As a quick aside...

“You can never have too many bottle openers” is one of the many mottos I live by. I have a few I’m ridiculously sentimental about: the waiter’s friend my college roommate’s dad gave everyone when we graduated, the card opener I’ve had in my wallet for a decade and never leave home without, the one with the ad for a random Japanese beer from the weird karaoke place we used to frequent in the city. There are always a few scattered around whenever we have people over just in case. And now we have a permanent one outside and I love it. 

Way back when we moved into the new house, I wanted to change the locks on the front and garage doors. This is partly b/c that’s just the sort of thing you do when you move somewhere, but also b/c you couldn’t open the front door using the outside handle and that seems like it would be important. 

So I ordered some matching sets online and when I did this bottle opener and cap catch set came up as “people also purchased.”

“Sure,” I thought. “Why not? We’ll use it somewhere.” Damn you Amazon, your algorithm works again.

It took a while, but I eventually figured out how to put it up in a spot where it would be most useful, outside next to the grill. I just so happened to have a scrap board that fit between the railing slats, and using some scrap wood and kreg screws it fits just fine. It’s gotten quite a workout this summer with all the guests we’ve been having so score one more for having mottos to live by.

I’m not taking this down to take pictures of how it got secured, so you’ll have to use your imagination. But I had some scraps from trimming the 2x10 boards that I kregged to the inside of two railing posts as supports. With those on, I stained the board I was putting the opener on and attached it to the supports. Then it was as easy as putting the opener and catch on, and we’re ready to go. Leaving the screw exposed makes it look sloppy but it opens beers fine and that’s all I was really going for. Sometimes it’s alright to focus on function over form. 

I stole this idea

I don’t remember where I saw this idea, but at some point early on in having kids, I saw an example of someone using an old toy to create some cool bookends. They cut the toy in half and re-attached them to the bookends, which I thought was a neat way to incorporate something unique into a room. But our oldest was young enough to not really be into anything at the time, so the idea just kind of sat somewhere in my exhausted brain as I tried to survive kid #1, and then #2. 

Well it came bubbling back this weekend when I saw a seam in the middle of a dinosaur kid #1 had buried in the sandbox. Suddenly I had the perfect toy to try this on, just waiting to be ripped in half and put back together as something new. And if it was buried in the sandbox odds are it wouldn’t be missed, but it might add something to an already dinosaur-themed room.

Getting the basics together was simple: tear the toy in half, trim the plastic lip off, chop some spare boards to get a pair of L-shaped bookends together. Easy so far.

plenty of materials around to use...

Paint the bookends blue, the dinosaur white, and add some black highlights to create a little visual interest. Okay, getting slightly trickier but still not difficult.

I weirdly liked how these looked sticking off the box I used to paint them on.

Finish the bookends with poly coat and attach the dinosaur halves…okay, this part was a challenge.

After several glues and cursing, I think these are done.

Sometimes the biggest challenge of a project like this is matching up what’s in your head with what’s happening in-front of you. This was pretty close but getting the toy halves lined up with each other across the bookends and then getting them to stay still was a bit challenging. They kept sliding down from where I had them lined up.

That’s what happens when your level of OCD is higher than your skill level. It can be rewarding to just see how things come together as a project happens, but the quiet voice in my head reminding me about that is usually drowned out by the much louder inner monologue focusing on “WHY WON’T THIS #$*%ING STAY WHERE I WANT IT TO?!” When that happens it’s usually time to get out of the shop for a while.

The boy snuck into the garage at some point when I had the pieces drying so he wasn’t surprised when I gave them to him, but he clearly was looking forward to having something new to display. Now in the issue of fairness I have to wait and see what toy of kid #2 I can destroy in the name of DIY…

Yeah, I like that much better.

And I'm going to have to keep telling myself that, b/c things are driving me nuts right now.

Comcast was able to get the basement cable working for about two weeks. I went downstairs hoping to watch some Supernatural while finishing up the caulking, and oops, no signal. Reset, guided set up, nothing's working. So instead I used up the rest of the caulk while I was trying to get this fixed over the phone. Nice try, no go. This will never end.

Of course, while I do this I just keep telling myself how much more I like the space now, and that helps calm me down.

Listing photo

Now

Yeah, that's more our speed. 

listing photo

now

Kind of a crappy, cloudy day to sit around and bother with comcast, which is coming through in my dark, fuzzy pictures compared to the listing. Still looks a lot more presentable though.

It makes me wish we had taken more pictures down here with the paneling up b/c it looks so much nicer now. There are definitely some rough spots but overall it's a big improvement. Hopefully we're not huddled together for warmth when we do anything downstairs this winter.