Garage/reading room

I had some wood shelving that was up in the condo but hasn't found a home in the new house yet that I've been wanting to put to work, and the shop getting reorganized this week gave me chance to let inspiration strike. The wife got me a book on wood finishing for christmas, and I've been reading Nick Offerman's "Good Clean Fun" which is big into keeping clean and organized so inspiration most definitely struck. I was going to put the shelves up in the basement once we had things set up, but using them as bookshelves in the garage seems like a much better place for them.

Testing...

and confirmed. Yup, that'll work.

So instead of evacuating while the lacquer fumes evaporated like I probably should have, I put one over the drafting table's new spot. I liked it so much the other one got put up too. They still need a coat or two of poly that they never got since we were staging and getting ready to move when these first went up but I think that will work. I'm still not sure the table is going to stay, but having move shelves in the garage means more storage space for non-tools that were taking up valuable real estate.

Now all I need is a broken down recliner and a mini-fridge, and I'll never leave the garage. I'm half joking, but being forced to re-organized has made it a lot more comfortable in there. It's a good lesson to learn and again, I'm amazed at how things are still rounding into shape after more than a year in the house.

Lacquer in the front

But only with the windows open.

The second coat of crib paint was looking good enough for me, so I attached some cleats and got ready to bust out the lacquer. The cleats got an extra coat of paint as well, just to give them one more thing attaching them to the crib in the hopes they're strong enough to hold a desktop. I think they'll be fine.

ComEd had turned the power off. Thank goodness for battery tools.

The lacquer also turned out fine, once I got used to the fumes. It took hours for them to die down, making me slightly hesitant to add another coat, which I think it could use, but I guess there's not rush. It's going to be a while before I have time to get boards to finish, so I have to sit around staring at a half-finished project until I somehow find an extra hour in the day.

Shiny. Hopefully kid-damage-resistant as well.

Which is a shame, b/c resurfacing the crib has gone well enough that I'm tempted to try it on our ikea chair in the basement to punch it up a little, but have no idea when I'd ever have time to get that done. Just another idea to let simmer for a while.

Sharing my space

It's been an amazing experience to watch our house round itself into shape over the past 15 months. As we settle in storage areas filled up and spaces delineated themselves by purpose, or at least intended purpose. And now I find myself wondering how exactly it's come to this, b/c now I'm sharing my garage with not just my bike trainer, but a new treadmill as well, and maybe even the elliptical again. Woo boy.

That's a little more crowded than I usually like.

The funny thing is when I first floated the idea of a workspace by the wife, her only concern was what we would do in a few years when our oldest gets a car and doesn't have a covered space to park it. Ha ha ha ha! Somehow I don't think she's worried about that right now.

Step 1: get rid of the garbage.

What I'm worried about is keeping this treadmill as dust free as possible, and that's going to take some re-organizing and possibly some dust collection planning in the future. We killed our last treadmill but I'd like to keep this one around long enough to lose the severe case of dadbod I seem to have caught. For now, I'll hope that changing the space around a bit is enough to keep things workable. I have plenty of projects on my spring/summer list, and don't want to lose my space to do it!

Second coat does the job

I'll admit to having some doubts about going with the cheaper rust-oleum paint vs something more expensive after getting a first coat on the crib. Thankfully a second coat helped even things out and things look a lot better now.

Feeling better about choosing the $7 paint instead of the $32 paint.

Even, consistent color after a second coat.

Still an obvious re-paint job, but definitely suitable for sealing. So if it stays warm this weekend I'll open up the garage and see how the clear lacquer looks out of the spray can. And there's always poly I can brush on if necessary. I can't wait to get some boards and put a desktop together!

Getting your feet wet

Priming the crib ended up helping with the final quality of my re-paint job, but getting the feet done was a little trickier. I ended up with a solution that took some of the difficulty out of it.

There was a lot of crouching and bending to get that paint on, and at some point I realized I still wasn't doing a great job. The feet had to come off to get their own coats. So I drilled four holes in a piece of scrap, screwed the feet in, and viola; four feet I could put anywhere to prime and paint.

Spray paint counts as primer if it's white.

That worked great for a least priming; paint was a different story. They weren't looking too hot with the big brush, so they got taken off and touched up with a smaller brush to get the details.

The kids were painting too this weekend, which gave me the idea.

I know the feet on a project like this aren't overly important. No one's going to be on their hands and knees to look at the tiny details but I'm anal. If I do something I like to do it well, and that kind of OCD is rearing it's ugly head during this project specifically for whatever reason. It'll help it look better in the long run at least.

furniture painting

Next up for the crib desk is paint. I was pretty dubious about this stage, since finish is pretty critical to getting these projects a thumbs up from the rest of the house, and there are plenty of tutorials out there about what can go wrong while re-painting furniture. And with one coat on things don't look perfect, but overall I'm pretty pleased with things thus far.

Hey, that looks really good in the can at least.

Whew. Not bad on the crib either.

Rust-oleum has a nice shade of royal blue in their latex, and at $7 it seems like a good start. I know, going cheap usually isn't a good way to guarantee a successful project but hopefully the early effort to sand and prime pays off by saving me some cash here. Working with latex was a learning experience; some spots went really well and look good right away, some look pretty shoddy and will obviously need more care in later coats.

That doesn't look too bad!

That, however, does.

I'm thinking at least three coats, so hopefully I can get one on over the weekend and another next week when I go in late. As long as I still have time to put together the wife's valentine's day card, which I was going to do today but the afternoon kind of got away from me...either way, that's got to get done in the next day or two. Then, a few days for a lacquer coat and we'll be ready to pick some boards and put a desktop together. Always looking forward to more woodworking.

Super hung-over day

If the Bears ever made the Super Bowl again I think I would lose my mind. As it stands now, my interest gets a little smaller every year w/o a rooting interest, but I still like to take the Monday after off. Especially after a crazy ending like last night. So as I spend the day lounging around an empty house, I figured why not see if I could make some progress on the crib desk.

Sanded and about to get tacked.

I have an idea on paint to try to get a match for the rest of the boy's furniture, but that means sanding and priming before it's ready to try. Sanding actually took significantly less time than I was planning on, so the primer came out too.

Remind me to get some foam rollers before painting.

Yeah, it doesn't look great right now. But with the right furniture paint, a couple poly coats, and a few sanded and stained boards glued together for a table-top, I'm starting to see some potential here. It might be a few weeks before that gets done, but it felt good to be surprisingly productive on a day off. Now we can start the countdown to a Friday off for John Wick 2...

Quiet time turns into baking time

The wife's birthday is this weekend, so while she's out with the kids I tried to get a surprise cake baked and frosted before everyone gets home. It was moderately successful.

I don't know if this will stay a surprise, since I asked the boy what kind of cake he thought Mommy might want for her birthday so I would have some cover on the flavor combination. He could be blabbing about it to her right now for all I know. Hopefully not though, b/c I don't feel like I nailed her gifts so a surprise is going to go a long way.

Anyway, instead of making a simple cake I thought it would be nice if I tried to fancy it up a little bit as a layer cake. Despite being someone who dives into drywall or tile with little to no experience, the decision to make a layer cake had me wondering if I was in over my head at points. I'm not the biggest fan of baking, even as someone who's spent a lot of downtime learning his way around a kitchen. It's a weird combination of rigidly adhering to directions while also physically messy; two things that have their place but together I find them incredibly annoying.

With some googled tips on baking a layer cake things ended up okay though. I remembered to line the pan and evened things out. Plus, baking gave me some time to get laundry done so there's a clean karate gi for tomorrow, plus a little dinner for myself.

The liners worked really well, actually, and things stacked up okay once it was time to bust out the frosting. This part I liked, since more was better.

The sides had me a little dubious, but things came together decently and now I'm just waiting for everyone to come home. And what's that in the background?

Yeah, that was my dinner. For whatever reason making a pizza sounded like the perfect way to add a little more chaos to the evening, but it gave me something to do while the cake cooled, so everything worked out. Now I just have to wait for everyone to come home.   

Getting rid of (the same) paper blinds

When the paper blinds came down in the kitchen, they went right back up in the basement. They came in handy over the holidays giving our downstairs guests a little more privacy, but now that everyone is gone they've gotten really obnoxious to look at. With the hassle of having them up outweighing any benefits, it's time for them to go.

Painters tape and all.

Thankfully the basement door was a little easier to plan around, and a simple curtain rod with blackout curtains looks a lot better, while also helping insulate the door a little bit. I should have picked out wider panels though. Probably should have washed them too...

Not a great photo. Still looks better.

The original post-drywall white blinds got left up since they can be clipped up but brought down if needed without interfering with anything. Plus, they felt like they were really stuck on the frame to the point of not coming off w/o taking some paint with them, and I'd like to go a few weeks without having to touch anything up down here.

Things are slowly rounding into shape around here. Slowly.