Bones of Winter Project

I use remodeling as a creative outlet for myself. This year is no different and, like always, there's a back story.

Our house has a wonderful area in the living room for an entertainment center. However, it's never been much of a priority for us. Our son sticks his fingers in his mouth, even right after eating, so pretty much anything and everything he touches goes to crap. That is one of the reasons we still have a tube TV in our living room. The other is, well, a lack of a good mounting arrangement.

You see, that lovely wall niche also houses many of the home's services running up its back wall. Duct work, pipes, power lines - they fill that wall and any stud finder lights up like a Christmas tree on that wall.

One idea was to make a horizontal cabinet. Perhaps mount a board to hold a TV wall mount. Fine ideas, but it doesn't really help pull the room together. It may not be a selling point to its next owners. I've just not been 100% sold on anything.

Except this year I'm done waiting and I don't want to just buy something out of Best Buy.

So I bought some character hickory plywood and some solid 1 x 2 character hickory and I'm going to make a TV table and a matching coffee table.

Here's the idea in a nutshell. Cut the solid hickory to length with mitered ends. Glue and screw to the edges of the plywood. Use I-Semble brackets between these tabletops to build the pieces. That's it. Oh, just using a simple polyurethane coating to the wood. That way, it will match our character hickory floors and, when we leave, they can come with us as a reminder of our first (and only) home.

Like I always tell folks - if you can piece together some particle board crap that comes flat packed in a cardboard box, you can make simple furnishings that cost less, look better, and last longer.

One thing of note is that hickory is heavy. Really, really heavy. I believe it is the densest hardwood native to the US. I had spaghetti arms after lugging just that amount of wood into the basement. I'm just saying that those are going to be some serious pieces of furniture.

For those so inclined to try something similar, the brackets I bought from Rockler (scored a half-price sale - they have them often). The wood I got from Keim Lumber, pre-milled to my specifications. In total less than five hundred dollars, delivered (about four hundred for the lumber and another hundred in hardware). Yes, you read that right. I sent Keim a cut list and sketch on how I wanted the plywood broken down and they cut it for me (something like $5 per cut) and delivered it to my house for free. I don't own a table saw and breaking sheet goods using a circular saw and guides is fine, but getting it cut for you is finer. Again, I'm not doing much more than I would if I were putting something store-bought together.

Birthday Tradition

It seems that my daughter likes when I make her a silly little "cheesecake" pie out of a graham cracker crust and premade cheesecake filling. Granted, I get fancy with doctoring the things up, but they're almost zero effort.

Lime (2014)

Lemon (2015)

Silly Little Shelf

So my wife wanted a shelf unit with limited dimensions to fit into the corner of her classroom and to hold a specific set of books. I didn't have the right scrap to make it, so I bought some crappy, solid pine from the BORG and got to work.

I have all of $14 invested in this.

I did a couple new things with this. I used my router to cut dados across a couple 1x2s. They're 3/4-in wide and 1/4-in deep. The other thing I did was fill in the pocket holes used on the upper shelf with flush-cut dowels. I bought a 3/8 dowel for a dollar and just glued short lengths of it in the pocket holes and cut them off. An orbital sander made quick work flattening those out as well as cleaning up any minor misalignment.

Since this was for my wife, I added her name to it.

Lower case, so that it takes on the second meaning of aspiration and optimism. 

Anyway, I expect that this will work well in her room. Simple to the point of being rustic.

Denver Business Trip

I am NASA Glenn's representative to the AIAA Space Simulation Working Group. This year, we met in Denver. In addition to a few days of presentations we toured the test facilities of both Lockheed-Martin and Ball Aerospace.

For our outing evening, we went to a train museum and a restaurant in Boulder.

Train Museum

Trip Photos

Driving Pylons

My daughter just earned her driving permit, so we need to teach her how to drive. To make things easier, I looked at buying a few traffic cones to set up as barriers for her to drive around. But ones that are tall enough are also somewhat expensive - more than $10 apiece for the cheapest. We don't have a long term need for them, so I thought that we'd make some, instead.

This is what we ended up with. Five Below was having a sale on their summer items, including pool noodles for $1 each. Then we went to Lowes and bought four 5-foot lengths of half-inch PVC pipe ($1.33 each), four PVC crosses ($1.26 each) and four PVC tees ($0.54 each).

In hindsight, I could have made these with eight tees because we didn't use the fourth leg of the crosses. I'm not running back to exchange them.

To make these, cut two of the 5-foot lengths in half and attach them to the middle of the tees. Using the other lengths of pipe, cut four 2-inch segments and twelve 6-inch pieces. Use the 2-inch pieces to connect the crosses to the tees. The 6-inch pieces form three legs, two from each cross and one from the other end of the every tee.

The pool noodles slide onto to vertical, 2-1/2 foot length of pipe.

The final cost was $16.54 plus tax.

Another benefit is that everything is merely press fit together, so the pool noodles and PVC fittings can be used later.