guns 'n nail guns...

If I didn't hate guns so much, I'd think this was pretty cool...it's creative at least! From likecool.com: "David Wiggins created this DeWalt M-16 Nail gun, It can drive a 6-D nail thru a 2 X 4 at 200 yards, it means you can sit in your lawn chair and build a fence! And it also with the hundred-round magazine. The DeWalt rapid-fire nail M16 nail gun is a high-powered, cordless tool, just make sure you wearing safety goggles and Kevlar!"

i finished kyla's bed...

I put the finishing touches on Kyla's bed and I moved it to her room from the garage this morning. Here are pictures of the finished product.

Kyla's bed...almost finished

As I mentioned earlier, I am making a full size platform bed for Kyla. For Father's Day, Sarah gave me the day off yesterday and I spent the day out in the garage working on the bed. When I start a project, I've usually thought it through pretty well, but I don't really use any plans other than the ones I sketch out on paper. So far, everything has turned out pretty well even though I tend to make a few mistakes along the way, but I guess that's how I learn best. All those years of watching "This Old House" and "New Yankee Workshop" on Saturday mornings are finally paying off!

Anyway, I had all the wood and I quickly got to measuring, cutting, and sanding. And by the time I came in to help get the house ready for our dinner guests, I had it all framed out. I got out there in the garage again tonight after the kids were in bed and stained it. Now I just have to cut the slats and put on the clear coat and Kyla will have a bed! I guess the true test is when I get it upstairs and throw the mattress on there. If all goes well, I'll make one for us too! I designed it so it can be broken down into four pieces which is necessary because it is HEAVY! Below are a few pictures of my work in progress. I'll post the finished product soon!

This bed should be strong enough to last a long time even with all the monkeys jumping on the it!

one of the corners

ah yeah!

double ah yeah

nightstands...

A few weeks after slicing my arm on our bed rail, we decided that we wanted to ditch the metal frame and get a little more cultural with a platform bed that is low to the ground. One problem...we didn't have any money to buy a bed. So we did the second best thing...put our box spring on the ground!

If you've ever been to our house, you'd know that we don't have an overabundance of furniture...mostly just the necessities for daily living. The one piece of furniture that were were lacking, however, that we felt we needed, were nightstands for our bedroom. It's not a big deal, the lamps, alarm clocks, and books sit on the floor beside the bed. Although, last summer, it was pretty disappointing when Kyla stepped on my glasses and broke them in half when she came in to wake me up one morning.

At any rate, I had been itching to get back into my garage to build something and I had a lot of scrap materials that I thought could become end tables. So I seized my opportunity, ran to Home Depot, bought $15 worth of materials and put together two platform-bed-sized night stands. Sarah helped me sand them down and I stained and sealed them as I had time over the course of a few days.

I'm pretty proud of how they turned out because I didn't have any plans, just a picture in my head of how I hoped they'd look. One of my summer projects will hopefully be making the matching platform bed...we'll see!

woodworking...

Thanks to my dad and my friend Jerry in Los Angeles, I've got some pretty good woodworking tools and I've been trying to build a few things over the past several years. Here are a few pictures of the jewelry/keepsake box I made for Sarah for Christmas. This was the first "fine" piece I've made. Everything else I've done didn't have much detail. It was a lot of fun to make and I learned a lot in the process!

woodworking part 2...

Here are a few shots of the play table I made for the girls while we lived in LA. My brother helped me start it right after Avery was born and it took me almost a year to complete. I can't figure out why I never had much time to work on it. I mean, we only had a newborn and a 2-year-old, I was only teaching full time, and I was only commuting 1.5 hours twice a week to class and trying to finish all of my homework. This is the piece I'm most proud of because the girls spend a lot of time playing on the table every day!