Hammer time

Looking at how other blogs have put together a cooler stand, one thing most seem to skip over is how to address the built-in spigot and expand it to the new box. And after dealing with it a little on my own, I understand why.

Since Coleman sells replacement valves, I just assumed I could screw the current ones out and work around that. Ooops. All I was doing was crushing the valve and not making any progress getting it out.

Finesse wasn't working, so I thought I might try a different approach. Out came my trusty mallet, and I used that to smash a hammer through the valve and pull the entire thing out. Sometimes brute force really is the answer.

With that out, I finished surrounding the box with my fence picket pieces, and measured how far from the cooler to the outside I had to bridge. Thankfully we're not going to be drinking out of this so the pressure to get this perfect isn't really high. I just need a place for the water to go once the ice melts.

That'll help make things a little cleaner.

To clean things up I think I'm going to have to trim the sides at the top and bottom to hide the uneven cuts at the bottom and give a lid frame something more substantial to sit on. So there's at least one more trip to get more boards in my future. Besides getting some extra boards, once those are on some hardware and some poly should just about do it. It doesn't sound like a lot, but without much time to work on this during the week it's been pretty slow going getting this all together. Throw in tiling the in-laws' backsplash and my project time has been pretty minimal lately. Hopefully it's together and out in time for our first big cookout, which can't happen soon enough.