.

Outdoor Furniture: Timeless Woodworking Projects for the Yard, Deck and Patio is a new title in our woodworking collection. Projects, including benches, tables, chaise longue and serving trolley, are built with traditional woodworking techniques specifically designed to produce furniture that will withstand the elements. They offer tips for choosing the right wood, joinery and hardware, and finish.

There is a pattern for each project and detailed step-by-step instructions with photos and illustrations.

In Garden Mosaics: 19 beautiful mosaic projects for your garden (2009) authors Biggs and Hunkin work with all types of mosaic including vitreous glass, slate, marble, pebbles and broken china. The projects range from easy-to-make house numbers to a more demanding tabletop design inspired by an Italian herbal dating from the 14^th century.

Junk Beautiful: Outdoor Edition (2009) demonstrates the repurposing of flea market finds for furnishing garden and patio. Author Sue Whitney, founder of Junkmarket, is a crusader for creative reuse.

In the book she offers some inspired contraptions: an old pipe and gauge is attached to a battered red scooter. A weathered bucket hung from the pipe holds the ice that chills the wine that makes the company mellow.

Friday: Back indoors, looking at fancy ways with walls.

Gardening is a messy process that requires storage for gloves, tools, seed, left-over compost – the list goes on and on. Frequently, these are grubby items that are better stored outdoors than in. Since space and storage are almost always problems for apartment gardeners, if you can get double duty from furnishings, that's a good thing.

I have a small collection of Chinese pots accumulated over many years and they have been put to work in different ways. I wrote in an earlier blog about my water fountain made from a medium-size pot.

For another larger pot, I built a slatted top to create a storage table which holds gardening paraphernalia inside and supports beer and sandwich on top. Here's how.

The top is made of 1 x 4 cedar. Cedar is durable for outdoor use, easy to cut with hand tools and not too heavy to manage. Choose lumber with a smooth surface for painting. The top was designed to create a small overhang, but not too much - space is tight.

Using a handsaw and a mitre box, I cut a 45° angle into the corner pieces to prevent bruises from sharp corners. I attached these corner pieces to the supports underneath to prevent the top from shifting or being accidentally knocked off by a clumsy thigh (guess whose?)

Before assembling the pieces, I painted all sides, using the dining-room table, covered with a painter's drop cloth, as a workbench. I chose a favourite eco-friendly milk paint - colour basil - which is available at Faveri’s.

The top was assembled with screws from the underside, using a 1.5 inch, number 8 wood screws or, to generalize, screws long enough to penetrate two thicknesses of wood securely, but not long enough to penetrate the top surface.

To level the finished tabletop and keep it from rocking, I attached small adhesive bumper pads to the rim of the pot wherever it dipped. These are the same ones that might be attached to the corner of a cupboard door to keep the door from smacking the frame of the cupboard each time it is closed. They come on a sheet and are available at building centres.

This type of top could be constructed for any large attractive pot. You might find that other dimensions of lumber, such as 1 x 3 or 1 x 5, will produce better results for the pot you are working with. In my experience, cedar stock at building centres varies. The Cedar Shop offers a good selection.

Monday: DIY books on outdoor furniture from the collection.