Nightstand Project

Two of the most beautiful pieces of wood I've ever had the pleasure of working with.  These are 11 and 15 inch wide pine slabs.  Looking at them now I wish I'd built a table out of them, but there'll be more pine where that came from.

The problem with a slab this wide is that it's likely to be warped, and I had to sand off almost a half inch from the edges on one side and from the center of the other to flatten it out.  I probably spent 8 hours sanding alone just to get these to a construction stage.

I don't have very many construction pictures, but I ended up using my Dremel tool a lot.   Sadly it wasn't very well suited to the size of the project so I had to find something with a little more power.

As long as you're going in a straight line the circle saw makes an excellent router ;)
The notches are for the shelves to slide into for both stability and looks.  I found, not surprisingly, that it is difficult to get the notch the exact same height as the shelf.  I love the inlayed look though, it's something that I'm going to continue striving for with future projects. 
(If anyone is working on their Christmas list, I could use a router ;)

I saved the best sections for the top shelves.  I probably spent an hour lining the grain up, I wanted the lines from the back plate to match up with the shelves so that it looked like they flowed together.  It worked pretty well considering they were different pieces of wood.  It was difficult because there were always some grain that lined up and some that didn't, I could shift them back and forth by about a 1/4" and had to decide which looked best.

I'm pretty happy with the end result.  I finished it with a wipe-on polyurethane finish, it goes on very easily and doesn't leave any brush marks like I remember seeing in other projects I made many years ago.  Limei is suitably impressed too, I now have permission to commence work on pretty much any wood working projects my heart desires -
pending their usefulness of course ;)

One Man's Junk, My Treasure

If one man's junk is another man's treasure... I'm that other guy.  With all of the building going on in our neighborhood there is plenty of scrap wood laying around for things like the following:

Most people slap some hooks in the wall to hang a shovel from or stand it up in a corner.
I spend hours sanding, staining, and finishing.
It's worth it though, man that is one nice tool rack.  I'm one hook short though and I can't for the life of me find another black one.  Red and gray are in abundance but no black.

Every handyman needs a set of free weights.  Not for exercising with, but for holding stuff down while glue dries.  This was an interesting project.  Our door frame wasn't quite straight, which left a little gap at the top corner letting in cold air.  My carpenter neighbor came over and unscrewed the frame, and we pried the bottom corner out a half inch bringing everything back into line.  Left a little gap between the flooring and the door frame though so I had to install a strip of wood which I was able to do with the help of on 15" adjustable clamp and about 50lbs of free weights. 

This little pile of scrap wood is going to turn into the finest work bench I've ever had the pleasure of working on.

Halfway through completion I was able to use it as a table, woo hoo!  You can see at the right side the table tops for the nightstands I completed yesterday, those will be part of my next blog post.

There she is, a work of art.  Construction cost = <$5  I put it into immediate use, it's light enough that I can drag it outside into the sunlight, small enough that it doesn't get in the way of parking the car.  I'm already well on my way to destroying the top surface but I kinda figured that would happen.

Back in Bozeman

I realized that poor Patrick is missing out on all of the exciting details of my life due to us refusal to use facebook, so when my Dad came over after Christmas to bust out the circle saw with me I decided to get the blog going again.  Full post on the construction of the bed frame you can just barely see the corner of at bottom right of the first pic will be coming shortly.

We moved the office into the master bedroom, which affords me a much nicer view of the mountains as opposed to the window into my neighbor's house that my old office faced.  You can see the newest member of the Mixed In Key team at bottom center.  He's pretty lazy but good for moral.

Our Mac team should be happy, my new test machine came in the mail last night.  I look really excited but I barely use a Mac at all when I'm at home.  I'm going to use it as a HTPC to get some use out of it.

How To Get Motivated

There is nothing like a trip out of town to get a guy motivated to finish up projects around the house.  I think it must be the thought of coming home to a bunch of work that does the trick.  Here's a pile of my finest aged compost that I added to a garden bed that will be turned into a strawberry patch.  Even though we won't be around much this year, they'll be well on their way to providing a nice crop next year if we plant them now.

I'm really up for any excuse to enjoy the view in our backyard though.  Mixing the compost in wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

Thanks to a tip from our local nursery I got some grass seed and hay to keep it in place thrown down where the rain runs off of the roof.  We were advised against putting gutters on as we get a lot of melting and freezing here.  Apparently the ice builds up on the gutters and can really do some damage to the roof.  Instead we have 2ft eaves that are supposed to keep the water far enough away from the foundation.  I made sure to slope the ground too, directing the water away from the house.

And finally, the shelves and coat hanger in the mudroom.  This is something I've wanted to put in for a long time so that we have a place to hang our coats on the way in from the garage.  This was a challenging project because the left wall holds the cavity for a sliding door.  All of the frame had to be attached with shallow drywall anchors.  Given my carpentry skills the knee brace was no joke either, but it came together surprisingly well.

Paul with a load of dirt, getting ready to make me really.  really.  really nervous.  The bucket was 6 ft wide, the corridor 7ft at the widest, so he literally only had inches to spare.

Looks like he's watching out for the house though.  He only bumped it a couple of times.  We didn't even call them scrapes.  A little touch here and there.  

It was wet and slippery in the back yard, but he managed well.  Saved me about 100 loads with the wheel barrow :P

It rained that night, got a nice little river path for the water already.

It's a dream come true, I've wanted to get this dirt brought in all summer.

Unfortunately we had to sacrifice the front lawn to get it done so quickly.  A worthy sacrifice.

Our roommate from Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim.  First time he ever used a shovel.  Me, doing my part to share a piece of American culture with him lol :)  We were flattening out the dirt in preparation for more garden beds next year.

After driving 6 hours on Friday evening to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, we set our tent up in the dark.

We awoke to a scenic drive around Coeur d'Alene Lake, which is much bigger than this picture implies.

Then we went to Silverwood amusement park, where we rode the Scrambler...

The Tilt O'Whirl....

And I don't remember what this one was called, but it sure looks like Limei was having a good time!

Nice photography light at the end of the day.

Then we set our tent up in the dark, again, and got ready to cook the best campfire meal possible.

We had steaks, corn on the cob...

...and yes, those are baked potatoes on the left, we throw them right in the fire.  Yummy!!!

We woke to a beautiful sunny morning.

Farragut State Park has a lovely lake, we had to postpone a swim for the next time though....

...because we had just found out that there were 3 frisbee golf courses in the park!

Nothing like tossing some disc in the trees with the mountains in the background.

Yep, nothing quite like it.  What a great weekend, who'd have known Idaho was such a cool place?

Spinach from early summer. That stuff grows like a weed!

The first tomato harvest.

Yummy cherry tomatoes and green beans from today.

Tall tall tomato plants.

Bearing some good fruit.  Or vegetable.  They taste good, that's all I know.

I don't know how we did it, but we grew some good stuff this year!

Mountain Biking at Emerald Lake Trail

It's been a busy August, lots and lots of pictures to upload.  Not so much going on with building the house, but what fun would it be if I left it at "we built a house and now it's done?"  That's not any fun!  What about building a great life here?  That's important too, right?!

Limei looks a little scared, but I promise you she is having a good time.

And working hard.

Really hard.

Really.  Really hard.

But still having fun.

Lots of fun.

Coming up on a technical spot.

Oh, and I was there too.