April 10th 2014 Weekly Recap

This week has not been the most productive week for me. We had some sad news in that Kristen's grandmother passed away late last week. And so, we were in a mode of trying to figure out the logistics of Kristen getting back to North Dakota for the funeral, and me holding down the fort while she was gone.

I did manage to get some shop time in. As I mentioned last week, I had a plan for reorganizing the garage, and I was able to get a good start on that plan. I also did some preliminary work on a project for the school fundraiser, Shamrock.

So, Monday through Thursday, I was playing Mr Mom, and trying to stay on top of things at work at the same time. Needless to say, that was a dual time job!

Till next week!

April 3rd 2014 Weekly Recap

Due to my lack of posting lately on any specific topic, I thought I would highlight some of the things I've been up to this past week. My intention is to make this a recurring post, possibly every Thursday. So, here goes!

This past weekend, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, and that allowed me some time in the shop with the garage door open to work on projects. All went well until the kids wanted to head out to play, and asked if I would take a break to go with them. So what did I do? I went with them of course! So we proceeded to head over to the school to hit some baseballs, climb on the playground, and fly a kite! Liam had received a kite at Christmas, so we go the chance to try it out. Here are a few pictures.

The boys all really enjoyed flying the kite, and it was an extremely great day to do it.

As I said, I was working the shop a bit over the weekend. The current big project is a bed for my niece. I'm making the bed out of reclaimed flooring from a friends remodeled house, and the results so far have been very good. I'll post a more detailed report on the bed when it is finished. This week I finished the milling in the posts for the head board and foot board, side rails, and head/foot board slats. I was also able to glue up the foot board, so things are progressing nicely (albeit very much behind schedule).

With the nicer weather we also did some yard work around the house. One big job that got completed was cleaning the sand off the grass along the street. What a difference that task made to the look of the yard! Now we need a little more warm weather and some rain and Liam can start mowing again!

Another small project that was completed was creating a sandbox for the kids. While I'm not looking forward to the sand being everywhere, it is definitely one of those play areas that will get used quite a bit. The kids were very happy to help get the sandbox put together.

Along with the sandbox, the playset got an update in the form of "wear mats". These are meant to be put under the swings to prevent the mulch or rock or rubber chunks that normal people put in as landscaping for play sets from getting displaced. Our purpose was to cover the bare ground (and mud) where the kids have killed off the grass. We would rather have more grass than landscaping, and these mats seem to work quite well for the task.

If anyone remembers back, I had posted that I had created a shelving unit in the kitchen. I finally got some iron on edge banding to cover up particle board, and boy does that shelf look nice now!

Saturday evening we were part of a progressive dinner event. This is a silent auction item at our schools fundraising dinner, that we agreed to host last year. I know, this yeas Shamrock event is coming up soon. This progressive dinner just got scheduled. Anyway, Kristen and I were slated to server dessert. I make a couple of my apple pies, and Kristen made cheesecake bars. Both were a hit, even though everyone was stuffed from the appetizer and main course stops. I hope the couples that participated had a wonderful evening!

This week I decided to ask a fellow woodworking friend for advice on how to organize my garage workshop. His own shop has undergone several transformations, so I figured he would have some insight that would be quite useful. As usual, he made some suggestions that have me chomping at the bit started rearranging the garage. I'm really excited about the plan we came up with, and I'll try to make sure I capture plenty of images of the process.

That's it for this week!