More Layered Wood Ornaments

layered wood ornaments

Just a quick update on the layered wood ornaments I’ve been making.  12 days of Christmas?  No, it’s not the 166th day of Christmas in my craft room.  I’ve knocked out a few more ornaments designs and this was the last one.   I plan on making one more before figuring out little hangers, packaging, and where to sell them.

I can’t wait for it to be done.  Honestly, I don’t want to see any Christmas stuff for a very long time.

Putting shelves in the closet

Making shelves for the broom closet

Last weekend, I found my new table saw.  By Friday night I finally got down to the workshop and put it together.

This closet has been a pain since we moved in.  It didn’t have shelves and we always just stacked everything inside.  Then all those things toppled over and we couldn’t shut the door.

Do you think anyone fixed it?  Fast forward about 5 years and it still won’t close and we just keep walking past it every day.

Saturday morning I headed down to the shop and cut some wood for the shelves.   Circular style saws scare me.  I have used handheld for years and it has scared the bejezus out of me every time I use it.  It always kicks back and I drop everything and go running while it’s soaring through the air.

My voice may have jumped a few octaves on some occasions.  So far I haven’t cut anything off so I may still have some dignity left.

So I take all the wood I cut upstairs only to find out I cut everything wrong.   I realized after remeasuring that I misread the little laser measuring thing.  It said 2.0′ and not 20″.  Everything was 4″ short.    Of course, I only bought exactly how much wood I needed because I don’t make mistakes.

I threw things down and walked away for a bit.  Shortly after I told my roommate how I screwed up and he pointed at his old bed he had just finished tearing apart.   Glorious sideboards that were only slightly smaller than the boards I bought.

I dragged it down a few flights of stairs to the basement, removed all the metal hardware and started chopping his bed into pieces.

putting shelves in the closet

As you can see it all worked out in the end.  Is it perfect?  Nope.

Do I care?   Nope.  You can see some of the 4″ short pieces holding up those shelves.

I do have to go back and repaint all the replaced pieces.  Only some of them got primed through the whole process.  But for now, it is done.   I have other shelves around the house to make and a fence to rebuild, so I’ll be back to finish painting this when I’m running around the house painting those things.

I’m just happy the vacuum and mops have a place to be now and they are not just randomly found around the house.  Oh, and I’m happy the door shuts now.

My life is pretty boring lately

wen table saws 3720 c3 1000

To be honest, my life is pretty boring lately.  I’ve been working long hours and by the time I get home, I have enough time to eat and go to bed.  Fun, right?

I am working on some commissioned paintings, but I can’t really report those either since they are a surprise for someone which makes my blog even more lackluster until it’s complete and given away.

I did, however, do some shopping this weekend and bought a table saw.  I don’t like saws as they like to scare me by kicking back on me.  But I have some closet shelves and DIY projects around the house to get done.

I don’t plan on using a saw much so I got one of the cheaper ones.  But, it came with a cart so that sold me on this low-end model.

Make sure to stay tuned for some boring shelves in my boring closets!

wen table saws 3720 c3 1000

Backyard Deck

20170806 191554

It has taken me several weeks to finish, but I refinished the backyard deck. Most of it was scraping and sanding.  Then an afternoon of painting.   It turned out pretty well.   I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the dog destroys it with his giant paws.    When that happens, I’m just going to burn it down, because I am not going through this again.   That was way too much work in the hot summer sun.

Then, said dog, hurt his leg and ended up needing knee surgery.

This dog, right here.

He’s lucky he is so adorable because I had to spend my weekend building him a ramp so he could get to the yard and make his boom-booms.  He’s not a small dog, so it had to be good enough for a 130-ish pound monster to walk up and down it.

He doesn’t much care for it but he’s getting better at using it.  He kind of has too unless he wants to hold it in for 8 weeks while he recovers.