How to Make a Roof Using Maple Sap Buckets | DIY Project

Frieda Wimmelman likes to blend old and new. Her contemporary farmhouse in southern Vermont, for example, mixes modern touches (such as Energy Star appliances) with time-worn items (salvaged beams and wide pine floorboards).

So when she saw that a neighbor had recycled the lids of maple sap buckets (think flat, round metal discs) as roof shingles, she knew she’d found just the look for her small greenhouse. Even better: It gave her an excuse to take advantage of her late grandfather’s abundant supply of retired buckets, stored in the barn.

How to Make a Roof Using Maple Sap Buckets | Process

Although she downplays her carpentry skills — “I was on the phone getting advice from my neighbor every 10 minutes,”she jokes — Wimmelman managed to do the daylong job herself. To make her shingles, she trimmed 3 inches from some 150 sap bucket lids. Next, she laid down a foot-wide strip of galvanized-steel drip edge at the base of the roof as an even starting point.

Then she moved from bottom to top, setting down overlapping rows of 10 lids apiece with 1-1/2-inch roofing nails. Working with the roof’s edges, Wimmelman cut a second batch of lids down the middle and ran these straight-sided shingles in alternating rows. To form a ridge cap, she bent the shingles by hand and nailed them down on either side of the roof. “It’s an easy metal to work with,” she says.

The best part? “It’s just very different,”says Wimmelman. “It gives it this scalloped look, which I really like. Of course, it also meant a lot to be able to use my grandfather’s buckets to create it.”

How to Make a Roof Using Maple Sap Buckets | Cost

New, flat, galvanized-steel lids can be purchased for under $5 each. Buckets run another $15 each. Look for new or used buckets and lids on eBay and at local antiques stores.