A cut here, a saw there

I'm still under the weather but I had a few minutes to myself this weekend and I took a stab at getting the crib opened up so it could accommodate a desktop.

This crib was supposed to be modular: you can take the front off and have a daybed. Or you can take the sides off and with replacement rails have a full-sized bed frame. The only drawbacks are, we can't buy the rails for a 5-year old crib model, and with a wall out it's not overly sturdy. Plus, I didn't want the straight wall out, I wanted the curved wall out. So the reciprocating saw came out to play.

I figured four cuts would do it, and hoped that leaving the rails attached would give the remaining "U" shape additional stability. Two cuts in, things were looking okay.

Things ended up working fine. I like that so much I might just try to line up a desktop with the bottom of the rail instead of placing it lower for the kids. They can always find taller chairs to sit at it with. What I'm not going to like is having to sand and paint this entire thing to finish it, but since I'm still hacking crap up it might be weeks before I have a chance to do that anyway. Is it summer yet?

Slowly getting back to work

I hate January. Being sick only makes it worse, and I haven't gotten much done so far this year. I did manage to clean some puke off the crib this weekend, but that was about it.

Yeah, that was gross.

A little better at least.

I was going to take the stickers off too, but I couldn't find the energy to do anything else. This project might be sitting there for a while.

Help me whiskey, you're my only hope.

I find myself very sick at the moment. Sick of being sick, and sick of OTC cold remedies not really helping. So since it’s the weekend, and a long one at that, I’m going to be making hot toddies instead of taking pills.

My recipe: 

1 jigger of whatever brown stuff I’ve got around. Got some leftover Jamesons and Makers I wouldn’t mind being rid of.

1 tbsp honey

2 tsp lemon juice

Dash of bitters

½ cup hot water

Orange peel garnish as long as it lasts

drink up

This might make it easier or harder to get any work done this weekend, we’ll just have to wait and see which. Down the hatch.

Who has time to turn a crib into a desk?

I’m getting surprisingly sentimental about some aspects of parenting, but getting rid of our crib does not strike me as anything to get emotional about. In fact, as we move the girl to toddler-friendly bed I’m excited to have the chance to re-use something that’s still pretty solid but outlived its initial usefulness. Excited, but also unsure of when exactly I’ll be able to get to work on this thanks to budget and time concerns. Oh well. I’ll find the time somehow.

If it's in the shop, it probably won't stay this way for long...

There is plenty to do though. This was not a terrible crib, but it’s been puked on, chewed on, and moved through three different locations, and at this point even with a few newborns in our social circle no one’s too keen on taking it off our hands. So I’m more than happy to have lots of steps ahead of me to convert it to a desk for the kids to use for art projects, and maybe even homework as they get older. 

Uh, yeah, lots of cleaning to do first. Years' worth of puke in there.

I somehow managed to keep posting while taking a class, teaching a class, working my normal full-time, and keeping family time going, so I’m sure I’ll find ways to work on this and the handful of other projects I want to work in in the foreseeable future. I just have to remember to take some pictures while I do to keep things interesting.  

So where does everything go now?

I was surprisingly hesitant to take all of our holiday decorations down this year. Usually everything is back to boxes in time for New Years, but for whatever reason no one was in any kind of rush to put things away. Part of it for me was probably not really wanting to admit it was time to go back to work but a bigger part was probably just everyone enjoying the season and not wanting it to be boring old January.

But you have to move on eventually, so I spent my last day off boxing up the extra tree, taking our outdoor lights down, and trying to figure out where everything is going to go. It didn’t help that I couldn’t stop buying extra decorations now that things are down to 90% off everywhere but that’s not important…

An extra tree meant a new tree box, and that was my first stop. Our old tree is still getting boxed up in the cardboard it came with, but this one got dropped off w/o a box in several pieces. I got the biggest, cheapest one I could find at wally-mart. Not really DIY but probably cheaper that way. Even then, it was barely big enough. But the tree has a new home under the stairs, and I did get to move some closet organization tools around to make it happen.

Already buried under halloween decorations

And what are these?

That took care of the tree, but there are still boxes and rubbermaids sitting around wondering where they’re going to go, not to mention all the other second-hand stuff that don’t even have containers to go into yet. This is usually when I introduce the fantastic project I’ve put together to address the issue that’s been raised but so far I’ve got nothing…hopefully that changes in the near future but for now the only DIY I’m doing is trying to fit these into spaces that are too small.

Good riddance 2016

What a crazy year! Looking back, I can’t believe everything we’ve managed to get done around the house with everything else we always seem to have going on. There were a few days there while I wondered what to get everyone that I felt bad for not making anyone anything special for Christmas, but once I looked a little wider that feeling went away. I called this “what’s next” partly as a joke, b/c it’s easy to get caught up in the list of things you need to do as a homeowner. But it’s also easy to chase the high from feeling like you’ve accomplished something on your own, and I need to remind myself occasionally that a quiet moment can be just as nice as long as I can slow down and enjoy it.

The best gift I gave in 2015 (in my opinion) was a shadow box I put together for the wife, with pictures of us in our condo and one of our keys mounted under an "Our first home" caption. Of course, it wasn't really our first home, but having our kids there and one fantastic dog really made it the first time our complete family was together. None of the gifts from this year had that kind of meaning. Or I should say none of the gifts I gave, b/c the wife had the boy pick out a present for me, and he picked a kylo ren figure which absolutely made my holiday season. I'm taking it to the office so I can look at it every day. 

Anyway, everything we've done in the year we've been in the house went a long way toward making this new how just as full of memories, and set up the potential spilling out into the future for years to come. I love it. I can't wait to see what's next.