Christmas Gifts 2010

2010 was a good year for hand-made Christmas gifts. It took me a while to come up with the exact right idea for each person, but in the end I was very pleased with both the quality of the gifts and how well they fit with each recipient.

For Sarah, I made another bird feeder. The feeder I made for her a couple years ago is still going strong and is a lot of fun to sit and watch. I wanted to make a feeder that would contain different seed and accomodate more birds at once. This is the design I came up with. You can't see it from the photo, but the upper part of each hole is half-covered by a small piece of wood to prevent the seed from just spilling out. It spills a bit when I pour it in, but once it settles the seed stays put. The feeder is about 24" high by 4" square. I used half-inch poplar from Home Depot. I like this wood for this kind of project because you can buy it already milled and ready to go. The paint should look familiar: it's the same paint I used on the generator enclosure.

For Elizabeth, I made this treble clef mounted on a piece of maple. The clef is about 9" high. I cut it out on the scroll saw and spent quite a while sanding it but it was worth it: it came out quite nice. Elizabeth is very excited about playing her violin in the Green Mountain Youth Symphony, so this was a good gift for her.

Helen spent some time last summer singing and touring with a vocal group called Village Harmony. They spent a couple weeks in Canada and then came south to the states. She had an absolute ball and loved every minute of it. I have to confess that I did not cut out all of these letters. There are too many and I could not have done as good a job as the folks at SJA Wood Design. I have bought letters from them a few times in the past and have always been happy with their work. I stained the mounting board black before gluing on the letters. I think it came out quite well.

As always, I ended up really enjoying making and giving these gifts. I always get  a bit tense leading up to it as I feel the pressure to create something unique and beautiful for each person, but the rewards are just great. I think the kids look forward to exchanging our handmade gifts on Christmas Eve as much or more than the gifts we open on Christmas Day.

Generator Enclosure

We are lucky enough to have a small generator that can be plugged into a secondary electric panel to run the critical systems in the house: heat/hot water, water pump, refrigerator, a few lights. This allows us to be without power pretty much indefinitely without an adverse impact on the house.
The issue was, though, that we stored the generator on the porch so when we needed it, we had to move it. It's very heavy; in fact, it's really too heavy for two people to lift. When I'm around, I move it with the tractor but Sarah's pretty much up the creek when I'm not around. I built this enclosure so that we can keep the generator in the right place without having it exposed to the weather.

This photo shows how I normally start projects like this. I have a journal that I sketch, take notes, make estimates in, etc. It's very helpful. Of course, I always end up improvising a bit while I'm building, but this way at least I have the rough outline of what I'm going to do before I start.
The enclosure is made from 1/2" B/C plywood and 2x3 studs. Hardware is galvanized. I painted it with Behr (Home Depot brand) primer/paint combination. That stuff was great to work with: covered in just one coat. I've got a bundle of shingles ready to put on the lid but we really needed to get the thing in place first, so I'll do the shingles a bit later.
The goal was to match (at least for the most part) our existing trash/recycling enclosure; I'd say I was pretty much successful. The colors, shape, and size pretty much match so at least the new one doesn't stand out too much.
Not exactly the funnest project to build but very useful.

A New Handrail

We love our house a lot, but we know that it can be tricky to get around in. Recently, I sprained my ankle pretty badly and I learned first hand just how many stairs this house has! I'm sure that our parents notice it, too.
This was a quick project to add a handrail to the three steps that lead from the mudroom (where we have the downstairs bathroom) up to the main part of the house. I bought the supplies from Home Depot but will probably revisit this project. I say that because HD only had fir and oak handrails and the handrails in the rest of the house are maple; the profile of the HD handrails was different, too. But since I wanted to get this project done today, I just bought fir and will special order maple at some point so that it matches the rest of the house (yeah, right).
Had I been thinking during construction, I would have had blocking installed in the wall before the sheet rock; as it is, the studs weren't in the best locations so the railing is longer than it needs to be. The top is 36" above the stairs, which meets code. While it's a bit long, it isn't disproportionate so it looks OK.
I like the final photo because it includes not only this project but the nook desk project and a hand-made kitchen stool by my daughter! Odin adds a touch of brown for depth.

Palletize

Time for the obligatory fall firewood post. I almost always have a pile of firewood rounds lying around various parts of our land. I like to let them season for a few months so that they're easier to split. Once I start splitting them, though, I find it's best to stack them on a pallet rather than just leave them on the ground. They dry better and don't get as dirty.
This batch is from some trees I cut down earlier this year.
I don't think I'll burn it this winter since I'm still working through a batch I split and stacked in June, 2009.

Finishing a Stair Case

We've lived in our house for almost exactly four years now. There are a few things that didn't get done before we moved in and finishing the stairs down to the basement is one of them. I'm not sure what motivated me to start working on them, but I started last weekend and was able to finish them up today.

As you can see from this photo, the treads were just plywood. I took this photo after installing the trim down the sides of the stairs last weekend. When I did that, I made templates for both the tops and bottoms out of cardboard then scrap plywood. They helped a lot by giving me the opportunity to fuss with the plywood rather than the $40(each!) 1x10s I was using for the final trim. With the prep, template making, and installation, it took the better part of a day to get these installed.
I bought the rest of the supplies yesterday from the Home Depot. I used pre-cut pine treads and 1x8 pre-primed trim. I urethaned the treads outside yesterday so that they'd be ready to go today. I spent almost an hour this morning getting the materials, tools, etc. laid out before I started and boy, am I glad I did. By the time I started, everything was at hand, which made the work go much quicker than I thought it would.
Here are the steps I followed for each tread/riser pair.

1. Measured the tread and cut it to length.


2. Measured the riser and cut it to the correct length and width.


3. Drilled two pocket holes on the bottom of the riser.


4. Attached the riser to the tread with pocket screws. This basically made them into a single unit.


5. Removed the tread/riser pair and applied a healthy dose of construction adhesive to the stringers.


6. Put the tread/riser pair in place.


7. Screwed the tread to the stringers from below with two pocket screws per stringer. This really drew the tread down.


8. Nailed the riser to the stringer (from the front) with finish nails.


9. Repeat

There were 12 steps. The whole thing took about 5 hours, which I didn't think was that bad.

Here's the final product. I'm quite happy with how it came out.

A Quick Easel

Elizabeth asked me to build her an easel the other day. She wanted to set up an art studio on her room so I figured I'd give it a try. It's not very complicated. I cut a rough-cut 2x6 I had lying around into 3 pieces, cut the outer two ends at an angle (I just free handed it on the table saw) and bolted the three legs together.

Turns out, she wanted a table-top-sized easel, so she was a little surprised when I hauled this monster up to her room but she took it in stride and starting painting immediately. I guess it just goes to show how two people can talk about the same thing but at the same time can be talking about completely different things. (In the software biz, we call it agreeing on the requirements!)
Once again, this is one of those projects that I was able to do with materials I had on-hand.

Stump Pulling

This stump has been a nuisance since I built the tractor shed back in 2008. It started life as a pretty good sized white pine, about 24" in diameter. I cut it down before construction and figured I could work around it during construction. (It was about 3 feet away from one corner of the shed.) Well, I did work around it back then and I've just lived with it since then, too. But I decided this weekend, after having pulled a few other stumps, that it was time for this big one to go.
My neighbor has used the tractor to pull stumps before this and he told me how to do it. I started off small and worked my way up. It definitely puts the tractor through its paces but it's very gratifying when they come out.
I have to admit that it was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be. The other stumps I've pulled were a bit smaller and more accessible so I could do the whole job with the tractor. Not so with this one. I could really only get at about 45% of it with the tractor so I ended up having to dig quite a bit by hand as well as chainsaw a couple really big roots. After 4 hours and a lot of sweat, though, it came out. It felt great!
Now I can maneuver around that part of the barn much better and I don't have to worry about that damn stump causing problems!

Cat Door Under Basement Stairs

From Blogger Pictures

We have been having a hard time coming up with a spot for our cat box that is accessible for the cat but NOT accessible for the dog. Sarah had the great idea to put it under the basement steps and restrict the dog's access with a cat door. This is the result.
This is one of those great projects where I didn't have to spend a penny: I had enough scrap wood, nails, glue, and even the hinges lying around to do the whole thing.
For the curve of the cat portal, I used a gallon paint can as the outline. Seems to work fine.
Now the dog won't have a perpetually renewing buffet.

Stone Wall for a New Garden

It's been a while since I either did or posted any projects but the dry spell is now over (at least for now!).
Right after we built the house, we had a giant, 3-story pile of dirt and stone. We spent a few hours pulling out the best stone and piling it in the yard. Having a pile of wall-stone is great, but boy, can it ever get in the way. I built a garden wall a couple years a ago with quite a bit of it but still had some left over.

We moved the left over stone to a pile on the side of the yard and there it sat for a few years. In the meantime, the brush really grew up around it and it just plain looked like hell. (I don't have a "before" photo, but trust me.)
Finally, Sarah and I pulled ourselves together and first decided what to do (the hard part IMO) and then started. This new wall for a garden or patio is the result. Each end is punctuated by quite a large stone and the two arms curve a bit to meet at a point in the back.
We're not sure if this will become a perennial garden, a seating area, or a new outdoor kitchen with a cobb oven. Regardless of what it becomes in the future, though, the work had to be done so that we could have fun going on to the next steps.
I learned quite a bit about building stone walls about 6 or 7 years ago when I helped build a large stone retaining wall in a construction project at our Waldorf school. I got to work with an experienced wall building who taught me a lot of tricks about not only putting the wall together but "seeing" the stone, moving the stone (a hand-truck is great), and modifying the shape of the stone with a maul and a cold-chisel (sometimes just a few chips can make a stone fit perfectly).

DIY Desktop Stand for Droid

I've been transitioning over to using only my cell phone for work-related calls lately. The Motorola Droid is a great phone for this. My phone time is mostly on speaker phone so I like to be able to mute the phone during these calls. This is to eliminate some background noise as well as let me do other things during the meetings (don't tell!). So I needed a stand for the phone that was stable enough to keep the phone safe and allow me to press the mute button during calls frequently without fear of knocking over the phone.
Now I could have bought a Droid-branded stand for this but this had two disadvantages:

1. It cost around $30 and I've spent enough on this phone for now.


2. The stands are all landscape and the Droid does not go into landscape mode when it's in a call. Thus the need for a stand that kept the phone in portrait mode.
   

You can see from this photo that I did several prototypes to get the right functionality and look and feel. The angle of the back is 22 degrees. I cut the slot for it with my regular table saw blade; I didn't use the dado set. I just made a couple passes until the hardboard back was snug but not too tight.
You can see from the pictures that I tried to drill a hole so that I could plug in the phone while it was in landscape mode. This was before I figured out that I had to be in portrait mode for what I was looking for. Even if I had wanted to keep the stand in landscape mode, I'd have had to cut up a USB power cable quite a bit to get it to bend enough to work so I was glad to switch to portrait mode.

The base on the final version is about 2.5" x 3.5"; it's a piece of 5/4" clear pine trim. There's a shallow dado that creates a lip that the bottom of the phone rests against. I'm not sure this is really necessary but it gives the phone a good solid feel when it's in the stand. That way, I can press buttons on the top of the screen and not feel like the bottom is going to cant up at me. The hole in the backer board is for the button on the back of my case that is used by the car mount and belt clip I have. I glued the backer board into the slot just to keep everything together. Since it's portrait orientation, the USB power port is conveniently exposed so that I can plug the phone in during long calls. (BTW, I downloaded a service that keeps the screen awake during phone calls so that I can get at the mute button quickly).
Overall, this was a very successful project. It does exactly what I need it to do; it was fun to build; and it didn't cost a dime.

Oily Counter Top Day

There's nothing like a day off to allow you to get caught up with a couple maintenance tasks and today is one of those days. Our kitchen island has a big (4+ x 8+) maple top that needs to be oiled a couple times a year; our Fireslate counter tops (which I've discussed before) also need treating a couple times a year.
I used mineral oil for the island. The top really soaks it up. Whenever I oil the island top, I also take the opportunity to oil our cutting boards and wooden utensils.
For the counter tops, I use Tung oil. I put it on pretty thick with a rag and wipe off the excess after it soaks for a bit.
Needless to say, between all that mineral and tung oil, the house is pretty smelly.
Probably one of the best side benefits of this chore is that we have to completely clean off the counter tops and the island. That gives us a good opportunity to (maybe) not put a few things back and keep the clutter down. Although, I have to say that we (Sarah especially) keep up with that kind of de-cluttering pretty regularly.
This is definitely not one of the more strenuous chores I do, but it's an important one to have done. (And yes: it would have been better to do this on Saturday morning before we left for our jaunt to Concord, MA but we were out of mineral oil, I had to drop the dog off at friends, etc., etc. You get the idea.)

WFH Desk Accesory

Here's a little desk accessory I made when I started working from home in May 09. Of course, it uses pocket screws to join the legs to the shelf. Note the ventilation hole in the front leg to help keep things cool. It fits nicley on my filing cabinet and straddles my laptop dock perfectly.

(This is a post from my Droid phone.)

Ski Storage Rack Prototype

For those of you who ski, you're familiar with the clutter and nuisance of ski storage. It always feels like they're either in the way, getting banged up, or, worse, not accessible when you need them. For the last couple years we've been using an antique barrel we picked up at a yard sale but it was just a smidge too small and we didn't like how it was getting abused by the skis. This project set out to fix that.
I spent some time looking around at various solutions. I was looking for something that would meet the following criteria:

1. Keep the skis and poles neat and tidy
   
2. Look decent enough to keep on our porch
   
3. Use materials I already had and....
   
4. Be as cheap as possible
   

I think that what I came up with fits the criteria pretty well. The holder (rack?) sits on our porch and doesn't detract from the look of our entrance; it holds plenty of skis and poles (nordic as well as alpine); it used materials I already had; and I didn't have to go out and buy anything!
The plywood is left over from when I enclosed the eaves on our porch and the two-by is left over from the wood shed construction.
I cut the plywood into interlocking slats so they fit together like an egg carton. The holes are 4" square arrayed in a 3x5 grid so there's room for 15 pairs of skis and poles. Each "tube" formed by the interlocking plywood is 13" deep. That's a little tall for kids' skis, but we won't have those around for much longer so I'm not worried about it. Then I wrapped the hole thing in the two-by. Skis are pretty heavy and they take some strength to support so I built this thing pretty tough.
I'm calling it a prototype because the next time I build one of these, I'll use one-by hemlock instead of plywood since I'm not a big fan of how plywood looks. Overall, though, I'd have to say that the ski rack does what it's supposed to do.

Home Ec 2

My family loves it when I make chicken stew and biscuits. My biscuit recipe came from my Grandmother and I've loved it since I was a kid. But the other night, rather than make biscuits, I decided to go a bit further and make a chicken pot pie. I've had good luck with the basic pie crust recipe in the Fanny Farmer cookbook and this night was no exception. Making a pie crust is slightly more work than biscuits but the pay off is huge!

This was probably the best chicken pot pie I've ever made and it was a big hit with my family. Needless to say, there were no left-overs.

Home Ec 1

My free time lately has not been taken up solely with building projects and lumbering. I also enjoy spending time in the kitchen and, when I have to, doing a bit of sewing...
I bought a great pair of Carhartt double-kneed jeans at the local thrift store for $8. They were a little long and had a small hole in them so I hemmed them up (my lovely wife pinned them up for me) and patched the hole.

Not the best job in the world but very functional. They're just work jeans, after all!

Score the Stump

I got to spend some quality time with my chainsaw over the holidays while I killed a few birds with one stone: I cleared out some trees down by the barn to make some room and I started working on firewood for the 2011-2012 heating season.
I had to take down a few pine trees to get at the maples and oaks but that's OK since I need the room anyway.

A couple years ago, I hosted two logging/chainsaw safety classes at my house and learned a lot about safely bringing down trees, dealing with leaners, and de-limbing them. The course is called "The Game of Logging". The idea is that if you make cutting down trees into a game with points, people will focus on getting the points but at the same time reinforce safety habits. I think that philosophy actually works.
I've done the first two levels of training, which you can read about here.



Turns out my score on the stump isn't that great. I didn't have a tape measure with me so I made my hinge too wide which caused all the other point losses. Here's a rundown on my score (10 points is the highest score):

Criteria		Score
70 degree or greater notch	yes	2 pts
Hinge thickness should be 2.68	1.5 inches - no	0 pts
Notch cuts meet	yes	2 pts
Fiber pull less than 3"	3.5" - no	0 pts
Level back-cut (+/- 1.5"	1.5" - yes	2 pts
Total		6 pts

So even though the tree feel exactly where I wanted it to, I still didn't get all the points I could for it. I will say, though, that I didn't violate any of the long list of safety criteria.

Let me wrap up by pointing out that while I have been going to the gym regularly since November, no gym work-out can match dropping, limbing, and bucking up trees for sheer cardiac load. It's a blast and it feels great!