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.

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. 

Labor Day weekend project: put our bedroom tv up

Ah, Labor Day. One last gasp of summery goodness without the hassle of getting to soccer games, work, school, or anything else. So of course I'm cramming the weekend full of garage sale prep. And it just wouldn't be labor day without sneaking in one more side project. So why don't we put the bedroom tv up on the wall?

This actually came about thanks to the garage sale, in that the in-laws had an un-used mount they were going to contribute to the sale, but we thought we'd grab it and use it ourselves. So I picked up another cable management kit during the week and viola, one labor day weekend project.

The tv is a sony bravia from about 7 years ago at this point, and beside occasionally dropping picture for what seems to be no reason it's been solid. I like our cheap TCL in the basement better but this works. With a new roku on it I love it these days, Ventures Bros marathon every night! It was up on the wall in our condo but has been on a dresser since we moved. There are minimal components to connect but if the tv is going on the wall why not go all the way and hide the wires properly.

Properly means a power bridge and sneaking the hdmi cords down the wall. Easy.

Breaking the drywall saw while trying to cut the hole out? Less easy. 

Finding studs and marking the bracket. Not so easy! Of course the studs are apparently randomly spaced.

Getting everything back on and powered up. Again, not so easy. Accidentally bent the pins on a cord, so we're down to just the Roku for now. Dammit.

Well, I was pretty close to not screwing this one up. Got the bracket on easy, power bridge in fine, even remembered to tie the cables together to get them through. At least we can still use it as I wait for new hdmi cords to show up.

Aha, something to build for the office!

I have a pretty great set-up in my new office: two big desks to spread out on, a table big enough to fit 5 people around, even a bookshelf for all my old books with some room to put pictures of the kids. Even better, it's all mine! Mine mine mine. Except when I have a meeting in it, which is quite often b/c I'm very important.

First day: I don't think there's any important detail in here. At least I hope not. 

Here's today's view from the other direction...it's nice and sunny out today.

Anyway, the one thing I wasn't crazy about right off the bat was the PC set up. I have a laptop on a dock that I can work off of a full-sized monitor from, and a wireless keyboard. But it's on a weird swivel tray, and my mouse kept falling off. At first I just moved the laptop to the other desk, which I also liked b/c I'm not crazy about not facing the door. But then I can't print and the battery life isn't great, so three months in and I still haven't quite nailed how I like to work yet. Not something to complain about though.

So I got fed up last week, took the tray off the desk myself and just put everything on the desk. It's flat, so it's a step in the right direction, but I need to raise the monitor a couple of inches. So hooray, scrap project time!

I still have not cleaned up from the last two projects. Yikes.

Ah, my favorite kind of project. Perfect to knock out in an afternoon and scratch the project itch. Between the new job and my classes, I was hoping to find something small to work on, and this definitely fit the bill. I had a few nice looking boards that didn't need much work, so I table sawed a few quick miters and glued them up. Easy.

Stopping point one: let the glue dry and it should be good. 

More wipe-on poly, man that goes on thin.

Maybe I should have tried dovetails on the joints here. Probably. Eventually. For now, miters were helpful for getting this done when I could find the time. .

Oops. Should have made it two boards wide. Oh well.

The perfect scrap project: glue a few cuts, a little sanding, and a coat or two of wipe on poly, some felt buttons on the bottom, and ta da, one easy yet functional monitor stand. It's enough work that I feel recharged, but it didn't take weeks to complete.

Reusing the wire shelves

With the cleats up in the garage, I now had to think of something to do with the wire shelves not being used.

These shelves were left in our condo from the previous owners, and they made our move with us after keeping them as pantry shelves. Honestly I couldn't bring myself to throw them out even if they're not overly useful. We had to cover them in cardboard to use them in our pantry, and they weren't very helpful in the garage. But there's got to be a better use for some of these than the garbage dump, so I figured I'd build a frame to put the shelves on to give the boy some additional closet storage.

The closet isn't too big, but some extra shelving in there would help get some boxes off his floor and out of the way. Hence the left over 1x4s getting split into 1x2s so I could play around with building a frame to set the shelves on to make the most of the space.

Easy frame up to fit the shelves on.

Even though I put them all the way together, this wasn't the sturdiest frame so I ended up just carrying the individual pieces upstairs to assemble in the closet.

Shelves in, no what to do with the middle?

They ended up really helping get the closet a little more organized. Right now, with no real clothes to hang up, this closet became a dumping ground when the boy has to clean his room. Hopefully putting these in there keep him from filling up the bottom of the closet just throwing junk in.

I ended up keeping the middle open to let one of the girl's costume dresses hang. I have enough scrap to glue together another shelf to add on, that might be a small extra project to glue and plane something together. For now, I'm happy with keeping some more stuff out of our garbage pile.

DIY painters canvas

As much as it pained me to change the media stand plans and not use the expensive 2x2's I bought specifically for the base, clearly I was going to hang onto them and use them for something else. Turns out I used them for TWO something-elses.

First, looking at the pieces standing up on their own, they seemed like a good size to make a canvas out of. I haven't had much painting time lately, but I do have a canvas drop cloth I've been holding onto for just this project. And a tall, thin canvas would fit perfectly where Vader currently is.

I started by cutting one of the longer sides at the 75% mark, and then set up a jig to make sure I trimmed the other piece at the same spot.

Then it was as simple as kregging the corners together, and viola, frame. I should maybe put a brace in the middle, or at least in each of the corners, but these are thick enough that if I get it square to begin with I think it will stay that way. It seems to be holding up so far at least.

Turns out it was just about the perfect size for the actual canvas, and I only had to cut along one edge to get it sized to fit over the frame. I did have to wash it though since the creases were pretty severe.

Eh, still not great but better

A few clamps and starting staples on one corner and things were ready to get stretched. This was exactly as difficult as I expected, since my obsessive/compulsiveness kicked in and wouldn't let me stop before I had stretched this entire things as taught as possible, but wasn't all-together impossible.

Not perfect, but tight and flat enough to paint on I think. Like I said, I've been preparing for this project for some time. So I've had some gesso just waiting to put to canvas. Of course, I had no idea how much was too much, or if I hadn't put enough on.

I swear, that's a different pic than the one up there.

At least, I think. Anyway, I left it to dry on my make shift easel until I find time to paint it.

It's about 18x42, really weird dimensions

In fact, it was so easy after this one was done I cut two scrap 2x3's to make a second similarly shaped rectangle canvas.

Cutting those in half still gave me an inch of material to work with, so I could still kreg the frame together. This one wasn't quite as clean on the corners, since there was a lot to cut off but I still kept things pretty tight.

This one's about 16x32

I loved this project for two reasons: I hated to see those 2x2s not get used, and I've been waiting to try putting my own canvas together for some time. Now I have two custom blank canvases ready to go and probably more in the future. I might not have saved any money technically on the first one since I was using expensive wood for the frame, but using actual scrap on the second probably put me back in the black. I can see this going much cheaper for future canvases. Of course, now that my summer hours are over and my workweek is back to 5 days I'm not sure when exactly I'll have a chance to paint but whatever, baby steps. Right now I have three ideas for two canvases, but probably only one that would get the wife's approval. Good to know how easy this is to put together. 

Anniversary breakfast tray

The wife thought I might have gone a little overboard for her anniversary present last year, cajoling my way into an expired discount on an outdoor rocker that she had had her eye on for some time. I'm going a little smaller this year, and much cheaper. But hopefully with more thought in it, which will help make up the differences.

This year she's getting a breakfast-in-bed tray, even though we rarely have the morning to ourselves to have a quiet moment. But maybe this will help be the impetus for more moments like that.

Right off the bat I started with a cheat; instead of making my own tray from scratch I picked up a cheap serving tray and put legs on it. I'm still in the middle of my media stand build which is eating up a lot of my time and space so a shortcut made a lot of sense. But just b/c it was cheap doesn't mean it wasn't nice looking, and I will admit probably much nicer than a tray I would have put together myself. Hopefully this helps get both projects done sooner rather than later. 

For a second shortcut, instead of getting new 1x2s from HD I trimmed a scrap from one of the 1x10s into even sections that should work for the legs. That table saw is freaking tremendous.

The legs need to be collapsible for storage, but tall and sturdy enough to hold a breakfast over someone's lap when swung out. So I went for a hinged design, with the tops cut at a 10 degree angle so they'll swing out when down, but still fold up relatively close when not in use. I'm an idiot though, and didn't buy enough hinges the first time around b/c I can't count to four apparently. 

 

With all that done, I left it bare but lacquered it. At this point the wife came down while I was working on it and saw it, so I didn't have to worry about keeping it hidden while stuff was drying. Kind of a bummer but a lot easier to work around at least.

Now I just have to be able to get up early enough to make her a coffee or something this weekend for our anniversary. That might be the hardest part of the entire process.