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.