DIY gifts for my staff

The year is almost over, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least offer a recap of the project I managed to squeeze in at the end of the year. I had been thinking about making everyone on my staff some tree cookie coasters this year from a couple of branches that I had been saving for a while. Moving into the interim position meant I had to make a few more than expected but they actually turned out pretty nice.

A couple of them ended up as live edge slab coasters vs rings b/c of the size of the branch, but some of them were dry enough to stay flat so they worked out.

Notice all the extras that weren't quite right on the left side there.

Months in the making, and I still had to work late into the night a few days before I wanted to pass these out. Nothing like saving thing for the last minute.

I was getting pretty tired of these at this point. I made about 50.

All in all I thought these were worth giving, at least I didn't feel too stupid handing them out. No more so than I would have with gift cards at least.

So that's it for 2019, and even though I'm working on something fun right now my record of actually posting results is pretty poor right now. Hopefully the final projects are worth sharing. We'll see!

DIY Disney pin shadow box

Well, November came and went and all we did was spend Thanksgiving week at Disney having an amazing time. And it came at the perfect time, dealing with a ton of stressful work and school shit. Spending 6 days walking 10 miles a day and doing all four parks was the perfect way to decompress and have fun.

The kids had an absolute blast, and the boy got seriously into pin collecting. I would say pin trading, but it was more about spending his souvenir budget on every pin that caught his eye. The wife started us all out with some mystery pins to get ready for the trip, and while I ended up donating mine to the kids' trading efforts I did come away with a handful of pins I wanted to put up when we got home. Thankfully, I had a spare box sitting around from a while ago and some leftover foam, so I threw it together while we were recuperating from our early-ass flight back.

Looking at the blank box now, I can't believe I just butted the corners. Oh well. I liked the natural look of the wood at least so that would work fine.

Put some cardboard under the felt to give the pins something else to grab onto, trimmed and stapled in the foam and viola, one shadow box.

Going for simple, I drilled out a spot for a nail so it would hang flush on the wall.

And then the pins!

Two from the droid factory, one from the opening. 

Clearance pins from 2014, still $10 a pop. 

All the pins I bought were Star Wars-related (surprise), either for Galaxy's Edge opening or a sequence of older pins that were on clearance. We also built lightsabers (more on that likely later), and there was a pin from that.

I did trade for a couple of pins too. The only one that I kept from the mystery pack was the ziggystar-trooper. I particularly liked the "bummer" pin, even though the trip was the total opposite.

Good times. Fun to get some use out of something that's been sitting in the garage looking for a purpose. Now I just have to build two more for the kids.

Surprise Star Wars day

We were out today and made a surprise stop at the Disney store at the nearby outlet mall. The kids were thrilled, but I was happy to see a Black Series stormtrooper on sale for $10. And when I paid with my fancy Darth Vader card, the guy at the register also slid me a leftover pack from Triple Force Friday with lithograms for the next movies, the Mandalorian, and the new game. Fun surprise.

I've got a pretty strong Star Wars corner going on my desk right now, with the lamp, a poster from Solo I've got to put somewhere, and now the trooper.

He doesn't look thrilled.

He's posed better on the box but I like it.

The lithograms are cool too, I think the Mandalorian looks good enough to shell out for Disney+.

We have a Thanksgiving Disney trip completely booked, and the kids don't know a thing. It was awfully hard not to spoil something today...

Thank goodness it's almost apple season

B/c I could use some homemade comfort food.

Not a whole lot going on, just my boss leaving and me stepping into an interim role while I'm trying to get feedback from my dissertation committee chair and feeling like I'm behind schedule. I could use some pie.

The dog's got the right attitude though. I could learn from her. Actually, I think I could use a drink. And that might be on the agenda for this weekend. 

I guess I will be buying new tires sooner than expected.

I got in some rainy commute rides last week, and as I was doing some chain maintenance this weekend I noticed a concerning amount of tire wear.

That looks concerning.

Oh, that looks worse!

Yeah, I have no idea where these came from but I would guess the gravel access road I take for around a mile to get in and out of the Arb have not been kind. Which is why I'm wondering if I should trade in for a gravel bike at some point. In either case I guess it's time to order a new set of tires.

It's the little things

I don't have much time to spend with my not quite as new anymore x-box, but when I played some in between classes this spring the downstairs tv being a little off was driving me crazy.

With the dog in the house the basement isn't really getting much use as our ready-space for the kids, so we brought the fancy TCL upstairs and put the older LG downstairs. I reconnected everything, but the placement of the basement tv was off. It was never quite straight, but it was a little too high on the wall too. It shouldn't have bothered me as much as it did since we weren't getting much use out of it anyway, but I guess my brain was looking for a distraction b/c I could not let it go.

So I re-hung it this weekend and I feel so much better. It's actually kind of worrying me how satisfied I feel just moving the tv down a few inches and reconnecting everything. I need to get out more.

This summer's big project

Just one post a month this summer? I guess it's a lot harder to do work around the house without Friday's off and a dissertation to write. So what's been eating up all my project time this summer? A new cooler box, or as I liked to call it the worst project I've ever been dumb enough to take on.

This started so innocently. Our neighbors were moving, and offered us their outdoor bar set for a halfway decent price. A bar/cooler with six bar stools for $40. Like an idiot, I said okay.

It sat in the yard as I wondered what I had done. 

Sat and collected a shit ton of rain water. 

The bar was just a big plastic cooler they had screwed some boards to and built a shoddy bar jutting off the top. And it was on the rustiest rack of wheels I had ever seen. One day into having this crap in our yard and I was feeling pretty damn dumb. 

First supplies run

But I was pot committed at that point and with a $100 home depot card burning a hole in my pocket I thought I'd try to make the best of it. Demo'd the "bar" off, took the wheels off, and muscled this plastic piece of crap up to the deck on my own.

These looked square at least. 

Getting this piece of crap up the steps convinced me it still needed wheels.

Without the wheels it was too low for a bar, so I built a frame to attach to the bottom on casters thinking I'd want it pub table height. But with all the rain we got through May and June, that collapsed as soon as I tried to move it around. It went back on in a much shorter fashion.

I thought 30 5" cedar pickets would be enough to wrap the damn thing, either my math or the board lengths were way off b/c I needed 15 more. Thankfully they still had some out at home depot after the initial trip. For all four sides, this meant taking off junk that was screwed onto the plastic, and putting something else on to use as a contact point for the boards to get glued/screwed to.

It stopped raining and got hot as balls at this point. 

With the cedar on it's not looking too bad, and I thought hinged lids would be easy enough to make to keep it functional but also good for storage. I was thinking tile but the wife suggested peel and stick to keep the weight down, which I thought was a good suggestion.

Mitered and routered to fit a 1/4 plywood panel. 

Again, doesn't look too bad. 

Of course my math was off on that too, and I needed to order a second set of supplies. 

Bought 15, ended up needing 25. Dammit. 

For weight these are fine, but there's not as nice as real tile. 

At this point I was ready to burn the fucking thing down. But the peel and stick wasn't hard to work with once I had enough. Getting the lids aligned right to put the hinges on was an adventure too, but at that point I was beyond taking pics and just wanted to be done. Thankfully all I had left after that was a quick run of caulk to tie the thing together and it was done. I'll have to stain it in the future with the same stuff we used on the fence but that can wait. 

It's already full of crap in this picture; two coolers & a tub of outside toys.

Whew. Now that it's done I don't mind it, but that was one of the most painful projects I've done around the house. The extra storage is nice, it's holding our two coolers and a few other odds and ends, and it does actually make a halfway decent bar top with people over. I might want to epoxy over the top in the future, but that's going to wait until I build my patience back up. 

new levels of suburban dad

I'm still trying to get some bigger projects complete around the house with not much time to make them happen, but I have to say the level of happiness I am getting out of the yard looking like this is beginning to concern me.

And this is a few days after a holiday weekend mowing. Things usually aren't quite so manicured.

commuting surprise

I have a couple of outstanding projects I'll post on when they get more finished, but I did want to share a run in I had on the way home yesterday. Thankfully not an actual run-in.

So I came across this guy in the road on the way home last night. Probably not going anywhere, just happy to have a sunny warm spot. But having seen the aftermath of another squished turtle in the road earlier in the spring, I didn't want this guy getting run over and moved him to the side of the road.

I couldn't hold him, the bike, and a phone at the same time so I didn't take a pic of him getting carried, but I hope he didn't mind moving out of the traffic path.

So that's all. Really busy with work, school, and the kids, and a bike ride like that is enough to keep me sane most days.

Upholstery is not in my wheel house.

But when has that stopped me?

We have a dining room set from World Market that's about 6-years old. The table and bench are in good shape, but the chairs started shedding their covers at an alarming rate this winter. I took one of the chairs into the garage this winter to try and take it apart to see if I could get it down to a seat cushion to re-upholster. Eventually I did, and even got the back off too to see if I could sew a new one (I could not).

Ugh. How exactly do I do this?

This chair has been in the garage since March, and this weekend we finally made it to a fabric store to see what we should try to put on it. I guess it's good that we waited, b/c four yards of the fabric we choose was going to be over $120, but there was a 60% off coupon in their app for Memorial Day. At least that way if I fucked up I wouldn't feel $120-bad.

And this was the first one, I figured out the corners after this. 

But getting the fabric on the seat cushion is easy enough. I wasn't going to mess with cushions so all I had to do was staple the new stuff on and re-attach the cushion. I might not have been technically correct but it looks way better and hopefully will hold up for a while. And none of this meant new tools; a screwdriver to start the staples, pliers to pull them out, a staple gun to put stuff back on. After the first one I got the system down and could turn them around pretty quickly while watching tv. 

At first glance it doesn't look horrible.

Sewing the back, not so much! I pulled two seams on the old cover to make a traceable pattern, and the fit actually wasn't too terrible. The stitching is god awful though.

Yeah, that's not a look I'm happy with.

So I have three mis-matched chairs while I track down a sewing machine to try again with. I can live with that as long as I don't have to pull any more staples any time soon. That was a pain in the ass.

re-doing cleat shelves

I had to spend the weekend downtown for a grad program residency, but before I left I had some time Thursday morning to redo my cleat shelves in the garage. I needed a chance to clean up a little and appreciated the chance to get a project done.

My circular saw fell off it's shelf this winter, taking down two of the bottom cleats on the way down. It's my fault for not make sure it was properly balanced; I was pissed about losing my shelf space. So I came up with a plan to add some back, but also get the circular saw a little sturdier on the wall.

Instead of individual cleats I picked up a 2x4 plywood and put it on the wall with construction adhesive, drywall anchors, and a line of wood screws in a stud. I think this should hold it.

With that up I put one of the old box shelves back up after popping the cleat off. I kregged it right to the board. Same with the circular saw shelf, more glue and a couple of wood screws through the back.

Add in another shelf cleat that I can figure out later and I think I've gotten a good deal of storage back. The bigger shelf is sturdy enough to stay on the floor, the table saw goes up against the wall, and I've got a spot for just about everything.

The best part was I could watch/listen to John Oliver while I was working. This set up is working well; if the dog was interested in staying in the shop vs the yard it'd be just about perfect. 

Not really a project but still work getting done

The gate wasn't the only thing I got done before class started, and this might be my favorite. It's not as fancy as redoing a basement or building outdoor furniture, but I convinced the wife to get a small tv to put over the treadmill in our third garage, and holy hell is it great having it up.

The TCL in the basement has worked great, so when the price on this 32" model dropped I thought we had a good candidate.

And a small enough tv that I wasn't too worried about using an extending bracket on one stud.

The tv bracket hangs on this, which can be adjusted accordingly.

All I had to do was line it up.

Attach the bracket to the tv,

And viola, on the wall.

It's kind of liberating to not worry about cord management right now too. Of course, getting it straight (enough to not be distracting) took a little finagling with tightening the bracket, but I could not be happier to have this up in the garage. I'll clean it up at some point but by getting home early on a day where no one else was home, even the dog, I was able to get this on and run before anyone else was even home. 

Just in time for GoT to come back too, no, that timing wasn't suspicious at all.